Hotel Pennsylvania CB5 Review

There's an uncertain amount of time before the CB5 review.  The potential developer currently should be putting together a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), which is a sort of prelude to the ULURP process and which has no official time frame for completion.  Once the DEIS is finished, and then certified by the City Planning Commission, CB5 will have 60 days to hold a public hearing and issue its recommendation on the proposal.

Let's not waste time on this people, let's get the word out now to the CB5 ad let them know where we stand.

CB5 Zoning review

On Wednesday  , November 4, 2009 @ 6pm the CB5 Land Use & Zoning board will be holding the first hearing of the month.  If you care to come down and voice your option about the possible rezoning of the Hotel Pennsylvania, please show up.  It will be held at Flatiron BID, 27 W. 24th, Rm. 800.


Remember this is your neighborhood too!

Contact the Chairman of the LPC

 Anyone who is interested in contacting the Chairman of the LPC, Robert B. Tierney can do so from this form. Please make sure you keep it to 150 words or less. Tell him whey you think the Hotel Pennsylvania should be landmarked.


http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/mail/html/maillpc.html

LPC

An interesting discovery was made today, apparently the LPC is not made up of City Council members, but rather voulenteers from the area, that are appointed by the current Mayor of NYC. (at present this is Bloomberg).

Christine Quinn

We received a phone call from the Office of the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's Liaison, Jose Conde.  Apparently to my surprise, there are several steps in getting the Hotel Pennsylvania re-zoned.  A process known as ULURP, (The Uniform Land Use Review Procedure).  There are many steps in this process the first of which is preparing an EIP (Environmental Impact Study).  Then it has to go to the Borough President, then to the City Planner, and then on to City Council.  Each of these steps has a certain time limit imposed on them before they must be completed.  Right now as stated, it is only in the EIP stage, and has a long way before it gets to the City Council.

The actual steps involved can be found here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/luproc/ulpro.shtml

All in all I would say this is good news!  Mr. Conde will keep us posted of any changes.

Follow up letter

Back on October 14th we got a phone call from Mr. Seth Berliner at Tom Duane's office. As of yet we received no response from him. We sent a follow up letter just to remind him we are still here. 

Ideas

If anyone has ideas they would like to share about saving the hotel, please post them as a comment and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks!

Vornado knew about 9/11 before hand?

After doing so research I came up with some interesting facts. Mind you this is just speculation and nothing confirmed unless stated.

In feb of 2001 Vornado entered into and was the high bidder for the 99 year lease of the WTC - Fact (http://www.vno.com/press/display.phtml?id=2442)

In March of 2001 Vornado, back out of the deal for the WTC and allowed Larry Silverstein to purchase the deal. - Fact (http://www.vno.com/press/display.phtml?id=2386)

Robert P. Kogod a trustee of Vornado Realty trust serves as "Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Defense" - Fact (http://www.muckety.com/U-S-Department-of-Defense/5001894.muckety) (http://www.vno.com/corporate_governance/robert_p_kogod_2.phtml) (http://www.muckety.com/Robert-P-Kogod/2134.muckety)

Now, although I do not know if the US really new that the WTC was going to be attacked before hand or not, I can not say, but it seems way to much of a coincidence that VNO pulled out of the deal 6 months before the attack almost to the day. - Fact (http://www.vno.com/press/display.phtml?id=2386)

So along with having connections in the DOD, I'm sure they they must have some connections in NYC's govt as well. (speculation)

Mr. Seth Berliner

I received a very interesting call today, from Mr. Seth Berliner, the legislative aide to Senator Tom Duane. We spoke for a few minutes and I was able to hopefully bring him up to speed on the current situation with the Hotel.

Vorndao

A interesting way of viewing how Vornado is connected through to the world. If you want to see the whole map, goto http://www.muckety.com/Vornado-Realty-Trust/5011867.muckety?big=true

Wikipedia

Well we are back where we started,  with Wikipedia, they refuse to allow us to mention ourselves, with out proof of our existence in the media.

Wikipedia

OK we finally worked out the differences (at lest we hope) with Wikipedia.  The effort to Save Hotel Pennsylvania will now appear on the Hotel Pennsylvania's article on Wikipedia.  Just as before we need your help in expanding it.

Wikipedia

We are currently in dispute with Wikipedia about our page.  We are working on getting them to restore it.

Richard N. Gottfried

Back in January of 2008 the local Assembleymen for the NYC area where the hotel is located, Richard N. Gottfried, Testifed before the New York City Department of City Planning Scoping.  The letter can be found here.
http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=075&sh=story&story=29966

Wikipedia

Help us make our Wikipedia page better, check us out and help the cause by posting some links, and references.

Spreading The Word...

A link to this website has been added to the Wikipedia article on Hotel Pennsylvania. It can be found at the end of the Proposed Demolition section. Please keep spreading the word about this website and the hotel!

Hotel Lobby back in the day.

No word yet

Still no word other then the canned response from Duane and Quinn's email.  Looks like I'll have to stop down there.