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Press Coverage
12/04/2015
Councilman Ben Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, said he wants to protect Central Park from being shadowed by skyscrapers.
12/03/2015
Mr. Kallos said: ... A Billionaire should not be able to take light and air from Roosevelt Island...
11/30/2015
It sounds like the developer and the community have two different ideas about how to honor the quiet Upper East Side enclave. In August, backed by a growing alliance of area co-op and condo boards, Councilman Ben Kallos (who adamantly opposes the project) told the Times that his move to rally against the development is "about preserving our residential neighborhoods and the light and air for the people who live there." Lisa Mercurio of the East River Fifties Alliance, a community group rallying against the development, said in a statement, "The entire community remains opposed to this inappropriate development project."
11/29/2015
New York City has seen an increase in the number of "superscrapers" being built throughout the city. These tall buildings are not only out-of-scale, but often unwanted in residential neighborhoods. One notable example that has mobilized community members is the proposed development of a 900-foot tower threatening the Sutton Area, a historic and residential area on the Upper East Side.
On this episode of Represent NYC, Ben Kallos, whose City Council District 5 will be directly impacted by the Sutton Area development, talks about this issue with Mike Ernst, the Director of Planning at the Municipal Arts Society, Rachel Levy, a Preservation and Planning Associate at FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, and Dieter Seelig the President of the Sutton Area Community.
11/28/2015
11/23/2015
11/23/2015
Meanwhile, a bill in the City Council that was introduced to do an end-run around the court case altogether has been sitting in the Committee on Housing and Buildings for years. The legislation would have codified the rules favorably to Local 14.
"I don't want to trust the safety of our people to a national exam when we need to make sure [operators] are prepared to do the work and have the experience here," said City Councilman Benjamin Kallos, the sponsor of the proposed legislation.
The bill has a veto-proof 34 co-sponsors. But with the city's Law Department on the opposite side, the mayor would not be likely to ever sign it.
11/19/2015
Co-owner of 412 East 85th Street Susan Jordan endorsed landmarking, saying the preservation of the 19th-century wood-framed house was important to the immediate and larger communities, and that the building served as a “reminder of Yorkville’s agrarian past.” Council member Ben Kallos called the building “absolutely amazing,” and noted that it was one of only six wood-framed houses still standing on the Upper East Side, including Gracie Mansion. Area resident Franny Eberhart called the building a “window to the history of Yorkville.”
11/17/2015
“I share the mayor’s goal for affordability, but have concerns about the lack of mixed-income developments proposed in the plan,” said Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan).
“A middle-income family should still have somewhere to live in this city. They’re not provided for in the mayor’s plan.”
11/17/2015
New York City Council Member Ben Kallos, representing District 5, said the most important thing was to include regulations for supetalls in the new the Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) proposal issued by NYC Planning.
11/12/2015
11/11/2015
In January 2015 Councilmember Benjamin Kallos spearheaded the “Anti Tenant-Blacklist” bill, which he introduced to the City Council. This bill would allow a tenant who felt discriminated against to file a complaint with the NYC Commission on Human Rights. Violations would be issued to landlords if complaints were justified.
11/10/2015
"We're going to see hundreds of trucks coming into residential neighborhoods," he said. "We're looking at knowing [pollution levels] on an hour to hour, day to day basis because there are 35,000 children playing in a park near this garbage dump."
11/10/2015
"East 86th has similar traffic as Penn Station has at 7th or 8th Avenue and that area has a BID, but we don’t," Kallos said. "No amount of city services will be enough to deal with the amount of foot traffic we're seeing."
A BID, which is a nonprofit authorized by the public and run by residents and property owners, has the ability to bid for and hire nonprofit organizations or private businesses to take care of commercial areas.
11/09/2015
“This community has faced a long-standing problem with conditions on and around 86th Street. This corridor’s needs are too great for band-aids or one-off fixes. A BID will provide the supplementary support this neighborhood needs and is long overdue,” said Council member Kallos.
11/09/2015
“We’re taking on the onslaught of dark money and special interests in the city’s elections,” said Councilman Ben Kallos, chair of the government operations committee and one of the sponsors.
11/09/2015
“We can’t let billion-dollar buildings take our light, take our air, take our sky,” said Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side. “We have zoning on autopilot that allows people to build whatever they want wherever they want.”
11/08/2015
"Central Park is everybody's park, and billionaires shouldn't be able to buy the sky and cast the rest of the city in shadows," said City Councilman Ben Kallos of Manhattan.
11/05/2015
Last month, Werner met with City Council Member Ben Kallos to discuss enforcement and administration of the law, which is shared by HPD, the city’s Department of Finance and the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR). A reporter also attended.
“We have a bureaucratic quagmire between DHCR, HPD and DOF and we as a city and a state must get to the bottom of it,” Kallos said at the meeting. He called Werner “a hero” for raising the issue.
11/01/2015
“86th Street is one of the busiest commercial corridors in the city,” Kallos said, noting that the 86th Street stop on the Lexington Avenue line is among the subway system’s top 10 in commuter usage. “Many other locations have BIDs, and this one was long overdue.”
The effort to create the district will step up this week as a survey is sent out to take the neighborhood’s temperature on having a BID. The survey includes basic information about BIDs and a questionnaire regarding neighborhood conditions, quality of life problems, and desired services.
“Rather than trying to deal with the problems on a case-by-case basis, it would be better to deal with it in the long term by creating a BID for that part of the neighborhood,” Kallos said.
10/22/2015
Councilman Ben Kallos is working with the East River 50s Alliance, a community group that coalesced around an effort to defeat plans for a 900-foot skyscraper in Sutton Place, to raise the money and dole it out to the analysts, planners, and lawyers that the activists will need in order to usher a rezoning bid through the city’s uniform land-use review process, or ULURP.
10/21/2015
"We shouldn’t be building luxury housing on public land," Kallos said at the protest last night. "Any development on public housing land needs to come with the approval of the existing tenants, and it needs to be 100 percent affordable.”
