Locals Debate SoHo Rezoning Plan In Community Board Hearing

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — A Community Board 2 public hearing lasted over two and a half hours Tuesday night as downtown residents made their cases for and against the city's plan to rezone SoHo and NoHo.

The proposed rezoning in the two Lower Manhattan neighborhoods would allow for as many as 3,200 new homes to be built in the historically business-centric community, including around 800 affordable housing units.

It would also update regulations for business owners and artists that have remained unchanged for 50 years.

While the downtown residents were far from a unanimous decision on the matter, there were three stances on the proposal that came up the most.

• Support of more affordable housing units in SoHo and NoHo.
• Ensuring that the rezoning does not destroy the neighborhoods' historic character and allow big business to take over space.
• Complete opposition to the plan, especially from people who have lived in the two neighborhoods for decades.

"During the height of the George Floyd protests, CB2 unanimously passed a resolution to, and I quote, 'commit our collective efforts to fostering diverse and inclusive neighborhoods by implementing anti-racist policies," one speaker said. "The entire community board signed onto this resolution to be anti racist and I would say this is your chance."

The speaker said that the added affordable housing the rezoning would bring was the "best way" to make the area more diverse and battle the "segregation" issues that SoHo and NoHo had.

However, the most frequent point made was the idea of supporting additional affordable housing and zoning for small-business, but not if it meant the elimination of historic areas and the invitation for big-business to take over the SoHo streets.

"We encourage the city to achieve these important policy goals in ways that do not change the historic character of these important neighborhoods," a speaker said.

A group of Lower Manhattan community organizations also discussed their recently released alternate rezoning plan for the two neighborhoods.

The Lower Manhattan groups says its rezoning plan will "keep new development in context with its surrounding, help existing local retail businesses and facilitate new appropriately sized ones, and protect current artist residents, allow non-artist residents to legalize their residency, and ensure that new appropriately-scaled residential development includes affordable housing."

You can watch the full meeting on the Community Board 2 Facebook page.