The Eminent Domain

The City Planning Commission just voted 11-1 in favor of the Willets Point rezoning proposed by the Bloomberg administration (dissenting vote was Karen Phillips, the appointee of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum).

It’s now up to the City Council to set some strong terms on how development goes forward. So far, a majority of councilmembers have followed the lead of Queens member Hiram Monserrate and demanded greater commitments and accountability from the City on assistance for displaced workers and the creation of affordable housing as a condition of approving the rezoning. With term limits looming, some councilmembers may not be enticed by any promises the administration may dangle in exchange for a yes vote on Willets Point…while others will desperately need the mayor’s support as they run for their next office. It’s hard to predict yet which way the Council will sway.

Did I say “how development goes forward”? That’s so very 2004. Let’s see: the City sweeps away some 1,800 jobs, spends hundreds of millions (it’s right there in the city budget) to prepare this polluted swatch of land for development, and…and…? There’s a little credit crisis exploding right now that could well leave northern Queens with a great big model airplane field — and, like Hanky Paulson, Bloomberg could be committing huge sums of money to a retro fantasy that’s no longer viable.

It’s sold out, but see if you can sneak in: Tonight the Municipal Art Society is hosting “Coney Island at the Crossroads,” a panel discussion on the fate of one of New York City’s great public spaces.

Like many New Yorkers, I’m mourning the demise of Astroland, the heart of Coney Island’s gloriously cacophonous amusement area. And like other commentators, such as the Village Voice’s diligent Neil deMause, I’ve been wondering why the loss of Astroland sparked such a tepid reaction? Where’s the New York moxie? The outrage?

Well, one reason, of course, is that Deno’s Wonder Wheel park next door remains open, featuring similar attractions and the all-important Coney Island energy.  Though they won’t admit it outside the anonymous forums of the Daily News website, a lot of post-Giuliani New Yorkers also fear and loathe a public space where teenagers who live in housing projects dance on the streets late into the night.

But I think there’s also another reason for the mournful silence around Astroland’s dismantling — an attack of cognitive dissonance about what government’s role ought to be in city planning. For several years, many New Yorkers who care about the shape of the city’s future have been fighting massive development projects by standing up for the small property owners who are being pushed aside. From Manhattanville to Atlantic Yards, grassroots groups seeking the preservation of beloved neighborhoods have coalesced around the absolute support of property rights, in the face of government’s power of eminent domain.

But in Coney Island, preservationists faced the exact opposite problem. The owner of Astroland, Joseph Sitt, has done exactly what property owners are supposed to do — exercise their rights, within the zoning and other codes, to do what they want with their property. City planners and economic development officials are now twisting themselves like contortionists at the Coney Island Sideshow to accommodate Sitt’s dreams of condos by the ever-encroaching sea while carving out some space for the rest of us. And while a few hardworking activists are demanding more aggressive action, it’s hard to ask the mayor for a heavy hand by the sea after years of decrying incursions by the City to advance big projects. New Yorkers have to demand, loudly, that the Bloomberg administration — this time — push a lot harder.

As the Bloomberg administration begins to consolidate its legacy of reshaping New York City’s landscape, labor and community groups are moving to set precedents for the future, and nowhere more aggressively than in Willets Point.

The rezoning of industrial Willets Point into a new hotel, convention center, housing and retail complex — developer yet to be determined — is proceeding, with the blessings of labor unions and Community Board 7, which on June 30 approved the city’s plan 21-15. The Central Labor Council and NYC Economic Development Corporation agreed that construction and security jobs will pay prevailing wage — the highest industry standard — while retail will pay at least $10 an hour. Community Board 7’s vote in favor came despite the presence at its meeting of hundreds of protestors from groups that included the Willets Point Industrial Realty Association, New York Immigration Coalition, ACORN, NAACP, and Centro Hispano “Cuzcatlán,” demanding affordable housing and stronger protections for some 1,700 workers at Willets Point’s existing businesses, many of whom will lose their jobs as a result of the area’s redevelopment.

Said Pastor Lancelot Waldron of Queens Congregations United for Action, “The mayor’s plan is not adequate for Queens. There isn’t enough affordable housing.” EDC has committed to make 20 percent of the apartments affordable, under the widely used “80-20″ federal tax exempt bond program. Maximum income for that program is $61,000 a year for a family of four, meaning that the new “affordable” housing will likely be unaffordable for more than half the families in Queens.
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If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from us in a few weeks, it’s because The Eminent Domain has been part of a major citywide effort to bring New Yorkers together around a shared agenda for how development should proceed in areas like Willets Point — with affordable housing, living wage jobs, and careful attention to what amenities neighborhoods need.

One City/One Future is a collaborative venture between dozens of community, labor, environmental, civic, immigration and other organizations around New York City, including many we’ve been covering here on The Eminent Domain, to set the course for New York City’s future economic development. One City/One Future is based on four basic goals:

• Create and maintain good jobs for a strong economy.
• Make and keep housing affordable.
• Grow the city greener.
• Strengthen local quality of life, neighborhood character, and diversity.

This fall, the One City/One Future Blueprint for Growth will outline strategies that can make those goals a reality in Willets Point and in all of New York City’s development decisions, following models that have proved successful elsewhere. The Eminent Domain will provide a space for discussion of those policies and the possibilities for making economic development work for New Yorkers. We’ll also continue to take a close look at development policies in action and ask tough questions about who wins, who loses and how development could be done better. For more information on One City/One Future, contact Sadaf Khatri at NY Jobs with Justice, sadaf@nyjwj.org.

The Eminent Domain extends a huge thank you to volunteer Danyelle King, who reported this summer from Willets Point, Coney Island and other hot spots undergoing redevelopment. She’ll be returning to Brown University this fall, where she’s majoring in urban studies.

I just had the pleasure of discovering Amy Lavine’s valuable blog on Community Benefits Agreements across the nation. She’s been covering New York’s highs (the Kingsbridge Armory campaign) and lows (Yankee stadium), along with a comprehensive array of noteworthy developer-community deals from coast to coast.

Let’s give a deeply deserved round of applause for Mattie Burkert, who has been a driving force behind The Eminent Domain from its inception. Mattie is interning at the incredible Chicago Reporter this summer, and from there she heads into her senior year at NYU. She’ll be posting from time to time, but we’ll miss having Mattie here. Thank you!!

A post on Brownstoner about FUREE’s upcoming annual convention has generated a wave of comments that are pretty astounding in their hostility to the people and businesses that have been in the area all along. Other posters are fighting back in defense, and the messages are worth reading. Here are some of them:

I think community organizing is important. Too often developers get away with anything they want as community boards and city planning let developers do whatever they want.

Only when community members get involved do people get what they want. So what is wrong with letting people ask for what they want.

I hope that community members fight hard for what they want. Nobody will fight for them.

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That shopping area exists as it is, in fact, because it is profitable and ideally located in the middle of the second biggest subway hub in NYC. Of course it used to be an almost exclusively white space (not that white people ever notice when something is predominantly white) until all of your parents and grandparents fled to the suburbs. Those without that luxury or option filled the vacuum of white flight. The businesses in Fulton Mall are a reflection of that and the concomitant disinvestment by the city, as well as the lack of capital resources available to the tenants for major structural improvements.

But these days white flight is going the other way; the upper-middle class is pouring back into cities and suburbanizing them as quickly as possible, remaking them in their own image. And just like their parents couldn’t possibly understand why blacks would be angry about economic disenfranchisement, social exclusion, and segregation (yes! I am talking about 20th century BROOKLYN here), these wonderful new “Brooklynites” can’t possibly imagine why people would be angry enough to fight back, when what little space and community they have garnered for themselves is ripped away to make room for the aesthetic taste and consumer culture of the “upper class.”

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I’m one of those white suburbanites who grew up and moved to Brooklyn, and a big reason why is because I couldn’t stand the lack or racial and economic diversity where I grew up. Downtown Brooklyn has a long history of racial cooperation, since back when those houses on Duffield Street were Underground Railroad stops and free slaves settled the neighborhoods nearby. The proposed redevelopment threatens to upset the historic balance we have and impose an unwanted homogeneity on our racially mixed neighborhood. Whether or not I shop downtown or on Smith Street is irrelevant. Smith Street already exists for me to shop on, and downtown Brooklyn exists for my neighbors. The expected cultural encroachment is greedy and unnecessary.

After months of waiting for the city Economic Development Corporation to select a developer for the massive Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx neighborhood of the same name, the push is on, hard, to make the project work for Bronx residents.

EDC has selected the Related Companies to turn the historic 575,000-square-foot building in Kingsbridge Heights into a mixed-use development encompassing retail stores, entertainment venues, and recreation and community facilities. The Related Companies isn’t just any developer: its $12 billion national portfolio of real estate that includes Manhattan’s Time Warner Center. The Armory is the latest in a series of City-sponsored development projects awarded to Related; others include the Bronx Terminal Market and Brooklyn’s Gateway Mall.

In an impressive show of force, yesterday dozens of members of the Kingbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, or KARA, stood in front of City Hall to call for negotiations for a community benefits agreement for the armory project — one that will include living wage jobs, space for schools, and other badly needed resources for the neighborhood. KARA is also calling for a labor peace agreement and a project labor agreement to make sure that jobs, in construction, retail, janitorial services, and more are union positions. And its members want to see amenities the area simply doesn’t have, from a bookstore to a movie theater.

KARA is being organized by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a venerable force that helped the area withstand the devastation of abandonment in the 1970s. It’s now making sure that as the tide turns the other way and new profit-seeking ventures arrive in the neighborhood, that the new development strengthens the neighborhood, which remains predominantly low-income, instead of pushing it aside.

Behind the scenes, the alliance has already made an important stride: Wth local elected officials it persuaded EDC to set up a task force of residents, businesses and local leaders to set standards for the armory’s redevelopment. EDC proceeded to give preference in its selection process to developers who would agree to pay living wages, create community space, and support the neighborhood in other essential ways.

There was just one problem: neither of the viable proposals, from Related and from Atlantic Development Group, included any of those things. The preferences therefore meant nothing, and Related’s winning proposal looks like any other plan to develop a shopping and recreation center (its closest kin in the New York area is probably New Roc City, in downtown New Rochelle).

Now KARA is doing something extremely gutsy: It is trying to wrest the whole concept of a community benefits agreement back from the jaws of elected officials who have perverted it beyond recognition, so much so that New Yorkers who pay attention to development simply assume that a CBA is one step removed from a shakedown. (Check out the comments on blogs and news sites if you’d like to think that’s not true.) And you can’t exactly fault that perception, given “CBAs” like the Yankee Stadium deal that basically gives Bronx officials a pile of money they can spend in any way they want, plus an ample supply of free sports equipment.

The question now is: how is KARA going to change the script here? After all, EDC has already selected Related. Here on The Eminent Domain we’ll be following the story as KARA works to get Related to the bargaining table. KARA members will be providing updates on their campaign and vision for the neighborhood.

But the situation highlights a glaring reality: New York City is suffering from its lack of a citywide framework for how economic development projects like this happen. All over the city we’re seeing citizens wage campaigns to make development more responsive to its host communities — in West Harlem, Willets Point, downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, and those are only the big ones — but they each fight their own lonely battles, often pitted against their own elected officials.

KARA has already assembled a strong roster and — this is key — a united front between residents, businesses, labor, and elected officials. Its members already include the Retail Workers, Teachers, Service Workers and Building Trades unions, and the alliance’s vision for the armory’s redevelopment has received endorsements from the Bronx Borough President Congressman Jose Serrano, the City Comptroller and Public Advocate, and seven members of the Bronx City Council delegation. But in the absence of a mechanism through which they can exercise influence on EDC’s development process, they will have a tough road to setting a better precedent for community benefits agreements.

As the Times reported last week, the Conflicts of Interest Board has cleared former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff to continue work on major development projects he oversaw while working as New York City’s development chief, even though he has gone on to work as president of Bloomberg L.P.

The 10-page waiver letter from the conflicts board grants Doctoroff extraordinarily wide privilege to continue working on his former projects. It permits him to continue serving on the boards of the Hudson River Park Trust and the Governor’s Island corporation, and to continue the work he began negotiating the creation of Moynihan Station. Doctoroff can work as an “unpaid consultant” on Queens West, the 5,000-unit housing development project for the East River waterfront.

Perhaps most stunningly, the former deputy mayor will “provide generalized policy advice and guidance on the implementation of PlaNYC,” the template for the future of New York City’s planning. That’s quite a job description, given that PlaNYC includes such sweeping recommendations as “Reclaim underutilized waterfronts” (”Today, New York City’s 578-mile waterfront offers one of the city’s greatest opportunities for residential development.”) Doctoroff will be involved in policy and land use decisions that open up billions of dollars of new development opportunities and shape the very fabric of the city.

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The Furman Center at NYU Law School has just released an ambitious analysis of the impact of inclusionary zoning, focusing on the two most important (and difficult to answer) question about the affordable housing development policy. One, how effective is IZ in creating affordable housing units? And two, in doing so to what extent, if any, do these mandates or incentives for developers to create affordable housing increase the cost of housing overall or limit its production? These are important questions for New York City, where the official policy is to consider inclusionary zoning on a case-by-case basis for areas being rezoned.

The Furman Center is asking enormous questions, and by its own admission the report’s answers are far from conclusive. Researchers focused on IZ programs in suburbs of Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., a palette of dozens of local initiatives that each operate under their own rules and operate within extremely local market conditions. The indicators the study looks at are also rough, and not really applicable to New York City; for instance, the researchers looked at how IZ affected the production of single-family homes, not apartments. One of the study’s main conclusions is that we need much more data than we have now about the performance of inclusionary zoning (it recommends some helpful information-gathering measures cities can take, which NYC would do well to follow).

But here are the most important points to glean from the Furman Center study:  The impact of IZ on overall housing production ranged from nonexistent to minor. And to the extent that developers are compelled to increase prices on their market-rate units to offset the loss they’re taking on the affordable housing they’re creating, density bonuses — essentially, permission to build bigger on their property than they would have been able to otherwise — are an effective way to make up for the hit.

Well, they’re talking. As the Daily News reports today, Councilmember Hiram Monserrate is meeting with Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber to discuss the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s redevelopment plans for Willets Point. Monserrate, responding to appeals from housing groups (especially Queens for Affordable Housing and its members) and unions (via the Central Labor Council), has told the Mayor’s office that he won’t back the City’s proposal, which has to go through the City Council as part of the Land Use Review Process, unless it includes affordable housing, aid for existing businesses, and “livable wage” jobs (that’s the CLC’s preferred term).

Monserrate doesn’t sit on the committees that will vote on the Willets Point redevelopment plan, but typically Council votes on land use defer to local members’ wishes, and Willets Point is in his Queens district. As Monserrate made clear in a Feb. 8 letter he sent to his 50 fellow councilmembers, he’s especially distressed at the plan’s lack of specifics on many key questions of public interest, especially exactly how the City intends to help workers whose businesses will be displaced and how much affordable housing will be included among the project’s thousands of apartments.

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