Paul Bunten and his fellow Westsiders for Public Participation have spent little time resting over the past months. The group of activists have continued to rally against the development of Columbus Village, a massive building project of residential and retail space, even as it continues to rise.
Bunten, the WPP, and their neighbors have long taken issue with the encroaching development, expressing concern that it would greatly alter the community and the landscape they call home.
“It is the citizens’ obligation to hold City government accountable to the law,” Bunten, founder of the WPP and a resident of 372 Central Park West, wrote in a recent e-mail. “The fulfillment of that obligation is our entire purpose.”
The WPP was created as a response to Bunten’s fears that Columbus Village was being developed without the input of those who would be most directly affected—the tenants of Park West Village. As Columbus Village’s four towering residential buildings, reaching as high as 29 stories, and 320,000 square feet of retail space for chain stores continue to evolve within the already existing property of PWV, tenants are demanding to be heard.
The construction, located between 97th and 100th streets along Columbus Avenue, is situated in the heart of Park West Village, a government-subsidized area with rent-stabilized housing. Many tenants have lived in one of the seven existing buildings for years, and worry that the addition of a retail destination would destroy their sense of community.
Residents have also expressed concern about how the construction will affect the environment.
In 2007, the New York City Department of Buildings found that structural instabilities in the land on which PWV is built resulted in the collapse of a retaining wall outside 784 Park West Village.
Shauna Zasslo, a resident of 784 Columbus Ave., questioned the structural soundness of the entire project at a Westsiders for Public Participation meeting in April.
“Our laundry-room floor is reconfiguring itself, the land is shifting,” she said. Zasslo questioned if the proposed 30-story building might also collapse.
Zasslo’s concerns were heightened over the summer, when residents noticed that a foundation was filling up with water from an unknown source. An environmental review confirmed that the water was not from the development’s old pipes, but could not determine the actual origin.
In response to such concerns, and the widespread feeling that community stakeholders had no say in the development process, the WPP, led by Bunten, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Buildings in April. Jack Lester, lawyer for the group, said in a press release that the lawsuit was meant to shed light on “the DOB’s gross dereliction of its administrative obligations ... allowing the developer to proceed under a cloak of secrecy and causing harm to the community.”
But the suit never made it to court. Five days before Lester and Bunten were set to defend their case, the DOB served the developers of 808 Columbus Village a temporary injunction, halting the construction until the developers could clarify construction plans. If the developers could not do so within ten days, the DOB was to suspend 808’s building permit indefinitely. The WPP agreed to the delay.
But the developers of 808 Columbus Village were able to clarify their plans after many extensions, and construction recommenced at the builders’ own risk.
For further exasperated activists, this solution was not enough. The WPP, along with State Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell, U.S. Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), and City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, has amended and refiled its lawsuit, adding the Board of Standards and Appeals as a defendant. The lawsuit is set to be reviewed Sept. 10.
Despite the steps activists have taken, many are still unsure of what can ultimately be done about a construction project that is already so far along. With the building frames already in place, few believe that stopping the construction is a viable option.
But Bunten and the community haven’t given up.
“The developers are on notice from DOB. They are building illegally and at their own risk,” he said. “Other developers who overstepped their bounds have had to replan after the community got involved. What goes up so quickly and hastily can easily come down just as quickly.”
