A Rowdy Crowd at the Hearing on Hudson Yds.

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The New York Sun

A rowdy crowd of several hundred showed up last night for a key public hearing on the plan to convert the Hudson Yards development into a glitzy neighborhood that would include a football stadium.


The hearing is part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure for the $3 billion plan that would transform the industrial neighborhood into a mixed-use area with high-rise towers, the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and a stadium for the Jets.


The borough board will hold a hearing on the plan tomorrow and a vote will be carried out next Tuesday.


The plan will then proceed to the City Planning Commission and the City Council, with a final vote sometime in January.


Community Board 4 already voted to reject the Hudson Yards plan, which runs from 30th Street to 41st Street, from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River. The community board cited a lack of affordable housing, increased traffic and air pollution, and high-density buildings that would block the waterfront as reasons.


At last night’s hearing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields had to continually quiet the audience, which repeatedly interrupted the speakers with boos and clapping.


The Department of City Planning opened the meeting with a presentation of its plan, which was interrupted by frustrated audience members who had heard the presentation many times before and wanted to proceed with the speakers.


“This is a formal process and while you may have heard this presentation before there may be people who have not,” Ms. Fields chastised.


Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who opposes the plan, was the first to speak. Calling for mandated affordable housing in the neighborhood, he also said the plan would destroy “hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs that while not glamorous, such as caterers’ kitchens and Federal Express employees, just try to run Manhattan without them.”


Representatives from the building industry spoke, including Michael Slattery of the Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful developers’ lobby, and the chairman of the New York Builders Congress, Frank Sciame.


Calling it a “smart regional plan that will improve the overall quality of life in New York,” Mr. Sciame was repeatedly booed and forced to rush through the end of his speech.


The loudest response came when Mr. Sciame said the project was “environmentally friendly,” and it would be a shame if “New York doesn’t have room for the largest convention, a home for its football team, or cannot be a host for the Olympics.”


An environmental lawyer, Michael Gerard, who was representing Madison Square Garden, testified that the plan will create havoc on the environment.


“Congestion will be off the charts,” he said, adding that air pollution will also worsen, and the increase in sewage will overflow an antiquated system and lead to an overflow into the Hudson River.


While several speakers criticized the plan, there were neighborhood residents who spoke in favor of it. “Living at 33rd Street and 10th Avenue, I am the closest to the stadium and I say that change is inevitable and we should embrace that change,” said a local resident, James Cassidy.


A manager of a local bar for the past seven years, Frank Ford, believes the project will increase business. “There is no doubt the Hudson Yards project will help my small business, and I think that’s what economic development is all about.”


Other local businesses oppose the development, including Federal Express, which employs 300 people at a building that will be demolished to make way for a station on the no. 7 subway line.


The New York Sun

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