Places that Matter "Zuccotti Park" (formerly Liberty Plaza Park)

[kster]

Zuccotti Park is a 33,000-square-foot space located in the Financial District between Broadway, Trinity Place, Liberty Street and Cedar Street. As of 2011, the park is operated, owned, and managed by Brookfield Properties, a commercial real estate corporation that works with high-end assets in North America and Australia. Their property at One Liberty Plaza houses many leading financial and professional services firms including Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Zurich American Insurance and Royal Bank of Canada. Zuccotti Park is a bonus plaza for One Liberty Plaza, which means that the public green space is a zoning requirement for the real estate corporation.

When skyscrapers were first erected in New York City in the late nineteenth century, they were considered engineering marvels that enabled property owners to capitalize on real estate by building up rather than out. But by the mid-twentieth century, concerns over land use and the possibility of turning surrounding neighborhoods into dense, shadowy canyons prompted the popularization of incentive zoning through which developers could gain additional floor area by providing public amenities. In 1961, New York City's Planning Commission adopted a zoning resolution that restricted the bulk and density of new development. Builders were also encouraged to create open space like plazas, arcades and open-air concourses in exchange for the right to build taller structures.


Snip...The park reopened on June 1, 2006, with a new name: Zucotti Park, named after John Zuccotti, the U.S. Chairman of Brookfield Properties and also the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York, former first deputy mayor of the City of New York, and former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. The park's renovation, designed by Cooper, Robertson and Partners, received the 2007 American Institute of Architects-New York Merit Award.

Snip... Since Saturday, September 17, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement has claimed Zuccotti Park as its base of operations. Because the park is privately owned, neither the mayor nor the police can force the protesters to decamp. Still open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Zuccotti Park now features a sprawling campsite, a people's library, a media station, a kitchen, information booths, posters, drum circles and between hundreds and thousands of people. Full-time and part-time protesters, supporters, news media, police officers and tourists have occupied or visited the actual site, while the eyes of the rest of the world focus, with increasing intensity, on websites reporting the demonstration's growing momentum. While the movement has not officially codified its demands, it calls for an equitable allocation of resources.



http://www.placematters.net/node/1611



John E. Zuccotti...

As a businessman, Zuccotti has been active in the development of New York City, as a partner in a number of real estate firms such as Olympia & York, Brown & Wood and Tufo & Zuccotti and as the U.S. chairman of Brookfield Properties.

Politically, Zuccotti has been active in both Democratic and Republican politics on both the local and national level, serving at various times on the National Republican Congressional Committee and Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

Zuccotti is married to Susan Sessions Zuccotti, the author of a number of books relating to the Holocaust


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Zuccotti

Susan Zuccotti...

Dr. Susan Sessions Zuccotti (born 1940) is an American historian, specializing in studies of the Holocaust. She holds a PhD in Modern European History from Columbia University. She has won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies,<1> and the Premio Acqui Storia – Primo Lavoro for Italians and the Holocaust (1987). She also received a National Jewish Book Award for Jewish-Christian Relations, and the Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Prize of the German Studies Association in 2002 for Under His Very Widows (2000). She is married to John Zuccotti.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Zuccotti