It has been two years, one month and twenty four days since I began serving as your City Council Member. I am deeply proud of the work we have accomplished together and excited for the road ahead.
I want to thank all whom I have already had a chance to meet and look forward to meeting you or seeing you again at my District Office at 244 East 93rd Street for First Friday, Policy Night, or another event listed at BenKallos.com/Events. Or I can come to you for Ben In Your Building.
If you would like to compare my goals with actions over the last two years, please have a look at my 2013 Policy Book as well as my Inauguration and two States of the District, where we looked to the past and prepared for a bright future. I am proud of these achievements, but I know we have much more to do together. Thank you for your support over the past two years. I am looking forward to the next year and 10 months.
Constituent Service Cases: 3,800 and counting
Legislation Introduced: 65
Legislation Passed: 8
Land Use Matters Adopted: 4
City Council attendance: 99.5 %
Governmental Operations Committee Hearing chaired: 35
Legislation Passed by Committee: 15
First Fridays & Policy Nights: More than a dozen
Community Meetings: More than 100
Participatory Budgeting Investments in Community: $3.6 Million
... Ferry Service for the East Side and Roosevelt Island: Following years of advocacy from my campaign to office, I am proud that there will be new stops for Roosevelt Island in 2017 and 62nd and 90th Streets by 2018, utilizing our waterfronts to improve commutes....
... Last year, our top vote-getters for $1 million in participatory budgeting were new green roofs for P.S. 151 and P.S./I.S. 217 on Roosevelt Island. This will provide students an opportunity to be exposed to the future of energy and inspire them to look to careers of the future, as well as understand environmental protection....
... More UPK for Roosevelt Island: With the Roosevelt Island Parents Network, through Eva Bosbach, we've been working to address the need for more Universal Pre-Kindergarten seats on Roosevelt Island. Through our advocacy we were able to double the number of seats at P.S./I.S. 217 in partnership with the Department of Education. There is still more to do and I personally met with Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña to discuss this issue. We are working together to identify spaces and providers who can partner to open up more pre-K seats for our kids. Please let my office know if you would like to help provide UPK or if you have a child you would like to attend pre-K on Roosevelt Island or on the East Side....
Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Upper East Side NYC Council Member Ben Kallos is leading efforts to block construction of a 90 story Sutton Place residential skyscraper.
The Bauhouse Group’s planned 900-foot-tall residential development near the East Side’s Sutton Place has been in the works for months and now tangible progress is about to happen. The developer has obtained demolition permits for the assemblage at 426-432 East 58th Street, it announced Monday. In addition to the demolition permit announcement, a new rendering of the tower has been made public, and
Rendering of 426-432 East 58th Street by Foster + Partners Via New York Yimby
can be seen above ....
... Completion of the as-of-right project is expected in the spring of 2019....
... But the demolition of those buildings will not stop efforts to preempt the tower with a height limit rezoning, according to Councilman Ben Kallos, who has worked with neighbors to fight the project....
... We expanded our coalition against superscrapers in residential neighborhoods to groups in other areas faced with the same spectre of tall buildings that will stand out of context and block out light and air. Together we marched to bring more attention to the fight...
How does the 90 Story Sutton Place skyscraper impact Roosevelt Island? According to Mr. Kallos:
The proposed superscraper at Sutton Place would be so large that it would not only block out light and air in the surrounding residential neighborhood, but it would also cast shadows across the river onto Roosevelt Island. A simulation shows that the building's shadow would arrive at Roosevelt Island just in time to cast tram riders in darkness on their way home.
No one should have the right to buy the sky and cast a residential neighborhood in shadows. Our city needs affordable housing in our residential neighborhoods for all New Yorkers, not 900-foot buildings for billionaires.
Mr. Kallos said:
... A Billionaire should not be able to take light and air from Roosevelt Island...
Are you at least 62 years of age? Then you may be eligible to have your rent frozen through the NYC Rent Freeze Program (SCRIE). We are hosting a screening and application session for this program with the Roosevelt Island Senior Association on Monday, December 7, 10am - 2pm, at 546 Main Street #1. If you, a friend, or family member is interested in applying, Community Service Society will be available to assist. Please call my office at 212-860-1950 to learn what documentation you will need and to RSVP.
I hope you had a healthy and happy Thanksgiving, as we did. We celebrated a very special holiday with our NYCHA residents, with Lexington Houses residents receiving new stoves from my office's funding (and an untimely gas outage was fixed ahead of Thanksgiving) and free turkeys from the New York Common Pantry for the residents of Robins Plaza and Stanley Isaacs and Holmes Towers.
As the holiday season continues, we are partnering with Chabad Upper East Side to provide free menorahs that you can pick up from our office. And of course, I invite you to join us at our holiday party on Thursday, December 17, 5pm-7pm, in our District Office at 244 E 93rd Street. I hope you can attend, and please remember to RSVP.
This month we kept up the campaign against superscrapers, including in testimony on the Mayor’s zoning proposals, held a public hearing on legislation to recover $1.6 billion in outstanding debt to the city, and passed a law I introduced.
Here on the East Side, we continued the battle against the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station with a bill requiring air quality monitoring, announced a master plan for the East River Esplanade from 62nd Street to 78th Street and are giving you a chance to decide how we spend over $1 million in City Council District 5 funding at Carl Schurz Park at a visioning session on December 15.
I hope to see you at my office for First Friday or Policy Night or at our rent freeze screening on Roosevelt Island on Monday, December 7. And as we approach the new year, please save January 10 at 1pm on your calendar for our annual State of the District event.
I am thankful to have this amazing job as your council member. What are you most thankful for this holiday season?
Who would have thunk it? ? Curbed has awarded Roosevelt Island 2 of its 2007 year end awards for Art & Urbanity. The Encampment came in second place for "Awesomely Absurd Art Project of the Year" behind the Red Hook submarine and ahead of Long Island City's floating tree.
But the big winner was the proposed skyscraper at Southpoint Park by Italian architectural students that Curbed refers to as "The Roosevelt Island Tower of Death" and which:
might be the finest architectural vision for New York City, and Roosevelt Island in particular, we've ever seen. You must watch it immediately, and this must be built. Make it so.
More here on the proposed skyscraper for Southpoint Park. You Tube video link is here.
Remember this post of the You Tube video showing a proposed skyscraper for Southpoint Park at Roosevelt Island entitled "Trilogy" that received much attention? Curbed referred to it as the "Roosevelt Island Tower of Death and stated:
it might be the finest architectural vision for New York City, and Roosevelt Island in particular, we've ever seen. You must watch it immediately, and this must be built. Make it so.
I received the following message from the creators who are from Italy.
This video was made for a degree thesis on Architecture. Our thesis was about the application of fractal in architecture,we participated on internationel competition called skyscraper07, we didn'win, but this experiance was the starting point about our degree thesis.
There seems to be some connection between Italy and Roosevelt Island. More to come. UPDATE - 12/12/28/- The Curbed 07 Awards are now out and this proposed Skyscraper for the northern part Southpoint Park's Roosevelt Island has been named by Curbed the most:
Awesomely Absurd Art Project We Wish Had Been Real
Below is a more detailed message from the Trilogy creators explaining the project:
This project it was about a thesis in architecture. I studied in Turin at the Politecnico of Turin. This thesis aims to demonstrate how the concept of fractals can be applied to architecture and to urban planning.
Participation in the competition held by "eVolo Architetture", entitled "07skyscraper", was the pretext to develop the theme of the skyscraper. What does "skyscraper" mean at the beginning of the XXI century? What is the historical and social context in which these megastrucures are inserted? How does the skyscraper connect with the city and the city with it? Can the skyscraper, taken on its own, be considered as a city within a city? Has the human scale been lost in the planning of skyscrapers?
These are the questions that we asked ourselves and to which we have tried to find answers through our research. The natural world has inspired all of the project design process. Observation of natural forms, especially their structure and their development mechanisms, has brought us to study fractals, which are considered as the minimum common multiple of living things. Therefore, the project design process has been sustained by a solid study on the meaning of fractal both in the geometric sense and in the topological sense.
Regarding the application of fractals in the geometric sense, we have elaborated a planimetric concept closely connected to the volumetric concept, in fact, the latter evolves from the three-dimensional modelling of the fractal generator. In this phase of the project the fractal dimension, chaos and the characteristic of self-resemblance emerged. The generator was iterated several times with the aim of obtaining a hierarchy in the different levels of scale, urban planning and architecture.
Study of the fractal in a topological sense lies in the ability to connect to all levels of scale. The connection between architectural scale and urban planning scale must come about through an interface, which in our case corresponds to the ground floor, or, in other words, the most important level because it represents the link between the building and the urban fabric. floor, For ground floor we mean level zero of the building, which is that of its original plot. It is a reception area, where people must be encouraged, through planning, to use urban spaces, spaces which are very precious and which aim to promote communication and relationships among and between people. We can, thus, understand the importance of level zero: it must be a liveable environment, in which all elements are planned on a human scale.
It is a reception area, where people must be encouraged, through
planning, to use urban spaces, spaces which are very precious and which
aim to promote communication and relationships among and between people.
We can, thus, understand the importance of level zero: it must be a
liveable environment, in which all elements are planned on a human
scale. To obtain a clear picture regarding the insertion site of the
building, we analysed the complex urban fabric reconstructing recent
phenomena. The methodology of the study followed a logical hierarchy,
that means that the information regarding the urban environment were
observed passing from the widest level down through the various level to
the smallest one. We sought to understand how cities have changed,
both on a global level as well as on a local level, focusing on the new
organisational, socio-economic and environmental characteristics. So we
studied geography in various forms, in terms of environment, population
and global networks, furthermore, we sought to under stand the way in
which forms of transport and urban planning can promote justice and
social equity, and we examined the relationship between the shape of the
city and sustainability, highlighting the potential for cohesion
deriving from public spaces.
To obtain a clear picture regarding the insertion site of the building, we analysed the complex urban fabric reconstructing recent phenomena. The methodology of the study followed a logical hierarchy, that means that the information regarding the urban environment were observed passing from the widest level down through the various level to the smallest one. We sought to understand how cities have changed, both on a global level as well as on a local level, focusing on the new organisational, socio-economic and environmental characteristics. So we studied geography in various forms, in terms of environment, population and global networks, furthermore, we sought to under stand the way in which forms of transport and urban planning can promote justice and social equity, and we examined the relationship between the shape of the city and sustainability, highlighting the potential for cohesion deriving from public spaces.
The historical/critical analysis of the site was very useful in the planning phase where we sought to value the context, even influencing some of the planning decisions in order to maintain a certain constructive tradition through the choice of materials. During the development of this thesis we discovered the existence of an intimate link between mathematics, architecture and urban planning, which in our project allowed us to connect the skyscraper to the city and to interact with it, thus connecting two parts of the city which, historically and traditionally have been very different. where we sought to value the context, even influencing some of the planning decisions in order to maintain a certain constructive tradition through the choice of materials.
I love NY, for this reason I chose this city to site THE TRILOGY, and while I examined the city I discovered that Manhattan and Queens don't communicate, so I think that Roosevelt Island can became the "key" to connect two part of NY City that are very different. Sorry for my bad english...(I'm italian) If you would like more specific information about the project, or some immage about the plan or masterplan contact me.
Click here for a stunning Youtube illustration of what a Skyscraper at Southpoint Park Roosevelt Island might look like. There is also what looks like a footbridge from Southpoint to Manhattan.
Roosevelt Island is a mixed income, racially diverse waterfront community situated in the East River of New York City between Manhattan and Queens and is jurisdictionally part of Manhattan. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, which connects Roosevelt Island to the rest of Manhattan, has become the iconic symbol of Roosevelt Island to its residents.
The Purpose of this Blog is to provide accurate and timely information about Roosevelt Island as well as a forum for residents to express opinions and engage in a dialogue to improve our community.
