The Eminent Domain

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.

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.