The Eminent Domain

The Eminent Domain has been on hiatus, much as many of you have been, but in the spirit of Leno and Letterman we’re back. Consider this an opening monologue from your editor.

Over the coming weeks and months, I’m going to be joined here by other contributors, who live and work in neighborhoods dealing with major real estate projects. They’ll tell you about their meetings, their debates and their challenges in making development responsive to their communities’ needs. And they’ll offer their ideas about how New York can grow in a way that works for the people who live here — and how to make that happen in a city where politics-as-usual has a habit of crushing innovation.

For now, I’ll humbly note some news that will shape what 2008 will look like for the groups advocating for saner and more responsive development process in New York City:

New York has a new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, replacing Dan Doctoroff: Robert Lieber, who spent 2007 as the head of the city Economic Development Corporation. Among much else during his brief tenure at EDC, Lieber presided over two major redevelopment plans that are the subject of intense community advocacy: Kingsbridge Armory and Willets Point. Like his predecessor, Lieber comes out of investment banking, where the guiding principle is maximizing returns at all costs. Not much is likely to change, and that’s not entirely bad news — Doctoroff did respond to political pressure when it was hot enough.

Manhattan Community Board 9 has a new chair. Pat Jones, who co-chaired the task force on Manhattanville planning and serves on the West Harlem Local Development Corporation. While the LDC has already reached its agreement with Columbia on community benefits, Jones and the community board will have opportunities to make sure that the Department of City Planning and Columbia both follow through on their commitments for Manhattanville. CB9 is also going to be holding hearings and voting on City Planning’s proposed 125th street rezoning. City Limits features an appreciation of outgoing chair Jordi Reyes-Montblanc.

Another neighborhood has embarked on the road to participatory planning. With the guidance of the Municipal Art Society, Imagine Flatbush 2030 has begun bringing together residents of the area near Brooklyn College to identify what they want to see out of the area’s future development. See Brooklyn Junction’s account of Imagine Flatbush’s inaugural meeting in December. In a year when Atlantic Yards, the Yankee Stadium rebuilding boondoggle and the Columbia University expansion all aggressively tested New Yorkers’ belief that they can expect to influence planning, many of us remain undeterred.