Building Power and a Livable New York
Compromise is Reached on Harlem Rezoning (NY Times)
City’s Coney Island Design Revised to Break Deadlock (NY Times)
Housing Policy: Politics as Usual (Columbia Spectator)
Harlem Fights for Victoria Theater (AM New York)
Answers About Brooklyn Architecture (City Room)
Introducting Planning for All New Yorkers: An Atlas of Community-Based Plans (Community Based Planning)
Willets Point Locals Sue City Over Neglect (Gothamist)
The Manhattanville Project (The Eye)
New Myrtle-Flatbush Tower to be Called “Toren” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
Gehry to Brooklyn Paper: Miss Brooklyn Ain’t Dead (Brooklyn Paper)
South Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance Ready to Go (Gowanus Lounge)
Despite Rezoning, a Net Loss of Office Space in Downtown Brooklyn (The Real Deal)
Harlem Councilwoman Opposes Rezoning Plan (NY Times)
Fighting a New 125th Street, Using a 110-Year-Old Law (NY Times)
Alumnus Governor May Impact the Fate of Manhattanville (Columbia Spectator)
Atlantic Yards May Prompt 9 to Revisit Eminent Domain (NY Sun)
Going Fourth: Brooklyn’s Boulevard Seems Ready for Retail (Brooklyn Paper)
An Atlas of Local Plans: Pointing the Way Forward? (City Limits)
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.
More from VOTE People and this morning’s City Hall press conference on the 125th Street rezoning:
Chief Counsel Norman Siegel said that he has found no existing case law interpreting the section of the City Charter that the group seeks to use to block the City’s current 125th Street plans. However, according to General Counsel Erica Razook, the group has consulted several experts from past Charter Revision Commissions who have assured them that the clause — which hasn’t been invoked since the 1940’s — applies to this case.
VOTE People is contending that the City Council cannot vote before April 10, because doing so would encroach on the 30-day window the group has to collect signatures. If the City Council votes before then, Siegel says, his clients will sue.
VOTE People has two chief demands: first, that the city refrain from using eminent domain to conduct the rezoning; and secondly, that the city place a cap on commercial property rent increases, in order to protect “mom-and-pop stores.”
After Siegel finished outlined the legal logistics, a number of speakers came to the podium and fired up the small crowd of activists standing behind the reporters and photographers.
Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council said that the current action should inspire all New Yorkers: “The radical makeover of Harlem is just the beginning for working-class neighborhoods,” she said. “This lawsuit will set the tone for resistance to come. Harlem’s fight is your fight!”
Next up was Councilman Charles Barron. “Harlem is not for sale!” he boomed, prompting a rash of applause and cheering. “I am from the People’s Republic of Brooklyn, but Harlem is the Black Mecca…. The city is using development as a new form of Jim Crow-ism,” he said. “Race and class are always at the bottom of this kind of development.”
He then commended Councilman Tony Avella of Queens, who is white, for his opposition to the 125th street rezoning plan: “I’ve decided to make Tony Avella an honorary black,” he joked.
Avella took the cue to come to the mic. “The people have lost power in New York City,” he said. “The only way to have recourse is to sue your own government. How sad is that?” He cited the example of the controversial Columbia decision, saying that the city has already “failed” the people of Harlem once. “I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen here. I gotta tell you, I’m not optimistic,” he said.
When I spoke to VOTE People executive director Craig Schley after the press conference, though, he emphasized that this legal action is only the beginning. He assured me, speaking of the rezoning plan: “This is not going to happen.”
VOTE People, a Harlem-based group that has been vocal in its opposition to the proposed 125th Street rezoning, is scheduled to hold a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 9 a.m. today. The organization will be announcing that it has filed a official protest — co-signed by Harlem business- and land-owners — against the proposal.Apparently those business and property owners have power to make more than a symbolic gesture. With the help of attorney Norman Siegel, VOTE People unearthed an obscure clause in the New York City Charter, which requires the Council to pass a rezoning by a three-fourths majority if a certain number of property-holders in an area to be zoned insists on it.
Sprayregen Brings Up Environmental Issues in Lawsuit Against Columbia (Columbia Spectator)
Proposed Move of Historic Grange Divides Residents, CB9 (Columbia Spectator)
MTA Votes to Sell West Side Land Rights to Tishman-Speyer (City Room)
As Builders’ Grand Visions Dissolve, So Does Our Faith (NY Times)
Atlantic Yards Stalled, but Arena Remains Goal (Brooklyn Downtown Star)
Desperate City Reconsiders Coney Builder (NY Post)
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.
[image courtesy of Runs With Scissors]
Related Wins Armory Rehab Project (NY Daily News)
With Polytechnic Deal, NYU to Gain Presence in DoBro (Brooklyn Downtown Star)
Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards (NY Times)
What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn? (NY Times)
For Troubled Coney Plan, City May Need to Backpedal (NY Observer)
A City by the Sea — or Under It? (Gotham Gazette)
Paterson Could Derail Development: Opposes Use of Eminent Domain (NY Sun)
StreetLevel: Schmerhorn Supermarket Deal Falls Through (Brownstoner)
Super Mart Highlights Fort Greene Condo Plan (NY Daily News)
Some Sort of Building Will Arise at Fulton, M.T.A. Says (Downtown Express)
Outcry as Harlem Rezone Plan Advances (NY Daily News)
New-Look Harlem Clears a Big Hurdle: Furor at Rezoning (NY Post)
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