Michael Bloomberg and members of the Department of City Planning are still trying to push through Midtown East rezoning plans, but they’re racing against the clock as Bloomberg’s Mayoral term fast approaches an end. The rezoning, centered around the Grand Central Terminal, would allow for a vast makeover of 73 blocks between 37th and 57th Street and 2nd and 5th Avenue. The Department of City Planning’s overview suggests that New York is in dire need of newer, taller commercial skyscraper developments to attract and facilitate the growth of business – lest we’re left behind by a growing list of progressive metropolises and commerce hubs that can accommodate: “The purpose of the rezoning is to ensure the area’s future as a world-class business district and major job generator for New York City”.

With government officials issuing zoning proposals to stall the expansion of large chain stores on the Upper West Side, other Manhattan neighborhoods are beginning to take note. Areas downtown and on the Upper East Side are now developing similar plans, in order to preserve retail diversity within their respective neighborhoods. 

Most of us don't think too hard (or at all) about zoning laws in Manhattan, unless we’re developers. That’s why we often know nothing about the regulations that literally shape the face of the Manhattan. Zoning is an all-encompassing subject that touches every aspect of new development, and it has done so for over a century. So what are the zoning rules that regulate new condo construction Manhattan? Anyone? Well, here’s a starting point to understanding our current situation: for 50 years, the basic structure of New York’s zoning laws installed by then Mayor Robert Wagner has remained the same. Currently, numerous neighborhoods such as the East Village and East Harlem are overhauling the details their zoning laws in order to accommodate new condo construction in Manhattan, but even with these changes, the basic structure of zoning laws remains untouched. A panel of planning experts met last week to discuss whether or not that structure can be improved, and the consenus was that our zoning laws are badly in need of change.

Even in a city that doesn't sleep, West 27th Street in Chelsea has long had a reputation for staying up late. That rep came courtesy of a bunch of clubs that, for a decade, set the pace for late-night revelry in a neighborhood that was, for years, Manhattan's club capital. Of course, no party lasts forever, and with those clubs closed -- and with Manhattan's club scene now doing its things behind the velvet ropes of the Lower East Side -- West Chelsea's former club capital has become something more upscale, a lot less messy and generally much more... residential. In the Wall Street Journal, Laura Kusisto notes that the stretch of West 27th Street between 10th and 11th Avenue, formerly the site of several notably noisy nightspots, has recently been home to a different kind of boom -- this time, as the home to some new luxury condominium development. With promising new Chelsea condominiums as 200 Eleventh Avenue, 245 Tenth and 133 West 22nd leading the way -- and with the newly opened second leg of The High Line giving the neighborhood some high-gloss glamour (and some high-end green space) -- it looks like the party may not be over in West Chelsea just yet.