City’s architecture community applauds Glen appointment

Rick Bell and Alicia Glen
Rick Bell and Alicia Glen

WEEKENDEDITION Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s selection of Alicia Glen, head of urban investment for Goldman Sachs, to serve as his deputy mayor for housing and economic development is getting applause from the city’s architectural sector.

“She’s perfectly situated, with both the title and the mandate, to carry out the campaign promises of the de Blasio administration,” Rick Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects’ New York chapter, said in an interview with the Insider.

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However, to succeed in de Blasio’s goal of creating and preserving 200,000 units of affordable housing, Glen will need to streamline the approval of new construction projects, Bell told Crain’s.

And the AIA’s New York chapter, teamed with the Real Estate Board of New York, the National Resources Defense Council and the Urban Green Council, isn’t stopping with Glen. The organizations recently submitted their first platform, which advocates a list of names spread across six regulatory agencies affecting architecture. [Crain’s]Christopher Cameron