For some reason, the AD-64 race has become the hot topic du jour among the NY media. Tomorrow's edition of the Village Voice has a bombshell article on that huge empty lot on the south-eastern part of Delancey Street and how Shelly's "Dr. No" approach to everything has basically kept it that way for more than a generation:
The Shame of Speaker Shelly Silver's Resistance to Seward Park Redevelopment
Just south of Delancey Street on the Lower East Side, near the bustling entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, lies that rarest Manhattan commodity: vacant land.
This is not just a few buildable lots, but a huge swath of property, some five acres in all, every square inch of it owned by the City of New York. It is a fabulous parcel, the kind that developers-like those building theswanky new towers rising on the other side of Delancey Street-only dream about.
(snip)
But not here. These weed-strewn lots have stood for more than a generation, their grim chain-link fencing, topped with barbed wire, all that passes for a streetscape. No one has dared break ground here in decades. Every promise to do so, every initiative that might bring new construction, has been buried by the political masters who control this barren turf.
Just who might these "political masters" be?
Who has such clout? Who tells a mayor, an entire city, to simply buzz off?
Who else but that wily old pol, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. This strip-carried on zoning maps as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area-is the northern edge of Silver's lower Manhattan district. And while he rarely leaves fingerprints, nothing moves here without his approval. In Albany, where he is the state's second-most-powerful figure, Silver is notorious for his often-obstructionist ways. On Seward Park, he has outdone himself. Under his watch, this territory has remained desolate and empty for more than 30 years, held hostage to stubborn prejudice and fear of change.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but Shelly just might be wary of allowing a huge population influx into his district- one that changes his electorate in ways he can't predict or control.
Regardless of his motives, the article is a greeat read that delves into the racial and generational divides of the area since it was leveled at the height of the misguided urban renewal era in 1967.
Even more, it serves as a powerful metaphor of Silver's tenure in the Assembly- a huge, gaping vacant lot left to fester for over a generation because of an utterly bewildering fear of change and progress by one politician with more power than any single person should ever posess in a democracy. Go read the whole thing. |
