Robin Pogrebin of the Times, in Third Article of a Series, Piles On LPC Chair Robert Tierney

I am growing increasingly astonished at the breadth of reporting and sheer writing craft exhibited by New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin in her series of pieces on the state of landmarking in New York City, specifically the work (or lack of, if you will) of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

In Pogrebin's first story, "An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status," the writer essentially dissects the Landmarks Preservation Commission's work -- or lack of work or efficiency, it would seem -- and lays a fair amount of the blame at the shuffling feet of LPC chair Robert B. Tierney, who has been keeping his chair lukewarm, Pogrebin writes, for five years. The article further tries to get to the root of what seem like extreme lassitude and laissez-faire-ness on Tierney's part, and how the cause of the preservation is being undermined in a widespread and thoroughly alarming way. In this first story (which I didn't realize was going to be part of a series at the time), I was particularly gobsmacked by this:

He’s a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks" (Routledge, 2008), and a party to the suit.

In Pogrebin's second story, "Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole," the story goes on -- it's all about how the sluggishness and ineffectualism of the LPC and Tierney act as permission slips for developers, who generally have the moral fiber of Gregory Rasputin, to demolish and cut corners and do all sorts of terrible things to our urban environment. Here is another particularly moving quote:

“In the middle of the night I’m out there at 2 in the morning, and they’re taking the cornices off,” said Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents that part of the Upper West Side. “We’re calling the Buildings Department, we’re calling Landmarks. You get so beaten down by all of this. The developers know they can get away with that.”

Now comes Pogrebin's latest piece: "Preserving the City: Church and State," which deals with the LPC's effect on the demolition (or preservation) of religious structures. (Interestingly, this is an area I'm not sure quite what I think yet: Does the cause of preservation supercede the right to religious freedom? I think it may not.) Here's a great quote:

Among the religious buildings designated on his watch, Mr. Tierney noted, were the first Catholic churches to become landmarks in 28 years: St. Aloysius on West 132nd Street, known for its ornamental polychrome bands of brick and terra cotta, and the Church of All Saints on East 129th Street, an imposing Gothic Revival masterpiece with wheel clerestory windows. Both won landmark status last year.

But while preservationists applauded those designations, they said the commission bypassed even more important treasures like St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem, completed in 1907 on West 118th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue. Known for its flamboyantly ornate neo-Gothic facade, fan-vaulted ceiling, spiky pinnacles and stained-glass windows, it was cited as one of the seven most important sites worth saving by the Preservation League of New York State.

"My community loves this church," Representative Charles B. Rangel wrote in a 2004 letter to Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

During years of pressure from Harlem advocates, the commission has declined to hold a hearing on St. Thomas, saying the building had already been significantly altered and its congregation was largely inactive.

Some preservationists and architectural historians accuse the commission and the New York archdiocese of grudgingly going along with the designations of All Saints and St. Aloysius in exchange for the omission of St. Thomas.

“This was their bargain,” said Michael Henry Adams, the author of “Harlem: Lost and Found” (Monacelli Press, 2001), a history of the neighborhood’s architecture. “To me it’s like the decision of Solomon.”

Read all three articles and answer this question: Should Tierney resign?

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Will Robert B. Tierney, Chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Exposed in the New York Times, Resign?

New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin is back today with a powerful follow-up to her earlier piece that exposes how the painful, inexplicable and unforgivably slow pace of the work of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is damaging, often irrevocably, the cause of historic preservation in our precious, ever-threatened Gotham.

This new article, called "Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole," is all about what happens as a result of the egregious, arguably immoral lassitude of LPC Chairman Robert B. Tierney -- who author Anthony C. Wood has called "a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City.” What happens? Here's what happens, according to Pogrebin:

Hours before the sun came up on a cool October morning in 2006, people living near the Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side were suddenly awakened by the sound of a jackhammer.

Soon word spread that a demolition crew was hacking away at the brick cornices of the stables, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building, on Amsterdam Avenue at 77th Street, that once housed horses and carriages but had long served as a parking garage.

In just four days the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was to hold a public hearing on pleas dating back 20 years to designate the low-rise building, with its round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation, as a historic landmark.

But once the building’s distinctive features had been erased, the battle was lost. The commission went ahead with its hearing, but ultimately decided not to designate the structure because it had been irreparably changed. Today a 16-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern is rising on the site: the Related Companies is asking from $765,000 for a studio to $7 million or more for a five-bedroom unit in the building.

This is obviously outrageous, and Pogrebin provides multiple examples of how Tierney's evident, if well camoflaged, hostility to the cause of preservation is creating a culture of sneaking and lying and deceit and, for all we know, double-dealing. That Robert A. M. Stern, of all people, is participating in this rape of the New York City I love leaves me speechless. Can it be that Robert A. M. Stern is an ememy of all that is good in America?

And what are we going to go about this problem of the LPC's ineffectuality causing the systematic destruction of designation-worthy structures in New York City. Should Tierney, for example, admit to his ineptitude -- and his careless attitude toward the idea of preservation -- and step down? You'd think that such an emperor, devoid of clothes, might do so. But only if we protest.

To be fair, it's not as if Tierney does not present a vigorous defense:

“In the middle of the night I’m out there at 2 in the morning, and they’re taking the cornices off,” said Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents that part of the Upper West Side. “We’re calling the Buildings Department, we’re calling Landmarks. You get so beaten down by all of this. The developers know they can get away with that.”

The number of pre-emptive demolitions across the city may be relatively small, but preservationists say the phenomenon is only one sign of problems with the city’s mechanism for protecting historic buildings.

“This administration is so excited about the new that it overlooks its obligation to protect the old,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks.”

In an interview Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, called end-run alterations and demolitions “a terrible situation and a complete misuse of the process.”

He added that the commission was trying to address the issue. Before putting a property on the calendar for landmark consideration, for example, Mr. Tierney or the commission’s staff members meet with owners to explain the potential benefits of landmark designation —a federal tax credit for repairs or improvements, for example — in the hope of enlisting cooperation or even support.

“Owner consent is not required, but I strongly try to obtain it whenever possible,” Mr. Tierney said. “It helps the process going forward. It’s not a continually contentious relationship.”

But one must wonder just how vigorous Tierney is in his approach -- and take note of how Stern, whose work I absolutely worship, tries to wiggle out of responsibility for the unnecessary end to a sterling building:

In the case of Dakota Stables, some preservationists have accused the landmarks commission of deliberately dragging its heels. “The commission had no intention of designating Dakota Stables,” said Kate Wood, the executive director of Landmark West!, a preservation group. “They waited until it had been torn down. It was clearly too late for them to do anything meaningful.”

“It was all so carefully orchestrated,” she added. “It was politics. It was all just theater.”

But Mr. Tierney said he fought genuinely hard to have the case heard. “It was knock-down, drag-out time trying to do everything we could do to have a fair and open hearing on that building,” he said.

He also said he was “extremely unhappy with how the owners proceeded” on Dakota Stables and on Paterson Silks, yet added, “That’s two out of thousands — not to minimize them.”

Mr. Stern, the architect who designed the Harrison, the luxury condominiums replacing Dakota Stables, said the late-night demolition created “a controversial and awkward moment,” adding, “I don’t like to tear anything down if I don’t have to.”

And so I ask again: Should Chairman Tierney resign? And if not, what can he be doing faster and better? And how do we hold him to it?

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New York Times Runs Expose on Landmarks Preservation Commission: Should Chairman Tierney Resign?

There is a great story in today's Times -- by one of its most dogged and thorough arts reporters, Robin Pogrebin -- on the maddeningly slow pace of the New York City Landmarks Commission's work. Anyone who has had anything remotely to do with preservationism in this town knows what this article is all about. It's tight and smart -- and it makes you wonder what next year's mayoral election is going to look like.

(I know, I know: no one is going to vote for or against Mayor Bloomberg on the basis on what his political appointee, commission head Robert B. Tierney, has or hasn't been doing during his five years as the chair of the LPC. But if you look at the news landscape lately, there have been a lot more articles focusing on city government, such as the pieces last week on how Bloomberg said the city couldn't afford the $400 rebates for homeowners and the City Council forced his people to admit that the mayor didn't have the legal authority to withhold their distribution.)

The question, meanwhile, as a result of Pogrebin's piece is whether Chairman Tierney should step down.

Highlights of the article:

A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.

In dozens of interviews, residents who have proposed historic buildings or districts for consideration said they were often stonewalled by the commission, receiving formulaic responses or sometimes no response at all.

And there's this:

On some occasions the commission has taken so long to act that the building in question has been demolished or irretrievably altered.

And there's this:

“He’s a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks" (Routledge, 2008), and a party to the suit.

Also troubling to critics is the fact that the commission does not document the resolution of each nomination or even quantify how many it defers or rejects. Asked how many Requests for Evaluation they received in the last fiscal year, commission officials said they fielded roughly 200 in addition to nominations generated by the agency itself and its neighborhood surveys. They add that about one quarter never reach the commissioners (other than Mr. Tierney).

It's a great read. Let's hope for change. Yes we can.

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New Formula for NYC Arts Funding

I hope everyone has had an opportunity to read and digest Robin Pogrebin's customarily good reporting in The New York Times on the new economic formula for nonprofit arts funding in New York City. This is absolutely a welcome -- and long overdue -- development. I'm pasting in the text of the piece below -- you should all read it and understand all of its implications and realize that, good as it is, it's no solution to the larger problem of arts funding and the various dysfunctional by-products of the nonprofit business model.

The one thing, however, that makes me wince/guffaw/roll my eyes is the subtextual wheezing and carping of Karen Brooks Hopkins of BAM. I mean, BAM has more money than most of the performing arts presenters and organizers in town, and it has all the prestige, board members, marquee names, connections, too, and what does she do? She grumbles, "The real question is, in this new world where we don’t have a budget dance, what can we do to not lose ground?"

Perhaps understand that your organization is not the center of the performing arts universe and that perhaps now your ability to hire lobbyists isn't going to be the one-trick pony that'll keep you fed and funded?

Perhaps understand that your organization was hitherto benefiting under a system that was punishing -- starving, ruining, torturing -- smaller organizations?

Anyway, here's Robin's story:

August 13, 2007
New Formula Means More Money for Arts Groups in New York
By ROBIN POGREBIN

Correction Appended

The Mark Morris Dance Group got $80,000, up from $12,000 last year. The Flux Factory, an arts center in Long Island City, Queens, got $20,000, up from $3,000 last year. And the Mama Foundation for the Arts, which teaches gospel music, jazz and R&B in Harlem, got $12,500, up from $5,000.

These groups, which learned of their allotments on Aug. 3, are among the beneficiaries of the city’s new formula for allocating money to cultural organizations. The sums are appropriations for fiscal 2008, which actually started on July 1.

In the timeworn budget dance, the mayor made cuts to the city’s cultural budget and the City Council then restored various amounts. Some arts organizations received fixed allocations in the budget and lobbied City Council members for additional discretionary funds.

But this year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council announced that they were breaking with that system. Arts groups that are not on city-owned land competed for $30 million in financing from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. And the 34 arts organizations on city-owned land, known as the Cultural Institutions Group, were allotted a total of $115.3 million, with an additional $4.4 million for “new needs.”

Last week arts organizations found out what those changes actually meant for them. It is the non-city-owned institutions — known collectively as the programs group — that saw the most striking improvement. These institutions used to compete for money from a $3.8 million fund established in 2003 by the Department of Cultural Affairs. Now that fund has been increased to $30 million, and it is allotted by peer-review panels. Between March and June these panels evaluated the applications on a range of criteria, from education programs to management and financial stability.

Three-Legged Dog, a media and theater group in downtown Manhattan, was one of the many groups large and small that reaped benefits from the new system. The organization received $28,500, its first operating stipend from the city.

Other non-city-owned institutions did similarly well. The Joyce Theater, which presents dance in Chelsea and SoHo, saw its city financing rise to $155,000 from $45,000 last year. The Queens County Farm Museum got $245,000, up from $76,000. The American Folk Art Museum received $225,000, compared with $6,000. The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City got $200,000, up from $140,000. The Roundabout Theater Company received $163,000, up from $134,000.

“On the program side we were really trying to reform a funding process — it was unclear, it was unpredictable, it was unfair,” said Kate D. Levin, the cultural affairs commissioner.

“In the past, dollar amounts were dependent on lobbying — people didn’t have equal access,” she added. “When you move to a merit-based process, you start being able to get more money to more organizations and reflect the strength and diversity of the field.”

The money going to the Mama Foundation, which has a school as well as performing programs, will enhance the organization’s efforts to teach gospel music and its history to teenagers, a program that now involves about 300 students, up from 70. “So much music has been taken out of the schools that we thought it was necessary to supplement it,” said Vy Higginsen, the foundation’s chief executive and executive director.

For the members of the so-called Cultural Institutions Group — including organizations like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Queens Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the increases were not as large, and some were worried that their allocations were limited to one year. “We were generally pleased,” said Tom Finkelpearl, the chairman of the Cultural Institutions Group, but he added: “We’re concerned about the next fiscal year. A lot of funding was one-time funding.”

The Brooklyn Academy of Music received about $4 million, close to what it got last year. “We didn’t really gain, but we didn’t lose,” said Karen Brooks Hopkins, the academy’s president. “The real question is, in this new world where we don’t have a budget dance, what can we do to not lose ground?”

Starting in the 2009 fiscal year, which begins in July 2008, the 34 arts groups will be guaranteed 90 percent of their funds. The rest will be conditioned on their performance through a new evaluation and accountability process called CultureStat. City-owned arts groups will be reviewed in areas including board governance and financial management and may receive a portion of the 10 percent balance even if they do not qualify for the whole amount.

Because of the push and pull between the mayor and the council that was normal in the past, arts groups often did not learn how much they were getting until February. In the future, Ms. Levin said, 75 percent of organizations will receive word by July and will get payments by August. Elizabeth Egbert, the president and chief executive of the Staten Island Museum, said that this was a significant step. “This year, for the first time, we received word of the final budget number in time to include an accurate number in our own budget, which helped tremendously in planning,” she said. “Since our board votes on the museum budget in June each year, knowing the city allocation in advance, rather than in January, six months into the fiscal year, is obviously a better situation.”

In addition, groups with budgets of $250,000 or more will eventually be accorded three-year figures, so they can count on a certain level of funding. Organizations with smaller budgets will continue to receive annual appropriations.

Some 170 groups also used to get a fixed amount of money every year as “line items” that were written into the budget and have been frozen since 1989. Those have been eliminated.

Instead arts groups have to make a case for themselves based on the work that they do and the public service they provide. “We’ve been able to be more responsive to the needs of organizations that are extremely different,” Ms. Levin said.

She said the city was now essentially able to say: “We hear you. We hear you have this particular need at this particular moment.”

Correction: August 14, 2007

An article in The Arts yesterday about grants awarded to arts organizations by New York City under a new formula misstated part of the name of a dance company receiving a grant. It is the Mark Morris Dance Group, not Company.

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