DVillageP11

COI

If you have an affiliation with Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, you need to declare it per WP:COI. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 15:11, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

As stated below Full disclosure: I am an employee of Village Preservation (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation) but I am not the executive director nor a director of any kind in the organization. DVillageP11 (talk) 16:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Incorrect changes made to Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation page

Summary:

1. The opening statement “The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) is a non-profit advocacy organization that opposes housing developments, supports restrictive zoning regulations and calls for preserving neighborhoods…” is a highly biased viewpoint that does not accurately reflect what the organization does. The cited reference for this statement is an article on a local government entity’s negative vote on a rezoning plan, and nowhere in the article does it say that the organization opposes housing developments or supports restrictive zoning regulations as the editor claims. The only mention of the organization in the article is a quote from the executive director in support of the community board’s vote and in opposition to the rezoning plan.

In addition, the statement does not reflect the mission of Village Preservation, but rather the editor’s opinion on its actions. The original statement of “The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) is a non-profit membership organization that documents, honors and preserves the architectural heritage and cultural history of several neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan, New York City: Greenwich Village, the Far West Village, the Meatpacking District, the South Village, NoHo, and the East Village.” It is an accurate statement, not only from the organization’s website but also from other websites such as here and here .

2. The statement “The organization has been characterized as a NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) group” is a misinterpretation of the facts in two of the three citations. The article from Crain’s New York Business (citation 2) is much like the article cited in the previous section: a look at various opinions concerning the same rezoning plan, both pro and con. The only statement about Village Preservation’s stance on the issue — “This group has opposed our plan to bring affordable housing to these neighborhoods since the moment we announced it. It’s not surprising to see them backfill their conclusions with misleading data” — comes from a spokesman for the mayor’s office that is pushing for the rezoning, hardly an unbiased source of information. The article also includes a correction on an earlier statement — “An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Village Preservation opposed affordable housing proposals at Elizabeth Street Gardens.” — shows a more accurate sense of the organization’s stance on affordable housing.

Citation 3, on a proposal for tall buildings in the city’s Meatpacking District, describes that project as a “row of former meatpacking buildings [being] partly transformed into larger spaces designed to attract high-end retailers” — hardly affordable housing. In addition, because the new buildings would be “significantly higher than the low-rise buildings that dominate the block’s aesthetic” within a historic district, it would be within Village Preservation’s mission to fight for preservation, but they were not alone as the article also spoke with other community organizations and residents against the project; the only one in support of the project was the developer. Again, this is not NIMBY-ism.

The next citation comes from a magazine that promotes NYC real estate. The article covers the opinions of a very pro-development all-volunteer group, and Village Preservation and its executive director were called “an archetypal nimby (not-in-my-backyard) foe.” While this is hardly an unbiased source of information, it does call the organization a NIMBY-centric group.

Therefore, I would suggest the replacement statement as follows: “The organization works to protect both local landmarks and historic districts from potentially harmful developments, a stance some critics have cited as an example of NIMBY (“not in my backyard)”.

3. The second paragraph in the introduction focuses on the executive director, Andrew Berman. I have taken a look at a number of pages for various NYC-based advocacy nonprofits, and none of them feature the leadership in such a prominent position. Unless he’s the only person on staff, which he’s not, the unusual position seems unfair and designed only to somehow embarrass him rather than educate others.

Regardless of the position, the reference cited does not reflect the statement that he won an award “because of his role in blocking housing developments in Greenwich Village.” The “honor” from the New York Observer was naming the executive director the *88th* most powerful person in NYC real estate because of his ability to organize residents against various building projects as needed; it does not say anything about housing developments, over which Berman has no actual say.

If the editor wants to include information about the executive director, fine, but this organization should not be treated any differently than others by placing this kind of deatil so high on the page. Instead, it should go in the History section, and it should accurately affect what the 88th-place award actually honors.

History: 1. Regarding the project the editor cites on St. Vincent’s Hospital, the description of the expansion’s goals as noted in the reference and other sources was not to expand the hospital. As the cited Gothamist post states, the application was “to demolish eight structures in Greenwich Village on West 11th and 12th Streets, near Seventh Avenue, and construct an $800 million, 21-story, 329-foot-tall hospital and condominium tower. Falling to the wrecking ball would be the 1963 O’Toole Building which houses the hospital. The plans are strongly opposed by local residents, The Municipal Art Society, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.” In other words, the biggest issue those players had with the project was its focus on tall luxury housing, which is not as noble as when the editor calls it an expansion of the hospital.

The editor claims, “The hospital sought to expand its size, as well as modernize the building in order to provide effective medical care and improve the financial situation of the hospital,” and cites an article from the New York Times. That’s not what the referenced article says. According to the Times, an existing five-story building would be razed for a 329-foot-tall hospital building, while “eight other hospital buildings in the historic district would have been sold to the Rudin Management Company for $301 million. “The Rudin Company would then have demolished the old hospital buildings and constructed a separate $800 million residential complex that would have included a 265-foot-high luxury condominium tower on Seventh Avenue, and new town houses and a midsize residential building on 11th and 12th Streets.”

The hospital did file for bankruptcy a second time and eventually closed, as the editor states. It was not as a direct result of the hospital’s plan to allow tall luxury buildings, as the editor seems to imply. His citation is from a response to an earlier letter by Dr. Alec Pruchnicki, who worked in the Department of Medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital for seven years. Even the doctor states, “there were many reasons for the hospital’s collapse, including the massive and complex nature of the 2007 rescue plan, hospital mismanagement, and the lack of support from the Department of Health (DOH), if not outright sabotage, when Mount Sinai was looking at a takeover”

The editor spends a full paragraph on St. Vincent’s, stating the case there in more biased detail than other projects. If this project is to be included on this page, I would suggest a statement along the lines of “In the late 2000s, the organization staunchly opposed a project by St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center to sell most of its property to a private developer for luxury housing and significantly expand its remaining main building from five stories to 21 in a historic district. The organization argued against the project as ‘a blow to the distinctive historic character of Greenwich Village.’” (same citation)

2. The statement “The organization advocated against rezoning of SoHo and NoHo to allow construction of thousands of new apartments,” is true, but the bias behind what’s omitted limits its usefulness as an opening to the subject. The citation used here even has the executive director not opposing affordable housing but instead wanting more (“we would welcome and embrace new affordable housing — deeper and broader than what the city is proposing. Fifty percent, 75%, 100% for people really in need”).

Instead, the paragraph would be more neutral and accurate as follows: “In the 2020s, the organization advocated against rezoning of SoHo and NoHo to allow construction of up to a few thousand new apartments, with about one-quarter of those designated as affordable housing. According to city officials, the plan will protect existing rent-controlled properties. [23][24] GVSHP condemned the plan, calling it "bad for our neighborhoods, and bad for affordability,"[24] and said that the construction of new housing would make the wealthy neighborhoods of SoHo and NoHo as well as parts of lower-income Chinatown less diverse.[23]

DVillageP11 (talk) 14:34, 7 September 2021 (UTC) Full disclosure: I am an employee of Village Preservation but I am not the executive director nor a director of any kind in the organization. I have tried to edit the entry for the organization after seeing it was changed so as to not have a neutral point of view, only to have those revisions changed back by the original editor. I have written the above to provide an unbiased account of the group’s preservation efforts using quotes from the citations used by the editor. These changes should be placed in the interest of fairness and of ensuring Wikipedia remains unbiased, accurate, and useful for all.

References

• Hi DVillageP11, it looks like you have posted this request on Talk:Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is the correct place to have the request. Since this request is not needed anymore, I have closed it as answered. Another editor will assess your request at Talk:Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and give their response there. Z1720 (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2021 (UTC)