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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Development watchers should pay close attention to what happens over the next few months in Willets Point, Queens, where the New York City Economic Development Corporation wants to demolish a hardscrabble haven for auto-repair shops and other modest industrial-service businesses, building in their place a convention center, hotel, housing, retail, and other components of a sparkling new neighborhood, to be constructed by a single developer yet to be selected.
That project is about to go through the City’s land use review process, and a number of community organizations — including Asian Americans for Equality, Queens Community House and ACORN — are looking to bargain for affordable housing, well-paying jobs, pedestrian access and other benefits from the development. The groups brought workers in Willets Point and residents of surrounding neighborhoods, including Corona, Flushing and East Elmhurst, together for a series of brainstorming sessions, whose recommendations are compiled in a new report (careful — that’s a PDF).
Meta-disclosure: The sessions and report were facilitated by the Pratt Center for Community Development, which sponsors this website as an independent news source on development in New York City. I’m mentioning the Willets Point project here because groups all over the city should watch it carefully: it’s poised to be perhaps the greatest test yet of the extent to which neighborhood groups will be able to influence a major development project. The Daily News picked up the story today, and as ULURP proceeds — especially as the transformation plan for Willets Point heads toward the City Council — there will be a lot to discuss about how much the public can and should expect when a neighborhood goes through an extreme makeover.
The Times has some not-shocking news today about the Yankee Stadium “community benefits agreement.” According to the article, the board of the new entity charged with giving $1.2 million in annual cash contributions — or in game tickets and athletic gear, if the Yankees prefer that — to Bronx community organizations hasn’t met yet, and hasn’t even registered with the IRS. The group’s acting chairman is a contributor to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, who brokered the agreement along with three Bronx councilmembers and the Yankees’ Randy Mastro (who, incidentally, was formerly Mayor Giuliani’s right hand).
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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:
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Sure enough, just over half of the Columbia community benefits commitment, $76 million, will be devoted to “a flexible benefit fund to be overseen by a committee of community and Columbia representatives,” the New York Times reports this morning — a committee presumably not including tenant representatives Tom DeMott and Luisa Henriquez, storage company owner Nick Sprayregen, or Rev. Earl Kooperkamp of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, all of whom have recently resigned from the body negotiating with Columbia for community benefits, the West Harlem LDC.
Think about that $76 million for a moment. That’s equivalent to Yankee Stadium’s $800,000 annual “community” pledge to Bronx elected officials — for 95 years. We’ll have to wait to see the language of the agreement, of course, but unless the promised body overseeing this thing is a paragon of democracy, what we have here is essentially a long-term purchase of elected officials’ compliance, long after Borough President Scott Stringer, Councilmember Robert Jackson and other parties to this deal will have been term-limited out of office.
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Columbia and the West Harlem Local Development Corporation have reportedly reached an agreement on $150 million in unspecified community benefits.
We’ll get you the details as soon as we have them. But based on earlier reports, we can be fairly sure of two things: the deal will include substantial funds for housing, and it represents the interests of the elected officials whose staffs negotiated it — not the community in whose name it was executed. As a certain resident of Yankee Stadium used to say, “It’s deja vu all over again.”
For further enlightenment, check out Good Jobs New York’s excellent report on Yankee Stadium, which describes how the Yankees hired longtime political operative Stanley Schlein to broker a “community benefits agreement” with the City Council — giving Bronx members $800,000 a year in cash to spend — in order to win the Council’s support for the stadium plan. The community had nothing to do with it.
Columbia can’t do any worse. Or can it?
Earlier today, the City Council’s subcommittees on Zoning & Franchises and Planning, Dispositions & Concessions approved Columbia’s rezoning plan for Manhattanville as well as Community Board 9’s own plan for the surrounding area. The plans both now go to the full Council for a vote, with no further public hearing. The Columbia Spectator has the story.
Crains reports that two more members of the West Harlem Local Development Corporation have resigned as negotiations with Columbia for community benefits — including a housing fund — hurtle forward. As we’ve noted, three other members who resigned last week reported that community representatives had been excluded from negotiations with the university.
We’re going to be debating a lot of issues here at The Eminent Domain, but one principle will remain sacrosanct: New Yorkers have to have meaningful opportunities to participate in city planning and development. Our neighborhoods are not a chessboard for real estate investors, okay? Thought you’d agree.
Three years ago the Municipal Art Society launched the Campaign for Community-Based Planning to bring together organizations, from community boards to environmental justice groups, working to increase public participation in city planning through a five-point platform. (Point #2, just to give you an idea: “The City must view communities as partners, not adversaries.”)
Now the Campaign has launched a blog, including a calendar of important public hearings. Happy birthday to you too.
With so much cooking in downtown Brooklyn it’s hard to know where to begin, but the current tug-of-war over the future of Admirals’ Row speaks volumes about the cognitive dissonance Brooklyn is going through, painfully.
Here’s what’s going on, as explained well in the Daily News: The Navy Yard Development Corporation is looking to develop a supermarket on the site of 10 decrepit mansions that once housed top officers of the Navy. Historic preservationists have sought, without success, to get the structures landmarked. Now the National Guard, which owns the buildings, has issued a report concluding that the buildings could be restored — at a price of nearly $20 million in all.
Now, we’re all familiar with the usual development scenario in New York City, as we’ll amply cover it on this site: Big developer proposes a project, government greases the way with rezoning and subsidies, neighbors rally to block the project. At first blush that looks like what we’ve got here. But. Brooklynites are struggling right now with the deep contradictions of the current path of downtown development, and it’ll make the Admiral’s Row saga a fascinating one to follow.
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While Kingsbridge waits for the big news — which developer will EDC select to revive the Kingsbridge Armory? — let’s catch up on a few recent stories of interest:
A Norwood News editorial reflects on a survey from Councilmember Oliver Koppell finding ample evidence of school overcrowding in District 10, contrary to the Department of Education’s conclusion that no new schools are needed at the armory site.
Also on the schools front, City Limits told the inside story of how schools disappeared from armory plans.
And where has the New York Times been on this important story? The armory redevelopment, transforming a site about half the size of Columbia University’s Manhattanville beachhead, got 280 measly words in the City Section (a sequel to a brief story last year).
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