Building Power and a Livable New York
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)
Hello my peoples. My name is Eric Pugh and I am a resident of Ingersoll houses. It’s located in the heart of Brooklyn right downtown. Downtown Brooklyn, a place where you get all your affordable shopping goods. “My Downtown,” is what I used to call it when I was young. Downtown used to be a very beautiful area.
Well, at least it used to be before the rezoning. Now where there was a neighborhood super market, local drug store, laundramats, your favorite discount store and your friendly neighborhood grocery store there stands nothing but a vacant lot.
My community was ripped away from me. It not only has an effect on me but to the residents of my community. Like our elderly. It was more convenient for our elderly to shop right across the street from where they live. Now that our stores are torn down they now have to walk three blocks up a hill just to get a little bit of shopping goods. So now not only do they have to go further than what they were used to, they also have to deal with the pain of heavy pushing or lifting. It’s just too much labor for them. My neighborhood only has one store now, on Myrtle Avenue and Prince Street, and they charge much more than they should.
So now our residents have to walk three long blocks just to get one item and to me, that’s just crazy. It’s as if downtown had its very own Katrina and the only difference it that, instead of water we are drowning from developers and this is a current that’s just to hard to swim with. The effect that was left on “My Downtown” is just heart breaking. How can you take away what yesterday owned and destroy the giving promises of tomorrow?
The “Impossible Dream” of Rental Development (NY Sun)
Unions Tie Rezoning to Pay Rules (Crains)
Geography of the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Plan (Gotham Gazette)
Ratner Kills Mr. Brooklyn (The Brooklyn Paper)
Groceries Grow Elusive for Many in New York City: With Rents Soaring, Stores are Being Demolished for Condos (The Washington Post)
Good Jobs NY Questions Subsidies, Calls for Community Process for Harlem Park (Community Based Planning)
Resident Input Sought on Fordham Road Shopping District Spruce-Up (NY Daily News)
Growing Pains (Columbia Spectator)
High Rise Condos Divide West Harlem Residents (Columbia Spectator)
Manhattanville Expansion Raises Questions About Aesthetics (Columbia Spectator)
Harlem on the Line (The Indypendent)
A New Way to Kill a Community: Nets’ Ratner, Jay-Z, Barclay’s Bank in $5 Billion Hip-Hop Lawsuit (Chicago Sports Review)
Downturn! Big D’Town project hits the brakes (The Brooklyn Paper)
B’klyn is Making Chain-ge (New York Post)
Promise of ‘new’ school proves false (New York Daily News)
The Fort Greene Association met Monday night to discuss, among other matters, the controversy erupting over the grand but decrepit historic houses on Admirals’ Row, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard… and members think the solution might have a lot to do with freshly baked bread.
Check out last week’s New York Times City Section for the story on the 10 crumbling buildings on Admirals’ Row, which once housed high-ranking officers but now stand vacant. The city wants to purchase the structures from the National Guard and demolish them to make room for a grocery store that would serve and employ local residents, especially those from the nearby Farragut Houses. Historical preservationists, like those who make up the FGA, want the city to grant the 150-year old buildings landmark status and restore them — a project that, according to the Guard, could cost as much as $20 million.
At the meeting Monday night, FGA member Paul Palazzo suggested that the restoration of the houses would be a boon to the community, bringing in profits from tourism that could be used to improve other areas of the neighborhood. “We have a valuable historical asset that can be turned into cash!” he said. Palazzo, well aware that the majority of community members are in favor of the plan to build a grocery store on the site, assured his audience “we can have our cake and eat it too.” (The phrase comes straight from a December post by Brownstoner, which slammed David Yassky, Tish James, and other elected officials for contending that the pricey preservation of the buildings would kill any hope for a supermarket.)
Divisions Over Expansion Intensify Among Manhattanville Groups (Columbia Spectator)
Columbia Closes Real Estate Deal for Displaced Residents (Columbia Spectator)
City’s Sweeping Rezoning Plan for 125th Street Has Many in Harlem Concerned (New York Times)
Harlem Up in Arms, Again (The Real Deal)
Green Arts Complex Neighbor to New Brooklyn Nets Arena (Plenty Magazine)
City Planning: Fourth Avenue a “Missed Opportunity” (Streetsblog)
Plans for Ground-Floor Retail at Brooklyn House of Detention Floated at Meeting (New York Daily News)
Carrion to Meet with Armory Group (Norwood News)
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.
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.
Credit Market Puts Massive Myrtle Avenue Project On Hold (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
Catsamatidis “Taking a Hard Look” at 162 Myrtle Project (Brownstoner)
Ethics Inquiry Postpones NYU Merger With Polytechnic (New York Times)
Brooklyn Family Sitting on $100M in Property, Air Rights (New York Sun)
Markowitz Dreams of Atlantic Yards (New York Observer)
Kingsbridge Road Gets a Cleanup (Norwood News)
Whether Community Likes It Or Not, Hotel Coming (Norwood News)
Harlem Residents Split Over Development on Fredrick Douglass (Columbia Spectator)
Night Out in Manhattanville Highlights Changing Atmosphere (Columbia Spectator)
Community Board 9 should be proud. Its 197-a plan for West Harlem is having an impact - though unfortunately for board members, it’s on a different neighborhood.
Last week, New York University and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer announced that they’ve agreed to a set of principles guiding the university’s future development. NYU doesn’t have a great track record in involving the community in its expansion, but between the current 2031 Initiative and this agreement, it’s clear that the university is trying to clean up its act (or at least its image) as it goes into another major phase of development.
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