A Stitch in Haste

So as we libertarians continue to lick our property rights wounds a year after the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment was rendered a nullity in Kelo v. New London, could it be that a new sort of property rights fact pattern is bubbling up in a backwater block of Manhattan?

East Village activists fighting to save the old P.S. 64 on E. Ninth St. celebrated on Tuesday morning as the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated it an individual city landmark, safeguarding it from the wrecking ball.

A few hours later, Gregg Singer, who purchased the building from the city in 1998 and is bent on developing a towering dormitory on the site, announced his plan for the building, for at least the next several years, to be home to the Christotora Treatment Center, a facility providing temporary housing for the homeless and ex-convicts fresh out of jail, supportive housing for people with H.I.V./AIDS and services for the mentally ill, substance abusers and “troubled youth.”

The peripheral issues grabbing the headlines in this case are twofold: whether the hippies "enlightened" residents of the East Village will even be fazed by a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, and whether a controversial "scare tactic" picture of a scabbed and bruised homeless woman (i.e., "your new neighbor") was photoshopped.

Whatever.

Here, in fact, is the really important part:

Calling the landmarking of the old P.S. 64 “stupid,” Singer said he plans to file a lawsuit in hopes of overturning the designation.
...
The landmarking of old P.S. 64 means that the standstill agreement preventing Singer from acting on his pre-existing permit to strip the building’s ornamental facade has been lifted. Speaking on Tuesday, Singer said he indeed now plans to commence with the stripping of the building’s terracotta window trim and copper cornice, starting on the 10th St. side. ... Singer said his strategy is to strip the building’s facade by using his pre-existing permit, then argue in court that the building never should have been landmarked in the first place.

How sublime -- granting "Landmark" status may in fact mean the destruction of the supposed landmark itself.

On Tuesday, Lisi de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said there has never been a case where a court has overturned the L.P.C.’s designation of an individual landmarked building.

Keep in mind that the L.P.C. is an unelected patronage bureaucracy that has little oversight. It is a collection of self-important central planner wannabes who are, apparently, smarter than Gregg Singer -- and you. Any building over thirty years old is subject to landmark designation, based on the capricious whims of (a simple majority of) the commissioners. And since designating landmarks is sole purpose of the Commission, is it any surprise that it never in fact runs out of landmarks to designate? When all you have is a hammer...

The L.P.C. has for decades now stunted development and exacerbated the city's perpetual housing shortage by freezing 23,000 buildings, forever, in the name of the warm fuzzy feeling of "preservation." But "preservation" for its own sake, untethered to any rational basis, objective criterion (nor, above all, to any "demeaning" market forces), is not the description of sound urban planning, but of a wax museum. And this city deserves better.

If the government wants to preserve a landmark, then it should buy it (yes, by eminent domain if absolutely necessary). Seizing your property is, after all, better than the alternative of not seizing it but not letting you do anything productive with it either.

Gregg is right -- this is all stupid. Landmarks preservation in New York has become gratuitous, counterproductive and obstructionist. The original laissez faire "Penn Station demolition" pendulum (wrecking ball?) has swung so far in the opposite direction of "preserve anything and everything" as to be downright absurd.

The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, perhaps. But a dilapidated, non-historical and currently unused former grade school in the East Village? Give me a break.

(Via Gothamist.)

"Honey, what landmarks should we visit while we're vacationing in New York?"

"Well, let's see -- the Empire State Building, Central Park, the New York Public Library ... oh, and of course the Pippen Building!"

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission today unanimously voted to landmark the former New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company building at 360 Third Avenue, a pioneering example of concrete construction in the United States. The 2 ½-story, Italianate-style structure on the corner of Third Avenue and Third Street in the Gowanus section of [Brooklyn] was designed by William Field and Son and built between 1872 and 1873 to house the concrete manufacturer's main office. The building is adjacent to the future site of a Whole Foods supermarket.

"This mysterious, elegant, small building commands the attention of everyone who passes by it," said Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney.

No, the Addams Family's house was "mysterious." The Fortress of Solitude is "mysterious." The Pippen Building is a square slab of concrete, the exact opposite of "mysterious." It is about as intriguing as a plastic Monopoly house.

And it now, by force of law and in defiance of property rights, will remain standing -- forever and ever...

(Incidentally, one wonders whether that gaudy radiator sign was also declared a landmark.)

It is an insult to the legacy of Penn Station and to New York's true (i.e., objectively demonstrable) landmarks to afford that status to structures like the Pippen Building. That alone is reason enough for the LPC's landmark mania (23,000 structures and counting) to be reined in. The economic cost, both to individual property owners and to the City as a whole, is undisputed.

(Via Gothamist.)

Time for me to gripe again about the Landmarks Preservation Commission:

The Landmarks Preservation Commission will hear a proposal today from the MTA and the owner of the "Honest Boy" fruit stand at the corner of Broadway and Houston in SoHo, Pan Gi Lee, to allow the construction of a two-story glass, steel, and aluminum building. The new structure, which would incorporate one of the entrances to the Broadway and Lafayette subway station, has been submitted to the commission for an advisory opinion because it would sit within the SoHo cast iron historic district.

It's bad enough that the LPC is out of control, declaring patently unimportant structures "historic landmarks" for no other reason than because, well, it's the raison d'être of the LPC to declare landmarks -- so where there are not enough "landmarks" to be found, the LPC simply invents them.

But now we also have the added gobbledygook of the "Historic District." If you visit New York City, you'll always know when you're in such a District by the brown (rather than green) street signs. And you will find them everywhere -- see generally, "the LPC simply invents them."

You have a subway station that is in no way historic or a landmark. You have a rickety old fruit shack. You have a plan to build a nice, aesthetic structure, increasing commerce in the process.

And you need the permission of a gaggle of unelected patronage appointees, not because any worthy structure is at stake, but because they have been granted central planner authority over an entire district?

Lovely.

More:

With the neighborhood exploding with shoppers and luxury, glass-encased apartments and boutique hotels, some locals said they would miss the old rickety stand.

And so everybody else, all the people who are not mentally questionable clods who enjoy dilapidation, have to suffer as a result?

Lovelier.

Still more:

Yesterday, the local Community Board 2 submitted a request to the Landmarks Commission that the proposal be denied and "something better built."

Clash of the unelected would-be central planners! Whoever wins -- we lose.

(Via Gothamist, which has a small picture of the shack in question.)

Tyler Cowen asks a simple question:

How good would the abolition of zoning in New York City be?

Of course, that question completely drops the context within which "good" is embedded. Stated differently: "Good" -- by what metric? Real estate values? Total available housing stock? Aesthetics? Whose aesthetics?

Suddenly it's not so simple a question after all.

How about defining "good" as "respecting property rights and constitutional principles"? As I commented at Cowen's blog:

Sorry for the Clintonism, but it depends (as you note) on what your definition of "zoning" is.

First-order zoning -- an area is simply designated "residential," "commercial" or "industrial" -- is not an excruciating abomination to libertarians and can be defended, at least in the abstract, as externality-correcting.

Second-order zoning -- height restrictions are the best example -- are less defensible and should be presumed illegitimate (i.e., restrictions should be subject to heightened scrutiny). This is the kind of "zoning" imposed on most of Manhattan.

Third-order zoning -- where any and every alteration, expansion or demolition must be submitted to an unelected board with near-plenary authority to approve or reject the project -- for any reason up to and including the whim and caprice of the board members -- is per se illegitimate, and under any sane jurisprudence such an infringement of fundamental property rights would be an irrebuttable due process violation. (So-called "historic districts" -- of which there are many in New York City -- are the most egregious example.)

Yes, the "first-second-third" nomenclature is my own concoction, inspired by similar terminology in the context of price discrimination.

More thoughts from Perfect Substitute