THE DAILY RAMBLE: Yonkers Landmark Preservation Board Hearing Tonight - What Is It’s Future?
This evening at 7 PM at Yonkers City hall the City Charter Revision Commission is holding a hearing regarding the Mayor’s proposal to weaken the ability of the Landmark Preservation Board to determine landmark status on a property.
Currently the LPB can landmark a property, subject to the approval of the City Council. The proposed change would require that the Planning Board ratify the designation BEFORE if goes to the City Council. In some respects the Landmark Preservation Board and the Planning Board work at cross purposes: the LPB preserves, and the Planning Board builds.
This change severely restricts the ability of the City of Yonkers to preserve it’s rich architectural heritage. All older cities have strong reasons to preserve their rich past. In New York City, Baltimore, Portland, Boston and many other places the old and the new work well together. Reasonable guidelines, a sensitivity to the past and a mindset that older properties can enhance value rather than diminish it. In Yonkers, sometimes this vision is lost in the desire to “build build build,” and to erase what Yonkers was.
In this writers opinion, and in many others i think, we do not want downtown Yonkers to turn into White Plains: devoid of any character, and dead as a doornail at night. We should learn from their mistake.
I generally support the Mayor and I share his desire to upgrade downtown and elsewhere, and to bring new businesses, jobs and tax dollars to Yonkers. In this case, however, I think this propsal is a serious mistake.
More Information on the LPB may be found HERE.
