The Villager newspaper has a report on the Gansevoort developers’ latest tactic, a deceptive “push-poll” designed to manipulate people into voicing support for their plan.

As the article states,

Push polling is a form of telemarketing disguised as a survey, in which a caller asks the listener a series of leading questions meant to influence his or her opinion on a particular subject.  The Gansevoort pollsters reportedly asked community members questions like, “Would you prefer to see a series of decrepit, partly demolished buildings, or a historically sensitive restoration of what Gansevoort St. looked like until the 1930s?”

One resident who was called by the pollster called the poll “deceptive” and a “pretty low way to go about doing things.”

Tellingly, the developers are refusing to reveal the questions asked in the ‘poll’ or the script used by the interviewers.

Read the full article here.