political response to Soho artist +/or zoning 'problem'?

how grassy are your roots?
I attended the community meeting in Soho last night previewed (briefly) in yesterday’s New York Post, along with (I estimate) 250 to 300 others. Before seeing notices for this meeting, I had not heard of the meeting sponsor, dubbed the “SoHo/NoHo Action Committee”, but they did a good job of drawing a crowd.

Like that meeting, this post is one part of a dialogue. The meeting leaders last night specifically stated that the meeting was a beginning; not to claim primacy by any means, but Manhattan Loft Guy has been chewing on these issues for 8 months (chronology below).

I am drafting this before scraping the blogosphere for any commentary or reporting, and I expect to find some of both on the inter-tubes later today or tomorrow. What follows are my thoughts, based on sitting through the meeting and reviewing the very extensive notes I took on the iPad. I am not a good enough key-boarder to offer extensive quotes, but I will have some close paraphrases, and I will not attribute statements to identified individuals because I cannot be sure of name spellings and my paraphrasing is sufficient for my purposes.

the politics, through my prism
It is obvious, at least to me, that the “SoHo/NoHo Action Committee” is intended as a counter to the Soho Alliance. Long-time Manhattan Loft Guy readers know that Sean Sweeney has been a frequent commenter here (again, my thanks to Sean for that) and that he has been publicly sceptical about whether there is even a problem for Soho residents due to the City’s approach to the Artist in Residence program and application of the peculiar zoning in Soho. Readers of this blog and of the many recent newspaper articles about A.I.R. know that the Sweeney viewpoint has often been contrasted by one particular long-time Soho lawyer as a public voice for owners and buildings that are suffering consequences from the City’s approach.

That attorney, Margaret Baisley, is one of three apparent sponsors of the meeting and of the SoHo/NoHo Action Committee, along with an architect and long-time Noho resident, and a formerly certified artist, long-time Soho resident, and current real estate broker.

Sweeney (who was present last night but did not take the opportunity to speak) has said that the Soho Alliance will lobby the City to change the regulations if the Soho community expresses that they want a change, but that he has not seen a community groundswell to do that.

I have not been to a meeting of the Soho Alliance, so I cannot compare the audience or the content last night to an Alliance meeting. I can only infer that the organizers of he SoHo/NoHo Action Committee think that a different forum from the Soho Alliance is needed to promote their view that change is needed.

so many speakers, so many commonalities
Not that a census is the right way to measure these things, but I counted 35 speakers, including the 3 meeting sponsors. I may have missed some identifications, but I counted about half the speakers as being in a household with a certified artist, most of whom have been Soho or Noho residents for nearly 40 years.

While I heard a few seemingly intentionally pointed remarks (about “greedy” artists, and “yuppies”), most people spoke about their own experiences and a wish to avoid negative changes. There was something of a disconnect between organizer assurances that “no one wanted to remove protections from artist renters” and speaker insistence that they would have been out on the street but for their artist-status, and that Rent Stabilization status was not a sufficient protection in a world in which landlords can take back rented space “for family use”.

I suspect that the SoHo/NoHo Action Committee learned that they need to be more clear in the next round of discussions about exactly how artist-renters might be protected if the rules otherwise change.

I also heard a disconnect between a topic of artist status and zoning, as many speakers who seemed otherwise willing to talk about how artist protections might be changed were very concerned that opening up a broad Soho zoning question is akin to Pandora’s box. There was more than a little grumbling (reasonable grumbling, in my view) that the petition presented for signature throughout the meeting was (a) one-sided, (b) assumed the result before the discussion (i.e., premature), and (c) in my words, ham-handed.

We the Residents of SoHo & NoHo hereby petition our government and all its agencies to rezone SoHo and NoHo, including a repeal of the artist certification requirement, the protection of existing artists in our district, and the promotion of the development of a neighborhood that reflects the goals of our communities.

I suspect that the SoHo/NoHo Action Committee views that petition as a tactical mistake, and would be reluctant to use any signatures gathered last night before further community meetings.

some flavor
Any summary is a distortion, because it is not the whole thing. My selections of interesting statements will be different from a collection offered by someone else who was there. But here’s a few specific things that were said (not full quotes, but close paraphrases as I captured them):

• the City Planning Commission has been very active in re-zoning throughout city but “won’t touch” Soho unless (until) there is an expression of community support
• “everyone” knows zoning regulations are “ridiculous” but people are worried that landlords will (mis) use any changes
• the real issue is not artists but commercial activity
• the pivotal political question that must be addressed: “why should Soho Rent Stabilized tenant-artists have more protection than Rent Stabilized tenants elsewhere in NYC?”
• certification process for artists is not fair, not consistent (in variants, offered by many)
• non-artist family members would like to stay (or to sell freely) after the artist member dies (and other variants on ‘grandfathering’ issues)
  
• artists want (deserve) a place to work that smells like art school, with the freedom to take out a chainsaw at any time (day or night)
• (in one building fully artist-occupied) no one can move, because there is no place we can go (without running risk of not being approved)
• (in a 10 unit building) we have had 17 sales in 10 years, no one has had problem with sales, or with renovations (another speaker offered a similar anecdote)
• (in one building formerly artist-occupied) most artists have sold to non-artists, now some neighbors having trouble getting permit for renovation; “this is no longer a neighborhood of artists”
• (various people) really worried about new construction, more retail, larger stores, changes in now-quiet blocks
  
• against changes until we see how renters are protected (similar: would like to see information in black and white about a zoning change before considering)
• (various) there are many contradictions here (including protected artists selling to non-artists, tactical fights about who is an “artist”)

incoherent, but not in a bad way
With 5-minute presentations by the three organizers followed by 30+ people speaking for 3 minutes each, it is too much to ask for much coherence on such complicated topics.

Personally, I heard a lot of fear expressed, as protect-what-we-have was a very consistent theme. Is it unfair to suggest that any one person’s self-interest is ‘too narrow’ a prism? If so, call me unfair.

I will probably have further reflections over time, particularly after I see what the rest of the blogosphere / media thinks happened at last night’s meeting. The issues are not going away, of course, of course.

related Manhattan Loft Guy posts
The titles are pretty much self-explanatory, going back to the mother post last November:

• March 7,  it is impossible to prove that the Soho artist in residence regulations are a resale problem unless ‘victims’ come forward
• March 5, is renter protection the thorniest (and separable) piece of the Soho artist in residence puzzle?
• December 17 real world impact of Soho artist-in-residence rules and Certificate of Occupancy enforcement, as the dialogue continues
• November 30, how are Soho artist-in-residence articles like the Richter Scale in California?
• November 12,  did the NY Times just write a front page obituary for the Soho real estate market?

© Sandy Mattingly 2011