Midtown East rezoning plans to reemerge next month

Alicia Glen: But "it’s going to be between a year or two before you see anything happen"

From left: Mayor Bill de Blasio, Midtown East and Alicia Glen
From left: Mayor Bill de Blasio, Midtown East and Alicia Glen

The de Blasio administration is gearing up to relaunch the debate over a rezoning of Midtown East next month.

Initially proposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as an effort to rezone a more than 70-block section of Midtown East to enable the construction of larger, more modern skyscrapers, the proposal died on the eve of a City Council vote in November, when Bloomberg withdrew his application, citing an absence of backing from legislators.

The new administration will unveil a timeline for the controversial rezoning plan in about two weeks, Alicia Gln, deputy mayor for economic development and housing, told the assembled crowd at a Citizens Budget Commission breakfast forum Wednesday. Any changes to the area zoning, she told reporters after the event, would not take effect until at least 2016.

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“That would mean we would obviously have the time to do all the work around consensus building on exactly how we should approach it, then get it certified,” Glen told the assembled crowd. “In real life, it’s going to be between a year or two before you see anything happen.”

How the de Blasio plan would differ from that of his predecessor was not immediately clear. Among the past criticisms was the notion that air rights were underpriced — a view on which Glen declined comment comment to Crain’s. [Crain’s]Julie Strickland