Valentine's Day Rally Urges Mayor Bloomberg to Have a Heart -- By Giving Landmark Status to P.S. 64

''Mayor B.
Have a Heart
Landmark our building!
That's a start!"

Those words echoed through 9th Street on Sunday, Feb. 13, as District Leader Rosie Mendez, Council Member Margarita Lopez, and Community Board 3 Chairman David McWater lead more than 100 members of the Lower East Side community in a rally to support the return of P.S. 64 to the community.

As Lopez pointed out in an emotional speech, the crowd had several reasons to be hopeful. The preceding Friday afternoon, Lopez received word that the first step in landmarking the building had been achieved: The Department of Buildings had determined that P.S. 64 met eligibility requirements for the roster of historic places.

Lopez also reminded the crowd of recent accomplishments: Developer Gregg Singer's first attempt to get public funding to build his proposed "dorm" on the site of P.S. 64 had been defeated. The city also stalled his second plan to build the "dorm" with other funding sources -- and denied his permits for demolition.

Looking ahead to the next step in the fight to return the building to the community, Mendez urged Mayor Bloomberg to get into the spirit of Valentine's Day and ''be a sweetheart: Give us back our building!" His support would help continue the movement that began in the late '70s when members of the neighborhood threw drug dealers out of P.S. 64 and began to use it as a community arts center. "This building is more than just a building," she said. "It epitomizes the community struggle."

Lopez also drew a connection between Valentine's Day and the history of P.S. 64. "Love is the reason why this building exists," she said. "After we kicked out the drug dealers, we took over the building and created love the best way we knew -- through art, which is the expression of the spirit and the soul. There must continue to be a center of love in this neighborhood and it must be in old P.S. 64."

Both leaders urged neighbors to write postcards and make calls to 311 to support landmark status for the building -- which would pave the way for transforming P.S. 64 into the Armando Perez Community Center. Perez, who died while fighting the sale of the building by the Giuliani administration, was a Democratic District Leader and one of the founding members of CHARAS/El Bohio who helped convert P.S. 64 into a community center. The center would be named in his honor as a tribute to what he did for the neighborhood. "Not too long from now," said Mendez, "we will stand here and cut the ribbon on the Armando Perez Community Center, and we will have our space back."