"We are asking for this affordable housing plan to have deeper levels of affordable housing," said Kallos, who also called for workers constructing the buildings to be paid a living wage "so that those who build our affordable housing can live in that affordable housing."
The group submitted the plan with co-signers including Borough President Gale Brewer and councilmen Ben Kallos and Dan Garodnick — all of whom would have to sign off on the rezoning if it were to pass a land-use review process — and State Senator Liz Krueger.
The rezoning application came as a direct response to the planned Bauhouse tower, with the East River 50s Alliance going door to door to raise money to hire planners and lawyers in order to make the application airtight and guide it through the review process.
Although demolition has already started at the site of the East 58th Street tower, building permits have yet to be filed, city records show. According to critics the firm is still struggling to finance the project, and Kallos said the rezoning effort could stop it in its tracks.
“Anyone who is thinking of investing in this place would walk away from the deal,” Kallos said. “If Bauhouse didn’t believe us before, the proof is here, and we will succeed.”
The DOE Fund is making a temporary return to East 86th Street to clean up the garbage that residents say chronically builds up along the sidewalk and flows out of trash bins. The DOE Fund, or the "men in blue," as they're called, began bagging up trash along East 86th Street on Dec. 19 and will finish their stint in the new year, according to Councilman Ben Kallos, who secured funding to pay for clean up on the busy street from Lexington to First Avenue.
UPPER EAST SIDE — A local community board is making a last-ditch attempt to control the impacts of a planned marine transfer station on East 91st Street and York Avenue — after years of opposition from residents failed to stop construction from starting altogether.
The Marine Transfer Station Task Force was created as an attempt to halt the project, which seems to being going full steam ahead despite much objection from the community, according to Community Board 8 chairman Jim Clynes.
The city wants to hear from residents about how best to spend $1.3 million to upgrade a run-down playground at Carl Schurz Park.
A meeting dedicated to the topic on Dec. 15 will gather ideas from the community about how to improve the play space at East End Avenue and East 84th Street, according to City Councilman Ben Kallos, who earmarked the funds.
"East 86th has similar traffic as Penn Station has at 7th or 8th Avenue and that area has a BID, but we don’t," Kallos said. "No amount of city services will be enough to deal with the amount of foot traffic we're seeing."
A BID, which is a nonprofit authorized by the public and run by residents and property owners, has the ability to bid for and hire nonprofit organizations or private businesses to take care of commercial areas.
Councilman Ben Kallos is working with the East River 50s Alliance, a community group that coalesced around an effort to defeat plans for a 900-foot skyscraper in Sutton Place, to raise the money and dole it out to the analysts, planners, and lawyers that the activists will need in order to usher a rezoning bid through the city’s uniform land-use review process, or ULURP.
Both Senator Jose Serrano and City Councilman Ben Kallos promised to fight to keep the new high-rise slated to rise at the East 93rd Street public housing complex affordable.
