Upzoning uproar: Fed up with mayor’s rezonings, 65 groups to protest at City Hall

Dozens of organizations from across four boroughs — including an array of community, civic, cultural, environmental and preservationist groups — are joining together to demand an end to Mayor de Blasio’s upzonings.

The groups — which will rally by City Hall at Chambers and Centre Sts. on Wed., Dec. 16, at noon — charge that de Blasio’s upzonings are, in fact, largely a “giveaway to his developer friends and campaign donors.”

The event, billed as a “Save Our Soho/Save Our City” rally, will be protesting not only the mayor’s plans for Soho and Noho, but also his upzoning schemes throughout the city. Soho Alliance members will be featured speakers.

The groups are also demanding an immediate “pause” to Zoom land-use-review public meetings, such as ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure).

The activists charge that, in the current COVID climate, the Zoom meetings on land-use issues, like upzonings, are “tightly controlled by the Department of City Planning, do not meet the legal requirements for an actual public meeting, and inhibit true grassroots participatory democracy.”

“Moreover, the Zoom ‘public’ meetings are fraught with technical problems,” a press release for the protest said. “Remote meetings are not how ‘public’ meetings work. Public meetings are held in public, not in the cloud.”

In October, The Village Sun reported how city planners “muted” community protest over the Soho/Noho rezoning plan at a recent meeting by carefully curating which members of the public could speak.

Wednesday’s rally will use COVID precautions and masks are required.

Participants will include: