The head of Landmarks is resigning

Meenakshi Srinivasan, the head of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, will resign and transfer to the private sector, City Hall confirmed Thursday.

Appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to the helm of the city agency in 2014, Srinivasan has chaired an 11-member group and overseen 3,800 building designations for historic protections.

“It’s been an intense, challenging, and incredibly rewarding experience,” she said in a statement, adding that she intends to do more “hands-on project-based work” in in the private sector.

Crain’s first reported the news Thursday.

Srinivasan, an architect by trade, chaired the Board of Standards and Appeals for 10 years before joining the commission. She joined the NYC Planning Department in 1990 where she worked on the master plan for Hudson Yards.

She was credited with designating 12 historic buildings in East Midtown, ahead of a major rezoning of the neighborhood that allowed developers to move in. She also implemented reforms designed to speed up designations of buildings, some of which had languished for as long as 20 years.

But her tenure at the commission placed her in some testy confrontations with preservationists. As recently as last month, a coalition of community groups called for Srinivasan’s resignation, after claiming that the commission had been hostile to preservationists and allowed “inappropriate alterations” to several buildings. [Crain’s] — David Jeans