The City Planning Commission has voted to up the cost of air rights transfers in the special Midtown Manhattan district that includes Broadway’s theaters, The Real Deal reports. Currently, when developers purchase air rights from theaters between West 40th and West 57th Streets from Sixth to Eighth Avenues, they pay $17.60 per square foot to the Theater Subdistrict Fund. Transferable development rights can usually only be used for adjacent properties, but the city created the special district in 1998 to help the theater industry thrive amid sharply rising real estate prices; within the district, air rights can be moved more freely in a larger area outside the usual “arms length” restrictions.

What does this mean for Broadway theaters?

On Wednesday the New York City Council voted to approve the La Central development project in the Melrose section of the Bronx, the Daily News reports. The project, which will be designed by FXFOWLE architects, is slated to bring 992 apartments to the borough, all of them designated as affordable housing under Mayor de Blasio’s mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH) legislation. It is the biggest project to be approved to date under the MIH rules, which require some income restricted apartments in projects that need the city’s approval.

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Image by Jorbasa Fotografie / Flickr 

City councilman Mark Levine announced Wednesday the creation of the Affordable Housing Preservation Taskforce, which will track existing affordable units across the city on the brink of becoming market rate. The task force is the latest in an effort to address the monumental task of preserving the city’s affordable housing.

According to Crain’s NY, the 14-member task force, which will be led by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, will work with residents, landlords and nonprofits to identify buildings headed toward market rate rent status. Rent regulation, for example, stipulates that rent can only be raised by a certain percentage each year as set by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board.

More on the new task force

Melissa Mark-Viverito via Wiki Commons

Last week it was announced that the New York City Council was introducing new legislation to alter the landmarks law in favor of historic preservation. But just four days later, after facing scrutiny for proposing already-existing stipulations to the law, the council spoke out that they were in fact not proposing any legislation. Now, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has revealed with perfect timing Council 2.0, “a new tech program aimed at familiarizing and engaging residents with the city council,” reports Next City. The goals of the program include making the council’s website more accessible, using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to generate feedback on hearings, programs, and proposals and creating a new website called Council Labs to help New Yorkers visualize the budget process.

More details here

The impetus behind the rezoning plan allowing taller towers in the blocks surrounding Grand Central Terminal – specifically the five blocks of Vanderbilt Avenue from East 42nd Street to East 47th Street – is to keep New York competitive with office development in other major cities like London and Shanghai.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the hotel-workers union, which had a key role in the demise of a similar proposal under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has flexed its muscles once again, seeking a concession that would require any new hotels to receive a special permit from the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

More details on the rezoning here