The fragile neighborhood fabrics of Chelsea and the West Village need protection from the zone-busting over-development plans of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
We saw how Speaker Quinn dealt with St. Vincent's Hospital : she approved the Rudin family's zone-busting luxury condo conversion of the only full-service hospital in the entire Lower West Side of Manhattan.
Speaker Quinn had her ''protectors,'' people who defended Speaker Quinn's blatant betrayal of the community.
Speaker Quinn's protectors, who didn't believe we needed a full-service hospital in the Lower West Side, are now having to deal with the impact of the architectural aesthetic of a zone-busting real estate development deal for Chelsea Market.
Healthcare activists pointed out how Speaker Quinn hauled in $30,000 in campaign donations from the Rudin family in a ''pay-to-play'' deal that put the City Council Speaker on a one-way course to fast-track and approve the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's. The Rudin family paid hundreds of thousands in lobbying for the luxury condo deal, and one of the lobbying groups that the Rudin family hired was Capalino and Company, a firm that has been successful in compromising Speaker Quinn to such an extent that Speaker Quinn can usually be counted upon to do what is wrong by the community -- meaning, Speaker Quinn goes along with the desires of real estate developers over the concerns and needs of her own voters.
Now comes the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, a feeder group that is described as ''belonging'' to the political boss system in Speaker Quinn's power base. The Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, which opposes Jamestown Properties's zone-busting development deal for Chelsea Market. Another group that opposes the zone-busting deal is Save Chelsea.
Jamestown Properties has hired Capalino and Company, and, again, real estate developers, their front groups, and their friends and family members, are funneling campaign donations to Speaker Quinn, this time in an amount that is greater than $370,000, according to The New York Times.
Here is my prediction for how things will unfold :
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