A personal statement on community planning

Hi. Thanks for visiting my web-site. My name is John Lynch and I am a trusted planning professional in the NYC metropolitan area with over 30 years of experience. For fourteen of those years I have operated my own practice. I have a great deal of experience with environmental disclosure, fiscal and market analysis, and municipal planning and zoning administration.

In addition to these areas, my professional interests include expanding local housing options and controlling sprawl around NYC, community / neighborhood redevelopment and preservation, identifying and spotlighting local strengths, promoting activity in public spaces, enhancing NYC’s role in media and culture and the overall economic development and revitalization of NYC and the surrounding region.

My professional interests were most informed by my childhood in NYC’s borough of the Bronx High Bridge neighborhood, (then Williamsbridge / Norwood) and my early adult years in the borough of Brooklyn (Fort Greene and Clinton Hill) and now by the revitalization of lower Manhattan. As a child I witnessed first-hand the destruction of once tight-knit vital neighborhoods and their housing, workplaces, businesses and institutions. When you grew up in the Bronx of the 1970’s you had a great time but all your neighbors and friends wanted to do or ever talked about was moving out of the neighborhood to Queens or the suburbs. Bronx neighborhoods had become “beat”, and were “changing.” Many families themselves were breaking apart too at that time.

Little did people know though that some of the best times of their lives were spent in the Bronx in the 1970’s. As an adolescent I vowed that I would work to preserve, strengthen and enhance communities. I didn’t want another child to watch the neighborhood of his childhood become a mere ghost within a few years of his becoming an adult.

As a young adult student and professional in the 1980’s I trumpeted the virtues of Brooklyn’s historic brownstone neighborhoods, its rich history and relationship to Manhattan, its waterfront and the vitality of the borough. Usually my words fell on deaf ears, but today is a different story. One can find high end Manhattan Realtors representing properties throughout Brooklyn. DUMBO, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, and Williamsburg have become creative centers of Brooklyn and NYC.

Downtown Brooklyn, and the borough’s waterfront have received substantial amounts of attention and investment. And Brooklyn is now its own brand in national discourse. These were but dreams of mine 25 to 30 years ago.

In the early 1990s I saw the potential glittering future of west Chelsea and this time I invested in the neighborhood, moving into an apartment in London Terrace on West 23rd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. In 1991, the heart of Chelsea was in the teens and west of 8th Avenue.

Today the hot addresses line the High Line which is west of 10th Avenue.
Over the past 20 years, Chelsea Piers have been redeveloped as a very successful mixed use commercial project, and art galleries have de-camped from SOHO to west Chelsea. The High Line itself has spurred a redevelopment wave in the area, all centered on the center of west Chelsea, 23rd Street, roughly between 9th and 10th Avenues.

Since the mid-1990s I have divided my time between Westchester and the lower Manhattan communities of the Financial District / Seaport and Little Italy, developing similar emotional and intellectual connections with these communities. These lower Manhattan neighborhoods are now among the fastest growing and vital in New York City!

In 2002, I met and worked with the former Deputy Commissioner for NYC’s waterfront agency and saw the opportunities for living and working, industrial retention, transport, and public access and tourism presented by waterfront land. I have developed an affinity for waterfront re- use and revitalization, and the public realm’s responsibility as steward of this resource.

I think planning for the waterfront is a metaphor for the role that governments must take in planning for, and developing and redeveloping residential neighborhoods and commercial areas. Preserving historic elements and character, guaranteeing diverse and multiple experiences for visitors and local and City residents alike, assuring that value is added to personal and commercial experiences and enterprises, and assuring that economic assets are maintained and enhanced, while conserving resources are values that have guided my professional work to date.

My personal interests include cruising and traveling, visiting with friends and family and rekindling old connections, organizing gatherings, Irish and Italian culture and writing.