A Hidden Lower East Side

(The East River Park Amphitheater, built in 1941, which will be destroyed when the city moves forward with its new "Preferred Alternative Plan" for the ESCR)       With little fanfare this past Thursday, March 14th, the De Blasio administration announced that they would be pursuing new plans for the East River Park and Lower Manhattan shoreline; not only presenting additional designs for extending Lower Manhattan up to two blocks into the river, but implementing a new phased-construction plan for the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (known as ESCR). In September, the city revealed that they would be abandoning previous designs for the ESCR, in favor of a new plan which "involves completely destroying East River park, 'elevating' it with 8 feet of landfill, and rebuilding a new park on top." That disastrous proposal was met with a predictably disastrous response from local residents, politicians, and community advocacy groups. Organized in the w...

This site, at 259 Clinton Street, is the proposed location for a 730-foot tall tower - one of a grouping of towers approved for construction in the “Two Bridges” neighborhood this past December. Though multiples lawsuits and various community organizations contest the legality of these plans, as of now, the towers should be completed over the next few years. Surrounded by some of the oldest public housing in the country, these towers stand to not only further the displacement of one the last working-class parts of the LES, but work to wrest political control of the neighborhood by inflating the real estate market with luxury housing. The “accessible housing” in these towers continue to be calculated based on median incomes 25% higher than the local community’s, and are few in number.