Amanda Burden

On Friday, we wrote about how the Municipal Art Society is putting together a design forum to come up with ideas for the redevelopment of Coney Island, kicking off the initiative today.

But this weekend, a Department of City Planning spokeswoman sent over a statement from planning director Amanda Burden that effectively fired a shot over the Municipal Art Society's bow, saying that the city welcomes new ideas—but not any that would change or interfere with its own rezoning plan for the area.

"It is imperative that the rezoning process and timeline not be jeopardized by any reconsideration of our proposed rezoning boundaries or urban design parameters," Ms. Burden said in the statement.  read more »

The Department of City Planning has named department insider Edith Hsu-Chen as its new director of the Manhattan office, which is currently seeking to rezone a large swath of the Lower East Side.

Ms. Hsu Chen's promotion--she was previously deputy director of the borough office--comes after the departure of Ray Gastil, who left for Seattle in July.  read more »

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Planning Director Amanda Burden, among others, sawed a log to open the new Red Hook Ikea today.

In this week's print Observer, Benjamin Popper profiles Greg O'Connell, Red Hook's biggest landlord and the de facto godfather of the new big-box.

Amanda Burden, director of the city’s Department of City Planning and chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, has been given a top designation by the American Institute of Certified Planners, the country’s major planners' organization.

Ms. Burden was inducted last night into the organization’s College of Fellows, a designation held by only about 400 members.

Ms. Burden’s work in the Planning Department has been a critical element of the Bloomberg administration’s legacy on development in this city, as she has crafted more than 80 rezonings, allowing for thousands of units of new housing while limiting development in many low-rise neighborhoods.

Even if many of the high-profile mega-projects championed by the city ultimately fail to be realized, the rezonings carry long-term impact, particularly the 2005 Hudson Yards rezoning that opened the far West Side to dense development.  read more »

The City Council as early as tomorrow could approve the Bloomberg administration’s proposed rezoning of 125th Street, as a Council subcommittee lists the proposal on its agenda.

The rezoning would allow for substantially more density around 125th Street in Central Harlem, an action that is expected to bring much new development to the historic African-American corridor.  read more »

"Amanda Burden is rich, rich, rich! You're destroying our community and making it white because you can't find a restaurant! You're a socialite and a horrible person!"

So shouted Harlem residents at Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden toward the end of Monday's contentious commission meeting about the Bloomberg administration's plan to rezone 125th Street to encourage denser development. The commission voted 11-2 to approve the rezoning. It now moves to the City Council for a final vote.  read more »

Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams just sent over an advisory to let us know he’s bringing the fight over the proposed 125th Street rezoning to the mayor’s doorstep at his East 79th Street townhouse, with plans to protest the proposal at 8 tonight.

Not too far away, and also a target of the protest, Mr. Adams pointed out, is the home of the Planning Department’s director, Amanda Burden, who has spearheaded the rezoning.  read more »

Atlantic Yards opponents in the blogosphere loved reading Dan Doctoroff eat crow in this week's Observer, but Forest City Ratner's admission in a New York Times article that construction of the Nets arena would be delayed until 2010 was greeted with a collective "duh".  read more »

Columbia University’s proposed expansion plan received the City Planning Commission’s approval handily today, but it wasn’t as easy as some expected.

For one, there was the constant heckling of the commissioners before, during and after the meeting.  read more »

Joe Sitt, a 42-year-old developer who has bought up Coney Island’s core, got stung a few weeks  read more »

Atlantic Yards blogger Norman Oder discovered there was part of Monday's profile of planning director Amanda Burden that The New York Times deemed not fit to print.

The paragraph, which did make it onto the newspaper's Web site, recounted a panel discussion at which Ms. Burden dismissed Atlantic Yards' opponents as "nostalgic and infantile." (Mr. Oder also knocks the Times for giving Ms. Burden credit for reducing the scale of the Brooklyn project, when the developer had proposed the reduction himself.)

- Matthew Schuerman

Bruce Ratner presented his plan for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project to city Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden and other city commissioners Tuesday, she said, but he did not mention scaling it back.

"He presented it to all the commissioners, some of whom hadn't had a chance to see it before," she said after a Crain's breakfast this morning at Pace University. Burden wouldn't give her own thoughts, although we have noted before what an intense interest she has taken in minute issues such as whether the doors along Atlantic Avenue will swing outward or not. (She's no foe of large-scale development, although she doesn't seem to like superblocks that much.)

As we report in an online article today, sooner or later city officials will have to confront a more serious issue: like when those much-hyped affordable housing units at Atlantic Yards are going to come online. The answer: not very soon.

-Matthew Schuerman UPDATE: An earlier version of this post mistakenly said planning commission members met with Ratner Tuesday. It was city commissioners.

Amanda Burden sent us this master-planbook for Fresh Kills, once the world's largest landfill, which by 2007 or so will start turning into a 2,315-acre park. (That's three times the size of Central Park.)

Whether anyone who doesn't live on Staten Island will go there remains the question.  read more »

Those vacant seats on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation are filling up fast! Grab one while you can. After today’s rejiggering, there’s only one left.

The Mayor came out strong with a press release at 4:30 p.m. announcing six appointees, including four from his own cabinet: Dan Doctoroff, Amanda Burden, Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw and Finance Commish Martha Stark. The Governor responded minutes later. (The Real Estate uses the word loosely, as we got the news from a phone call from Empire State Development Chairman Charles Gargano, and we may have been low on his list. But hey, a phone call doesn’t take as much time as a press release to prepare for.) His two appointees are the aforementioned Gargano and James Kallstrom, his special advisor on counter-terrorism at Ground Zero.

The Mayor’s other appointees are Verizon President Lawrence Babbio and civic icon Bill Rudin. Stan Shuman and Ed Lewis resigned from the board earlier this week, according to a mayoral aide, “after several years of service.” The Governor, meanwhile, still has one more seat to fill.

Gargano said he did not know whether the simultaneous announcements were planned or a coincidence, but he said he had been asked by the Governor several weeks ago. Asked whether the LMDC would become the arena for a showdown between the Governor and Mayor, he said, “No. It’s not like there are going to be any surprises. The Governor set out a very aggressive timetable for Ground Zero and this puts a strong focus on accomplishing that.”  read more »

And people say the LMDC doesn't have anything left to do. If so, its board will sure have a swell time doing nothing.

-Matthew Schuerman

Greenwich Village dwellers and preservationists won a battle today when the City Planning Commission voted to limit the height and scale of new developments in the far West Village, a haven of luxury real-estate speculation since the infamous Perry Street celebridorm by Richard Meier, overexposed both literally and figuratively, went up along the Hudson River.

The City Planning Commission voted unanimously today to approve a down-zoning of the Far West Village that imposes strict regulations on developers for quite some time into the future.

Developers interested in the neighborhood are not pleased.

During a hearing last week, proponents of the rezoning pleaded with commission chair Amanda Burden to take action quickly, as developers were gearing up to start their projects before the rezoning could take effect; apparently, she listened.

Two glaring exceptions to the rezoning remain: the Superior Ink Factory (pictured), at 70 Bethune Street, where Related Companies plans to build a 120-foot residential tower, and the Whitehall Storage site, at Charles and West streets, where the Witkoff Group is planning a 175-foot tower.

Now, the City Council has to vote on the rezoning, which should happen before Thanksgiving, according to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.  read more »

- Matthew Grace

If there's any excitement over at City Hall this morning, thank Yassky press secretary Evan Thies, who sent out this request Friday:

"please let everybody know that we need folks to show up for Amanda Burden's press conference on Monday at 11 AM at City Hall. we need protesters to chant behind her and Sean Donovan on the steps and bring signs demanding affordable housing etc."  read more »

Thies tells us he was only trying to help.

"Commissioners Burden and Donovan have said quite often that they welcome the community's input," he emails.

Summer on the Seine may soon be just around the corner from the Hudson.  read more »

As she strode to the front of the Polish and Slavic Center auditorium in Brooklyn, Amanda Burden, ch  read more »

Manhattan socialites will soon have one more fabulous address to scratch out of their black books: S  read more »

In public, the talk is solely of "cooperation." But make no mistake about it: There is a war afoot f  read more »