Monday, July 30, 2007

Some of our personal appeals

The following are scanned images of some of our personal appeals, which we have sent in hard copy to your home and/or gallery. (Obviously, we are not in touch with everyone who has been affected by or is concerned about your planned construction, so there may be more out there.)

Appeals by Matt, Peter, Natalie, and Celina (click to enlarge):





Sunday, July 29, 2007

Love Thy Neighbor

We believe that you don't want to do harm to your neighbors. Your construction will block our sunlight as it did for the folks at 236 E. 13th Street. Those people were lower income tennents in small apartments. We also live in small apartments. You are rarely home (yes, we can look down on you when you are in your back yard and can see when your lights are on). You own many homes. Why must you take sunlight away from people with less money than you?

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Life under the hammer

The last construction project probably took some years off of my life. I work nights, and 7 days of daytime construction was unbearable. I'm so sad to hear that this is starting up again that I will have to move. The wealthy are driving us out of our neighborhoods in more ways than one. The Zwirners are limiting the neighborhood housing stock, consuming amazing amounts of electricity, and disrupting our lives. For what?

Links to their permits and property tax records.

Here are links to official information on the Zwirner's house from NYC.gov:

232 East 13th Street Building Information and Property Tax

234 East 13th Street Building Information and Property Tax

And while I'm at it, here's that article on David Zwirner's house from the New York Observer:

But he’s been quietly expanding elsewhere too, recently paying $3.65 million for a four-floor building at 232 East 13th Street. Conveniently, the place is next-door to his five-bedroom brownstone—which was listed for $2 million when Mr. Zwirner and his wife bought it in 2002. ...the Zwirners aren’t strangers to superb home redecorations. “A complete gut—they totally ripped it apart. One of the most amazing renovations I’ve seen in the city,” said broker Patrick Vernon Lilly about the townhouse he sold the Zwirners in 2002. “They’re the type of people who see real value when other people can’t.”

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

(To all of our neighbors) Please post your personal stories

Please send in your personal appeals, or stories on how you will be impacted by the expansion. (Post them as comments, and we will public highlights in future posts.)

Please be respectful! We cannot ask that David Zwirner be a good neighbor if we are not good neighbors ourselves.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Please put your home expansion on hold

Dear David Zwirner,

Let us introduce ourselves. We are your neighbors on the south side of East 13th Street, where you own a home, and on the north side of East 12th Street, where our backyards face yours.

Last week, we discovered that you have bought 232 East 13th Street, the building next door to your current 5-floor, 5-bedroom single-family townhouse with elevator and swimming pool. Congratulations! We are disturbed, however, by the fact that you plan to immediately begin constructing an expansion upon your 7,158-square foot home (71,585 according to your Buildings Department permit, but we assumed the last digit was a misprint), both vertically and horizontally.

We urge you to reconsider this.

First, your home expansion risks permanently blocking off sunlight for many of your neighbors to the west, just as the expansion at your home at 234 East 13th Street did for your neighbors on the other side. Consider this: Your have almost 7,200 square feet in your home. You have multiple homes. Most of us live in 300- to 500-square-foot homes, and these are our only homes. Some of us have lived here for decades. Others have recently saved up money for apartments in this booming real estate market, and some even recently refinanced. Your expansion severely devalues our investments-- the blocked sunlight will cost some apartments 30-40% of their current value.

Second, the demolition, construction, and expansion of your five-story townhouse in 2002 greatly upset the rhythms and the social fabric of the local community. Your construction crew regularly flouted regulations, often beginning before 7 am on weekdays and 8 am weekends, for so many months. Hundreds of people were affected along the way-- We are doctors, nurses, teachers, librarians, sales clerks, photographers, students, children, and retirees. We do not choose our schedules, and the noise from your home-building wreaked havoc on quite a few families' lives. Perhaps you did not know that hundreds of your neighbors were quite upset by your plans. Back then, we had discussions as a community, on how we should respond. We decided to let it go, to make it end as quickly as possible.

You can afford to do this home renovation right, and to not severely devalue our homes and quality of life in the process.