So why does it take forever for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to take action on historic neighborhoods and buildings?

Historical preservationists and pols have long been frustrated with the agency, which is meant to preserve the city’s architectural heritage, because of
its slow response time and lack of accountability

Today the New York Times presents the first in a series of articles examining how the famously mysterious commission works and details about a recent Supreme Court ruling that the agency’s inaction is "arbitrary and capricious."

The New York Times conducted its own six-month examination of the
commission’s operations. They discovered "an overtaxed
agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even
as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its
decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on
landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are
uncertain how many it rejects in a given year."

Yay. Maybe this will help bring about change to the commission, which is in desperate need of an  overhaul. Here’s an excerpt from the Times’ article.

For years, preservation advocates have pleaded with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider enlarging its protective mantle in Park Slope, one of Brooklyn’s most scenic brownstone neighborhoods. In 2000 they proposed that the commission extend the 44-block Park Slope Historic District eastward and southward, preserving 19th-century residential architecture like the handsome houses on Garfield Place, with their two-sided bays and original stoop ironwork.

The initial response was encouraging: in a June 2001 letter to the Historic Districts Council, the commission said, “We will review the material and keep you informed of the process.”

And then the preservationists waited. And waited. This month — seven years later — a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan decided that they had waited long enough.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed in March against the landmarks commission’s top officials by a preservationist coalition, the judge called the agency’s inaction “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to start making timely decisions on every designation request. To allow such proposals “to languish is to defeat the very purpose of the L.P.C. and invite the loss of irreplaceable landmarks,” the judge, Marilyn Shafer, wrote.