Tech hub officially breaks ground on 14th Street
[Photo via @VladeckRA]A handful of local elected officials and other community stakeholders gathered yesterday morning for the official groundbreaking at the future home of the Union Square Tech Training Center (aka tech hub) on 14th Street at Irving Plaza.”The new Tech Training Center will be a hub for local residents to gain new skills, network and plug into the City’s thriving tech scene,” Vicki Been, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in prepared remarks. “We are proud to support this new institution and its goal of helping to create the most dynamic and diverse tech ecosystem in the country.”The project is being developed jointly by the city’s Economic Development Corp. and RAL Development Services. The Union Square Tech Training Center includes Civic Hall, which will offer digital skills for low-income residents, as well as market-rate retail, office space and a food hall.The hub, championed by Mayor de Blasio and initially announced in early 2017, passed through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process earlier in 2018, capped off by a unanimous City Council vote — led by local Councilmember Carlina Rivera — in August 2018. A rezoning was required to build the the structure, which is larger than what current commercial zoning allows. The approval came despite the pleas of some residents, activists, small-business owners and community groups who had long expressed concern that the rezoning necessary for the project would spur out-of-scale development on surrounding blocks.The Village Preservation, who was against the rezoning without stricter zoning protections for the immediate area, used the groundbreaking ceremony to help amplify their ongoing concerns. Nearly a dozen protestors gathered outside the private ceremony.They kept the public out of their press conference for the groundbreaking, but we got our message across this morning as we protested @NYCMayor’s corrupt deal for 14th St Tech Hub + @CarlinaRivera breaking her promise to demand neighborhood protections: https://t.co/IyY1aflo8f pic.twitter.com/Wxbt664dyc— GVSHP (@GVSHP) August 5, 2019https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHere’s part of a statement the Village Preservation issued yesterday:”Rather than a cause for celebration, the groundbreaking ceremony for the 14th Street Tech Hub calls for serious examination of the corrupt process which led to its approval and the sweetheart deal it gave to several donors to the Mayor. The majority of this project is purely for-profit commercial office space being built on highly valuable public land for a song, when other bidders on the project would have included more public space and benefits and not required the commercial upzoning so opposed by the neighborhood. This sad saga is rife with broken commitments and promises made by both the Mayor and Councilmember Carlina Rivera regarding protections and mitigations for the surrounding neighborhood.”You can read their full report here.The new building, on the former site of a P.C. Richard & Son, has an optimistic grand opening set for the fourth quarter of 2020, per the 14th @ Irving site.Previously on EV Grieve:Behold Civic Hall, the high-tech future of Union Square — and NYCSpeaking out against a ‘Silicon Alley’ in this neighborhoodP.C. Richard puts up the moving signs on 14th Street; more Tech Hub debate to comeCity Council’s lone public hearing on the 14th Street tech hub is tomorrowCity Council unanimously approves tech hub; some disappointment in lack of zoning protections The conversation continues on the now-approved tech hub for 14th StreetP.C. Richard is gone on 14th Street; preservationists want answers about tech-hub commitments
