The Eminent Domain

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.

Read the rest of this entry

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.

Read the rest of this entry

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.

Things are heating up in West Harlem. According to the Campaign for Community Based Planning, City Council may be voting as early as tomorrow on Columbia’s expansion plan — even though they have until January to do so. The Columbia Spectator reports that rumors have been circulating to this effect since yesterday, and traces them back to an email sent out by The Coalition to Preserve Community encouraging Manhattanville residents to protest the early decision, which they believe will take place at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow.

In other news, we’re still waiting to hear about the Sprayregen Swap, back on the table since Thursday…

West Harlem’s community plan might have a fighting chance after all.

You’ll recall that in late November, the City Planning Commission approved the Community Board 9’s 197-a plan for the area, but without, well, the heart of it all: recommendations for how to incorporate Columbia University’s planned expansion into the fabric of Manhattanville’s existing buildings, preserving small businesses and the industrial activity amid a rising new campus.

At a Wednesday morning hearing, the Council’s subcommittees on Zoning and Franchises and Planning, Dispositions & Concessions came face to face with two starkly different visions for Manhattanville: Community Board 9’s 197-a plan and Columbia University’s own proposal to build a self-contained academic campus on 17 square blocks.

To judge from the comments of the councilmembers, they were paying careful attention to some of the community board’s key recommendations rejected by City Planning — above all, its call to prohibit the use of eminent domain to acquire property for development in Manhattanvillle. Read the rest of this entry

Fresh off its 6-to-1 anointment by the City Planning Commission, Columbia University’s application to rezone 17 square blocks of Manhattanville now goes to a hearing on Wednesday morning with a joint pairing of City Council subcommittees, Zoning & Franchises (chaired by Tony Avella) and Planning, Dispositions and Concessions (headed by Dan Garodnick).

Councilmember Robert Jackson, who sits on Avella’s committee, can expect to take some heat at the hearing from constituents over his role in the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, which Community Board 9 created as a vehicle for residents and business owners to negotiate a community benefits agreement but which Jackson, Rep. Charles Rangel and other West Harlem elected officials insisted on having their own representatives join.

Last week, three LDC members resigned, complaining that they were effectively locked out of community benefits negotiations controlled by the elected officials’ representatives.

Jackson was a key supporter of Borough President Scott Stringer’s agreement with Columbia, which paved the way for the university expansion’s approval and doomed prospects for Community Board 9’s own plan for the zone.