The Landmarks Committee Meets

Last night, the Landmarks Committee of Community Board 3 held its first meeting since the community's propitious turnout on February 16th with the Landmarks Preservation Committee (LPC), the city agency responsible for historic designation.

At the February 16th meeting, LPC announced its plans to move ahead with designating the Stuyvesant Heights Extension—a big step forward for landmarking Bedford Stuyvesant. However, there were three other groups representing districts in Bed-Stuy outside of the Stuyvesant Heights Extension at that meeting that had hoped to be calendared, including Bedford Corners, Stuyvesant East and Stuyvesant North.

So the agenda for the CB3 committee was to provide an update on the movement of Stuyvesant Heights Extension, as well as set a course for the four other districts (now also including Stuyvesant West) that also remain a priority for the committee.

In attendance at last night's meeting were Nelson Stoute, Henry Butler, Claudette Brady, Perri DeFino, Morgan Munsey, Evelyn Collier and Linda Thorne.

Announcements

Evelyn Collier has been appointed the new chair of the Landmarks Committee, replacing Ms. J. Bolling; Nelson Stoute has been named the vice-chair of the Landmarks Committee.

Updates:

Stuyvesant Heights Extension

The Stuyvesant Heights Extension will hold a “Landmark Informational Session” next Thursday, March 24th at Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church, 230 Decatur Street (at Lewis Avenue), from 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.

All homeowners of the Stuyvesant Heights Extension are asked to come out to this session, not only to show support for historic designation, but also to learn how the designation process will affect all homes, including the benefits gained through landmarking. A representative from the Historic Districts Council (HDC) will be in attendance.

Stuyvesant Heights Extension represents more than 900 homes over 24-30 blocks (see attached map to determine in which area you reside).

Also, LPC is determining a date for a hearing for the Stuyvesant Heights Extension, which they expect will take place some time in May.

Bedford Corners

Bedford Corners will be the next district of priority for landmarking with LPC. Bedford Corners representative Claudette Brady stated she is preparing the residents now through various support initiatives to move quickly towards being calendared. Also, Henry Butler, chairman of Community Board 3, confirmed his intention of re-approaching LPC sooner rather than later to continually push hard for Bedford Corners and keep the district high on LPC’s agenda.

Butler said he will reach out to LPC Executive Director Kate Daly now, to reinforce the community board’s strong commitment to continually moving forward.

“Republicans are looking to cut community block grants in 2012,” Brady pointed out. LPC grants and research are partially funded by community block grants.

So “now is the time to push ahead on this, because in 2013, we should be considerate of a new mayor, a new councilmember, both of whom may have an entirely new landmarking commitment for Bed-Stuy,” Dakota said.

Also Brady said Bedford Corners will be working to further build its support base by re-approaching those residents that, for whatever reasons, were not a part of the initial contact group.

Stuyvesant East

Reno Dakota has been working on a map of the boundaries that define the five landmark districts, which has been submitted with a request for evaluation by LPC (see attached). Dakota, along with other representatives of Stuyvesant East, just returned from a preservation weekend conference.

Stuyvesant East has held two meetings of about 40-50 people where an HDC representative was present to answer questions. The group also has applied for records retrieval.

One of the members of Stuyvesant East has agreed to fund the printing of “Designate Stuyvesant East Historic District” window signs to continually generate community support.

Stuyvesant West

No representative was present at the committee meeting.

Stuyvesant North

No representative was present at the committee meeting.