Home > News > WPP Receives a WESTY Award
WPP Receives a WESTY Award
October 13, 2009 - Westsiders for Public Participation
is proud to report that our advocacy work on behalf of community stakeholders
has been recognized and rewarded!
WPP President Paul Bunten recently
received a prestigious WESTY award, an honor bestowed upon West Side
activists that celebrates their special contributions to New York communities.
Recipients include organizational and civic leaders who, through informed
participation in public affairs, have achieved real results that better
the quality of New York City living.
Since he founded WPP in April
2008, Paul has worked to mobilize Westsiders - whose cherished neighborhoods
are increasingly threatened by overdevelopment - and inspired them to
take part in community-based planning activities. Working under its
mission of civic advocacy, WPP has rallied against new development that
fails to provide opportunities for meaningful influence by the stakeholders
who have built the very neighborhoods under threat of destructive change.
So when construction began
of Columbus Village - a transformative real estate development consisting
of five new market-rate apartment buildings and 320,000 square feet
of tri-level retail space along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues - WPP
was the first to take action, by filing a lawsuit against the New York
City Department of Buildings for neglecting to study and mitigate the
many adverse impacts of huge new buildings on the surrounding Park West
Village neighborhood.
In a separate lawsuit, WPP
took the Columbus Village developers to task for moving forward without
a neighborhood impact study, and for breaking the law about how much
open space was required to remain available for the use of all Park
West Village residents.
Both lawsuits were settled
out of court in July 2009, and Congressman Charles
Rangel has since
congratulated Westsiders for Public Participation for leading the Park
West Village neighborhood to "a vital crossroads in terms of community
participation and input on development."
"Without people like Paul
leading the way in this tough fight," Rangel said, "Park West
Village would be a lesser place."
Click here to read the press clipping that reports WPP's full record of community advocacy. Please encourage your friends and neighbors to create an even greater success story for WPP in the future by subscribing to our email updates today here.
