New York, NY – Preservationists battling a 350-year-old Upper West Side synagogue’s expansion efforts added a new wrinkle to their fight, asking a state judge to overturn what they say is a citywide ban put into place after September 11, 2001, on releasing blueprints of “sensitive” locations without written permission from property owners.
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Landmark West, a 22-year-old nonprofit group, says building plans filed with the city help rally community opposition to projects like Congregation Shearith Israel’s petitions to landmark and zoning boards to put up a school and a condominium behind the landmark sanctuary in a brownstone neighborhood on West 70th Street. “Transparency is supposed to be a hallmark of the Bloomberg administration, and to respond to a community organization’s request for public documents by saying that we may be terrorists — I mean, it isn’t sound public policy,” the group’s executive director, Kate Wood, said.
The city calls the non-disclosure of some building plans the “sensitive building policy.” The preservation group filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court calling the security policy “absurd” and challenging whether the city can deem properties like religious institutions as “sensitive” and restrict access to public records.
A spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, Kate Lindquist, confirmed that the city maintains such a policy but declined to elaborate, citing another city policy of not commenting on pending litigation. [NY Sun]