So, the 2006 IRS ruling the city requested for the Yankees hinged, in part, on a free luxury box

No major daily newspaper has been looking hard lately at Atlantic Yards, but the press keeps running with the Yankee Stadium story, thanks in part to new revelations via Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. E-mail messages from city officials acquired by Brodsky tell an interesting tale, as the Daily News reports:
Mayor Bloomberg's top aides engaged in a behind-the-scenes brawl to win a free luxury suite at the new Yankee Stadium that could wind up costing taxpayers, e-mails show.

Joseph Gunn, a city lawyer, in fact warned that the city would refuse to request a ruling from the Internal Revenue Service to allow tax-exempt funding if the city did not get the luxury suite.

As we know, such a Private Letter Ruling was achieved in 2006 for the Yankees and for the New York Mets. And the city this year successfully went to bat to get those rules grandfathered in for additional tax-exempt bonds for the baseball teams and, most importantly to the city, for tax-exempt bonds for the Atlantic Yards arena.

The coverage in the Times adds this piquant quote from Seth Pinsky of the New York City Economic Development Corporation: “This is a big issue to the mayor.”

We kind of knew that.

The investigation into the city's practices regarding tax-exempt bonds isn't over

In response to those who've prematurely assumed that the Atlantic Yards arena is dead, I've asserted that it is, rather, very much in play. Indeed, the recommitment of the Barclays Center naming rights deal is a sign that the project has some juice, even as the stock of parent Forest City Enterprises slumbers. (It´s still down nearly 90% from its peak, but up some 50% from its low.)

At the same time, the Congressional investigation led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) into questionable assessments of Yankee Stadium also remains in play, as Kucinich has vowed. (“We’re going to continue our work here, make no mistake about that," he said after a hearing October 24.)

Should further and more concrete evidence of dubious practices be found, that would cast doubt on the tax-exempt bonds issued for the Yankees and, inevitably, the still inchoate plan for tax-exempt bonds issued for the Atlantic Yards arena.

In other words, even though more lenient regulations for the arena bonds were grandfathered in, questions will be asked.

Attorney-client privilege

Noticing New York blogger Michael D.D. White has argued that the city, which has resisted turning over documents requested by Kucinich on the grounds of attorney-client privilege, doesn't have a good case.

He writes:
Attorney-client privilege doesn’t extend to facts. You can’t take facts that are not privileged and magically cloak them with privilege by communicating them to an attorney. It is also questionable whether this privilege of secrecy can apply at all to the public process of issuing bonds and taxing property. When it comes to bonds, almost the reverse is true; rather than being able to conceal negative information there is a special obligation to disclose it.
(Emphases in original)

Is AY site in Fort Greene? Flashback to an odd caption

Though the New York Times has made several errors, large and small, in its Atlantic Yards coverage, I think a disproportionate number have been in captions (e.g., here, here, here, and here).

Captions can be treacherous, given that they are often written by a harried copy editor who doesn't know the story that well.

Still, that's no excuse for identifying buildings within the Atlantic Yards footprint as located in Fort Greene rather than Prospect Heights, as indicated by the caption in this 4/2/05 Times article.

(The caption also includes the superimposed AY footprint, with streets already demapped, though the northern boundary of the property at issue remains Pacific Street.)

Despite the Times's stated policy of correcting "all its factual errors, large and small," I'll assume that the failure to correct this--I did request a correction, to no avail--falls under the explanation, as per the Corrections Editor, "There is a limit to how many old articles we can correct in print."

The cozy relationship between Sheldon Silver, the Met Council, and Bruce Ratner

I know I'm late on this, but let's take another look at the cozy relationship between Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, and developer Forest City Ratner. There's nothing illegal, just another episode of the questionable one-hand-washes-the-other power configuration that seems so prevalent in the city and state.

Silver says that those who care about process are "naive." Perhaps that's also his message for those who had hoped he'd ask hard questions about Atlantic Yards.

(Update November 29: Somehow I missed the October 27 press release about Silver welcoming the Nets' Yi Jianlian to Chinatown.)

Helping the Met Council

A 12/3/06 Associated Press article. headlined in the New York Post as
SHEL GAME: SILVER LINING PAL'S CHARITY, reported:
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver directed $1 million in public money to a charity and its affiliates whose chief executive is an old friend and the husband of Silver's chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel, according to records and interviews.

The grants are part of the legal and routine pork-barrel spending that annually totals $170 million between the Assembly and Senate, and is based on closed-door decisions by lawmakers.

Much of the money - more than 60 percent of the Assembly's share - goes to established social-service nonprofit firms to carry out programs not covered in the state budget.

The records released last week show that six grants, most under Silver's name alone and all directed by the Assembly majority, went to the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty.

The Met Council's CEO, William Rapfogel, has known Silver for 40 years and his wife, Judy Rapfogel, is Silver's chief of staff. Then again, William Rapfogel said, the Met Council received member items from Silver before he was chosen speaker, and his wife disqualifies herself from discussions regarding the Met Council. "While there is potential, it doesn't mean there is impropriety," he said.

(Unclear is whether the amount of grants increased, but that seems likely. Indeed, the New York Sun reported 12/4/06 that Silver gave out more than $7 million of the roughly $50 million in member item projects earmarked by the Assembly.)

Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group was a bit more wary, telling the AP: "I think the public should always be concerned when taxpayer dollars are awarded in secret and . . . the public should demand that the system be changed from awarding it on political power to one based on need or population."

In response

In a letter to the Post, Meyer Muschel acknowledged the system is broken but noted that the Met Council serves not just the Jewish community but all of New York City:
But criticizing Silver's support for the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and its executive director, William Rapfogel, is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

In an editorial headlined SHELLY THE PORK PRINCE, the Post didn't buy it:
One thing New York does not lack for is cash-strapped do-good organizations. What elevates Met Council over the rest when it comes to taxpayer-funded baksheesh?

Obviously, it's Silver's personal ties to the group.

Silver's defense: caring about process "naive"

A 6/20/07 New York Times article headlined Assembly Leader Wields Power By Keeping Albany Guessing reported:
Among the most favored beneficiaries in the last fiscal year was the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and its affiliated organizations, which received nearly $1 million. The group's chief executive, William E. Rapfogel, is the husband of Mr. Silver's chief of staff, Judith Rapfogel. The council is widely acknowledged to provide useful services to all ethnic and racial groups throughout the city, and has long received generous public financing.

Though government watchdog groups criticize member items as unregulated pork, Mr. Silver says they are a legitimate way to finance worthy causes that do not get into the state budget. ''Those who look at process are naive,'' he said of the system's critics.

Honoring Ratner

Each year the Met Council holds a "Builder's Luncheon" to honor someone in the real estate field and raise funds for its supportive housing initiatives. This year's event, as the Council's widely-reported press release stated, raised $1 million and honored Bruce Ratner:
Numerous other elected and appointed officials were present as the keynote speaker, Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver, presented Mr. Ratner with a beautifully decorated charity box.

That gets the developer, Silver, and the Met Council some nice publicity for a relatively small amount of money, even while the developer and Assembly Speaker deal in much larger sums for a project in which affordable housing does not come first.

As Eric McClure of No Land Grab pointed out, that "pales beside other gifts bestowed upon the developer by the Assembly Speaker, which include PACB approval in 2006 of the Atlantic Yards project and a special clause in 421-a legislation. But just in case you were thinking this was a one-way street, Ratner greased the Silver-controlled Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee with $58,000 just this past January."

How the (unintended consequences of) the EIS process fostered suburban sprawl

Developer Jonathan Rose is one of the most-lauded developers by environmental and affordable housing advocates; on November 3, he was honored by the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter to give the annual lecture in honor of Samuel Ratensky. He was the first developer chosen for the honor, which goes to those who have made significant lifetime contributions to the advancement of housing and community design.

And Rose, who by the way whose initial effort at developing the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA) was stymied in the 1980s, thinks the environmental review process went awry, starting with a federal law, which, I'll add, spawned state laws like the one under which Atlantic Yards was evaluated and approved.

Rose, who lamented the loss of the big picture, blamed environmentalists too focused on the opportunity for legal challenge and developers who realized that they could avoid or beat back most challenges.

Where the growth is

"In the next 50 years, America will grow by somewhere between 90 and 100 million people," Rose said at the lecture. "What you can see is the largest increases--a lot of them are in the South and Southwest in places that are either subject, like in Miami, in Florida, the whole place could be washed over by rising sea level, or places where they need a whole lot of air conditioning and where they don’t have much water and they’re frankly, from an environmental point of view and a global security point of view, the worst place to have dramatic population growth. But this is where the population growth seems to be."

Back to 1970

"We as a nation have done nothing to plan for this," he continued. "So I’m going to take you back to 1970, there were two bills in Congress, the National Planning Act and the National Environmental Protection Act [NEPA]. And all my environmental protection friends hate it when I tell you what I’m about to tell you."

Lawyers and developers

"The National Planning Act would’ve created a framework for national planning that would’ve dealt with our infrastructure issues and decided where development should be and shouldn’t be, and land preservation," he said.

"But the environmental community, which was basically formed by lawyers at that time--really the most vociferous environmental activists--and the real estate community both decided to endorse NEPA, which created the environmental impact statement [EIS] and a legal framework for reviewing individual projects. So everybody voted to say--the developers said, Y’know, listen, we can beat this thing, they’re not going to sue on every project, it’s just an impact statement, we can deal with that, planning could actually restrict growth and development, we don’t want that. And the environmentalists said, We’re a bunch of lawyers, we want the ability to take everybody to court."

The loss of national planning

"So the effect was that we turned our back on national planning, and we turned our back on a national infrastructure policy," Rose said. "And, at the same time, here’s what happens: 1000 individuals choose to subdivide a parcel in the suburbs, or the exurbs, and it falls under the screen of an environmental impact statement, each one is one individual act."

"One person chooses to build a 1000-unit urban project in a city and they get held up for five years in an environmental impact statement," he concluded. "And so the unintended consequence of NEPA actually was one more of the many things that made it easier for suburban sprawl to proceed from 1970 to 2000 instead of urban redevelopment."

Note that, in the mid-70s, NEPA spawned numerous state variants; in New York, it was the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), as explained in Nicholas A. Robinson's 1982 Albany Law Review article, SEQRA's Siblings: Precedents from Little NEPA's in the Sister States.

Atlantic Yards was approved under SEQRA.

Systemic observation

Jane Jacobs, of course, was wary of planning, though she focused on cities rather than national policy. Would she have opposed the National Planning Act? Did she? I'm not sure, but she was no fan of suburban sprawl.

Previous comments

In a December 2007 interview with Planning magazine, Rose spoke similarly:
"If you wanted to build a 1,000-unit project that is mixed income, mixed use, green, next to mass transit, you could spend years going through the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] process. However, if 1,000 home builders each built just one house, leading to sprawl, there's no environmental impact statement required. But which creates the most traffic? Which is more wasteful of energy?

Clearly the 1,000 single homes, but because each one is used independently rather than synthetically, each one falls below the screening limit of NEPA."

To Rose, this is just one way the system currently favors sprawl over high-density, environmentally sustainable mixed income housing. Last May, while testifying before Congress on ways to expand the low income housing tax credit, Rose called for the federal government to take a leadership role in leaving "a more sustainable development legacy to future generations."

A key problem, as Rose sees it, is that the U.S. has no national plan, only regulatory statutes such as NEPA and the Clean Air Act. "Essentially we created a regulatory environment in which we made our decisions based on science and law, a good thing, but insufficient," he says. What is missing from this piecemeal approach, he says, is values. "You could no longer say we will preserve this historic landscape because it is important to our national heritage, because it is who we are as a people, because it is part of our moral regional value system, our social values, our spiritual values."

NEPA is also a poor planning tool, he says, because of its heavy reliance on environmental impact statements, whose accuracy he believes is unproven. "I ask this of Planning magazine readers: Does anybody have a good, broad-based study of a diverse group of environmental impact statements of [completed] projects that 10 years later were back-tested to see if the predictions were accurate?"

One of the reasons he believes they can't be accurate is that "they look at projects from a granular point of view; essentially, they look at a project by itself, and not the whole system."

Financing delays plague NYC projects for both offices and condos

There are more signs that the offices and condos planned for the Atlantic Yards project face financing delays, along with similar projects in the city--though, in the case at least of condos, there might be a silver lining.

(The arena and the mixed-income rentals depend significantly on tax-exempt bonds, which also face financing challenges.)

An 11/19/08 New York Times article, headlined Defying Slump, Developers Plan 60-Story Hospital Industry Center on West Side, described efforts to build a 60-story tower in Manhattan. The Times noted:
One executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating Extell said he found it hard to believe that enough companies would commit to 10-year leases in the current market to make the project financially viable. “Under normal conditions, Israel Green and Extell could — and did — raise a lot of money,” the executive said. “They are as smart as they come.”

But he said that over the next 12 months, space would become cheaper to lease, and that it might make more sense to lease than to build. “There is nothing getting done or built that’s over $100 million these days, because you simply cannot get the lenders together to fund it,” the executive said. “In fact very little is being done above $75 million. When you’re looking into a crystal ball, a year to a year and a half looks to us like a train wreck just beginning to hit.”

And how might it be funded? The Times reported:
[Extell's] Mr. [Marc] Shaw said the developers were not asking for government financing at this point, though they might look for tax breaks down the road. He said the building would finance itself through leases that would “replace the conventional bond that’s hard to get right now.”

Condos hard to fund

On 11/17/08, the Real Deal reported delays in funding condos--but perhaps a silver lining in the long run:
Real estate developer and New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner says that because there's so much inventory on the market, "there's nothing too obnoxious that you can ask for right now," when looking for an apartment. Kushner was speaking last week at an event called "Real Estate Gets Real," hosted by the Observer, Halstead Development Marketing and Wells Fargo at the Scandinavia House on Park Avenue between 37th and 38th streets. Meanwhile, Stephen Kliegerman, executive director of Halstead Property Marketing, told the crowd not to expect any real funding for new condo projects until 2012 or for new rental buildings until 2010.

In the video, Kliegerman says:
Because of the banking crisis... there are no new condominium buildings that will be started for the next 12 to 36 months. So any hole in the ground... that has funding... is going to most likely get built. And I say most likely, because I believe that about 25 to 30 percent of the jobs that are just in the ground but are not superstructure up, probably won't get built, because those developers don't have deep enough pockets, and their bank may pull the plug and say, let's hold on right now.

Currently, we have about 6 to 8 months of inventory, resale and new construction. If the economy completely tanks, and no one buys another apartment for the next year,
that inventory will rise to 12 to 18 months. If you do the math, that means, within 24 months, what are we going to have in New York City? We're going to have a housing crisis. There will not be enough apartments to house all the people coming to New York.

Remember, New York is not just a local marketplace. It's an international marketplace as well. Even with international economies faltering, where do people put their money into times of crisis? Into real estate. Why. Because it's a long term hold. It's not a daily traded security. You don't lose half your money overnight.

So you have the 421-a deadline coming and going. You have the credit crunch that is slowing down or stopping any new construction. So 24 to 36 months from now, there's going to be relatively and virutally no new housing stock to speak of, until we get out of this time and the banks start lending again.

But all the projections are, and I was at a Real Estate Board function last week... all predicted that they won't see any realistic, reasonable funding for for-sale housing come until about 2012. Ad they don't believe there will be any reasonable funding for rentals until about 2010, 2011.

Developer Chakrabarti: environmental review process is "workfare" for lawyers and consultants

A lot of community groups don't like the environmental review process that, under city, state, and national law, requires elaborate disclosure documents that are burdensome to produce but not necessarily helpful.

And developers don't like them, either.

"Workfare program"

Vishaan Chakrabarti, the Executive Vice President of Design and Planning for the Related Companies, offered forceful comments (video) October 16 at the Vertical Density Symposium sponsored by the Skyscraper Museum in conjunction with its Vertical Cities: Hong Kong | New York exhibition.

"Our environmental impact process is completely flawed," he said. "Our regulatory process for a project like Moynihan Station--probably over $15 million has been spent on environmental work that no one will ever read, that is its own kind of workfare program for lawyers and consultants.”

Now Chakrabarti was arguing for a process that would make it easier to enable density at a site that he believes could accommodate such density--and needs it to make the project work economically.

But it was notable that a developer would share some of the same frustrations that community groups express: the process produces endless documents that are too hard for most people to read (well, it was worthwhile to read some not-so-credible statements in the AY review) and aimed significantly as a defensive strategy for litigation.

An even longer EIS

The Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) comes on three CDs, plus another CD for the General Project Plan.

Just for the heck of it, I requested the FEIS for the Access to the Region's Core project, which would involve a new tunnel under the Hudson River.

It comes on a DVD. The Table of Contents alone is 29 pages.

Eminent domain case speeded up, might be heard in January

Well, the Atlantic Yards state eminent domain case will be heard on a faster track than first envisioned. On September 29, I predicted that final briefs would be due in late February, with a hearing sometime after that. That implied a decision no sooner than May or June.

The state appellate court, however, on its own accord changed the schedule, with the nine petitioners required to file their brief by this Friday, November 28. That means that the defendant Empire State Development Corporation has to respond by December 19 and that the petitioners' reply brief is due December 29.

Decision by March?

While no hearing has yet been scheduled, the timetable leaves open the possibility of a January hearing. And while a decision might come by March, that doesn't mean that Atlantic Yards backers would "get through litigation, some time in March," as New Jersey Nets CEO Brett Yormark said last week.

The losing side--most likely the petitioners, because the case is a long shot--would inevitably file an appeal, which could require several more months. And other litigation may persist or arise.

NYC's chief urban designer salutes continuity and vitality of streets (and what about AY?)

The Director of Urban Design for the Department of City Planning, Alexandros Washburn, only joined the administration in January 2007, so he's presumably had little contact with the Atlantic Yards project, which got its final state approval a month earlier. (The City Planning Commission in September 2006 had endorsed the project, with minor changes.)

Still, it was remarkable how, in a recent discussion of the city's planning practices, he saluted the High Line project, which began with public infrastructure, not a private developer, involved multiple developers, and emphasized streets rather than demapped them. The contrast with Atlantic Yards is stark.

Washburn, who's had a distinguished career that included serving as the only staff architect ever working for a U.S. Senator (Daniel Patrick Moynihan), spoke October 18 at the Vertical Density Symposium sponsored by the Skyscraper Museum in conjunction with its Vertical Cities: Hong Kong | New York exhibition.

(I'll have more complete coverage of the symposium going forward.)

The park came before the rezoning

"We are thinking of things as pedestrian-connected infrastructure. Something like the High Line is a very good example of what New York is doing," he said, citing a "disused piece of infrastructure from the 1930s. It was about to be torn down, so real estate interests that owned land underneath it could build."

"Friends of the High Line was formed by two citizens, not planning officials, not even architects, just two very concerned and creative citizens, who instituted a whole program to save this infrastructure, convert it into a park," he continued.

It didn't hurt, he noted, that one of the early Friends of the High Line was Amanda Burden, who became Mayor Mike Bloomberg's City Planning Commission Chairperson.

Washburn (right) described a win-win solution: "And with that, and the support of the Bloomberg administration, rezoned the neighborhood, in a manner that allowed development rights to be transferred off of this new park and onto the surrounding territory, therefore allowing densification, but only in context of this superb new linear park."

(Photo from W Architecture)

The High Line, he suggested was "in some ways the paradigm." (Vishaan Chakrabarti, the Executive Vice President of Design and Planning for the Related Companies, also cites the High Line as an example of development compatible with density.)

Moses and Jacobs

"In my job, where I have to be the chief urban designer, we are given these tasks: the deputy mayor says we need 5000 units of housing over here," Washburn continued. "Well, how are we going to do that? Is it Robert Moses? I mean, that’s the normal approach, that’s the top-down approach. OK, we need 5000 units of housing; that’s a lot of high-rises."

"But we don’t want the Robert Moses approach only. We love Jane Jacobs," he said. "We really think that [Jacobs'] The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Death and Live of Great Vertical Cities--we’ve got to value our streets. Everything happens in the street. [Jacobs] called it the ballet of Hudson Street. But it applies to any street."

He cited a speaker from Hong Kong: "What you showed, that wonderful collage... it was a perfect example of that series of connections that happen at ground level among citizens."

It's all about the street

"It doesn’t matter how expensive the fabric is," he continued. "High-rise, low-rise. It’s the street itself. So we spend a huge amount of time battling with developers who in their sort of haste to put up the tower are trying to get past their responsibility to the street that needs to be shown by every building. So we believe in blocks. We believe in how the tower meets the block, meets the street, and it’s a remarkably complex streetscape...."

Note that the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), in the Atlantic Yards Final Environmental Impact Statement, took pains to argue that the project--well, at least in its second phase, to the east--would have a better superblock. While Pacific Street would be demapped, the ESDC noted, the buildings would create street walls rather than be isolated in a park, like Stuyvesant Town.

But however much that make Dean Street and Atlantic Avenue better off than many streets at the perimeter of superblocks, Pacific Street would be gone.

(Graphic from NoLandGrab.org)

Seeking the fine grain

Washburn continued: "In school, it seemed so stupid to me, those trash cans and benches and light bulbs--what’s so difficult about that? But, it’s not, it’s actually where all your theories of urbanism come together."

"You’ve got to make the street a lively place. You have to get all these very pedestrian systems to mesh. And I think that’s technically our biggest challenge, is how do we have towers come down and support the type a street where... the grain absolutely becomes the fineness that Jane Jacobs would love."

The green solution

He concluded: "So how do we get the quantity of Robert Moses with the quality of Jane Jacobs? And the only answer to the question mark that I could come up with is to look to another New Yorker, to look to Frederick Law Olmsted, not in the sense of designing another Central Park, but in the sense of trying to bring nature and green networks into every scale of every development that we do."

"And the High Line is an example of that, because it’s a green network to revive a neighborhood, with a degree of density that’s adding thousands of housing units, but to the degree of finesse and complexity that Jane Jacobs would’ve wanted."

"So I’m hoping... that, in seeking the green future, we will marry those traditions and continue with, I think, urbanistically, [what] is our greatest, greatest asset, the continuity and the vitality of our streets."

It's not like Pacific Street has always been a great connector. However, critics of Forest City Ratner's superblock project, in devising the UNITY plan (right), have added new streets, emphasizing continuity and vitality, which would further animate Pacific Street.

Remember, Rockefeller Center, to which the late New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp misguidedly compared Atlantic Yards, added a street, while Atlantic Yards has subtracted them.

Even as lawsuits delay construction, demolition on Dean Street creates facts on the ground (and blight)

The picture at right, which I published last Wednesday, quickly became out of date. Photographer Tracy Collins on Saturday returned to the site and showed (below) that 487 Dean Street, at the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue, had already been chopped in half, with the only structure remaining behind some scaffolding.

Soon enough, 489 Dean Street, another structurally sound row house will be demolished. Then what? Forest City Ratner will have to wait. The owners of the building just to the east are plaintiffs in the pending eminent domain case, and the owner of the adjoining two buildings has not, as far as I know, been negotiating with the developer.

In a best-case scenario, it could take many months for the Empire State Development Corporation to prevail in court and then to pursue eminent domain, so Forest City Ratner could clear the land, destined to become a staging area for arena construction, should it ever begin, and later a tower nearly seven times taller than current structures, at 272 feet.

Why now? Why blight?

So why bother to demolish the buildings? Because they can. Surely it creates pressure on the neighbors--who likes living next to a demolition site and empty lot? And to some, at least, it creates facts on the ground, a situation that must be remediated by action.

In the short term, however, and perhaps in the long term, it's compounding blight, not--as is one of the stated goals of the Atlantic Yards project--removing blight.

Lupica, again, questions the Brooklyn move

Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica, in today's column, wonders:
One of these days [NBA] Commissioner [David] Stern needs to figure out where the [New Jersey] Nets are going to be playing in a few years if they're not playing in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, the Nets are improving. That doesn't mean they're filling seats yet, though.

How taxpayers might help the Nets land LeBron James

By shedding expensive contracts, the New Jersey Nets have cleared salary cap space and positioned themselves to make big offers to free agents in 2010, notably superstar LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers. (So have the Knicks, though the Nets have a stronger supporting cast.)

Maybe we should think of it another way, as well. It's not just about the Nets' contracts. It's about where the team owners would get the money to pay a free agent. Sure, a smaller payroll helps, but that's not the only thing.

It's also about the subsidies.

The example of the Yankees

The issue came up on the CUNY-TV talk show City Talk regarding the new Yankee Stadium, which I wrote about yesterday.

One guest was Baruch professor Neil Sullivan, author of The Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York (2001, updated 2008),

He pointed out how the San Francisco Giants privately financed PacBell Park:
Everyone was, 'Ohmigod, you can't build these things, you'll have no money left for the ballplayers.' They signed Barry Bonds, they went to a World Series, they functioned fine.

The great question in the off-season, one of the great questions that the Yankees will be considering, is do they make an offer to Manny Ramirez, that's going to be 20 to 25 million dollars... for four or five or maybe six years. Where do you think that money comes from? In this stadium game, one of the ways I think about it, the state picks up, the public picks up the capital budget for this private business. All of that money, hundreds of the millions... goes over to the operating side. They can go chase anybody they want.

Remember, the direct subsidies for Atlantic Yards so far total $305 million. The savings on tax-exempt bonds could be $165 million. Other subsidies and tax breaks would be enormous as well, though no one's produced definitive numbers.

That could help pay for a few good hoopsters.

"Bloomberg's bombast": historian Siegel says sports facility subsidies don't pass cost-benefit analysis

Historian Fred Siegel, writing in the 11/17/08 issue of the conservative Weekly Standard, doesn't forget that New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, in his first term--the one that even the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett praised--supported welfare for sports team owners.

Siegel's essay, headlined Bloomberg's Bombast: New York's mayor buys himself a third term, begins:
The folks over at Newsweek have a sly sense of humor. They put New York mayor Michael Bloomberg on the cover of their November 3 issue and let him dispense fiscal advice to the next president. In the article, Bloomberg, who has presided over record levels of spending and debt increases, chastised "Washington" for putting us in a hole by "spending with reckless abandon for years." The lofty Bloomberg told Newsweek's readers, "Programs that don't pass a cost-benefit analysis, that have been driven by politics rather than economics, should be cut."

This is excellent advice. But Bloomberg has never taken it. One of the few things economists agree on, for example, is that subsidized sports stadia are a bad investment of public funds. They are also one of Bloomberg's passions. The mayor tried and failed to subsidize a West Side football stadium to the tune of roughly $600 million, but succeeded in sending similar sums toward his developer friend Bruce Ratner for a massive Brooklyn project, centered on a basketball arena, now stalled, for which there was no demand. He subsidized the Mets' new home, Citi Field, and, through direct and indirect subsidies--some of which are now under New York state and congressional investigation--Bloomberg has been paying for the construction of George Steinbrenner's new Yankee Stadium. The costs to the city so far are $458 million (with tax breaks provided to the two teams for the stadium projects further costing the city an estimated $480 million in revenue). Yet, the mayor tells Newsweek's readers that national infrastructure projects have to be funded "strictly on merit."

Costs and benefits

I'm not sure $600 million is the appropriate sum for Atlantic Yards--the direct subsidies would be about half that and the indirect subsidies significantly more--but Seigel's point is sound. There's been no cost-benefit analysis. And the press has been supine.

No demand?

Is there "no demand" for Atlantic Yards? That's a good question. There was little demand for the much-ballyhooed office space. Surely there's demand for housing, but could the city and state have achieved housing faster had there been a more legitimate bidding process?

There is demand for an arena, given the opportunity to move a team from New Jersey, but not necessarily at the terms Forest City Ratner achieved. What if the state had tried to keep some of the naming rights? What if federal taxpayers didn't subsidize the move of a sports team, which does nothing for the federal treasury, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich has pointed out?

On CityTalk: "How much welfare do you think the Steinbrenners should get?"

The Yankee Stadium deal was the subject of a scathing episode of the CUNY-TV talk show City Talk, taped November 11, which raised many issues that should be pursued regarding the planned Atlantic Yards arena.

Host Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College political scientist, was joined by two forceful guests. Bettina Damiani, Project Director, Good Jobs New York (GJNY), declared, "If somebody could write a book on how to make an opaque democratic process and screw over poor people, this would've been it."

Baruch professor Neil Sullivan, author of The Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York (2001, updated 2008), said the fundamental question was "how much welfare do you think the Steinbrenners [Yankee owners] should get?

(Note that the video for me was fuzzy, but I downloaded the audio.)

Opening up

Muzzio brought up the recent spate of critical news coverage.

DM: OK, the last week, stories all over the place, Jim Dwyer in the Times, For Yankees, Mayors Play Ball at City's Expense; Mike Lupica, The city's real tax burdens, Juan Gonzalez, Yanks caught stealin' from taxpayers again. Why the upsurge in interest? Why the news stories?

(Note that the headlines of the print articles, read by Muzzio, are not necessarily the same as those online).

The press enters, belatedly

BD: I think for two reasons. One is, we're watching our financial systems totally recreate themselves as they're melting down, so it's a little bit on the front of people's brains, about financial systems. Secondly, a little bit of a pessimist in me thinks that it's OK to write about these things, because this project is so far along nobody's going to get mad at the media for it.

Well, the press always likes to piggyback on a governmental investigation, and recent reports from committees led by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and Rep. Dennis Kucinich certainly have provided a jump-start. Yankee Stadium is probably the poster child for questionable behavior, but it's not too late to take a look at Atlantic Yards, as pre-construction demolition and utility work continues.

(The Mets have gotten much less scrutiny regarding their new stadium, but, as Damiani pointed out, at least "they didn't try and gobble up Flushing Meadow Park.")

Fixed, or too complicated?

Muzzio raised the question about whether the press had rolled over.

DM: So you, in a sense, create a web of the permanent government, the movers and the shakers and the fixers. So you're telling me that the papers stayed away from it when it was hot because of their interest and now they're in it because it's a done deal.

BD: I wish I had the answer for that. Because, I mean, we could've fixed it early on, when there was really an opportunity to put some democratic process to this. The reality is, early on, the only people that really, really put their nose to grindstone on this was Pat Arden at Metro and Neil deMause, who's the author of Field of Schemes. It was a heavy lift, and I think part of it was because it's a very complicated project.

We should keep in mind that there's a difference between editorial pages, which are influenced by the publisher's interests--the prime example is the recent editorializing against term limits--and news coverage.

Then again, there's been ample evidence from groups like Good Jobs New York that the press could've relied on, so I suspect that the government investigations have given columnists the ammunition they feel they need.

Always a political building

Sullivan provided some history of Yankee Stadium.

NS: It's a political building, it always was. It was built by Jake Ruppert, who was a Tammany Hall Congressman... So Ruppert would've known... the Terminal Market was going to open up and he'd have a fan base... but he paid for the whole thing with his own money, which to me is exactly the way these things should be done. Let me just interject: everything we're talking about here... boils down to a very simple proposition, which is how much welfare do you think the Steinbrenners should get? That's what it all comes down to.
(Emphasis added)

The first phase is, possibly, honest graft. The second political phase is in the seventies, when Mayor [John] Lindsay, bargaining against himself, decides that the socialist model of stadiums, which began in the 1950s in Milwaukee, the cities, counties, states, would actually construct the stadium, finance it, and then rent it to the private entertainment business. That model took over.

The city was going into bankruptcy, the South Bronx was going into a free fall, and Lindsay persisted, that this stadium's going to be done. It was supposed to--they pulled $25 million out of the air because that's what it cost to build Shea Stadium--the stadium wound up costing... $120-$140 million, at the very time the city was imploding.

Muzzio cited "reverberations and echoes here" with the current situation.

The era of partnership

Now, Sullivan said, things are much more complicated. He didn't even deal with the question of whether PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) to pay for construction represent a free sports facility--Brodsky says yes, the Yankees say no, and the same arguments apply to the AY arena--but instead pointed to the consequences of municipal ownership.

NS: You're now in this current phase, we're getting out of the socialist phase, which at least had simplicity going for it, and now we're into the era of the partnership and when I first heard about this deal, the Yankees said, 'We're going to pick up the lion's share, we'll need a bit of stuff, the infrastructure... $800 million we're coming up with.' Well, that's an improvement.

Well, trying to get through this agreement, and I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer... I'm reading it, reading it, and reading it. In some ways, there's a benefit to taking a step back instead of plunging into the morass of details, you take a step back: OK, here's this private entertainment business, they gotta come up with $800 million of what was supposed to be $1.2 billion but they don't own the stadium. the city owns the stadium. And one of the points I've been hammering about for years, it does the cities no good to own these things. Because if you don't have a ball club in the stadium, you own the world's largest flowerpot. There's nothing you can do with this so-called asset. It's an albatross around the community's neck. So you want to get rid of the stadium, you should auction them off. You should get out of this business entirely, especially in this city. New York has never played the stadium game well. And it certainly hasn't played it well in this instance.

Why the fig leaf of public ownership?

The reason for public ownership is to provide the opportunity to issue tax-exempt bonds. The same goes for the Atlantic Yards arena, which a federal appellate court described in a 2/1/08 decision as "a publicly owned (albeit generously leased) stadium." Yes, the developer would use PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) to pay for construction. But rent would be nominal.

And what happens when the arena is obsolete? Surely that would happen before the 30-year bonds were paid off; after all deMause has observed that team owners try to get money for renovations as soon as possible.

The owners of Yankee Stadium, home of the country's richest team, do not need naming rights to pay for construction. The case of the Atlantic Yards arena is even more stark, given that developer Forest City Ratner gets to sell naming rights for a publicly-owned arena.

A brief history of machinations

Muzzio asked Damiani for "a brief history of what can only be described as the machinations behind this." He cited GJNY's July 2007 report, Insider Baseball: How Current and Former Public Officials Pitched a Community Shutout for the New York Yankees, and February 2006 report, Loot, Loot, Loot for the Home Team.

BD: This was sort of a perfect storm. You had the former Deputy Mayor, under Giuliani, who happens to be Randy Levine, who worked for baseball, then worked for City Hall, and then miraculously went back to the Yankees.... So there was this revolving door that was greased so well for a project like this, because you had the insiders going back and forth. Then you have... unfortunately, the Bronx doesn't have the best representation, we're going to leave it at that. Their local elected officials, I don't know where they were, but somehow it managed that 22 acres of parkland, some of the heaviest used parks in that area of the Bronx... were taken, as a state of emergency, through the city and state legislature, in nine days at the end of the legislative session.

She continued, her tone verging on incredulousness.

If somebody could write a book on how to make an opaque democratic process and screw over poor people, this would've been it. Because it was done perfectly. It was really quite ingenious. All of this was done at the end of the legislative session. People didn't have an opportunity--they didn't even know it was happening. There was no public hearing--22 acres of parkland in New York City! As we all know, this is a city; we do things by feet, much less by acres.... It was given not over for a hospital or a school or a road, but for a baseball stadium to move across the street.
(Emphasis added)

What about the CBA?

Sullivan joined the bandwagon of people criticizing Community Benefits Agreement (CBAs) for New York projects.

NS: That all went through, as I understand it, through this Community Benefit Agreement, that this was what spread the wealth around. The Community Benefit Agreement, as I understand it, is simply the modern expression for honest graft. Y'know, you guys stay quiet, we'll give you X amount of jobs, you'll get these contracts... The women, the minorities, various categories... So we'll scatter this around. But it's the same fundamental exchange that the city went through back at the [of Tammany Hall's George Washington] Plunkitt.

Lost parkland

Muzzio also was incredulous.

DM: But the community lost all this parkland--the parkland they're replacing it with is on the top of garages, it's not contiguous, it's not available yet.

BD: This is the issue. When you see Community Benefits Agreement, I can do little air quotes, because nobody from the community was involved in this process and nobody signed it. What irks me beyond belief, besides that they call it a Community Benefit Agreement, there's a process in which you're taking money out of the city treasury, essentially, this pot of money, and the Yankees are going to say we're going to privately give tons of money to community groups in the Bronx.

So people that head up this Community Benefit fund are the ones that decide how services are provided in the Bronx? It doesn't make any sense. It's totally counterintuitive to the democratic process. So, the issue of the CBA really kind of makes the hair go back up on my neck, because it's really was what helped seal it through. Everyone was going: It's OK, there'll be a CBA.... which has not been replicated in New York City anywhere like how it's been done out west.

Damiani gave definitive testimony 5/26/05 before the City Council pointing out how the Atlantic Yards CBA--which, I'd point out, looks better than the Yankee Stadium CBA--differs significantly from more legitimate CBAs. That was never covered in the press.

Public costs

DM: Let's talk a little about the magnitude of money. The IBO [Independent Budget Office] in an August 7 letter, they argued you would lose tax revenue over 40 years of $28.3 million... and would save the Yankees $189.9 million.... Then you've got the overt cash subsidies where there's not only an opportunity cost, but they're handing them cash to build garages. Excuse me--explain this to me.

(Keep in mind that, not only would tax-exempt bonds save the Atlantic Yards developer a large sum--I estimated $165 million--there would be $305 million in direct subsidies.)

BD: I wish I could... The reality is... the reason why it's been so difficult to write and advocate around this project is because it is so complicated. They just throw figures and numbers out. The reality is this project is being built with public money, despite what the mayor says... because tax-free bonds, so they're getting cheap and free tax-free financing, it's mostly a federal subsidy... but also we've gotta pay for new parks. We have to pay to tear down Yankee Stadium... Right now, when we're talking about an incredible deficit on the city and state level, we have to keep a very close eye on making sure that the South Bronx doesn't get shorthanded on the way these parks are rebuilt.

Who sacrifices?

Muzzio quoted Lupica, who pointed out that the city has canceled a class of new police recruits. Sullivan was sarcastic.

NS: Everybody's got to sacrifice because we're in tough times, but I'll repeat that you're sacrificing in this instance so you can transfer money up to the Steinbrenner family... They're the primary beneficiaries.... When I read Randy Levine's testimony, before the House committee... He talked about how there had never been transparency like this... And I thought, he's kidding, right? Well, y'know, in a way he's not. This is a fleecing of the taxpayer that's hiding in plain sight. It's all right there. But it's so complex that you would have to dig into this.
(Emphasis added)

Which means there's a job for journalists.

It's for the kids, right?

Sullivan went on to criticize the popular rhetoric--exemplified in the Atlantic Yards context by New Jersey Nets CEO Brett Yormark and lobbyist Richard Lipsky--that a new sports facility is about the children.

NS: You can write this down now. When the stadium opens, there'll be kids from the local schools who'll come out, and Bud Selig will appear, having done his own stadium scam in Milwaukee, and he'll be talking, 'Oh isn't it wonderful, the children, it's all about them, blah blah blah.' They go back to these godforesaken science labs in the Bronx. Their grandparents are going to go to hospitals and need all kinds of help. The most basic services are ignored so we can transfer money up to this family that owns one of the most lucrative private entertainment businesses in the world.

"The people are supine!"

The host started thinking aloud.

DM: Isn't this a small pieceof what we're witnessing nationally... to bail out the corporations, banks and insurance agencies? I don't want to sound like a populist yet... or I do.

NS: It's part of the explanation for how, historically, sports owners in New York City get away with this. There really is no kind of populist tradition in New York City

DM: The people are supine! You've been yelling in the wilderness for how long?

BD: Over three years.

I don't know if the people are supine, given general resistance to subsidies for sports teams. It's more that the infrastructure for analysis and resistance--the press and civic groups--is pretty thin. These stories are tough to do. And perhaps some traditional civic watchdogs have learned to pick their fights. The resistance that's grown up in response to Atlantic Yards is notable.

NS: My biggest surprise writing the book... in the 70s, I'm looking for all kinds of backroom stuff. Every single newspaper in town... told the entire story from start to finish. We are going into bankruptcy. The South Bronx is going into a free fall. And Lindsay has frozen capital budgets, except for Yankee Stadium....

The explosion of articles in the Daily News in particular now may well have to do--maybe some editor said, 'Dial it back for a period of time.' But at the end of the day, it's easy to blame Randy Levine and blame all these other people, but it's the people of New York who have put up with this.

DM: And their elected representatives.

Remember what Brodsky said at the Kucinich hearing: "[T]here is nothing like professional sports to make public people nutty."

They paid in San Francisco

Sullivan pointed out that the New York model isn't the only one.

NS: San Francisco, which is always trotted out as the most harebrained liberal place in America, four times, twice in San Francisco and twice in San Jose, they voted down a new public stadium for the Giants. They forced the San Francisco Giants to build PacBell Park... with private money... The Giants were fine.

What next?

Muzzio asked what's next. Damiani said the Yankees would have to request more tax-exempt bonds at a hearing before the New York City Industrial Development Agency, and GJNY will announced that hearing. She also said that the city needs more teeth in its Conflicts of Interest Board.

Nobody mentioned Atlantic Yards.

Final words

Muzzio asked his guests for some final observations.

NS: A candidate for mayor should give a serious, thoughtful look at auctioning off the stadium. See if that makes sense, give it to a private party and get out of this business.

BD: Make the Yankees pay their taxes like everyone else.

They'd make the same arguments, I presume, regarding the Atlantic Yards arena.

And, then, Forest City Enterprises stock price rises

The price of Forest City Enterprises stock went up 15% yesterday, to $3.94 which was a very good deal for anyone who bought the stock on Thursday, when it it closed at $3.42.

But it's still off 92% from its one-year high of $50.27. A day earlier, it was off 93%.

Port Authority's Ward: AY represents simple--er, complex--density challenge

Christopher Ward, named in May to become Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, made some revealing comments about Atlantic Yards, showing that, while the project invites snap analysis, it's just not that simple. He spoke on October 16 at the Vertical Density Symposium sponsored by the Skyscraper Museum in conjunction with its Vertical Cities: Hong Kong New York exhibition.

(I'll have more complete coverage of the symposium next week.)

Ward (video) discussed how history leapfrogged, with London influencing New York, which influenced Hong Kong, and how each city built major new development outside the central business district, for example Canary Wharf on landfill in London and the World Financial Center on landfill in Manhattan.

Bruce Ratner's challenge

Then he got to Atlantic Yards. “That is part of the challenge that we face in terms of where we will build," he said.
"Think of the challenge that Bruce Ratner’s facing, Atlantic Yards, where you’ve had exactly what you could describe as a transit-oriented development resisted heavily, simply because--simply for the complex reason that the community around there does not match the height, density, and character. So you have the brownstone versus the skyscraper, although Atlantic I think is the MTA’s second-largest transit hub within the city, which lends itself to the very model that Hong Kong represents.”
(Emphasis added)

It's the third-largest transit hub, I believe, but not necessarily the third-busiest. (Aren't Times Square, Grand Central, and Union Square busier?)

More importantly, let's not confuse the arena site (above, in image from AtlanticYards.com, the arena is placed directly over the transit hub, even though it would be slightly to the southeast), from the project site as a whole.

The official web site states, "The development will be adjacent to New York's third-largest subway hub," indicated by the red star in the image at right. The arena would be located between Fifth Avenue (running north from the end of "St Marks Pl") and Sixth Avenue.

That map, however, omits other subway stations. Actually, most of the Atlantic Yards footprint would be closer to smaller subway stations, including Bergen Street, served by the 2 and 3 trains, 7th Avenue, served by the B & Q trains, and Clinton/Washington Avenue, served by the C train.
(See map below, from onNYTurf; it should indicate that the Atlantic Avenue station is served by additional subway lines.)

Yes, the arena block would benefit from a new entrance to the subway hub, but anything east of 6th Avenue--and, actually, parts of the arena block--would be closer to the other stations.

That's why Atlantic Yards would be an extension of Brooklyn's downtown, not an insert into the downtown. And that's why Forest City Ratner has so assiduously avoided any sense of ground-level scale in its periodic promotional brochures, aka "liar fliers."

Teasing out the syntax

Ward's awkward syntax suggests that the issue is more complex than simple. Yes, many have resisted the project's scale and density, but supporters of the UNITY plan welcome significant density, just not at the level that Forest City Ratner proposes. Urban planner Ron Shiffman, a supporter of density, has argued that the proposed density "far exceeds the carrying capacity of the area’s physical, social, cultural, and educational infrastructure."

Several other issues generate resistance, including the undemocratic approval process, the level of public subsidy, and the use of eminent domain based on questionable findings of blight.

After all, Kent Barwick of the Municipal Art Society wouldn't have mused that Atlantic Yards might be "this generation's Penn Station" were it only an issue of esthetics.

Curious coincidence

Ward was lauded at the symposium, but not everyone's a fan; see Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz's 5/27/08 commentary in the Daily News.

A curious coincidence (and I'm not making a comparison): Ward has a theology degree and former Atlantic Yards point man Jim Stuckey has a degree in sacred scripture.

As Forest City's stock continues to plunge, one project is scrapped

As the stock of Forest City Enterprises (FCE) continued its mind-boggling fall--down nearly 18% yesterday to $3.42, a new low, and 93% for the year--the casualties have begun.

Yesterday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Bayly Pointe, a project planned for 1000 acres in central Ohio, had been scrapped. Why? A letter from the company cited the poor economy and infrastructure issues.

Lessons for AY?

This doesn't necessarily signal anything about the developer's plans for Atlantic Yards, because Bayly Pointe had not yet been approved.

The developer, and its local arm Forest City Ratner, surely aim to hold onto a project like Atlantic Yards that has increased in value by gaining governmental approvals. After all, they "control the pace."

But the tanking stock has to concentrate the mind. Either Forest City Enterprises is headed for oblivion or it's a very good buy.

Who's in charge? Forest City says "we control the pace" of Atlantic Yards

The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) says the state is in charge of the Atlantic Yards timetable.

However, Forest City Enterprises (FCE), parent of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner, is telling the real estate industry that Atlantic Yards is among "Active Large Scale Projects Where We Control the Pace."

That message was within an FCE PowerPoint presentation for the 2008 NAREIT (National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts) Annual Convention this week in San Diego. (The slides accompanied presentations made by FCE officials.)

Both the ESDC and FCE, of course, seem to be discounting the effect of pending litigation and the availability of credit and tax-exempt bonds on delay.

But the message from FCE, apparently, is that, given that the project has received government approvals, the developer is in the driver's seat.

Public/private partnership?

It seems to be a direct contradiction of an ESDC lawyer's assertions in court this June.

And it puts an interesting gloss on FCE's Chuck Ratner statement, after approval in 2006, that Atlantic Yards is a "public/private partnership."

After all, project opponents have long called AY a developer-driven project. Even a "mend-it-don't-end-it" critic like the Municipal Art Society's Kent Barwick said, after the project approval, “From the beginning, the project has been a public-private partnership in which the public has not been represented."

Dubious timetable

Remember, as I reported June 24, George Locker, attorney for 13 residents of two rental buiildings in the Atlantic Yards footprint, questioned the project timetable during a court hearing.

While the General Project Plan and other documents projected a ten-year project timeline, the State Funding Agreement offers no start date for Phase 1, and gives the developer 12 years from the delivery of property to complete that phase without penalty. As for Phase 2, which would contain 70% of the affordable housing and all the open space, there’s no timetable.

“The bulk of the Atlantic Yards project, as far as the operative contracts are concerned, does not exist,” Locker said. About eight months after the December 2006 approval, he contended, “the project essentially disappears.”

“Reasonable” efforts to proceed

In court, ESDC attorney Philip Karmel attempted to rebut those concerns. “The foundation stone is the funding agreement,” he said, adding that the claim that there is no deadline “is a complete and total mischaracterization.” Rather, the developer is required to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to move forward.

What does that mean?

“It means you have to try your hardest,” he said.

Translation needed

This week's news raises a question: In what language does "we control the pace" mean "try your hardest"?

After 27% fall in stock price, how long before some news out of Forest City Enterprises?

What should we make of the astounding continued fall in the stock price of Forest City Enterprises, parent company of developer Forest City Ratner?

The nearly 27% decline yesterday brought the stock to $4.16, nearly 92% below the stock's 52-week high. (Graphic via DDDB.) The stock has fallen nearly 79% since October 10, when it was $19.79.

The entire market is in trouble, as the Dow hit a five-year low. The real estate sector is among the worst hit, but Forest City Enterprises seems to be having it even worse.

Institutional investors must be pulling out. Credit is tough to find. Forest City is laying off staffers.

By the same token, Forest City is moving ahead with its various projects.

The value of AY

How does the lack of investor confidence affect Atlantic Yards? Would the developer pull out? Well, the project passed governmental review, which is quite valuable--after all, the developer now says "we control the pace."

But the carrying costs of the project and the continued losses by the Nets basketball team have to hurt. Have the phone lines to Dubai, Russia, and other potential sources of rescue capital opened back up?

Times columnist: hard data needed to support benefits of projects

David Leonhardt's Economic Scene column in yesterday's New York Times, headlined Piling Up Monuments of Waste, suggested that funding for the nation’s infrastructure was less of a problem than the inability to set credible priorities.

Scattershot system

Leonhardt writes:
It’s hard to exaggerate how scattershot the current system is. Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits.

There are monuments to the resulting waste all over the country: the little-traveled Bud Shuster Highway in western Pennsylvania; new highways in suburban St. Louis and suburban Maryland that won’t alleviate traffic; all the fancy government-subsidized sports stadiums that have replaced perfectly good existing stadiums. These are the Bridges to (Almost) Nowhere that actually got built.

Well, the Atlantic Yards arena wouldn't replace a "perfectly good arena," given that the aging Izod Center is in another state and, without public transportation, is not the easiest place to visit. But federal taxpayers would subsidize new construction, even while a new arena in Newark could use a basketball team.

And, while the environmental review process in New York was extensive, was it truly rigorous? After all, the Empire State Development Corporation counted benefits but not costs. And the press punted and never analyzed the study that Forest City Ratner paid for.

Hard data needed

Leonhardt observes:
But now wouldn’t be a bad time to send a message. The current system is so inefficient that even a minimal amount of change would represent progress. If you want your project moved to the front of the line, you should have to come to Washington bearing hard data — not flimsy boosterism — about its economic and environmental benefits.

While Atlantic Yards is (mostly) not an infrastructure project, the same argument goes applies. It's not enough for project proponents to say that it's needed ever more in hard times.

The Voice's Barrett on Bloomberg's transformation (with a blind spot)

Wayne Barrett's Village Voice cover story, The Transformation of Mike Bloomberg, demolishes the claims that Bloomberg's decision to seek a third term was driven by a duty to confront the financial crisis and dissects the editorial arguments made in favor of Bloomberg's effort to extend term limits.

Best and worst mayor?

[Correction: an earlier version referred to Tom Robbins, who's also done good work on Bloomberg.]

Barrett's article begins:
Mike Bloomberg is the best mayor—in fact, the best state or city chief executive—I've covered in 31 years at the Voice. He's also the worst.

In his first term, he was able to close a gaping budget chasm without crippling city services by imposing the largest and bravest property-tax hike in history—and it sent his approval ratings plunging. When the city boomed again, this Nixon-to-China boldness by a businessman/mayor had forever refuted the knee-jerk right-wing orthodoxy that higher taxes invariably kill growth. His smoking ban proved that a mayor can literally change the air we breathe and was part of a lifesaving public-health commitment that pumped resources into city hospitals that his predecessor had stripped of city funding. While mayors before him had hidden behind the independent Board of Education to diffuse responsibility for the seemingly intractable dysfunction of the schools, Mike Bloomberg put himself in charge and staked his mayoralty on the slow but steady improvement that has occurred with him at the helm. The continuing decline in the murder rate under Bloomberg was a rebuke of the Giuliani years, when New Yorkers were led to believe that a polarized city was the price we had to pay to reduce crime.

As thankful as the city is for all Mayor Mike accomplished after 9/11, that was nearly a full term ago. Now, he's decided he wants a third term, even though he still owes us a second.

Bloomberg & AY

I think Barrett is a bit too generous about Bloomberg's first term. After all, there were already signs of the mayor's edifice complex and his unquestioning willingness to back a developer's plan.

Remember, this is the mayor who said, in a 1/23/04 radio interview six weeks after Atlantic Yards was announced:
Then, we’ve got to find a find a ways--Bruce Ratner’s got to find a ways--to build this complex in Brooklyn. Like everything else, it’s controversial, I’m sympathetic to people who don’t like something like this moving in to their neighborhood. People whose apartments are going to be replaced, or houses taken away, generally speaking, this guy Ratner is a very responsible developer. If you go back and look at his track record when he developed MetroTech, which made an enormous difference in the city, he treated people very well.

As I pointed out, Bloomberg essentially said that the city and the developer were on the same team, nearly a year and a half before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority put the Vanderbilt Yard--some 40% of the proposed site--out for bid.

Partnership for NYC

Barrett explains how politics works in the city, involving real estate developers and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn:
Kathy Wylde, the president of the Partnership, says she learned "in July" that the mayor was "seriously thinking about it," after making inquiries for at least a year. Wylde's board of directors includes virtually everyone whose name has appeared in stories detailing the early lobbying for another term—Speyer, Rattner, Kravis, Rubenstein, Parsons, Murdoch, and even Lauder's nephew, William, who actually runs the cosmetics company (Speyer went to William Lauder's father, Leonard, to put pressure on brother Ron). Bloomberg was once on the Partnership board himself, and its 20-member executive committee voted unanimously to support the extension legislation.

Wylde also lobbied Quinn, who's been a friend since the two worked together in housing organizations more than a decade ago. Wylde introduced Quinn to the Partnership honchos at a luncheon at the Speyer-owned Rockefeller Center shortly after she became speaker in 2006. "The universal opinion of the CEO is that she has a bright political future," Wylde declared from the onset. Wylde got 30 bigwigs to sign a letter backing the bill, 25 of whom are on her board, and an ad featuring it soon appeared in the Times. The fact is that under Wylde and Speyer's leadership, the Partnership is the closest thing we now have in New York to a political club with the clout to make a mayor.

Here's the Partnership's testimony about Atlantic Yards, at the 5/4/04 City Council hearing and at the 8/23/06 hearing on the Draft Enviornmental Impact Statement.

"I am personally confident that Bruce will continue to work in good faith to resolve the concerns of immediate neighbors," Wylde testified at the latter hearing.

Does that include trying to get out of paying for demolished trees?

How far Brooklyn has come

Wylde reflected:
I cut my teeth in community organizing by leading opposition to the relocation of the old Fort Green Meat Market from Atlantic Avenue to the Sunset Park waterfront in 1971. Our community lost that battle, and so did the City, which has lost money on the failed meat market almost since the day it opened. I mention that community struggle as a reminder of the many years—not very long ago—when the only development happening in Brooklyn was the construction of public projects that were unwanted in other places. Atlantic Yards is a symbol of how far Brooklyn has come since those days.

Isn't Atlantic Yards also a symbol of public officials not trying to figure out what valuable public land might be worth?

Chutzpah! FCR tried to evade paying $159K restitution for trees, saying (unscheduled) open space would compensate

Preparing to demolish 86 street trees around the Atlantic Yards footprint, Forest City Ratner contended last year that it did not need to pay $159,000 in partial restitution to the city because the trees in the Atlantic Yards open space eventually would “add much more value than the trees that will be removed during construction.”

That argument required chutzpah, given that no part of the Atlantic Yards open space would be constructed until the project’s Phase 2, for which there is no announced timetable and no penalties (as of yet) for delays.

The city Department of Parks and Recreation, perhaps mindful of that timetable, held its ground, requiring the requested payment, and Forest City Ratner complied.

The story is told via letters received by the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods (CBN), after filing a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the Parks department. The entire document is nearly 30 pages (PDF).

(Photo by Steve Soblick. Click on all graphics to enlarge.)

Tree inventory gives value

A 5/18/07 letter from FCR’s Rebecca D’Eloia to Brooklyn Forestry Director Andrew Rabb accompanied a “Tree Inventory and Valuation For the Brooklyn Arena Project” report by the arborists Urban Forestry, LLC.

The report detailed the number and conditions of 86 street trees (though D’Eloia, in her letter, said 85). Given the age, size, and conditions of the trees, it valued their replacement at $246,180 or 328 new trees, three inches in diameter.

Six trees, all on or near the arena block, were valued at more than $10,836, with four of them valued at more than $12,364.

The report depicted the current street tree layouts, provided by the project landscape architect, Olin Partnership, as well as preliminary layout of the trees proposed for the eight acres of open space.

Numbers and timing

Forest City Ratner plans 116 street trees, but due only at the end of each phase, as I reported in September. That's a pretty good deal for the developer, since Phase 1 could take 12 years after the close of litigation and the delivery of property by eminent domain, and there's no timetable for Phase 2.

(Photo from The Footprint Gazette, which has photos and videos from April tree removal.)

That means the 33 street trees for the arena block wouldn’t come until the arena and (all?) subsequent buildings are finished. There would be an additional nine open space trees on the arena block.

The rest of the trees would come in Phase 2, and the street trees would be planted only after major construction.

Block 1120, the block bounded by Pacific Street and Sixth, Carlton, and Atlantic avenues, would have 171 trees, including 39 street trees and 132 open space trees.

And Blocks 1121/29, the superblock bounded by Dean Street and Carlton, Vanderbilt, and Atlantic avenues, would have 449 trees, including 44 street trees and 405 open space trees.

“The approved Design Guidelines for the project require a minimum of 290 trees within the open space, although the current layout provides for 546,” D’Eloia wrote. “The current street tree layout would provide for an additional 116 street trees.”

Parks focuses on street trees

The Parks department, however, was only willing to count the planned 116 street trees, and asked for either 212 new street trees within a quarter of a mile of the project or payment of the remaining value: $159,000.

FCR’s chutzpah

Even though Forest City Ratner had what seems to be a pretty good deal, it wanted a much better one. An 11/2/07 letter from Project Manager Debbie Bhatt reminded Rabb of the numbers in D’Eloia’s letter. “Therefore, we are replacing 85 trees with a minimum of 406 trees, but probably closer to 662 trees,” she wrote.

“We understand that your analysis of potentially required restitution only counts the 116 street trees, resulting in a request for 212 new trees within a ¼ mile of the project or $159,000," she continued. "We ask that you consider all of the trees we are planning, as they will all be within publicly-accessible areas. As stated in the General Project Plan, and as part of the public approvals and documents associated with our project, the 8 acres of open space in our project are completely publicly accessible, and will provide passive and active recreational opportunities, attractive pedestrian and bicycle path connections between the adjacent neighborhoods to the north, south, and east, and will include landscaped areas, plazas, boardwalks, water features, lawns, and as stated previously, approximately 540 trees. In sum, we believe that the Atlantic Yards project and the open space that will be part of it will add much more value than the trees that will be removed during construction, and we ask that all trees be considered in the restitution calculations.”
(Emphasis added)

Her letter said nothing about when such open space and trees might be provided.

Parks stands ground

Rabb responded 11/13/07, “After careful consideration of your letter, it has been determined that the restitution for the removal of 86 street trees within the project limit of the proposed Atlantic Yards Project remains at 328 trees or $246,180 as stated in the May 2007 survey.”

“The Department of Parks and Recreation will count the 116 trees to be planted within the public right-of-way towards this restitution. This leaves a balance of 212 trees to be planted or $159,000,” he wrote, adding that a permit for tree removal would be issued only after “receipt of restitution value.”

FCR complies

FCR filed a permit request but had did not immediately send a check. Rabb, in a 2/5/08 letter, reminded Bhatt that the balance had to be paid. On 3/11/08, FCR sent the $159,000 check.

Nets CEO Yormark continues to spin: "We're on target" for Brooklyn groundbreaking

In an interview Monday (video) with Alexis Glick of Fox Business News, New Jersey Nets CEO Brett Yormark maintained near-complete confidence as he moved back the Brooklyn arena timetable yet another time, but the video's worth watching for the moment where it seems like Yormark doesn't quite believe himself.

It's also worth watching for the moment when Yormark declares that "it's no longer about access to the paying customer."

Barclays re-ups

The interview began with Glick noting that some people thought the Barclays naming rights deal might fall apart, but Barclays has reaffirmed its commitment. Barclays, Yormark declared, has never wavered.

Glick, not exactly the most curious interviewer, didn't think to ask if the reaffirmation was on the same terms.

"Things are going according to plan"

Glick then served up a nice leading question: When you look at the current climate, I’m sure hindsight is 20/20, but a lot of big team owners and executives may not have made the plans that they have made. And yet, for the most part, from what I can understand, things are going according to plan. Walk me through some of the litigation issues that still remain in Brooklyn and the Atlantic Yards, and the time frame in terms of getting this project done and completed as soon as you’d like.

Yormark's answer deserves a close look. Listen to his tone, at about 1:02, when he declares "We're on target" and tilts his head (right). Does the uptick in his voice betray that he's not really sure?

BY: Would love to. We’re on target. We are going to, hopefully, get through litigation, some time in March, and shortly thereafter break ground. I look at groundbreaking some time in the first half of ‘09. Obviously, with Barclays and all of our founding partners, our suiteholders—everyone’s excited about it. I’ve spent a lot of time, Alexis, in Brooklyn, meeting with kids, throughout the borough, every day. And there is so much support for this project. And when you look at the project, the affordable housing, job creation, and most importantly, bringing the team and sports entertainment back to the borough. It’s going to be a huge moment. We’re just thankful that things are moving in the right direction.

Litigation done in March?

If Yormark thinks litigation would be over in March, he's about as accurate as he was when, in September 2007, he said groundbreaking would be that fall and asserted, unequivocally, "We'll be in Brooklyn for the 09-10 season."

Well, if the timetable I described six weeks ago still holds, the last briefs would be due at the end of February 2009. Oral argument and a decision likely would take longer than a month.

[Clarification: Yormark's timetable is possible, since the case has been speeded up, and will be heard in January. But the decision will be inevitably appealed.]

How much support?

Well, last night the Nets hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose superstar LeBron James, is coveted by the Nets when he becomes a free agent in 2010. Still, as the New York Times reported:
Even James’s presence did not fill the Izod Center. Swaths of empty seats remained, and the announced attendance of 16,911 fell well short of the capacity of 19,990.

We know that announced attendance usually exceeds actual attendance by no small factor.

As for support in Brooklyn, last night I visited my favorite place to watch hoops on the big screen, Buffalo Wild Wings in Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Terminal mall.

Yes, they had the Nets game on, but it was relegated to some of the small televisions, without audio. The big screens, and the room, belonged to the game between the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics.

Costs decline, but so does spending

Glick raised the possibility that the arena might cost less to build.

AG: I imagine there are two different scenarios going on right now. One is, I imagine, that building costs will decline… On the other hand, you also have tons of branding opportunities, you talk about suites and the importance of suites, and we’re hearing from a lot of owners that is pretty difficult to come by in this climate, because any excess capital is being cut. How do you weigh those two equations?

BY: We’re fortunate that we’ve got a little time on our hands. We’ll be in Brooklyn for the 11-12 NBA season. We’ll probably be in Brooklyn actively in the summer of 2011. So give us a little time to gain some traction. We’ve presold our suites to the tune about 30 percent. And we’re meeting with a lot of prospective buyers right now, a lot of CEOs. All the CEOs we’re meeting with understand it’s very cyclical, what’s happening in the economy…. But it’s going to come back.

He's right that things can be cyclical. But couldn't Glick have checked some reports--not just mine--that say 2012-13 is a more realistic scenario.

Helping unemployed fans

AG: One of the things you guys have had is this tremendous relationship with the stakeholders in New Jersey…, and you’ve been doing some really terrific things to help those losing their jobs or are on the cusp of unemployment.

Yormark sounded like a social worker--up to a point.

BY: We launched an unemployment program last week. Our philosophy for years has been about providing access, but it’s no longer about access to the paying customer, it’s now about access to the people who need us most, and those are the unemployed. We did an outreach program last week where we identified five games in November and December, where if you sent us your resume, we put aside 300 tickets for each of those games for people who are unemployed. Everyone needs a night out and we want to extend ourselves to the extent that we can. The response has been overwhelming. We’ve received to date over 3000 resumes. The tickets, obviously have been spoken for. But we’re still acting as a job bank [jobbank(at)njnets.com], in trying to facilitate introductions between our season ticket holders, our sponsors, and those who are unemployed.
(Emphases added)

The job bank surely might help. But unless the Nets were giving away freebies at the concession stand, it was essentially cost-free to distribute 300 tickets for an arena with lots of empty seats.

Note that Fox continually flashed the factoid that Atlantic Yards would create 18,000 jobs, a claim that appears on the official web site. For the umpteenth time, 15,000 construction jobs means 15,000 job-years, or 1500 jobs a year for a decade.

Creating value

Glick expressed some apparent concern.

AG: The amount of jobs are so few and far between--how do you keep people up psychologically?

BY: The NBA across the country is doing a terrific job of reaching out to communities…. I think right now it’s about creating value for those key stakeholders… And that’s about the experience…. It’s not just the game, it’s the overall experience.

An affordable experience?

AG: You talk about the experience…. Look, the cost to take a family to a sporting event… it used to be affordable… and now it’s so unaffordable. How do you bring that back? How do you bring that experience back so we can take all of our kids to a game again?

BY: Well, the NBA has been very proactive in providing opportunities for anyone to come see an NBA game. There are teams out there that have tickets priced at 5, 10, and 15 dollars. There are opportunities to go to the concession stand and buy a hot dog for a dollar now. And all that is an opportunity to bring in as many people as possible.

The $3.75 hot dog

Maybe you can get a hot dog for a buck somewhere in the NBA, but not at the Izod Center. According to the November 2007 Team Marketing Report, the Nets were #7 in the NBA in Fan Cost Index (FCI).

A hot dog was $3.75.

Demolition visible at Dean Street row houses (but what about the Construction Update?)

Since the week beginning September 22, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), in its Atlantic Yards Construction Update, has alerted community members that demolition would begin at 487 Dean Street (block 1128, lot 89) and at 489 Dean Street (block 1128, lot 88), two structurally sound row houses just east of Sixth Avenue, targeted (along with the three houses to the east) to become a staging area for arena construction, should it ever begin, and later a tower, oh, nearly seven times taller, at 272 feet.

While interior demolition work may well have occurred, only this week did demolition become truly visible, with the windows hollowed out of the buildings. It can't be pleasant for the neighbors next door, who are plaintiffs in the pending eminent domain lawsuit.

Oddly enough, the Construction Update sent out November 17 omitted these buildings (see map at bottom).

(Photos above and below by Tracy Collins. Note the Spalding Building across Sixth Avenue in the background; if and when Forest City Ratner demolishes this industrial building that was renovated into loft condos, we'll know there's no turning back.)

What the Blight Study said

Regarding 487 Dean Street, the ESDC's Blight Study found a highly alarming cracked sidewalk and a few squiggles of graffiti. It stated:
Unsanitary and Unsafe Conditions
The sidewalk along the 6th Avenue side of lot 89 is in poor condition. In some places, the sidewalk is cracked and crumbling and in others, it is poorly patched (See Photograph B). Weeds grow along the curb for the length of the lot. In addition, as shown in Photographs C and D, graffiti has been painted on the western façade of the building, which faces 6th Avenue.
Indications of Structural Damage
A structural due diligence survey has not been conducted for this lot. The visual assessment did not indicate that the building structure is substantially compromised.

Regarding 487 Dean Street, the ESDC's Blight Study stated, in part:
Unsanitary and Unsafe Conditions
No unsanitary or unsafe conditions were identified as part of the visual assessment.
Indications of Structural Damage
A structural due diligence survey has not been conducted for this lot. The visual assessment did not indicate that the building structure is substantially compromised.

At right is a photo I took in the summer of 2006.

The ESDC's map

The ESDC also circulated a map (click to enlarge) regarding the demolition status of property in the footprint. I've circled the buildings at issue. Note that the largest single property, in dark gray, is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard.

LeBron James: Brooklyn "not my problem"

Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James knows that the New Jersey-to-Brooklyn-maybe Nets want to lure him when he becomes a free agent in 2010.

But Brooklyn is not weighing on him, as Newsday's Ken Berger reported last night:
"I don't know, man," LeBron said, when asked what's going on with the Nets' glacial move to Brooklyn. "I haven't been hands-on about what's the problem. I think we all saw the cutting of the ribbon, but that was the last time we've seen anything going on with the Nets moving to Brooklyn.

"I don't know if it's still in the works, but that's not my problem," he said. "I'm not invested in the team or anything, so I can sleep good at night."

Asked what his friend [Jay-Z] who is invested in the team thinks, LeBron said, "Um, I don't know. I haven't asked him. And even if we did talk about it, I couldn't tell you guys."

For the records, there have been Atlantic Yards announcements that may seem like the equivalent of a ribbon-cutting, but no ribbon has been cut.

LeBron James to New Jersey or Brooklyn? No, and not quite

In the run-up to tonight's New Jersey Nets home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, a lot of sportswriters are speculating whether Cavaliers superstar LeBron James, who becomes a free agent in 2010, would stay put in Cleveland, just down the road from his hometown of Akron, or move to the bigger cities of New York or Los Angeles, where he could become even more of a brand.

There are a couple of variables. First is money. Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst writes:
Out of all those teams, none can pay James more than the Cavs. Second, as of now, the team most of the speculation surrounds, the New York Knicks, is not one of the teams with the needed space.

While the Cavs could sign James to a $133 million multi-year contract in 2010, other teams could pay only about $102 million.

But the money issue isn't dispositive. After all, on a bigger stage, James could earn more endorsement money.

Also, at a certain point, additional cash is less important than lifestyle (James likes Cleveland, but he might also like a bigger city) and the opportunity to win.

What about the Nets?

Rebuilding in basketball is a chess game, and the Cavs have been trying to build a winning cast around James. Will they get it right in two years?

The Knicks have retooled their offense but not their lineup, while the Nets, with James's friend, superstar Jay-Z, as a part-owner, have made wholesale changes, with a suite of promising young players.

But they don't have a new building. Former shoe executive Sonny Vaccaro told the New York Times today:
“LeBron’s relationship with Jay-Z will go on regardless,” Vaccaro said. “He’ll be an international celebrity in New York. If the Nets aren’t in Brooklyn, he’s not going over there for even $200 million. They’re putting pieces together. They’re doing the right things. They’re just living in the wrong building.”

Brooklyn, 2011?

The Record's Al Iannazzone speculates:
So does James, because of his strong relationship with Jay-Z, forgo the Knicks, wait another season and play for his meager 2010 salary to align his star with the hip-hop mogul and part-owner of the Nets one year later in Brooklyn?

It would have to be a perfect storm.

First, the Nets have to make sure they’re in Brooklyn. Two, they may have to clear more money...

But the arena can't get built by 2011. My calculation is that, even if lawsuits are cleared by mid-2009, the 32-month construction timetable suggests a best-case opening in March 2012.

Imagine Coney thinks big (and small): new cable car, digital skins, and lucrative $ignage

A little more than four decades ago, many in the city had given up on the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Now it's a thriving, multi-building institution, and its handsome, cavernous BAMcafe, glittering with light and graced with Milton Rosa-Ortiz's floating part-torso sculptures dubbed "Disbelief", was the appropriate setting for last night's standing-room only public unveiling of the Municipal Art Society's (MAS) Imagine Coney project.

It was a particularly opportune time, as well, given that just yesterday morning the New York Post reported that developer (or flipper?) Joe Sitt was ready to give up his plans for hotels (time-shares) and entertainment retail and sell to the city.

And MAS president Kent Barwick said that city officials, while not yet jumping on the Imagine Coney bandwagon, were definitely listening. (Presumably they're considering the Imagine Coney contention that a 25-acre amusement area, not the city's plans for a bonsai park of 9 acres, is required to restore Coney.)

The civic process, it should go without saying, differs enormously from the Atlantic Yards plan, where the city embraced rather than challenged a developer and endorsed a fait accompli.

Big plans

If Sitt sells, the city would control the site of Astroland, whose rides are about to go on the block, but, as was instantly clear yesterday, the nostalgia that New Yorkers feel for that 1960s amusement park is not enough to revive Coney.

Rather, said members of an international team that solicited ideas from the public, held two public work sessions last week and then held an intensive two-day charette, it was time to restore Coney as an international destination, capitalizing on the amusement area's iconic status.

That means Coney would be the city's "greatest seaside stage," a home for concerts and festivals--and current empty lots and Keyspan Park could immediately be deployed so that Coney is busy rather than dead in 2009. And Coney would be a year-round destination.

An express train from Manhattan could deliver many thousands more people, and no new track is easy. (The train design incorporates the Funny Face emblem of the old Steeplechase Park.)

But, as former Disney VP David Malmuth put it, "It's critical that there be something that blows people's minds."

That would be a "glass boat in the sky," according to stage designer George Tsypin, and it's the first item in the MAS press release:
Among the concepts from the charrette: an extraordinary new cable-car ride that would float through clouds and connect all of the major Coney Island attractions; a wave-like retractable roof that would ensure 12-month seasonality for Coney Island; an “electric city” that would feature small-scale, local entrepreneurs, amusement operators with 21st century digital skin signage; and a high-rise hotel and entertainment district north of Surf Avenue that would feature extraordinary new architecture.

Digital skin signage? "One day, it looks like Venice," said Tsypin. "The next day, it looks like Marrakech."

Retractable roof? Well, as architect and design engineer Nicholas Goldsmith explained, the Beijing Olympics deployed a tent-like foil material that allowed climate control but also let people get a sense of being outside.

More ideas

Other ideas floated last night included an international graffiti contest; parades for every season; a ferry to Coney Island Creek; an opportunity for large-scale public gaming; and juiced-up presentations of Coney's popular sports, handball and basketball.

Malmuth suggested that the Shore Theater next to the subway terminal be revived, housing a "signature Coney Island show," an introduction to the amusement area's history. He also endorsed an opportunity for "sing-along" shows.

The Child's Restaurant building, at the west end of the amusement area, has already been temporarily repurposed as a roller rink; Malmuth said it could house "a new form of dinner theater."

How to pay?

Oh, and how to pay for it? Well, L.A. Live, the entertainment campus next to the Staples Center in Los Angeles, generates $63 million in signage and sponsorship.

(Oh, right, civic groups and government now know that sponsorship and naming rights can be lucrative. The Empire State Development Corporation apparently gave no thought to claiming a share of the naming rights for the Atlantic Yards arena, which would technically be publicly-owned.)

One audience member was dismayed: "Are corporate billboards about dreams?" Malmuth responded that "Coney has always been about commercialization. I want to suggest that we not think about Coney as either/or."

Also, and this was a major theme last night, high-rise hotels and housing--north of Surf Avenue, so as not to block sightlines to the beach--also would be necessary to drive revenue.

Audience reception

Several hundred people filled the BAMcafe and, while the crowd (to my eye) skewed hipster, there was good diversity in ages and geography (and some in ethnicity), each with Coney Island memories.

"We really need your help," Barwick said and, while a few in the audience expressed dismay at aspects of what they saw as blueprints, most were enthusiastic.

If the city proceeds with its land use review process regarding the smaller amusement area, could the Imagine Coney ideas still work? Sure, said Barwick; the first round of events could occur in Keyspan Park and parking lots.

What about smaller entrepreneurs--wouldn't they get lost? "You need both," said Barwick, saying the overall framework must work for promotional purposes but "Coney Island cannot be Disney by the Sea."

One Coney Island resident said she was very upset because she thought Coney was demonized as a deserved place of criminals and addicts. "All I see is a beautiful beach, a beautiful boardwalk," she said.

Barwick didn't respond directly; only later did Aaron Beebe of Coney Island USA comment that there were limits to the Imagine Coney plans, which were focused on the mostly-empty amusement area--which, he could have said, benefits from zoning that is rare in the city.

But last night was the beginning of a long process, and MAS said it aimed to keep
people in the loop and capitalize on their passion.

“The long-term future of Coney Island begins with a short-term programming schedule,” said Barwick in the MAS press release. “We must send a clear message to the world that Coney Island is back, and get people going there this summer. Unless that starts to happen, a robust long-term vision will become less and less viable.”

Learning from AY: Gowanus Summit insists balanced development desirable and possible

They didn't say so explicitly, but it sure looks like the Gowanus Summit--a coalition of community organizations, affordable housing advocates, labor unions, and advocates for blue-collar jobs setting out principles for rezoning in Gowanus--learned from the Atlantic Yards experience.

They haven't let one developer's demand for density and a particular footprint drive the process. They haven't let advocates for affordable housing shout down those who raise questions about other priorities.

Rather, they're trying to have it all, and while the devil will be in the details, they think the package is workable, not just affordable housing but space for industrial jobs, respect for community context, mixed-use zoning, responsible contracting, and a comprehensive approach to neighborhood infrastructure.

Yesterday, before City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden came to the Gowanus area to present the city's rezoning proposal to the Land Use Committee of Community Board 6, members of the Gowanus Summit held a press conference at PS 32 to announce the principles and to encourage the city to be a partner.

"We don't yet see any areas of conflict," observed Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development (and a City Council candidate), noting that the city hasn't broadened its vision to include the full Gowanus Summit principles.

Working out the tensions

I didn't stay for Burden's presentation--I had another learning-from-AY event to attend, regarding Coney Island--but it was remarkable how the participants asserted that the tensions could be worked out. (Here's some skeptical coverage of Burden's presentation from PFMA)

Leading the charge were City Council Members Bill de Blasio and David Yassky, two elected officials who endorsed Atlantic Yards but have become more critical and seem to have wised up to the notion that the end may not justify the means.

"This is land use the way it ought to be," Yassky declared.

Adam Friedman, Director of the New York Industrial Retention Network, called it "an extraordinary process of bringing people together." Michelle de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee asserted that existing affordable housing could be preserved. Jo Anne Simon, a Democratic District Leader (and City Council candidate), called it "a really great trend going forward: balance and coming together."

Density plus context

"Overdevelopment is irrevocable," de Blasio warned. "Once it happens, it happens."

The Principles for Responsible Development of the Gowanus Canal, however, explain that, to achieve all the goals, the neighborhood had better get ready for changes:
We recognize that achieving all these goals will require significant development around the canal--most likely at densities and heights higher than some would prefer. While we do not support density for its own sake (and are cognizant of the challenges that development can bring), we are willing to support additional density around the Gowanus Canal, to the extent that it will enable us to meet these ambitious principles for development.

However, the section on balanced development also called for contextual rezoning to limit out-of-scale development in residential sections of Carroll Gardens, from Pacific Street on the north to the Gowanus expressway on the south, and from the BQE on the west to Smith Street/Bond Street/3rd Avenue to the east.

Some bumps in the road

And Friedman, in a press release, warned what could go wrong: "City Planning made the right decision in agreeing that a significant portion of the Gowanus Canal corridor should remain zoned for manufacturing. Unfortunately, traditional manufacturing zoning leaves big loopholes, and the area could still be overrun by big-box stores and hotels, as was recently the case in Dutch Kills in Queens."

Coalition members

The coalition included the Fifth Avenue Committee, Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp., AFL-CIO, Mason Tenders' District Council of Greater New York, 32BJ SEIU, NYC Central Labor Council, NYC District Council of Carpenters, New York Industrial Retention Network, New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council, Pratt Center for Community Development, Public Housing Communities, the Carroll Gardens Association, and the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation.

(Public Housing Communities, btw, was a new group formed to sign the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement; I didn't see a rep from the group at the press conference yesterday.)

Atlantic Yards Deathwatch? Maybe if the stock keeps tanking

I'm not sure I buy the concept of the Atlantic Yards Deathwatch. Maybe it should be the Atlantic Yards Delay-watch. But it is worth remembering that, when the project was announced in December 2003, the arena was supposed to open in October 2006.

Remember, Chuck Ratner of parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) said in March 2007, "We are terrible, and we’ve been a developer for 50 years, on these big multi-use, public private urban developments, to be able to predict when it will go from idea to reality."

Then again, if FCE stock continues to plummet--down 16.27% yesterday, to a new 52-week low, as DDDB pointed out--Atlantic Yards can't survive.

How Forest City Ratner (quite possibly) saved $55 million on "Arena Land"

In June, I wrote that an unreleased appraisal might be hiding a city-enabled bonus of tens of millions of dollars for developer Forest City Ratner (FCR).

Now I can better estimate a number: $54.6 million.

That number, of course, is speculative, but the calculation is fairly straightforward. Forest City Ratner was reimbursed $100 million by the city for property in the Atlantic Yards footprint for which it spent $103.5 million.

But the property was more likely worth $158.1 million, based on the city's own valuation of development rights at a site reasonably close to the Atlantic Yards footprint. So that means the city's land subsidy could be considered not the announced $100 million but nearly $155 million, a bonus of some 55%.

(To estimate the city's subsidy, you have to consider the $3.5 million for which FCR was not reimbursed: $158.1M - $3.5M = $154.6M.)

"Highest and best use"

To recap, according to the City Funding Agreement, land purchased by FCR for the project was subject to a "highest and best use" appraisal submitted to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC), as a condition for delivering to the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) the city's $100 million subsidy for AY land acquisition.

That appraisal has never been made public. The NYC EDC refused to release it in response to my Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request.

Note that the appraisal was issued after the land deals were done, not beforehand or during negotiations. Given the city had already pledged $100 million, the appraisal did not help the NYC EDC decide how much money it would contribute; rather, it served to delineate the subset of properties to which the city's $100 million would be applied.

"Arena Land"

If the appraisal had indicated the properties were worth more than $100 million, the developer would've been reimbursed for a smaller fraction of its purchases and would've had to contribute more of its money.

As I wrote the "Arena Land" could join the Atlantic Yards Lexicon under this definition: "Those properties on the arena block for which Forest City Ratner spent about $100 million."

Fishy sequence

“Appraisals, particularly last year before the credit crisis, are notoriously amenable to being ‘tailored,’” a real estate professional told me.

So, how might the appraisal have neatly arrived at $100 million?

The appraisal was supposed to take into account all government regulatory restrictions, including expected zoning override, as with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 2005 RFP for the adjacent Vanderbilt Yard.

Indeed, the 2005 appraisal that resulted valued the property at $75 per buildable sf, with a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 10, leading to a valuation of $271.2 million. (The appraisal subtracted various costs associated with track relocation and platform construction to reach a $214.5 million figure, though Forest City Ratner's cash bid was $50 million, later doubled after the MTA agreed to negotiate exclusively the developer.)

That $75/sf now looks like a significant bargain. The market in the past two years, according to the real estate professional I contacted, ranged between $110 and $200 per buildable sf.

The lots that comprise "Arena Land," for which FCR paid $103.5 million, total 105,392 sf, I determined. With an FAR of 10, that's $98.20/sf.

At $150/sf

But what if the value per square foot was not $98.20 but $150?

Speaking at a panel October 20 at the Museum of the City of New York, Yvonne Isaac of the developer Full Spectrum said, "the city’s asking upwards of $150 a square foot buildable FAR," including land in the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District.

Isaac was skeptical of that number. "There’s no way we could make that affordable," she said, indicating that the developer was not proceeding with a project there, for the time being.

Maybe $150/sf won't work, but it is the city's number.

Revaluing "Arena Land"

What if the city had valued the "Arena Land" at that number? The value would be $158.1 million.

That means the city would've reimbursed Forest City Ratner for a much smaller proportion of the properties listed above. The developer would've had to absorb a significant chunk of the purchase price--nearly $55 million worth.

And until the city releases its appraisal of "Arena Land," that's as good an estimate as we have.

Lupica continues the ribbing

From columnist Mike Lupica in today's New York Daily News:
Quick question for Caring Bruce Ratner:

Where can I buy my "Brooklyn Nets" T-shirt?

At centennial of Martyrs' Monument, some worthy reminders

Sometimes we forget our history. On November 14, 1908, a crowd of 30,000, including President-elect William Howard Taft, gathered at Fort Greene Park--in pouring rain!--for the dedication of the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, designed by Stanford White.

Yesterday, on the occasion of its centennial, that 148-foot Doric column gained renewed power. It commemorates prisoners of war, most of them merchant seamen, who died after cruel treatment by the British; their bodies, more than 11,000, washed up on shore during the early part of the 19th century. "Surely this ground is as hallowed as any in our history," historian Edwin Burrows said yesterday at the celebration.

The crowd yesterday was perhaps 300-400 [I earlier estimated 600] , the weather pleasantly misty, the MC City Council Member Letitia James, who as a woman and African-American would not have been eligible for the franchise that the patriots fought for. Elected officials gave requisite speeches; several connected the martyrs' efforts to the symbolism of the recent election. Broadway star Cady Huffman, a resident of Fort Greene, led the crowd in the national anthem. There was a procession of flags and a 21-gun salute and a performance by youth musical group.

But the event belonged to Burrows, author of Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War. In declarative sentences, he focused the crowd and set out the bravery of the martyrs. Only ten percent survived, but many more could have. Their captors invited the able-bodied to join the British armed forces. Some did. "Thousands did not, preferring certain death to dishonor," he declared.

So when the monument's eternal flame was lit for the first time since 1921, the audience was reminded of a thread of patriotism that still stirs, and has helped inspire a more perfect union.

The monument now will remain lit, a beacon of sorts, a reminder of painful ideals as Brooklyn continues to change. (Hint: from the back of Borough Hall, walk east on Joralemon Street toward Adams Street, and the monument will come into view.)

Today, there are additional events: a parade around the park at 9 a.m. and ceremonies at 10 a.m. Delays in refurbishing the park generated criticism this past summer; it looked fine yesterday, with new benches and once-departed (and controversial) eagles restored. The Daily News yesterday ran a fine editorial.

(Photo by Steve Soblick)

A DDDB angle

The driving force for the centennial celebration was Ruth Learnard Goldstein, chair of the centennial committee of the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, who's tried for decades to restore the monument. She also happens to be a board member of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB). So DDDB, which does not frequently have a presence in other civic programs (other than that of the Brooklyn Peace Fair 2008 journal), bought a small advertisement in the centennial journal.

The journal contained advertisements from, among others, the Myrtle Avenue Partnership, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Industrial Park, the Society of Old Brooklynites, the Society for Clinton Hill, and a variety of local businesses. The only developer, for the record, was IBEC Living, which has developed the nearby Clermont Armory.

So there was no advertisement from Forest City Ratner, which is building the 80 DeKalb Avenue project just west of the park's southern border. That may be because the building is under construction. Then again, working with an avowed opponent of Atlantic Yards might have been a bit icky.

Initial results of Imagine Coney to be presented tomorrow

After two public meetings and two design meetings last week for the Imagine Coney project, the Municipal Art Society will unveil the design team's initial recommendations on Monday at 6:30 PM at the BAMCafe upstairs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Reservations are recommended.

Initial ideas

While the design team obviously isn't wedded to suggestions from the public, the MAS has provided a list of "top public ideas," some of which are far more realistic than the others.
* Create a Venice, CA-style Muscle Beach
* Brooklyn Nets/Nudie Bar/Gambling (note that these are not linked)
* Hologram Facility/Video Wormhole
* Dig Hole to China
* Reestablish Massive Clock
* Outdoor Stage/Indoor Theater for Public Use
* New Fanciful Architecture
* Best Water Ride Ever
* Robots
* Adult Fun
* New Old Rides
* National Eating Hall of Fame (my idea)
* Transport Rides
* Be in Video Game
* Laser Water Show
* Interspecies Friendship

Catching up with Jane Jacobs and AY

In case you didn't check back on my coverage last Saturday of an affordable housing panel that served as the First Annual Jane Jacobs Forum, take a look at the lengthy comments from Benjamin Hemric, a Jacobsian who's read a lot more than The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Then take a look at Michael D.D. White's Noticing New York, where he's expanding on his 1/26/08 Brooklyn Paper op-ed, How Jacobs would view Yards, with methodical posts detailing the 47 criteria used in his report card.

One sample:
There is also the question of whether Jane Jacobs' ideas should be treated as any form of "gospel," something she herself would have questioned, though she would have readily endorsed the use of her ideas by those endeavoring to see for themselves and use common sense to reach their own conclusions. Based on things Jane Jacobs said about herself in life, I was tempted to add a standard (in line with her constant empirical questioning) that people, including Ms. Jacobs, should regard themselves as fallible and capable of mistakes. People need to know they are not God. Were this added as criteria #48 the project would not score well on it. Jane Jacobs knew that big plans tend to lead to big mistakes. It is far from clear that the megadeveloper of the Atlantic Yards project adequately comprehends his mistakes or ability to make them. In the face of this, Jane Jacobs, although believing in her own fallibility, was famous for being right when too many others had gotten it wrong.

Barclays recommits to naming rights agreement, but details are scant

Barclays yesterday recommitted to the Barclays Center naming rights deal for the Atlantic Yards arena, and that has to be good news for project supporters. The deal had to be renewed by the end of the month and there was at least speculation that Barclays might reconsider.

Despite a statement that Barclays was "unwavering" in its commitment, it's reasonable to question whether Barclays, which had some leverage and has faced losses of its own, renewed at the previously announced $400 million ($20 million a year over 20 years) figure.

We don't know, as the Record's John Brennan noted yesterday. I'd bet they managed a better deal of some sort.

Barclays helps with financing

The press release also stated that "Barclays continues to play a major role as the co-lead in the financing of the Barclays Center," which is news to me, since previous news coverage described Goldman Sachs as the lead. Has Goldman tried to spread the risk, reward, and responsibility of getting the deal done?

Both Forest City Ratner and Barclays have indicated patience, as legal challenges persist at least through next year; last month they welcomed the news that tax-exempt bonds for the arena would be grandfathered in under more lenient federal rules.

Should the arena be successful, a naming rights deal might prove to be a prudent investment for Barclays, which could acquire financially weak banks in the United States and continue to expand.

Stock price still sinks

In the short term, however, there's reason for dismay.

I imagine that officials at parent company Forest City Enterprises hoped that the announcement might nudge investor confidence. Instead, the stock went down more than 5%, to $7.16, continuing a stunning decline.

It was over $70 in May 2007, over $50 a year ago, and $19.79 on October 10.

More on layoffs

Also, Forest City Ratner has begun layoffs, and while the following information can't be confirmed, a commenter on NetsDaily stated, "It may be good that the Nets are going to Brooklyn. But I happen to know they let go of almost ten key internal employees earlier this week and several that were selling for the new arena suites and seating."

I'm also told--secondhand, but from a source I consider reliable--that the fellow occupying the Atlantic Yards Community Liaison Office has departed.

"Updated timeline"?

Barclays "affirmed its commitment to the future arena in Brooklyn and the updated timeline for a 2009 groundbreaking."

In translation, "updated timeline" means "delayed timeline."

Even if the project survives legal challenges, Forest City Ratner has requested at least $100 million in subsidies--and hasn't gotten them.

The press release

Barclays Affirms Steadfast Commitment to Arena in Brooklyn and 2009 Groundbreaking
Says Support for Atlantic Yards is "Unwavering"

Barclays, a leading global financial services company and the naming rights partner for the future Barclays Center, today affirmed its commitment to the future arena in Brooklyn and the updated timeline for a 2009 groundbreaking. The Barclays Center, which is designed by Frank Gehry, will be the world-class home of the Nets.

"Barclays is unwavering in its commitment to the Barclays Center and we are very pleased with our long-term alliance with our great partners, the Nets and Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC)," said Gerard LaRocca, Chief Administrative Officer, Americas, at Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays PLC. "We are very excited about being part of the continued renaissance of Brooklyn and we eagerly look forward to opening night at the Barclays Center."

"Since we announced our 20-year naming rights partnership in January 2007, Barclays has offered nothing but resolute and great support," Nets Chief Executive Officer Brett Yormark said. "We deeply appreciate our partnership with such a well-respected and distinguished company, which shares our love for Brooklyn and our strong sense of community."

"We are thrilled to have Barclays as a partner," said Bruce Ratner, chairman and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, a subsidiary of Forest City Enterprises, Inc., and the chairman of Nets Sports and Entertainment, LLC, which owns the Nets. "The Barclays Center will be one of the most spectacular sports and entertainment arenas in the world. Even more importantly, it is a centerpiece of a development that will bring thousands of jobs and affordable housing units to Brooklyn." Forest City Enterprises (NYSE: FCEA and FCEB) has an equity interest in Nets Sports and Entertainment.

In addition to its naming rights commitment, Barclays continues to play a major role as the co-lead in the financing of the Barclays Center. Momentum for the Barclays Center continued recently when the Internal Revenue Service issued a new regulation that confirms that tax exempt bonds may be used to finance the arena.

Blight's hard to find: why Mike Bloomberg could never work for AKRF

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has started backing away from claims that Willets Point is blighted. “To take an area which, it’s not fair to say it’s blighted,” he told NY1, as quoted in Crain's and cited by DDDB. “It’s seen its better days is a fair way to phrase it.”

Well, Willets Point is pretty rough--unpaved, no sewers, remember--though the city should take the lion's share of the blame.

But it's curious how unpaved Willets Point has "seen its better days" but a small but well-kept house (the fifth one in) in the Atlantic Yards footprint drawn by Forest City Ratner is, according to consultant AKRF's report for the Empire State Development Corporation, blighted because it doesn't fulfill 60% of allowable development rights.

(Or is it just that Forest City Ratner wants to build a 27-story building there?)

Clearly Bloomberg could not get hired by AKRF.

Did the state try to gain any value from arena naming rights? Apparently not

Yesterday, Gov. David Paterson proposed $5.2 billion in budget cuts over the next 16½ months, with reductions in school aid, increased tuition at city and state universities, and reduced Medicaid reimbursements, among other things.

Perhaps administration officials--many of whom were not in charge at the time, actually--are wondering why exactly their predecessors allowed Forest City Ratner to claim the entire value of naming rights for the Barclays Center arena.

In response to a Freedom of Information Law request, documents received from the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) indicated that no effort was made to retain any such value, though at one point, a Forest City Ratner executive indicated anxiety about the developer being "punished" for the naming rights deal.

Why it matters

The arena would be publicly owned, formally at least, and leased to FCR for $1 a year. The main reason for the fig leaf of public ownership is to allow the issuance of tax-exempt bonds.

Still, it's not the developer's property, As author Neil deMause told me earlier this year, "There’s no reason for this [naming rights] to be private money."

But allowing the team owner to retain naming rights was apparently an unspoken component of the Atlantic Yards agreement. As Andrew Alper, then-president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, told City Council 5/4/04:
So, they came to us, we did not come to them. And it is not really up to us then to go out and try to find a better deal.

(Note that the $400 million deal apparently must be renewed by the end of the month, and renewal--at least at that level--is hardly certain.)

Digging in

In September, I contacted the ESDC, asking:
Under the Freedom of Information Law, I request records regarding any discussion between the Empire State Development Corporation and developer Forest City Ratner (or any of its affiliates) regarding naming rights for the planned Atlantic Yards arena, now expected to be called the Barclays Center.

More specifically, I seek records that describe whether or not the ESDC attempted to ensure that the public received some value for the naming rights. I also seek records that explain the ESDC's rationale in allowing developer Forest City Ratner (or any of its affiliates) to control the naming rights.

The response

There were no real answer to the question about the ESDC's rationale.

In response, I got a six-page file (PDF) of email messages, part of which consisted of a message I myself sent and the ensuing ESDC response. Notably, none of the documents were dated before 2007, meaning that the issue was not discussed before the ESDC board approved the project in December 2006.

I filed a similar request with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Alper's agency, which also participated in the initial Memorandum of Understanding for the project. I was told there were "no responsive documents."

Redacted documents

Though the documents are scant, in several places they were redacted; the ESDC cited exemptions that allow agencies to deny access to records that are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not final agency policy or determinations and instructions to staff that that affect the public, among other things.

The six pages

The documents consist of the following:

Page 1. A 1/16/07 email from ESDC President Avi Schick asking staffers, "In the KPMG analysis, what was the dollar amount assumed that Ratner would received for the arena naming rights?"

(The answers are redacted, but the KPMG report, released during litigation over the AY environmental review, assessed "sponsorship/naming rights" at $31.2 million. The Barclays Center deal announced 1/18/07 is said to be $20 million a year, but Forest City Ratner has since announced numerous other partnerships. KPMG did say that the $31.2 million figure may be on the high side.)

Page 2-4. A 1/22/07 email from me to then-spokeswoman Jessica Copen asking why, if the arena is publicly owned, why the Local Development Corporation (LDC) wasn't selling naming rights

Again, some internal messages were redacted; nor was Copen's answer included in this file. Her answer did not exactly address the issue, given the significant public support for the arena: "Financing for the stadium comes ultimately from the team. The team has the naming rights. It's the same deal as with the Mets - who also sold naming rights to their new stadium."

Anxiety from Stuckey

Page 5. A 1/19/07 email, just after the naming rights announcement, from Jim Stuckey, then Forest City Ratner's point man on the project, expressing some anxiety, perhaps over the notion that the naming rights deal could effect public subsidies.

He wrote to ESDC attorney Steven Matlin, "Steven, our collectivr [sic] naming rights deal helps ensure the financing of this project and should be applauded, not punished. Do you think I should raise this at our meeting with Avi [Schick] and [ESDC Downstate Chairman] Pat Foy tomorrow?"

Stuckey's note had a couple of typos and spelled Foye's name wrong. Then again, the message was sent at 1:42 a.m., at least according to the e-mail time stamp.

Matlin's answer: "Jim, I think everyone took note of the deal--but I would not expect it will be used to reopen the business agreement."

The rest of his answer was redacted. What might it have said?

A final query

Page 6. An email regarding a query from Matthew Schuerman of WNYC asking about the sponsorship of the Urban Room and the Stoop.

The answer is completely redacted.

Willets Point affordable housing offers more moderate-income housing than AY

The New York Times's article today on the Willets Point deal is headlined Willets Point Project Foes Reach Deal With the City; while Councilman Hiram Monserrate is now on board, there are numerous property owners who have not yet come to agreement and could be subject to eminent domain.

WCBS TV reported that small business owners say a $3 million relocation fund is an insult.

The city will now control more than half of the 62-acre site, according to Crain's. (Here's DDDB on Monserrate's former opposition to eminent domain, which he said should be taken off the table.)

Contrasts with AY

There are some notable contrasts with Atlantic Yards. The city has pursued this development plan via the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which gives the City Council a vote; City Council Member Letitia James remains opposed to AY but never had the clout that Monserrate had, given the state override of zoning.

Also, as reported last December, the city has pursued redevelopment at Willets Point before choosing a developer, aiming to avoid potential legal challenges, as with the Atlantic Yards sequence.

Affordable housing

The big lift was on affordable housing and, ACORN, Forest City Ratner's partner on Atlantic Yards, was in on this deal too. (Is there also a requirement to publicly support the project?)

While similar in percentages to the Atlantic Yards affordable housing deal, the Willets Point plan emphasizes housing for low- and moderate-income families, while the Atlantic Yards plan offers a wider range of units, including those aimed at middle income families earning more than six figures.

The Times reported:
The deal requires that 35 percent of the project’s 5,500 housing units be set aside for families who make less than $99,840 a year, or 130 percent of the city’s median income of $76,800. The original plan reserved just 20 percent of the units for families of those income levels.

It's hardly clear, as with Atlantic Yards, whether there are bonds and other public funding mechanisms to fulfill the affordable housing promises.

Note that 50% of the 4500 rentals in the Atlantic Yards plan would be affordable, and 200 of the announced 1930 condos on site would be subsidized. That's about 38 percent, but the plans are not similar.

More lower-income

The Times reported regarding Willets Point:
The future developer will have to abide by housing guidelines that will require the construction of 820 homes for families who make $38,400 a year or less, which is more housing for low-income families than was required in any of the city’s other recent redevelopment projects, including Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Hudson Yards, on the west side of Midtown.

The rest of the homes will be distributed as follows: about 330 for families earning $38,400 to $46,080; 770 for families earning $46,080 to $99,840; and the remaining 3,500 or so priced at market value.

Note that $38,400 is 50% of the current Area Median Income (AMI) and that $46,080 is 60% of AMI. Thus, there would be 1150 units for households earning up to 60% of AMI. The top level of income would be 130% of AMI.

According to the housing chart on the Atlantic Yards web site, there would be 900 units for households earning up to 50% of AMI (in the 2006 chart, $35,450) and no units for those earning 50%-60% of AMI.

So there would be a little more low-income housing--but not as much lower-income housing.

There would be 450 units for households earning 60-100% of AMI, 450 units for households earning 101-140% of AMI, and another 450 units for households earning 141-160% of AMI.

The AY housing switch

As I reported in July 2006, the Atlantic Yards affordable housing plan changed. Originally, 900 of the 2250 affordable apartments were promised to moderate-income people earning 50%-100% of AMI.

Now, only 450 units would go to that cohort, and 900 units would be aimed at those earning above the AMI.

While the currently proposed scenario was, in fact, one of three anticipated in the Housing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that ACORN negotiated with developer Forest City Ratner in May 2005, this scenario, which would reap the highest rent, was not the one the developer initially promoted.

Density questions

While Willets Point would also have a convention center and office space, note that 5500 apartments over 62 acres is much less dense than the 6430 apartments planned for the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site. Of course, AY would be closer to a transit hub, but the contrast is still significant.

FCR layoffs confirmed; parent company stock price continues to sink

A week ago, I speculated that Forest City Ratner (FCR) had laid off some people working on the Atlantic Yards project, even as corporate officials at parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) would not specify where there'd been layoffs.

Yesterday, there was partial confirmation, as the New York Post quoted sources saying there had been layoffs at FCR. Though no projects were specified, it's reasonable to believe that the company's most ambitious project couldn't have gone unscathed.

Stock price continues to fall

Meanwhile, on October 10, Forest City Enterprises' stock price was $19.79, near the low point of its 52-week range. On October 23, the price had sunk to $11.91.

Yesterday, the stock closed at $7.55. The stock chart at right covers only three months.

No wonder the Nets are giving away tickets

The New Jersey Nets, in a gesture that represents both corporate citizenship and an effort to fill some seats in the Izod Center, are giving away tickets to the jobless.

Eric McClure of NoLandGrab pointed out that, by giving away seats that are sitting empty, the Nets are not exactly "taking a hit," as a marketing expert claimed.

Indeed, based on images from last night's game against the Indiana Pacers, the seat-filling effort can't begin soon enough. See here, here, and here.

Announced attendance was 13,551, or 68% of 19,968. Then again, a reporter in the audience on Saturday observed that the arena was half-empty when the claim was 89% full.

In Coney Island Visions report, new ideas, express dreams, and AY avoidance

Observing that the city's truncated Coney Island plan--an apparent accommodation to developer Joe Sitt--"greatly reduces the area set aside for open-air amusements and puts too much faith in 'entertainment retail,'" the Center for an Urban Future yesterday issued a report called Coney Island Visions, asking thinkers from a variety of fields about Coney Island's future.

The effort is a partnership with the Municipal Art Society (MAS), which recently began the Imagine Coney initiative. While the MAS is soliciting advice from everybody (here are my suggestions), the Center for an Urban Future consulted amusement industry veteran, writers, architects, urban planners, and historians. Most have not been involved in the details of the development debate but were asked to provide a broader picture.

Avoiding AY

The first person quoted in the report brought up Atlantic Yards is an example of what not to do.

Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn & The Fortress of Solitude and an opponent of Atlantic Yards, said he thought the Brooklyn Cyclones baseball team had made a big impact. (Well, maybe during the baseball season.) He continued:
One of the things that’s perverse about this is that maybe Coney Island would love to have something like this [an arena for the Nets]. While it’s a real sore thumb here close to downtown Brooklyn, it might be a marvelous result to have a professional sports team there.

He was asked if developer Joe Sitt, "who grew up in the area," had come up with the right ideas. Lethem's response:
Being from the place does not necessarily make you the best caretaker of its meaning in a larger sense, [Brooklyn Borough President] Marty Markowitz being a key example. I think sometimes people who are of a place are too eager to erase the scruffy complicated meanings that have attached to it in favor of something quite slick, which I think is the kind of mistake that Markowitz was prone to with his encouragement of [Atlantic Yards developer Bruce] Ratner. Obviously there’s so many reasons he fell in behind that proposal, his authentic Brooklyn-ness didn’t let him see the limitations of something so monolithic and futuristic.

He added:
One of the positive things, when you say that some of the space is owned by the city and some is private. That’s good. The nightmare of Atlantic Yards is that Ratner bought everything up.

An express train

The single best idea, to me, came from Lisa Chamberlain, executive director, Forum for Urban Design:
One thought is to have an express train from Times Square to Coney Island and do some cross branding. Call it surf and turf. Times Square is probably one of the most visited place on earth. But at least now, Coney Island is visited almost exclusively by people from this region. Few tourists go there.

Express service has been suggested for years, notably in Alex Marshall's article Play Ball in the August/September 2001 edition of Metropolis. And, of course, express service would bring a Coney arena within the realm of possibility.

Indeed, Ron Shiffman co-founder, Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (and a member of the Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn advisory board), pointed out that Coney in the 1980s had been selected as a site for an amateur arena:
Coney Island may be a good alternative to consider if the Nets are to come to Brooklyn. Locating the Nets there and having the kinds of attractions there in the off months that bring a lot of people to the area would be an asset for area merchants and for the city.

Intriguing ideas

Here are some of the comments I found most intriguing.

Eric Zimmerman, founder of video game development company Gamelab:
I was thinking of an emerging genre of games that take place in public spaces and use new technologies like cell phones or GPS locators. These are sometimes known as “Big Games” or alternate reality games. And these games would take place in and about the space of Coney Island.

Mike Wallace, professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice:
One wouldn’t want a reified, abstract, cartoonish version of Coney Island—to preserve a few remaining shells when the entire web of experience and meaningfulness is gone....

Whoever’s doing this should talk to Vietnamese, Ecuadorian, Pakistani immigrants and try to figure out what it would take to get them there.

Lars Liebst, CEO, Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens:
Why don’t you create a pier? Why don’t you start up a boat from downtown New York that could go over there, so the access to that area will be much easier....

You shouldn’t just look at it as an amusement area. Look at it as a whole area where you could add cultural activities, where you could do something about hotels and restaurants. You shouldn’t just do another Six Flags, because if you do, forget it.

Michael Sorkin, principal, Michael Sorkin Studio:
If any place were a good place for a competition, this is it! A wide open architectural competition. One wants to exercise the absolute limits of creativity in a case like this. The aura is so powerful.

Charles Denson, author, Coney Island: Lost and Found and executive director/co-founder, Coney Island History Project:
They should recreate the Steeplechase Pavilion: a winter garden in the winter and a grand interior space in the summer. The main thing is the amusement area should be low-rise so it permits evolution. Once you put in high-rises, it stops the evolution. As new entertainment technology becomes known, if it’s low-rise, you can adjust.

Karrie Jacobs, architecture critic:
What seems probable given all this new investment is you’re going to have one big amusement operator come in and replace this ragtag bunch of amusements with something big and new and shiny—and economically that may be successful, but I really hope they find a way to preserve the vernacular of Coney Island. Maybe the city should institute a zoning mechanism—a vernacular bonus—that would encourage a big amusement operator or developer to lease some percentage of their holdings to the small operators, new and old, so that some of the flavor of the neighborhood can be preserved.

Words of caution

Shiffman, the last interviewee, closed with some words of caution:
I’m not hopeful because I don’t really see anybody organizing or working with those directly impacted–local residents, merchants and the communities that Coney Island serves. Developers are doing it from the perspective of their needs and the City Planning Department doesn’t really care about engaging in a community planning effort. There should be a major initiative to develop an inclusive community plan there. I would want to make sure that the kinds of things that are developed there attract people of all ages and all backgrounds and aren’t somehow screened and sanitized. It would be a shame if we screened out the kids who have traditionally come out there because they like rap music or any other type of music that attracts a diverse audience. Any development or plan for Coney Island has got to be inclusive and it’s got to include all groups in the planning process.

Perhaps the flurry of discussion will foster a more inclusive plan.

Imagine Coney? Here are three ideas: amusement museum; eating contest Hall of Fame; and street hoops haven

Inspired by the Imagine Coney initiative launched by the Municipal Art Society and the Center for an Urban Future's new Coney Island Visions report, in which many suggested drawing on Coney's roots, I offer three suggestions, one of them not my own.

A Museum of Amusement History

Credit former Brooklyn Borough Historian John Manbeck, who made this prescient suggestion in the 6/10/02 issue (PDF) of the Brooklyn Paper, in a column headlined "Coney Island Comeback?"

Manbeck wrote:
My suggestion? Use some of the promises and profits to help us remember what Coney Island really meant. Coney Island always rebuilt itself. Now build a Coney Island historic museum, a Museum of Amusement History — like William Mangels wanted back in the 1950s.

Build re-creations of Coney Island rides as Rockefeller did in Williamsburg, Va. The Trumps have roots in Coney Island.

Re-construct the old Elephant Hotel. Buy ancient merry-go-rounds and rides like the Virginia Reel. Recruit Dick Zigun to open a bigger sideshow. Re-stage Fire and Flames. Sell John Dorman’s freshmade candy. Create a miniature village of Old Coney Island. Tie in with the current attractions.

A Home and Hall of Fame for Eating Contests

Coney Island was always a place of extremes, but now movies and virtual reality (which, btw, some of have suggested has a place in the new Coney) take people farther from the amusement parks of yesteryear.

But people still go to extremes, and one of the most popular annual events in Coney is the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest (right).

Why not have a Hall of Fame that encompasses all eating contests, with photos, memorabilia, and crucial information? Why not have a restaurant that offers that time-old gastronomic wager, a free meal, if someone can eat an extreme amount?

Just like the current Coney Island Sideshow, the hot dog contest is both campy and serious--after all, you can't fake eating that much.

Coincidentally enough, contest co-impresario George Shea, a p.r. maven who founded the International Federation of Competitive Eating, also reps the Municipal Art Society. Watch his "sermon." Or this one, which has him declaring that competitive eating "is the battleground on which God and Lucifer wage war for men's souls." He's a 21st century carny par excellence.

A Haven for Street Hoops

Coney Island, notably the projects near the island's western end, has a rich basketball tradition, including New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, his cousin, Sebastian Telfair, now of the Portland Trail Blazers, and
high school star Lance Stephenson, currently the nation's second-ranked shooting guard and star of the web series Born Ready, which just happens to feature the Coney Island skyline.

Nearby Lincoln High School is a perennial powerhouse. Marbury and some of his high school cohorts appeared in Darcy Frey's book The Last Shot, and Spike Lee picked up a similar story in his film He Got Game.

In the summer, among the most famous places for street basketball in New York are Rucker Park in Harlem, the West Fourth Street courts in Greenwich Village (aka "The Cage"), and the "Garden" at Surf Avenue and 26th Street in Coney Island.

"The Cage," more than the other two, is a tourist attraction, given its more central location and proximity to public transit. Why not establish a set of quality outdoor courts near the amusement area and subway station, and treat Coney Island hoops--and street basketball in general--as a regional resource? (Hmm--and what if the arena planned for the Atlantic Yards site ends up in Coney, the site once promoted by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz?)

Maybe Marbury, who's in 2004 announced plans to fund a rec center in Coney Island, would help. He's already launched a low-priced, populist line of basketball shoes: Starbury. And does have some time on his hands.

And has the Atlantic Yards arena site been assessed? Not that I've been told

In order to generate PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes) sufficient for the Atlantic Yards arena bond, would the land under the arena be assessed in the same questionable way that the land under Yankee Stadium was assessed?

The Yankee Stadium site, as pointed out in investigations by committees led by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, was subject to a curious and precipitous increase in value, and to get to the increased value, comparables from Manhattan (including far-off Alphabet City), and failed to adjust for size, location, and time.

If the same thing is happening in Brooklyn, well, we don't know.

FOILs come up empty

On October 21, I filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC):
Under the Freedom of Information Law, I request records regarding the financing for and assessed valuation of the planned Atlantic Yards arena.

It is my understanding that a preliminary application for tax-exempt financing has been filed with ESDC. I would like a copy of that application or--if one exists--a final application.

It is my understanding that ESDC has been provided information by the New York City Department of Finance that describes the assessed valuation of the arena and/or arena site. I would like a copy of such documents.

In a letter dated October 28, the ESDC stated "there are no responsive records in ESDC's files."

I got a similar answer from the New York City Industrial Development Authority, which issued bonds for the Yankees deal but would defer to the ESDC for the arena.

As for the New York City Department of Finance, well, a response to my FOIL request is overdue.

Does a lousy record help the Nets go green?

From Sports Business Journal:
The New Jersey Nets earlier this year were recognized by The CarbonNeutral Co. for their ongoing green efforts. The team hosted six Green Nights last season and plans to host six more during the 2008-09 season, drawing fan attention to environmental issues with in-arena signage and handouts promoting eco-friendly tips.

I wrote about the issue last March, pointing out that the greenest thing would be to move to an urban arena, with Newark being the most immediate option.

A commenter on NetsDaily made a similar point, with a twist:
One way for the Nets to “Go Green” is to play in a location that is within reach of mass transit. What is the carbon footprint of the cars in the IZOD parking lot at their games?
Maybe the Nets having a bad year will be good for the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the players all have to drive to their practice facilities. I doubt a single player on that team drives a Prius or Civic hybrid.

I’d like to know just what the Nets are doing to be “carbon neutral” given the above…

In any case, it’s good the issue is on their radar screen.

After Oil: dispatches from a conference on the challenges facing cities worldwide

I couldn’t get to Philadelphia this past weekend for the symposium at the University of Pennsylvania titled Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil, but a set of jouranlists and academics blogging at the web site of the magazine Next American City posted some 16,000 words.

I’ve distilled some thought-provoking excerpts below. My overall conclusion is that, however much civic energy is spent on individual controversies (like, um, a certain Brooklyn megaproject), there are huge systemic issues we have to address, and, as noted by some of the bloggers, many of those at those conference--though more motivated than most, obviously-- didn't grasp the urgency of the problem.

(I don’t provide links to each post, but my excerpts are in chronological order, while the live blog entries are in reverse chronological order.)

The official web site states:
The event marked the 50th Anniversary of the 1958 University of Pennsylvania/Rockefeller Foundation “Conference on Urban Design Criticism,” whose participants included Jane Jacobs, Louis Kahn, Kevin Lynch, Ian McHarg, Lewis Mumford, and I.M. Pei. That historic conference helped shape the new field of urban design in the 20th Century. Now, we hope you will participate in this critical exploration of new directions for 21st Century urban design.

What about AY?

I don't know if Atlantic Yards came up at the conference, but, as a quick aside, consider whether AY would be a green development.

Well, density is good, but too much density can be extreme. Transit-oriented development is good, but less good if it includes significant amounts of parking and isn't accompanied by upgrades of local transit. Forest City Ratner aims to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for buildings, but isn't a lot of embodied energy lost when existing building are demolished, especially ones that have already been rehabbed?

Paging Jane Jacobs

The conference began, perhaps with Jane Jacobs. Andrew Blum cites a Jacobs line posted on the wall of the exhibition accompanying the conference: “Hundreds of thousands of people with hundreds of thousands of plans and purposes built the city. Only they will rebuild the city.”

Diana Lind cites two other quotes. One is from Jacobs: "In order for a society to flourish, there must be a flourishing city at its core."

The other is from Judith Rodin of the Rockefeller Foundation, former present of Penn: "Progress always starts with bold ideas."

Navigating the disconnect

Nate Berg cites Adil Najam, of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, who points to an incredible disconnect between urban policy and climate policy. He adds:
David Orr of Oberlin College argues that we don’t even have an urban development policy for one of the actual countries in our world, the United States

Berg concludes:
Building policies that address urban planning issues and climate change will need to happen soon, and ithese policies will have to be drafted together in a unified way. Maybe a good way to start that policymaking is by looking at the world as Najam’s single third-world country.

Randy Crane reacts to the opening panel:
What I am not hearing are serious proposals for institutional and political reform, or even discussions of the feasibility of such efforts.

(Maybe they should’ve been talking about congestion pricing?)

Crane observes that it's not so easy to stop sprawl, get people out of the cars, and build compact, mixed-use communities:
But each of these represents huge, extremely problematic tradeoffs that must be productively negotiated with full attention to the competing constituencies at each step of the way. 


Transit vs. autos

Randy Avent, reporting on a session on regional urban planning, disagrees with a contention by Dinesh Mohan of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi suggests that underground transit does nothing to impede automobile flow, but merely increases supply.

Avent adds:
It’s also important to remember that transit is far less competitive than it should be, relative to driving, because of the favoritism we show to automobiles. We allow drivers to use roads at no cost in most cases, leading to congestion. We provide massive volumes of parking. We build at low densities that make walking problematic.

Brief window of opportunity

Elizabeth Dickinson quotes Alex Washburn, Chief Urban Designer for the city of New York: “Cities are a confluence of politics, finances, and design and design is often the weakest. The window of opportunity for design opens and closes quickly, so when that window opens, we need to be prepared to rush in.”

Washburn warned attendees to be sure they had a place at the table: “I would challenge every designer to take a sabbatical in government and be a part of the decisions as they hang in the balance.”

Beyond Jane Jacobs?

Blum cites an “overwhelming” scope of interconnectedness that suggests the “uncomfortable inadequacy of the past century’s urban planning toolbox.” Cities, he writes, are global organisms, “a shockingly different singular image than the Jacobsean one that dominates today.”

He quotes Najam, “We’re going to spend the day as people who think about cities thinking about climate. But how do people who think about climate think about cities?”

Skepticism about LEED

Lloyd Alter quotes Himanshu Parikh, who’s skeptical about LEED, the certification system for green buildings, and prefers simpler systems that “encourage simplicity, natural ventilation, traditional ways of building as we did before electricity.”

Management vs. design

Berg, in reporting on a discussion about three global cities (Philadelphia, New York, Durban), notes that participants said that city management is more important than city design. One example: PlaNYC 2030, because it has 127 separate initiatives. (Of course the biggest one, congestion pricing, has yet to get off the ground.)

Crane reports on New York City sustainability chief Rohit Aggarwala, who noted that average carbon footprint of a NYC resident is 29% that of the national average, so one solution for climate change is to move people to big cities

Mark Alan Hughes, Philadelphia’s director of sustainability, advised that solutions are piecemeal, and major change may require fundamental governance and organizational reform.

Better understanding consumption

Dickinson cites a coinage by Alex Steffen of the magazine Worldchanging, “the Prius Effect.” Just as drivers of Priuses are more sensitive to their mileage, additional transparency in the home--and in society at large--would help us understand the costs of our decisions.

A post-oil city

Crane reports on a speech by UK Engineer Peter Head, who cited Dongtan, near Shanghai, and Brazil’s Curitiba and Colombia’s Bogota (both known for bus rapid transit, or BRT) as sustainable cities.

Among the solutions: more vegetation on roofs and roads, high speed rail, zero emission mass transit, and consolidated centers for freight delivery.

Blum was a bit skeptical, calling it
Arup’s invigorating vision of happy eco cities circa 2050—all the way through to suburban garages turned to vegetable stalls and big city buildings bragging about their energy conservation on electronic billboards.

Avent follows up by noting that China, because of its rapid urbanization, has ample opportunity to experiment, while in the United States, whether city or suburb, “the probable resistance to a wholesale rethink of our building techniques is daunting.”

The issue, he suggests, is more political than technical.

Crane, in reporting on another session, quotes population ecologist William Rees, who suggests that we must give up on material wealth, and U.S. cities must reduce their ecological footprint by 80%.

The politics of that would be even tougher.

Goodbye to cars?

Alter suggests that panelists on the “future of automobility” were “surprisingly blase” about accepting the persistence of cars.

He writes:
I frankly am a bit shocked. I would have thought that the single biggest factor affecting urban design in the age after oil is the virtual elimination of private cars, replaced by denser, walkable cities, transit and bicycles.”

Making priorities

Avent wanders the exhibiton space, and notes that participants were asked to answer big questions in urbanism by placing a marble in a jar corresponding to their preferred answer.

He notes that the use of urban brownfields for agriculture was far more popular than the elimination of car lanes for bike lanes, and the latter topped congestion pricing. Even though participants were urban planning professionals, he notes, “ordering the policies by their effectiveness on those measures would likely generate the exact reverse ranking.”

Also, he points to participants preferences on how to accommodate the rising urban population. Dense urban infill topped suburban infill or suburban greenfield development. While dense urban infill is desirable, he suggests there’s much more opportunity to increase the carrying capacity of the suburbs.

In other words, it’s a regional problem.

A skeptic in the house

Blum reports on a plenary session, Getting the Message Out: Urban Design and 21st Century Media, in which author Witold Rybczynski “referred to the topic of the day as ‘this green thing’—a phraseology that seemed the urban design equivalent of McCain’s ‘that one.’”

Asked critics should some day evaluate a building’s green credentials, his response, to Blum, was unconvincing: “I think it is quite possible, and I think we’re probably getting there.”

Indeed, many architecture critics not only shy away from green issues, they shy away from larger urban planning issues. Can you critique the design of Atlantic Yards without discussing the process?

The governance crisis

Diana Lind cites Ottawa City Councillor Clive Doucet, who emphasized “a crisis of governance—in his country and others.” Why Lind wonders, don’t New Yorkers carpool in the way they did during the December 2006 transit strike?

Alter observes that Doucet’s vision of the future is the vision of Ottawa of his past, where the cops take the bus, where there are local farmers markets, walk to the pub, walk to the store, where the first thing you do is use your feet, not your car.

The problem, Alter notes, is that such a vision won’t accommodate a billion Chinese.

Still, he reflects on a walk down Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street, which has upper floors that could be adapted, signs of much “excess capacity all over America.”

Crane reports that the success of Curitiba in Brazil, which was partly an incremental process of discovery in a rather unique governance and administrative setting (the country was under military rule at the time, so the political accountability of these decisions was not exactly a democratic one), a point on which I’ve written briefly before (by way of comparison with Bogota).

Avent quotes Curitiba’s Jonas Rabinovitch, who contends that people need an economic incentive to act, and “only later do they develop their environmental conscience.”

“Cars are the new cigarette”

Dickinson notes that several people have suggested the metaphor of smoking, that the societal shift came about after research and political advocacy. She quotes Stephen Goldsmith: “Cars are the new cigarette. We have to teach people that cars are cancerous.”

One commenter notes that many people assumed that smoking could not be banned in American cities and especially Ireland--but the culture changes.

Where from here?

The skeptical Alter, at a closing breakout session, expresses dismay “at how little attention was actually being paid to the issue of urban design after oil.”

He writes:
William Rees of the University of British Columbia got it, and tried to get some focus on the issue of the end of oil. A few others got it, and stressed the need for urgency and action. But most were less concerned about mitigation or adaptation than they were about more traditional planning issues.

Avent observes:
I appreciate the idea of an ecological approach to city planning... but our immediate task is more specific.... Planners must act to cajole both households and leaders into accepting changes that constitute, on the surface at least, a painful alteration of lifestyle. Forget, for the moment, total recycling of waste. How do we get people to want to walk from one place to another? Forget, for the moment, the encasement of buildings in energy-producing algae tubes. How do we attract young families back into cities from the suburbs, reducing their carbon footprints in the process?

His conclusion:
We have to sell the people something they’re not sure they need, and it seems unlikely that merely telling them they need it is going to change their minds. Planners have to convince them they want it, through the power of their design.

No time to waste

Alter notes that it took a lot of time for the lessons of the urban design conference 50 years ago to be absorbed, but we don’t have that luxury today.

The issue, he concludes, is that people's lifestyles must change:
This is why I thought that the preoccupation with carbon dioxide and climate change was a misdirection; what we have is a planning and design issue, that we have planned our nation around cheap individual transportation. The main impact of peak oil is not that we will run out of the stuff, but that it will get more and more expensive as the supply dwindles.... That will affect planning and urban design in real, not academic time. When gas hit four bucks a gallon the value of suburban real estate took a severe hit. Sales of sophisticated personal alternate power sourced vehicles, called bicycles, soared. Business owners started questioning why they pay for office space when they can have people work from home. Trains still didn’t run on time but they suddenly were filled.

New problems, new media

Alter suggests that reaction must occur in blog-time, not book-time:
My hope is that somewhere in that conference, among the presenters, observers or students, there is another young woman or man putting these thoughts together like Jane Jacobs did fifty years ago. I hope she writes more quickly and that the professions are quicker on the uptake. Frankly, I hope she blogs, it’s faster and we don’t have a lot of time. We have a little economic time-out right now to put our thoughts together, to consider what we have to do to respond to the problem of Re-imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil.

That should remind us of an April 2006 quote from journalist and Streetsblog founder Aaron Naparstek: "If Jane Jacobs had the tools and technology back when she was fighting Robert Moses' plans to bulldoze Lower Manhattan, I bet 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' would have been a blog."

In China, many eggs broken for omelet of massive urban tranformation

Last week, I mentioned how an urban planner was impressed by China's massive efforts at urbanization, and that a critic listening was appalled at the casual dismissal of the costs of upheaval.

But how much transformation is there? In an interview in the September issue of Metropolis, headlined The Chinese Century, Thomas J. Campanella, author of The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World, explained that this is unprecedented:
We’ve never seen anything like this in terms of the sheer amount of stuff being built. But we’ve also never seen so much destroyed in order to build. You know the old maxim “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”? Robert Moses was very fond of that saying. Well, China has busted a lot of eggs to make this great big omelet. The amount of urban fabric that’s been razed to make way for all this new construction is unprecedented in the peacetime history of world cities. In fact, the only comparable thing we have—and I don’t want to make too much of this because in China it’s reconstruction—is the wartime bombings of cities like Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sledgehammer vs. gavel

Campanella suggested that, while China should offer more community participation, in the U.S. things go too far:
We have these long time frames in America when it comes to urban planning. I’ve served on the town-planning board in Hillsborough, North Carolina, for several years, and there’s this little river-walk project that we have been trying to get built for about six years—coddling, wheedling, nurturing, and arguing with the landholders to convince them to give an easement; trying to get funding for it; writing grants. In the seven months that I was in Nanjing, the local government built this incredible world-class trails system around the lake and mountain there. I remember looking at it, thinking, The happy medium is somewhere between these two poles. In the U.S. we have what I call an “excess of gavel”—too much participatory democracy. Anybody can come out of the woodwork. It doesn’t take more than a couple noisy people to bring a project to its knees for a long time. The problem in China: they have the opposite set of issues. They have no gavel. They have nothing but a sledgehammer. I’ve argued that we could use a little bit more sledgehammer here, and China could use a little bit more gavel.

The Chinese century

He agreed, that while the last century was the American century, we're now in the Chinese century:
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry James had spent about twenty years away from the United States. They were critical years: the industrial revolution, large-scale immigration. And then he came back around 1904, and he wrote about seeing those towers in Lower Manhattan for the first time. The tone that he writes with, regarding these buildings, had that same mix of awe and fear, envy and admiration and befuddlement, that I’ve felt myself and seen in others writing about rising skyscrapers in Pudong, Shanghai, or Shenzhen. Chicago, New York, and San Francisco were the Shen­zhen and the Guangzhou of one hundred years ago. I feel that we now look to China in a way that’s remarkably similar to the way old-world Europeans felt about us. We have become the Old World. Now, I’m not saying we’re finished. But, as far as urban ambition, we are, I think, finished.

Lupica: "Bloomberg was a cheerleader for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards hustle"

New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica today, in a column headlined Yankees' and Mets' new stadiums are NYC's real tax burden, slams Mayor Mike Bloomberg for city support of the new stadiums, then adds:
Oh yeah: It's also worth pointing out that Bloomberg was a cheerleader for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards hustle, along with just about every other politician of note in town.

Critic Huxtable: "Everything in this city is totally developer driven"

In Philip Lopate's interview in today's New York Times with Ada Louise Huxtable, "the dean of American architectural criticism" has some harsh words for the developer-driven world of architecture in New York today.

The interview is headlined Her New York and takes off from Huxtable's new book, On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change. She currently writes for the Wall Street Journal (at 87!) but made her reputation at the Times.

"Eye candy"

Huxtable sets out a central problem: Architecture is a very real and important art; it affects us all so directly. You must judge it in terms of problem-solving in this uneasy, difficult combination of structure and art. My feeling is that criticism is not looking at this — it is treating architecture as eye candy.

Indeed, I'd point out that the late Herbert Muschamp pronounced Atlantic Yards "a Garden of Eden" only with some major blinkers.

Huxtable does offer some praise for the Atlantic Yards architect, though she doesn't mention him in context of the Brooklyn project:
The “wow” buildings. Don’t blame it all on Frank Gehry. Gehry is legit; what he did at Bilbao is superb. He showed us how to marry all the arts in our time. But the lesson taken away from it was: We need something that looks “iconic,” that’s going to put our city on the map.

She acknowledges some tension regarding such buildings: For a while the novelty was very great. It doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of functioning well for people who use it. On the other hand, if it doesn’t take us to another place, it’s nostalgia, and there’s an awful lot of nostalgia operating out there today.

The lesson of Rockefeller Center

Lopate: New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities-within-a city, like Rockefeller Center. Why do you think it’s so hard to do that now?

Huxtable: If you look at Rockefeller Center in detail, it’s a very elegant plan... First of all, Rockefeller Center was privately planned. It was planned for profit; it was a hard-nosed thing, and of course during the Depression it had to be rejiggered completely because it lost its anchor tenant, the Metropolitan Opera. But while Rockefeller insisted on a certain return of profit, he did hire the best architects and let them alone, and they combined Beaux-Arts and modernist principles into a really complex, humanistic urban plan.

Note that there were multiple architects, not one. Gehry has said he'd typically bring other architects in on a project as big as Atlantic Yards, but developer Bruce Ratner said no.

"Totally developer driven"

Huxtable continues: We don’t have that kind of development now. Everything in this city is totally developer driven. You do not get Rockefeller Center-type development unless you have some kind of leadership that will commit to it; and these developers are so powerful and so wealthy and so sure of what they want that you’re starting from a different premise. We’ve had, I think, a very good mayor, who has done good things for the city, but he doesn’t know the difference. Bloomberg’s a businessman: he thinks development is planning.

Lopate: You say in your book, “Here we practice the art of the deal, not the art of the city.”

Huxtable: Exactly. It’s your urban development corporations, state and city, that are in charge of these things, not the planners. There’s nobody in there that has any of this city-making programmed in their heads; they have dollars and cents and time frames. It’s pure business.

The role of density

Lopate: I take it you’re for density but not for overbuilding.

Huxtable: How can I be against density? I’m a New Yorker! I grew up with density. Still, in a way I’m glad for this downturn in the economy. Because so much bad stuff was being built. This will give us a chance to think, to take stock. I am so weary of these stupid alliances between developers and cultural institutions in which the cultural institution is given a block of space and the developers overbuild the rest and make an enormous profit.

She also could have mentioned the alliance between Forest City Ratner and ACORN, which led to, as I've written, a privately-negotiated affordable housing bonus.

Was Izod Center 89% full or "half-empty"?

The announced attendance at the basketball game Friday night between the New Jersey Nets and the Detroit Pistons was 17,767, meaning the Izod Center, which has a capacity of 19,968 (the box score in the New York Times said 19,900) was 89% full.

The New York Times described the arena as "half-empty." Could it be that a lot of ticket-holders just didn't show up?

While some photos of the game suggest that sections of the arena were close to full, other photos confirm that there were a lot of empty seats, if not necessarily 50%. See here, here, here, and here.

Times columnist skeptical of stadium subsidies; what about AY?

In a column today headlined For Sports Teams, Mayors Play Ball at the City’s Expense, New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer takes a very skeptical view of increasing city subsidies for new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets.

After pointing out that Mayor Mike Bloomberg is prepared to close health clinics and libraries, Dwyer comments:
The premise of these sports stadium investments, public officials say, is that economic development benefits will roll into the city over the decades — $40 million over 40 years in the Bronx, for instance.

Perhaps this will happen.

Or maybe it is a hallucination that is even flimsier than the assumptions that drove Wall Street to sink trillions into financial instruments that no one actually understood but all the right people agreed were worth tons of money.

What about AY?

Perhaps he could turn his attention to the Atlantic Yards arena, for which Bloomberg claimed in 2004, "This will be done with private money, and any city monies of any meaningful size will be debt issues financed by the extra tax revenues that come from this."

That was before the city pledged $100 million in subsidies, then added $105 million more. And the developer wants, at least, another $100 million.

Paging Jane Jacobs? Panel takes on where and how to build affordable housing

So, what would Jane Jacobs say (WWJJS)? It’s hard to extrapolate the oracle of 1961 New York to the much-changed situation of 2008, and it’s especially hard to transfer her wisdom to the problem of affordable housing, which was a lesser and different problem in her time.

But Jacobs above all urged people to see for themselves, and that was one underlying message of a panel discussion Wednesday, titled Housing New Yorkers in the 21st Century, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation as the First Annual Jane Jacobs Forum. Last year the two organizations collaborated on the Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York exhibition.

(I wrote yesterday about how a city official’s observations on the trade-offs between neighborhood character and density suggested a process much different from that which brought us Atlantic Yards.)

(Note the lengthy comments by Benjamin Hemric below.)

Bleak picture

Moderator Vicki Been, director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, set out a bleak picture, citing the a “terrible crisis in getting land,” leading to increasing costs of land, plus skyrocketing construction costs and “a fair amount of community opposition to a variety of proposals.” Beyond that, even before recent credit crunch, various neighborhoods, especially poorer ones, have faced a decreasing availability of credit. Also, various neighborhoods face the ripple effects of the foreclosure crisis. (Here's testimony Been recently made before Congress.)

She noted that recent Furman Center research showed that, of 333 census tracts throughout the city, 220 saw more mortgage foreclosures than new mortgages being originated. Meanwhile, the amount of housing subsidies from the city, state, and federal governments has decreased. (“That is only going to get worse,” Been added, which implies that even a Democratic administration in Washington has other priorities.)

The demand to make homes more environmentally sustainable also raises costs, she said. Further complicating the picture, she concluded, “We’re seeing increasing frustration about the ability of communities to plan for what’s going on in their community.”

Providing affordable housing

Been began with a provocative question: why does New York City have to provide housing for all segments of our workforce, to all who want to live here? Why can’t people live in New Jersey and take the PATH train?

Jerilyn Perine, director, Citizens Housing and Planning Council and a former commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, acknowledged the contradictions in Jacobs’s vision. “Here’s somebody who sort of talks with great love of the diversity of the neighborhoods, yet really dislikes public housing,” she said.

Jacobs invented the idea of community participation but, in the book, supported Columbia’s plan to expand into Morningside Park without mentioning the local community’s criticism. And while Jacobs drew “such a fine grain description of her [Greenwich Village] neighborhood,” she “dismisses the Bronx.”

“So there’s this funny dichotomy, which particularly comes through with housing,” Perine said, noting that Jacobs didn’t look at the macro housing market. “In some ways that epitomizes the conflict we’ve always had,” she said, between planners who work in neighborhoods and people who look at larger trends.

Where to put subsidies?

These days, Perine said, there are plenty of places in New York that are affordable to someone, and it’s a question of where to direct subsidies. Even 20 years ago, she reminded the audience, Mayor Ed Koch used to say that everybody can’t live south of 96th Street.

These days, there are pressure “to put city dollars into places with very high underlying market values.” If Jane Jacobs were here today, Perine said she hoped Jacobs would push officials to clarify “what problem are we solving. Are we trying to make the West Village affordable for somebody who wants a $500 apartment, or are we starting to make Far Rockaway, East New York, Bushwick and Brownsville, and Morrisania places to grow the middle-class? I’d hope it would be that.”

The AY example

Perhaps half of the 450 lowest-income apartments at Atlantic Yards, those aimed to households of one, two, or three people, would rent for around $500. There would be 2250 subsidized units.
City Council Member Bill de Blasio, in an interview last year, acknowledged that, from a purely economic standpoint, affordable housing should be concentrated in neighborhoods where it costs less to build, but argued that there are social costs to forcing the working class farther out, as in Paris.

(He also, oddly enough, claimed that the Community Benefits Agreement would guarantee the affordable housing in the absence of scarce subsidies, not noticing that the housing depends on such subsidies.)

HPD’s take

HPD Deputy Commissioner for Development Holly Leicht said New York has to be maintain diversity, and pointed out that the city must support not only low-income housing but also housing for those of middle and moderate incomes.

(Such “workforce housing” actually would be a majority of the planned Atlantic Yards subsidized housing; the irony is that most members of the low-income group ACORN, which “negotiated” the AY affordable housing agreement, wouldn’t qualify for those units, as those seeking housing discovered at a July 2006 AY affordable housing information session.)

Leicht said Perine brought up a “complicated question” raising “hard trade-offs,” noting that HPD has walked a fine line on it.

Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC) in Brooklyn, suggested that New York City’s growth depends on immigrant groups, who help fuel “our competitive edge... It’s very clear from a public policy standpoint that you have to have the housing that fuels that diversity.” Still, she acknowledged that it was valid to raise questions “about where you’re going invest those limited public resources.”

No one other than Perine took a clear stand. Later, even Perine hedged a bit, acknowledging that inclusionary housing does create some low-income housing in more expensive areas. Still she pointed to “a whole swath of Central Brooklyn... that really needs a tremendous amount of assistance and investment.”

“So. do you do that one unit in a high-market area or do you do the ten units in the lower-income communities that sort of have endemic housing issues?” she asked rhetorically. “I don’t think there’s a perfect answer.” Such trade-offs are ones that policymakers must “wrestle with every day.”

Unmentioned during the panel discussion is that there’s a lot of de facto affordable housing in less-affordable neighborhoods, thanks to 20somethings putting up room dividers in already small apartments and the creation of rooming houses by immigrants sleeping in shifts. The latter, at least, violates the housing code, raising questions of whether it should be modernized or better enforced.

(A reader reminds me that there's a lot of rent-regulated affordable housing in less-affordable neighborhoods.)

Adding density

Been noted that the city could add housing supply, and affordable housing, by becoming more dense. She noted another potential contradiction with Jacobs, who detailed the fine-grained nature of her neighborhood while also supporting significant density. (Jacobs, it should be mentioned, supported density via a variety of building types, not projects, as was the dominent policy of the time.)

Leicht allowed that “it’s a complicated question,” noting that, in its rezonings, the Department of City Planning (DCP) has generally tried to upzone wide avenues in areas where there’s transit access, and to downzone smaller blocks. Also, DCP has offered a bonus by adding density for affordable housing. (Note that DCP did so for part of Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, but missed the boat in the first phase of the Fourth Avenue rezoning.)

While there has been some success, Leicht acknowledged that large parts of Queens and Staten Island have argued against density. (At a panel discussion last month, both Steven Spinola of the Real Estate Board of New York and community planning advocate Tom Angotti criticized downzonings in Queens neighborhoods with good transit access.)

Leicht went on to discuss how a more transparent process has emerged in which the public gets a sense of the trade-off between affordability and density--a process, I pointed out yesterday, absent from the Atlantic Yards plan.

Later, de la Uz brought up Atlantic Yards as an example of going too far, but exaggerated the numbers: “If it’s built the way it was approved, we’re going to end up with 16 60-story buildings, making it the most dense census tract by two in North America. There’s a point at which things get ridiculous in the conversation.”

While the Atlantic Yards density may be “ridiculous,” the buildings would range from about 20 stories to about 50 stories.

An architect’s take

Architect Mark Ginsberg of Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, offered two more factors to consider. Since 1960, the average dwelling size in this country has doubled in size, though the increase is not as dramatic in New York. Also, the size of average household is much smaller. Given those factors, a typical building houses fewer people, thus adding pressure on density.

While the city’s 1916 zoning rezoning resolution was designed for a buildout of 40 million people, clearly overambitious, the 1961 zoning resolution would only accommodate 12 million people, he said. Even that latter number must be lowered, he said, because of the combination of downzonings and neighborhoods not fully built out. Given that the city could now accommodate perhaps 10 million people, that adds pressure for density, he said. “We’re going to have to look at upzonings, hopefully in ways that don’t destroy a community.”

(Note that the Empire State Development Corporation declared underutilization--less than 60% allowable development rights--a factor in blight, which would condemn large swaths of Brooklyn.)

What about New Jersey?

Been, who noted that President-elect Barack Obama “has shown some inclination to think about cities as metro areas.,” asked what was so sacrosanct about the city’s boundaries. After all, there’s capacity for housing in northern New Jersey cities served by public transportation.

Forward-thinking transportation planners in the New York metro area see an eventual amalgamation of the PATH and New York City Transit systems, leading to a one-fare ride to cities in northern New Jersey, but that’s hardly far off.

Ginsberg said he had no problem with people looking at the region, but that might mean, as with commercial office space, population growth might occur more across the river.

How much community input?

Perine said Jacobs raised core arguments about the role of planning versus community input. “Planning is really about one thing, it’s about the future,” she said. While the community planning advocacy perspective “is important and valuable and should be listened to,” she warned, “There are very few communities that come to City Planning and say, ‘Y’know we’d really like you to figure out how you make more room for the Ecuadorians who are coming, or the South Asian immigrants we believe will be coming in the next five years.’” The audience chuckled at the recognition.

“No one says that,” she continued. “The planners really have to be thinking about the future, so community planning becomes about the future... not about sort of pandering to the idea of communities as little museums, to be preserved in the image of people who are there today, or, even worse, have some sort of nostalgic blowback version of their community that, yknow, I don’t think any community can stand up to... Does that mean we should build 80-story buildings on Barrow Street? no, but there’s something in between.”

Angotti and others would point out that, in the Melrose Commons redevelopment in the Bronx, local residents actually requested increased density.

Perine acknowledged that everybody would like their neighborhood to be contextual, but downzonings that eliminate elevator buildings also eliminate housing accessible to the elderly or the handicapped.

The role of design

Been asked design can be used to make affordable housing more acceptable to the neighbors. Ginsberg noted that there are different ways to get the same density.

de la uz noted that, during controversy over a building the FAC plans for supportive housing, neighbors raised many questions about the people the building would serve, but no one raised concerns about the design. “It was wonderful to take that off the table,” she said.

Leicht said the design of affordable housing has come a long way. She noted that a design competition, cosponsored with AIA, for an HPD site in the South Bronx led to a winning design that was arguably “a little bit less sexy” than the second-place entrant. But “the reality is, that [winner] is going to be built, it’s an incredibly sustainable building.”

Community participation

Been asked how to improve community participation, whether the land use review process needs to be rethought or whether it’s more a matter of tweaking around the edges, as in Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s efforts to professionalize community boards.

de la Uz noted that the Fifth Avenue Committee doesn’t “get a shovel into the ground until we’ve had community advisory meetings and ... charrettes.”

Perine reminded the audience of Jacobs’s key criticism, that planners at that time “didn’t actually look at what was really happening at communities.” Rather than slavishly follow Jacobs’s vision of 1961 New York, “first and foremost, she’s saying, ‘Go and look for yourself.’” (That was the key message of the Jacobs exhibition last year at the Municipal Art Society.)

Current discussion, she warned “are far too Manhattan-centric, too dominated by a white intellectual conversations.” People must pay attention to “the two most dramatic changes”: the influx of immigrants and “the rapid change of household composition.”

de la Uz pointed out that “the City Planning Commission has basically become a zoning commission, not a full planning commission,” but noted that CPC has learned some lessons, and “now there’s much more advance conversation going on.”

That led up to Leicht’s comments, which I wrote about yesterday, about how “ULURP is awfully late to start a conversation about a large project.”

What next?

Been asked panelists about their wish list; what public investments might foster affordable housing. Perine returned to the regional issue. “I would swap Staten Island for Paterson and Newark and Jersey City,” she said, to laughs from the crowd. “I suggested the swap thing to Mayor Bloomberg once when I was housing community, and he said, ‘That’s good, never say that again.’ But I’m not in the administration.”

She also argued for extending the Number 7 train, both westward, as already planned to support the Hudson Yards development, “but also bring a transport system to Eastern Queens. To be honest, I think if you just did that, a lot of things would take care of themselves.”

Leicht pointed to the need to increase the sewer capacity. “We just did a huge rezoning in Jamaica,” she said. “There’s tons of potential in Jamaica for density and growth, but the sewer system is outrageously outdated... If we’re going to be doing a lot rezonings and density, we can’t do it til the infrastructure is in place.”

Peine pointd out that the cities in norther New Jersey already have such infrastructure.

Ginsberg suggested a revision in city regulation, so, for example, somewhat more costly green roofs are counted in lowering a building’s impact on the sewer system.

de la Uz added that brownfields could support increased development, as is happening at the Public Place site on the Gowanus Canal. “There’s this notion that there’s no more land,” she said. “There are thousands of brownfield sites that go undeveloped because of complexity of redevelopment process.” (Part of the Atlantic Yards site is a brownfield, and state subsidies are expected.)

She also suggested efforts to improve public transportation, such as the expansion of Bus Rapid transit suggested by the Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE) coalition. Increased support for transportation, she noted, could have come out of congestion pricing.

Indeed, left on the table as the conversation ran down was how to pay for housing and other improvements. Surely congestion pricing will return in some form.

Which would be better policy, direct investments in housing or efforts to upgrade transportation in areas, such as Third Avenue in the Bronx or 21st Street in Astoria/LIC, where there’s ample opportunity for development, as planner Alexander Garvin has pointed out? Wouldn’t the latter bring more bang for the buck?

In informal conversations after the panel, the answer I got back was that it’s complicated, and that both were necessary. Housing subsidies, I was told, bring more immediate impact. Still, we should remember that lotteries for government affordable housing bring some winners but also frustrate a lot of people, so there must be efforts to increase the supply.

An AY reference

Perine at one point noted that, while planners should be careful not to inhibit change too much, Jacobs was writing when widespread demolition for urban renewal was common.

“It was a much more, let’s say, gruesome reality that she was reacting to,” she said. “We haven’t seen that kind of wholesale urban renewal condemnation and widespread clearance for same time. even a site like Atlantic Yards, one could argue, is just 35 years later. It was a very old urban renewal plan designed at that point for that sort of old Jane Jacobs time.”

However, the connection between the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area (ATURA) and Atlantic Yards is hardly tight; the pending eminent domain case involves properties outside ATURA that Forest City Ratner included in order to build at the density and scale it--not any evaluating agency--deemed economically sustainable.

HPD official says development trade-offs should be transparent (and implicitly indicts the AY approval process)

In talking about development trade-offs, a top official in the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Wednesday night provided an (implicit) indictment of the process behind Atlantic Yards.

HPD Deputy Commissioner for Development Holly Leicht spoke matter-of-factly during a panel discussion, titled Housing New Yorkers in the 21st Century, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation as the First Annual Jane Jacobs Forum. (I’ll write tomorrow about the broader issues raised at the forum.)

She even declared that the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)--which Atlantic Yards critics stress was bypassed in the state approval process--doesn’t work for large projects.

Balance and transparency

Leicht acknowledged the challenge in balancing neighborhood character and the need for increased density to accommodate a growing population and additional affordable units. In the rezoning of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront (approved in May 2005), she reflected, the City Planning Commission wanted less density while HPD wanted more.

Since then, she said, “The best thing that’s happened is that it has become a more transparent process, of really saying to the public, ‘OK, we’re going to show you our numbers, we’ve done analysis. We can show you how much affordability you can get, but this is what it’s going to be, and how are we going to sort of meet all these various needs.’”

The city has engaged with communities over those trade-offs, she said. "And to some degree, I think that that’s been successful. I think there are still places where people think things are too tall, but I think, increasingly, it’s already that challenge is there, it’s only going to get worse, because there’s just not land left.”

The opacity of AY

She didn't mention Atlantic Yards, which stands in clear contrast to that process. As I've written, AY included a privately-negotiated affordable housing bonus, with Forest City Ratner agreeing to build 50% affordable rental units (assuming the availability of subsidies, which isn't a given), and partner ACORN signing a contract agreeing to publicly support the project as a whole.

There was no public discussion of the balance; in fact, ACORN’s Bertha Lewis notably eschewed that role, declaring 2/28/06, “So, if I could stop one iota of gentrification, I’ll do it. I can't do environment. I can’t do traffic.”

(She added that “we're not just singleminded and coldhearted," but the ACORN contingent at the 8/23/06 hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement often disparaged those who tried to discuss the project's environmental impact.)

Similarly, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz defended the scale of the project without acknowledging tradeoffs, declaring on 5/7/06, "It has to be that big, for the affordable housing.”

ULURP is too late

Even former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff acknowledges Atlantic Yards should’ve gone through ULURP, which gives community boards an advisory vote and requires the approval of the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Atlantic Yards critics point out that ULURP at least allows local elected officials a voice, adding legitimacy.

HPD's Leicht, however, warned Wednesday night, “ULURP is awfully late to start a conversation about a large project. It’s one thing if you’re talking about a small project, and you’re going to tweak a floor... or affordability, slightly. If you’re talking about a large-scale project, ULURP is simply too late to really have that dialogue.”

“To me, the issue is not so much needing more expertise on community boards,” she added, in an apparent reference to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s efforts to provide land use training and urban planning interns to community boards in that borough.

Starting dialogue

“I find some of the most knowledgeable, sophisticated community boards tend to be the ones that get into the weeds and fight you to the end about 37 floors versus 35 floors. That isn’t the essence of what Jane Jacobs was talking about or what community planning is about," Leicht continued. "The best experience I’ve had in terms of really getting meaningful input has been far earlier.... It’s having a dialogue with community members about what do you want to see in your community, what’s missing.”

She offered as an example the effort to develop Public Place in Brooklyn. For four months in 2007, Brooklyn Community Board 6 and HPD held a series of public visioning sessions about the potential project there. Later, the city issued a Request for Proposals, and a development team was selected in April.

Needless to say, there was no such dialogue and no RFP for Atlantic Yards. (There was a belated RFP for one component of the project site, the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard, 18 months after the city and state announced they were backing Forest City Ratner's plan).

Listening to Yormark: sports reporter says Brooklyn deal is a go

In the Big Lead sports blog, sports reporter Dave D'Alessandro of the Newark Star-Ledger said he thinks the Brooklyn move will happen--though his source is not exactly reliable.

Q: Will the Nets ever make it to Brooklyn? The delays have us thinking no. If that’s the case, then do you think LeBron stays in Cleveland, or winds up with the Knicks? Or can you imagine him playing in New Jersey? Is there even a darkhorse for his services, or is he the type who bigger-than-sports star must be in one of the NBA’s major markets, like LA, Chicago, or NY?

His response: The political momentum is such that there may be no turning back at this point, and the linchpin in this deal – sharp guy named Brett Yormark – asserts that the financing is there, and that his partners are content to see it through. Even Barclays, which actually turned down Gordon Brown’s handout, seems to be hanging in there. Maybe that’s just a company line, but the signs are that they’re still going to break ground. . . . uh, some time in the coming century. And yes, it would appear silly for LBJ to make the leap without a guarantee that he’ll be out of Jersey within weeks after signing any deal with Team JayZ, unless it involves a secret chunk of the equity that would get him to cool his heels for a while. Otherwise, how can anyone seriously be sold on playing in Jersey?

While I agree that the "Atlantic Yards is dead" meme is way overstated, I also think anything Yormark says should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, he's the guy who last year said the arena would break ground in the fall of 2007 and open in 2009. Now groundbreaking might happen next year and 2012 is a more likely best-case scenario for an arena opening.

(Here are some comments on NetsDaily.)

Has Forest City laid off anyone working on AY? I'd bet yes

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Forest City Enterprises (FCE), parent of Forest City Ratner, announced layoffs Wednesday, "citing tight credit conditions and dwindling demand from retail tenants for its projects."

Spokesman Jeff Linton wouldn't specify numbers, but said it was what the newspaper termed "a small percentage of the company's work force of 3,200."

Is AY included?

A brief paragraph, I think, provides some clues about Atlantic Yards:
He said the company remains committed to all projects already under way. "It's those far-future things that we've made the determinations that we need to slow down," he said.

You might say Atlantic Yards is "already under way," given that the developer and affiliates have already invested $250 million.

However, FCE categorizes Atlantic Yards in the "initial development stage," one step behind the "shadow pipeline."

Forest City Enterprises CEO Chuck Ratner said two weeks ago, "We have also demonstrated repeatedly in recent months that we continue to have access to non-recourse financing to fund our development pipeline projects."

In April, Ratner told investment analysts, "We’re looking at our entire development pipeline with a much more critical eye in response to realities of the current market. As a result, we’re moving forward only with the strongest projects and slowing or delaying others until those opportunities mature further or economic conditions stabilize."

Again, here he was talking about projects ahead of Atlantic Yards.

"Key project milestones"

In April, Joanne Minieri, president of Forest City Ratner, said of Atlantic Yards, "And upon the achievement of key project milestones, we will proceed as planned."

That, I wrote at the time, could mean the additional subsidies--at least $100 million--that the developer has requested, and at which strapped city and state government may not look favorable.

It also could mean the favorable renewal of the Barclays Center naming rights deal, the resolution of which we should know by the end of November. It also likely means the grandfathering in of tax-exempt bonds for the arena, which was achieved last month.

Why AY

But here's why I suspect Atlantic Yards is in the category of "those far-future things" cited by spokesman Linton. The developer can't have many people working on projects in the category that exists before the "initial development stage" category. So that latter category has to be a target for layoffs.

In March 2007, Chuck Ratner acknowledged regarding the shadow pipeline: "As you know, in our business, these things take a very long time, most often, frankly, longer than we anticipate." That statement obviously applies even more so to projects in the "initial development stage."

FCR confirms planned increase in AY office space, decrease in condos

We have further confirmation Forest City Ratner plans more Atlantic Yards office space than previously announced, 1 million sf rather than 336,000 sf, an apparent recognition that the condo market is in trouble and a hope, based on some mixed evidence, that the office market will pick up.

Also, if the pattern regarding office space in Downtown Brooklyn extends to Atlantic Yards, most of the jobs would be firms relocating from Manhattan to Brooklyn; thus the jobs wouldn't be new.

The New York Times, in an article yesterday headlined Office Tenants Flee Manhattan Rents for Brooklyn, reported enthusiastically on the office market in Brooklyn, focusing on Forest City Ratner (and failed to mention that FCR is the partner of the parent New York Times Company in the new Times Tower).

AY office space: 1 million square feet

The article stated:
Plans are in the works that would profoundly change the scale of the office market near Downtown Brooklyn. The most drastic is the long-delayed $4 billion Atlantic Yards project...

MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president for commercial and residential development at Forest City Ratner, said the project would add up to one million square feet of office space, including a 600,000-square-foot tower. In addition, the company says it has the capacity to add almost one million square feet of office space in the MetroTech development.

Keep in mind that FCR originally announced 2.1 million square feet of office space, involving the four towers wrapping the arena. That allowed them to promise 10,000 new jobs, though that total was dubious from the start, given lowered demand and the fact that many jobs likely would be relocated rather than new. (Image from 2004 flier.)

Ultimately, the projection was lowered 336,000 square feet, and that figure still appears on the official Atlantic Yards web site (right).
That amount of space could house 1340 jobs; 1 million square feet could house 4000 jobs.

Delays pending

There's no reason to think that the new office space is coming soon. The Times reported:
But Ms. Gilmartin said Forest City Ratner would not build any new office space in Brooklyn until it had adequate advance leasing. She said that before the credit markets froze up this fall, the banks could finance buildings with 50 percent advance leasing. Although it is too soon to say what might happen once the credit markets thaw, she speculated that bankers might want greater advance leasing, perhaps as much as 60 to 75 percent.

Beyond that, note that increasing construction costs, including the Frank Gehry premium, should mean that Atlantic Yards office space is more expensive than Downtown Brooklyn office space, making it somewhat tougher to attract tenants.

For Building 1 in the Atlantic Yards project, the developer is looking for an anchor tenant, essentially-cold calling, the Times reported in March.

Changing plans

As approved, Building 1 was to contain a mix of uses, including office space, condos, and a hotel. However, in May, the developer announced that Building 1 would consist only of office space, with 650,000 square feet, but was waiting for an anchor tenant.

Why was housing eliminated? Perhaps FCR concluded that the condo market had softened. Indeed, the developer chose not to build condos at its Beekman Tower in Manhattan.

Also, as I reported last month, FCR p.r. firm Geto & DeMilly's web site, in renderings and a site plan from May, show both Site 5, at the far west end of the project footprint, and Building 1 would contain office space (yellow). The tower at Site 5, on land now occupied by P.C. Richard/Modell's, was previously supposed to be condos.

Brooklyn office market picking up?

I wrote last year that the Brooklyn office market is tanking, but it seems to be picking up--though not as dramatically as the Times indicated.

Brooklyn offers a cost advantage, with asking rents now $30.52, significantly lower than those in Manhattan; major tax breaks cut the effective rent nearly in half, to $16, the Times reported.

Note that these tax breaks are targeted to keep companies now in Manhattan from moving to New Jersey or Westchester and instead to stay in the city. In other words, the office jobs are relocated rather than new, even though Forest City Ratner promised new jobs.
Vacancy rate much like 2006

The Times reported:
The vacancy rate there in modern, well-equipped buildings — what brokers refer to as Class A office space — fell to 7.9 percent in the third quarter, from 9.4 percent in the first quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the commercial real estate concern.

The Downtown Brooklyn office market has only about 8 million sf of Class A space. The Times reported that leases signed this year total nearly 300,000 square feet.

But the math on the vacancy rate is a little fuzzy. Of 8 million sf, 9.4% is 752,000 sf and 7.9% is 632,000. That means a net pickup of only 120,000 sf, not 300,000 sf.

The vacancy rate is only fractionally better than that at the end of January 2006, when it was 644,909 sf, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report cited last year in the Real Deal.

FCR "sitting pretty"?

The article ended on an up note:
So the office market in Downtown Brooklyn might remain tight for some time. There is some sublease space on the market; and JPMorgan Chase is looking to rent out a large block of space in its buildings in MetroTech. But Ms. Gilmartin said that 99 percent of Forest City Ratner’s space in MetroTech is leased. “We are sitting pretty now,” she said.

Presumably much of the remaining 632,000 sf is controlled by JPMorgan Chase.

Had the article taken a wider view, Gilmartin's statement could have been treated with much more skepticism. Forest City Ratner can't be sitting all that pretty, given that the flagship Atlantic Yards tower is nowhere near construction.

AY supporter Thompson clarifies position: no more subsidies

From the New York Observer's interview with Comptroller William Thompson, who remains a mayoral candidate:
The Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn faces some clear challenges, and the developer has asked for more than $100 million in additional assistance from the city. Do you think the project should get more government assistance if it can’t go forward otherwise?

No. I think that that project has received a lot of government assistance to this point. It’s a project I supported in its original form. It continues to morph and change, and that may be one of the projects that you have to reevaluate on a staged basis before you move forward. It is still a project that I support, but it continues to change.

Well, the city originally pledged $100 million for infrastructure or land, but later devoted that entire sum to land and added another $105 million for infrastructure. Total: $205 million.

So, I'm not sure whether the "more than $100 million in additional assistance" is a reference to the initial addition of subsidies or a reference to a specific request on the table. Publicly, the developer has simply said, "We still need more [subsidies]."

[Update: To clarify, the Times reported in September that "Mr. Ratner has asked government officials recently for as much as $100 million in additional cash for the project."]

What Thompson said last month

Thompson two weeks ago was less equivocal (though he wasn't queried specifically about subsidies), saying, "If those projects made sense two-three years ago, when things were booming, they make sense during slower economies, also."

Maybe he's thinking more like Newark Deputy Mayor Stefan Pryor, who said last week about municipal decisionmaking, "We want to look for the least necessary insertion of subsidies."

As the State Senate goes Democratic, would that mean a change for AY?

Now that the State Senate has a 32-30 Democratic majority, Brooklyn Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, an opponent of the Atlantic Yards project, should have new clout, but it's not as simple as that.

In many cases, the majority will follow the wishes of the local legislator, but in this case, some members of the Democratic majority, like Carl Kruger, who's benefited from Republican largesse, are staunch AY supporters. Other solid Democrats, like [updated] Martin Malave-Dilan, are supporters. After all, as the New York Times reported, four Democrats, including Kruger, may continue to support Republican Dean Skelos as Majority Leader.

[Update: I originally listed Eric Adams as a supporter. He's sometimes been critical, appearing at some BrooklynSpeaks events. I'm not certain of his position, but note that he recently organized a health fair co-sponsored by the developer.]

Leadership issues

Also, putative Democratic Majority Leader Malcolm Smith has past ties to a firm deeply involved in the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement.

A New York Observer article two weeks ago, headlined Malcolm Smith and the Worst Job in New York Politics, described some of the pitfalls facing Smith regarding the battle between progressive ideas (a revision of rent regulation, a repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws, etc.) and more conservative ones:
In the process, Mr. Smith will be forced to choose between placating his colleagues or protecting his fragile relationship with David Paterson, a governor who has a history of turning on his allies.

Also, even if the Democrats vote as a bloc, Smith may not even retain his leadership position; the New York Post reported Monday that Sen. Jeff Klein of the Bronx was manuevering to replace him.

New governance act?

The new Senate may be more receptive to the BrooklynSpeaks-inspired Atlantic Yards Governance Act, which would set up a new structure to oversee the project.

But it's less likely that the Senate, and thus the Legislature as a whole, would be persuaded to "look for the least necessary insertion of subsidies" (in the words of Newark's Deputy Mayor) and pull the plug.

What about eminent domain?

State Senator Bill Perkins, joined by Montgomery, in September held a hearing on eminent domain reform and suggested that a Democratic majority might move reform legislation forward.

Maybe. There's no evidence that some of the more development-friendly Democrats are exercised about eminent domain abuse; perhaps moderate reforms might be possible.

Michael D.D. White of Noticing New York this week tried to get some positions on eminent domain from various Democratic and Republican State Senate candidates, and came up pretty much empty.

At the least, as I've pointed out, a state commission on eminent domain is in order.

RPA looks at infrastructure investments for Brooklyn, slams (implicitly) AY parking plan

Maybe the local, state, and federal governments will decide it’s time to invest in infrastructure, notably transit. If so, a study released last month by the Regional Plan Association (RPA) lists possibilities and priorities to improve transit for New York City and Northern New Jersey.

“Tomorrow’s Transit: New Mobility for the Region’s Urban Core” (PDF 24.9 MB)adds urban portions of Northern New Jersey to the five boroughs of New York City. (Someday there will be an integrated rail system and it will be a one-fare ride to Newark and Jersey City, right?

“In every recent recession, government has invested in transit and infrastructure to spur recovery,” said Thomas K. Wright, Executive Director, Regional Plan Association. As the report explains, “Transit projects can provide immediate construction jobs and purchases that can help fill the void left by sharp declines in private construction projects.” (Like, perhaps, a particular megaproject?)

Parking policy

Though the report says nothing about Atlantic Yards and little about projects that might impact the plan, it does offer some belated but now mainstream wisdom about parking:
To reduce the overabundance of low cost parking, establish parking ratio requirements in non-residential areas commensurate with the level and use of transit in the area.

More generally, in transit-rich areas follow the lead of Manhattan and Jersey City and require lower parking ratio requirements and establish maximum, rather than minimum ratios.

Indeed, as I pointed out last December, Mayor Mike Bloomberg's much-praised PlaNYC 2030 contains a glaring omission, a failure to address the antiquated anti-urban policy that mandates parking attached to new residential developments outside Manhattan, even when such developments, like Atlantic Yards, are justified precisely because they're located near transit hubs.

Brooklyn transit recommendations

The RPA’s recommendations for Brooklyn include:
Convert the Atlantic Branch of the LIRR to subway service and connect it to the Second Avenue Subway; build a Utica Avenue branch off the converted Atlantic Branch of the LIRR; extend the Nostrand Avenue 2 and 5 lines to Kings Highway; extend the Canarsie L line to Spring Creek Towers/Starrett City; and establish high speed ferry service from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bay Ridge.

Interestingly, though the RPA recommends Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for Nostrand Avenue, which is the MTA’s first Brooklyn route (albeit in 2012), the report doesn’t push BRT on Flatbush Avenue, which presumably would be welcomed if the Atlantic Yards arena emerges.

It does acknowledge:
Local bus service, as in the other boroughs can be exceedingly slow. The heavy bus volumes on Nostrand Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, Kings Highway and Flatlands Avenue led the MTA and the City to include these corridors in their initial list of BRT candidate.

Finding priorities

RPA explains:
Project recommendations were based on population density, rail transit and express bus coverage, travel times, poverty and auto-ownership. They fell into four main categories: those that can be implemented relatively quickly and inexpensively; those that help serve underserved constituencies; those that would add value to the current set of expansion projects; and those that are major, new expansion projects to be implemented over many years.

Among priorities are dense areas with no transit service, high poverty levels and low auto ownership, such as the central Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick and Brownsville.

“Projects that could improve service to low income areas at relatively low cost should be considered first,” said the RPA’s Jeff Zupan. “Those include Bus Rapid Transit routes on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn and in Newark, express subway service on unused tracks on the Dyre Avenue line in the Bronx and the J line in Brooklyn, discounted price service on inter-city commuter rail service and a new station entrance on the L line to serve the Lower East Side.”

Rapid transit to Flatbush

An intriguing but expensive (and long-term) recommendation is to convert the Atlantic Branch of the LIRR to rapid transit service. That would offer a connection to southeast Queens, a stop at East New York, and a high speed trip to downtown Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, and a connection to the JFK AirTrain station. Indeed, the AirTrain could become a one-seat ride to the Flatbush Avenue terminal or to Penn Station.

Moving people faster

Some recommendations seem like no-brainers:
To speed buses, purchase only low-floor buses, encourage riders to exit from the rear door, and establish off-fare collection using the smart card technology.

Install time-to -next-vehicle information technology on all subway and bus routes, as is now available on the Canarsie L line.

Transit-oriented development

The report recommends:
The MTA and NJTRANSIT should establish a priority subset of stations (out of the combined 900 they serve) for transit oriented development (TOD). The priorities would be based on availability of developable land, quality of transit service, and willing partners in the community. Among the areas that should receive the most attention are those where redevelopment in urban areas has begun or is anticipated soon. This could include areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx, which suffered most in the economic decline in the 1970s.

It adds:
To encourage more development near stations, local efficient mortgages should be instituted by the state legislatures.

As the graphic indicates, the more residential density, the less likely urbanites will drive and the more likely they will take public transit.

Take another look at the charge. The net residential density tops out at 200 units per acre. Atlantic Yards, at least as currently planned, would be 292 units/acre--and it would be higher if we subtracted the acres devoted solely to the arena.

The Times takes a skeptical look at stadium construction figures (but not AY)

If the Atlantic Yards arena moves closer toward construction, maybe the New York Times will take a skeptical look at the numbers behind it. Meanwhile, in today's article about baseball stadiums, headlined As Stadiums’ Costs Swell, Benefits in Question, there's a lot of skepticism.

And then there's some he-said, she-said:
Still, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester, and Good Jobs New York, a private advocacy group, have been critical of the Yankees project for what Mr. Brodsky says are “massive subsidies” resulting in too few jobs. He has also said that the city may have manipulated the value of the stadium land in order to comply with federal regulations regarding tax-exempt financing for stadiums, an assertion that a Congressional subcommittee under Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland, is investigating.

The Bloomberg administration and the Yankees have vigorously disputed those criticisms.

OK, but things definitely do not compute.

As Election Day approaches, a deficit of democracy in New York City

As Election Day approached--not one with much choice for New Yorkers in local election, as City Limits reported--Mayor Mike Bloomberg, for the first time, yesterday had to listen to members of the public scold and rebuke him in the four-hour "comment period" before he signed an extension of term limits into law.

At least one person commenting yesterday, Prospect Heights activist Patti Hagan, managed to shove Bloomberg's own unequivocal words--five separate statements--in his face while connecting his "power grab" to Atlantic Yards.

She commented:
After your strong-armed, knuckle busting performance last month to get term limit extended, I'd like to refresh your memory on the subject of term limits extension--in your own words.

You said: "The public has spoken twice and they have spoken quite clearly. I don't know that you should keep shopping for a different answer."

...Unfortunately, Mr. Mayor, you have a bad habit of ignoring the People of NYC--you don't care what we think or vote. Instead, you govern imperiously with an inner circle, limited constituency of a couple dozen billionaire overdevelopers like the predatory Bruce Ratner--you blessed his Ratlantic Yards land grab in Brooklyn--and look where that has gone in 5½ years! Nowhere! Jinxed!

Well, it's gotten official approval and pre-construction demolition and utility relocation has begun. Whether it actually gets off the ground is another question. Suffice it to say that developer Forest City Ratner is happy with the mayor, as FCR executive MaryAnne Gilmartin indicated last week.

Public input on projects?

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn pointed to part of Bloomberg's justification:
...There’s no easy answer, and nobody is irreplaceable, but I do think that if you take a look at the real world of how long it takes to do things — we live in a litigious society, we live in a society where we have real democracy, and lots of people have the ability to input their views and approve or disapprove projects — I just think that three terms makes more sense than two...
(Emphasis added by DDDB; see video on NY1.)

DDDB cited to Council Member Letitia James's statement that "this is really all about a legacy," including Atlantic Yards.

James yesterday was singled out by New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman for cautioning Bloomberg:
“With a stroke of the pen, Mr. Mayor, you will pre-empt democracy,” she said in a voice tinged with sadness.

Dissecting Bloomberg

Let's look at Bloomberg's statement again:
we live in a litigious society, we live in a society where we have real democracy, and lots of people have the ability to input their views and approve or disapprove projects.

Well, we do live in a litigious society, but it doesn't follow that we have a real democracy.

And yes, lots of people have the ability to input their views--heck, they waited outside City Hall for hours to testify yesterday and to testify at the two hearings held by the City Council--but that doesn't mean they have the ability to approve projects.

After all, no elected official in New York City got a vote on the Atlantic Yards project. It bypassed the City Council and the City Planning Commission, whose votes are necessary to approve projects that go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP.

The votes went to four members of the Empire State Development Corporation board, who took 15 minutes, and the "three men in a room" of the Public Authorities Control Board, who took five minutes.

As Coney plan teeters, MAS enlists international experts for whirlwind workshop

Maybe some public, professionals, and institutional input can shape a better future for Coney Island, an international icon in need of a major makeover.

On October 27 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, the Municipal Art Society (MAS) convened an extensive array of Coney Island stakeholders (minus one bigfoot) and an international team of designs and architects, in a remarkable effort to reimagine the redevelopment of Coney’s amusement area and surrounding blocks, beyond the images (right) in the city's rezoning plan. (MAS is funding the project, raising money from foundations and individuals.)

The initiative, which MAS dubs Imagine Coney, stands in stark contrast to the civic response to other recent urban development initiatives, which had sufficient juice and/or consensus to short-circuit similar interventions. Consider that MAS entered the Atlantic Yards fray only in the summer of 2006, offering some cogent critiques of the project’s design and spawning the “mend-it-don’t-end-it” coalition BrooklynSpeaks, but was unwilling and unable to challenge a project then seen as inevitable.

For Coney, MAS is soliciting ideas from the public, including events and activities, new amusement rides, design ideas, and housing- and retail-related ideas. (Might anyone suggest a sports arena?) Also welcome are thoughts, memories, and photos that might spur others to generate ideas. (Screenshot at right from Imagine Coney.)

Entering the fray

Imagine Coney is partly a response to the city's contentious rezoning effort, but, given that zoning is not planning, it is a much broader look.

After the Greenpoint/Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn rezonings, and the Ikea and Atlantic Yards projects, all controversial, “we wanted to cheer” at the city’s plan for Coney, said MAS president Kent Barwick.

That plan, announced in November 2007, involved a new amusement area and more opportunities for entertainment-oriented retail, hotels and housing. In April 2008, after jousting with landowner Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, the city, which had opposed Sitt’s plan to put housing—first condos, then time-shares in the amusement area—revised its plans, agreeing to a smaller amusement area (in blue) and more space available for what is vaguely termed “entertainment retail.”

That change caused widespread dismay, with concerns that high-rise towers and shopping would encroach on land zoned for amusements, a rare status, with Coney Island Development Corporation (CIDC) member Dick Zigun of Coney Island USA resigning his position in anger.

The decision to cut the city-owned open-air amusement park from 15 acres to nine acres was “doubtful,” said Barwick, noting that experts think that’s too small a site to work.

Imagine Coney involves what MAS calls “a world-class team of designers, engineers, producers and economists” to rethink Coney as an international icon and lure for New Yorkers. Among them are Anne Hamburger, creative producer and David Malmuth, economist, both formerly of Disney; Soren Lund, former chief architect for Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, and Will Alsop, the British architect responsible for the Urban Entertainment Centre in Almere near Amsterdam and the redevelopment of the riverfront district of Clarke Quay in Singapore.

Time pressures

Even before the session, the Department of City Planning issued a statement from Chairperson Amanda Burden, warning, "It is imperative that the rezoning process and timeline not be jeopardized by any reconsideration of our proposed rezoning boundaries or urban design parameters."

(At right and below, two images from the city's rezoning plan.)

The city understandably wants to start the rezoning process early next year, given that Astroland, the faded but well-loved existing amusement park, has been dismembered, leaving a hodgepodge of attractions along with landmarks like the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel.

Hence the accelerated schedule set up by MAS, with the initial presentations last Monday, public workshops on November 10 and November 12, design workshops on November 13 and November 14, and a public presentation at Borough Hall on November 17. “The aim is to restore Coney Island to be one of the world’s most exciting and original entertainment and amusement destinations once again,” MAS states.

I asked Barwick about Burden’s comment. He noted that MAS had approached Robert Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development; city officials, according to Barwick, “said they would not be closed to new ideas but were in a course of action with a timetable.”

At the meeting

The lineup at what MAS called the "Coney Island Charette Briefing Day" October 27 Monday was impressive, including Zigun, historian Charles Denson (right; more photos from the briefing day by ashford7.com), Astella Development Corp., the South Brooklyn Youth Consortium, and officials from several city agencies.

Also, at least according to the program, the two major developers, Taconic Investment Partners and Thor Equities, were supposed to be present. Taconic, which has proceeded less controversially than Thor, did send a rep, endorsing the city's plan. Thor was absent.

I only stayed for part of the session, so I missed some of the major action (and the Atlantic Yards “gaffe” by Jon Benguiat of the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office). I did catch Benguiat make some cogent remarks, reminding the audience that Coney Island is not merely a state of mind but home to thousands of people.

Benguiat recalled a planner's adage that there are always physical solutions to physical problems, but the challenge "is to know when the problem is physical." Coney Island's plight--the condition of its streets and infrastructure--"just didn't happen."

Barwick saluted the city for making significant progress before the rezoning: stabilizing the Parachute Jump, restoring the boardwalk, buying the land under the Wonder Wheel, and buying and renovating the B&B Carousell, once located on the north side of Surf Avenue.

Metro reported that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz discussed the promise of a partially-enclosed amphitheater at Asser Levy Park, presaging a major upgrade for summer music events and potential ice skating and more events in the winter.

Purnima Kapur, who heads the Brooklyn office of the Department of City Planning, said the city wanted to maintain an amusement core, develop jobs, and create an opportunity for neighborhood development, with streets, parks, and new housing, including 20% affordable. Wide Surf Avenue "has the potential to be a beautiful boulevard," she said; photo from city rezoning plan).

The city would not only map nine acres of parkland--too little, according to critics--it would add new east-west streets to enhance street life.

The conflict with Sitt

Apparently some of the panelists were concerned about high-rises in the amusement district, which Sitt seems to want. “It doesn’t matter if it’s [built] high. It’s the lower level that matters,” Lund said, according to Metro. “[A] compromise that takes a little of this and that — that’s the way not to do it. You kill the uniqueness. Putting a hotel here, a condo here — that doesn’t work.”

Beyond the boardwalk

City Council Member Dominic Recchia, an ally of Sitt, didn't mention the developer in his remarks, but talked about his dream to bring live theater to the Shore Theater across the street from the subway station and the importance of building a new community center outside the amusement district.

(Screenshots at right from Imagine Coney.)

Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Jules Spiegel reminded the audience, "As long as summers are hot and people need to cool down, there will always be a Coney Island." He cited the various efforts, in and out of the amusement district, to rehabilitate parks in Coney Island.

Madelyn Wils, executive VP for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, described Coney Island as "a great opportunity and significant challenge... What gives us hope is the bones that made Coney Island a destination are still there."

Among the challenges: the perception of decline; the fact that new amusement parks are built in year-round warm climates; and the transformation of a destination now seen as seasonal.

The transformation will require the city "to invest an unprecedented amount of money," she said, adding that "the revitalization will be more challenging in these difficult economic times."

Lynn Kelly, president of the CIDC, described the establishment of Steeplechase Plaza on the site of a soccer field adjacent to Keyspan Park. The grade will be changed to connect with the boardwalk, and the B&B Carousell, the last of its kind, will be moved there. Beyond that, the CIDC this month for the first time will exhibit at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

With all the progress, there's still room for new ideas--and, probably, a debate about the zoning.

Interviewees wanted for the Civilians' insta-theater inspired by AY

The Civilians theater troupe, as I wrote in January, plans a piece inspired by Atlantic Yards.

Now they're seeking interviewees for a project that will first go on stage in about a month.

The announcement

The Civilians want to hear from you. Brooklyn is changing fast. We are creating BROOKLYN AT EYE LEVEL a theater show inspired by interviews about the transformation of Brooklyn and the controversial Atlantic Yards Project. If you have something to say about the communities surrounding the proposed project (Downtown, Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights & Park Slope), we want to listen. We want to talk to long-term residents, recent arrivals, players in the Atlantic Yards story, anyone who works or lives in the area and cares about the future of Brooklyn. Eager to hear from all perspectives. If you want to be interviewed send us an email with a little information about yourself to Michael Premo, Project Coordinator: Premo(at)thecivilians(dot)org. For more information: www.brooklynateyelevel.org. These interviews will be performed along with original music and dance by Urban Bush Women live at the Brooklyn Lyceum, December 4th – 7th.

AY project fallen apart? Let's wait until we see the Barclays deal

Sports columnist Will Leitch of New York magazine, considering the low chance overseas investors would bail out Bruce Ratner, declares (No Red Dawn for Ratner) that "it appears the deal will fall apart the old-fashioned way: not enough money."

Again, I don't think it's that simple. Yes, the Nets keep losing money. Yes, Ratner has decimated the team to rebuild it, with the hope of getting a free agent like LeBron James in 2010.

The big decision point, I think, will be whether Barclays Capital renews and renegotiates the arena naming rights deal. Perhaps we'll know by the end of the month.

Overdevelopment, zoning, and the public realm (and AY)

If you listened to a panel on overdevelopment at the Museum of the City of New York two weeks ago, there were some curious disconnects. Everyone--the defender of the real estate industry, the developer, the community planner, the public official--seemed to make at least some sense, but it sure didn’t hang together. And there wasn’t enough time in the Q&A to tease out the tensions.

Some clarity emerged when I attended a panel October 28 at the Municipal Art Society, featuring planner Alex Garvin--a mainstream figure but clearly not part of the Bloomberg consensus. (The panel, called Growing Greener Cities, took off from a new book, Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century, to which Garvin is a contributor.)

At the very least, said Garvin, in words that show some commonality with sometime antagonists like community planner Tom Angotti, we should stop relying on zoning as planning, recognize the importance of public investment, and stop expecting megaprojects to solve pressing needs for infrastructure improvements.

Zoning is obsolete

Garvin, an academic and consultant whose long resume includes managing director of planning for the city’s Olympic bid and positions in five mayoral administrations, calls for a “Public Realm Approach” to grow green cities. (What’s sustainability? He points to the 1987 report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”)

“We have an obsolete way of doing that in this city--it’s called zoning,” Garvin declared. “I defy you to tell me that by regulating”--he showed a slide of buildings on Second Avenue in Manhattan--”that that gets you a greater city, or a sustainable one.”

And until we sweep away the processes, he said, we’ll never get there, not with Hudson Yards, not with Brooklyn Bridge Park, and not--implicitly--with Atlantic Yards.

The public realm

Garvin thinks we must spend public money on the public realm, "the quality of life of a great city,” including streets, squares, transportation systems, schools, public buildings, and parks.

The City Planning Commission, he said, should plan rather than merely approve zoning. As a City Planning Commissioner, he recalled, “I sat through endless public hearings on changing the zoning in Staten Island where the residents would come, and correctly, say 'we only have a lane of traffic and you’re going to create traffic, and the school’s already overcrowded.'”

“When I started working in the city in 1970, the City Planning Commission drafted the capital budget for the city of New York and a five-year plan," he observed. "That was taken away in the charter revision of 1975. I believe we need a capital investment strategy. I think it’s high time we started spending money and stop trying to get private property owners to do things that we the city should be doing, whether it’s building schools or improving our streets.”

Projects: not a solution

In other words, when the city hailed the ostensible goodies promised by the Atlantic Yards project--eight acres of publicly-accessible (but not publicly-owned) open space, a new railyard, and a new subway entrance, among other things--we had it backwards.

Eugenie Birch, co-editor of the book and a professor of urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania, cautioned that a list of capital projects isn’t enough, it must be part of a framework that foresees how these investments would stimulate private investments. “Unfortunately, the city is very project-oriented,” she added, in another implicit dig at projects like Atlantic Yards. “We all get excited about this project and that project and don’t think about the bigger picture.”

Indeed, after an audience member, the ubiquitous Michael D. D. White, rattled off a list of problematic megaprojects, Garvin countered with better examples of the public realm. Among them (as he discussed at a panel in July), a light rail system on 21st Street in Queens, which would stimulate development in a substantial amount of vacant or underutilized property, and also new transportation along Third Avenue in the Bronx--both areas suggested in his unreleased 2006 land use plan, apparently omitted from the mayor’s PlaNYC 2030 package, which recommended building over rail yards and highway cuts, as well.

(In a Gotham Gazette column, planning professor Angotti, while praising Garvin for “a bold set of recommendations about public space and transportation,” criticized the report as top-down planning and the product of “growth advocates and [the] powerful real estate industry.” Then again, the document was a start, rather than a conclusion, and hardly the main agenda for an industry that prefers tax breaks and megaprojects.)

“I would argue that we could do investments that could create this,” Garvin said, “but we need an entirely different attitude to the way we do planning in this city.” But how to pay for it? Some would be financed using tax-increment financing (TIF), based on expected new revenues.

Such controversial financing was originally contemplated for the Atlantic Yards arena, but unlike the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) plan currently in place, would require legislative authorization. Then again, the legislature might be more amenable to a TIF plan involving clear public benefits, rather than benefits that flow significantly to a private developer.

(Arguably, some of New York State's significant net deficit in tax revenues might be returned by Washington in the form of infrastructure and housing support.)

Public realm principles

Garvin sketched four principles involved in his approach. One is to “include human beings in nature,” something he suggested the environmental community sometimes ignores.

“Secondly, we need to ensure that all public works include environmental mitigation,” he said, suggesting, as an example, that the creation of international rowing facility for the Olympics would’ve cleaned the lakes at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that suffer from the effluent from cars.

“Third, stop thinking in single functions,” he said, pointing to a “mixed-use multiple purpose public realm” and suggesting that environmental laws could protect neighborhoods that once preferred single-use zoning, thus rejecting manufacturing as unhealthy.

“Finally,” he said, “I believe we need to create a public realm framework. Because if the framework is right, then private development around it will grow up in a way which is complementary.”

Gauging height

Garvin suggested a return to some past guidelines. “The city adopted a zoning resolution in 1916, the first comprehensive zoning anywhere in the U.S.,” he said. “It had two elements I would move back to and get rid of everything we have now.”

The first is height limits that were multiples of street width. For example, originally Park Avenue was 1.5 times as high as it is wide, 210 feet to 140 feet. “That creates a public realm where there’s a sympathetic relationship with light and air.” (That certainly wouldn’t be the case on Dean Street, the relatively narrow street on the southern border of the AY footprint.)

Secondly, he suggested retaining three categories of use: residential only, commercial /residential, and the rest unlimited, though of course subject to environmental rules. Birch noted that was akin to the concept of flexible “performance-based zoning,” which, as a proponent points out, “does not organize uses into a hierarchy which is then used to protect 'higher' uses from 'lower' ones. Rather, it imposes minimum levels of performance by setting standards that must be met by each land use." (It’s also worked in Toronto, where it was supported by Jane Jacobs.)

The threat of overdevelopment

The first panel, titled "New York For Sale: Are Developers Overbuilding?", got diligent coverage but little analysis in the New York Times’s CityRoom blog. Interestingly enough, the panel was planned when “overdevelopment” was perhaps cresting, but, at the time of the event October 20, the economic and real estate downturn made it all much more complicated.

Still, said moderator Hope Cohen of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Rethinking Development, the original question is still very important, given that city rezonings have opened up to more development. She set out several questions: Is it possible to do better? If we don’t develop, can the city accommodate the 1 million-plus people that are (still) anticipated by 2030? And, in this moment of slowdown, can we “take a breath and start thinking about how we would want to develop”?

REBNY’s take

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), gave no quarter. “Maybe the term ‘overdevelopment’ isn’t such a bad word any more,” he said, “when we look at what the benefits of development really are.”

He had statistics to suggest that we have not overbuilt. Office construction, over the past six decades, slowed significantly in the 1990s, and even the uptick in this decade puts the square footage well behind previous decades.
1950s: 30 million sf
1960s: 54 million sf
1970s: 57 million sf
1980s: 48 million sf
1990s: 11.7 million sf
2000s: 18 million sf (so far)

“Have we overbuilt on office buildings? Absolutely we have not,” said Spinola, not acknowledging that, as Crain’s reported October 7, the vacancy rate had just surged 30% over the previous year. “[Senator Chuck] Schumer’s Committee of 35, which I served on, basically identified the failure to build additional office space as one of the main reasons we did not compete for the larger share of the economic growth of the region and permitted New Jersey and other areas to take advantage of that.”

Remember, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Atlantic Yards initially relied on Schumer’s 2001 Group of 35 report, but after criticisms were made of the report’s assumptions, the Empire State Development Corporation cut back on references to it.

Housing could still pick up

Spinola also pointed to a decline in housing units from the 1960s (some 36,000-37,000 a year) to the 1990s (about 8200 a year), with a significant uptick “thanks to a mayor who was elected in 2001 and made a commitment to deal with the question of housing,” leading to some 17,900 units a year so far this decade.

“Even with this,” he said, “we have a vacancy rate of about 3.9 percent.” Notably, the market has shifted to the outer boroughs, noting that, in 2002, more than half of the new housing units were in Manhattan, but the number had been cut in half by 2007.

In 2005, Brooklyn began to outpace Manhattan,” he said, citing “a result of builders building where the development was needed and also to try to meet the cost consciousness of people looking for such housing... You could not make truly affordable housing in Manhattan, because of land prices and construction cost.” He didn’t at that point acknowledge the influence of the 421-a tax break, which subsidized luxury development in gentrified outer-borough neighborhoods.

Spinola cited the mayoral administration’s upzonings and downzonings, commenting that some of the latter went too far. In South Park Slope, he said, there are wide streets, so “we believe the density was significantly less than it should’ve been.” Also, he said, Corona and Kew Gardens “on top of basically a transportation system,” thus an argument for increased density.

More density?

Despite complaints about overdevelopment in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, he said, “the big deal” is a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 4, far less than Battery Park City, which has a 10 FAR. (Downtown Brooklyn goes up to a 12 FAR.)

“The problem with Williamsburg/Greenpoint is I believe the density is substantially less than what the potential could have been on the waterfront in Brooklyn,” he said.

His point went unrebutted, but why is it that many in Williamsburg are worried about the density? It’s not purely a question of esthetics--the question is one of the public realm: can the subways handle it? Indeed, Garvin at his panel suggested a light rail along the waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens, an investment that certainly could accommodate more development.

Tax issues

Spinola said real estate taxes are the single greatest source of city revenue. “The truth of the matter is that New York City has become addicted to real estate--it’s become addicted, because of the revenue it generates,” he said. “The most consistent revenue for the city of New York is the real estate taxes, because it doesn’t vary year to year dramatically.” (Actually, as the Times pointed out, some real estate taxes — the mortgage recording tax and the transfer tax — do fluctuate.)

Spinola pointed to but didn’t dwell on the knotty issue of equitable taxation. Office buildings, newer condos, and newer rental apartments pay much more in taxes than one- to -three-family homes and older co-ops, “because of the political structure.”

He noted that neighborhoods have changed dramatically. “Take a look at the Upper East Side. Today we have fewer people living there than the 1950s.” Even though there are 47,000 housing units, the population has declined to 217,063 from 232,389, as the number of people per household has declined to 1.6 from 3.8, even as the median income has more than doubled, turning the neighborhood from middle-class to upper-class.

He did cite the 421-a program in noting that, after reforms were passed, 17,000 housing units were begun in June, to qualify under the old, looser rules. “Of those 17,000 units, how many will be built? I can’t tell you,” he said. “Not all of them had financing.”

Optimism

“I will finish up with a bit of optimism,” he said. “If not all of these projects go ahead, it’s not the end of the world. I believe we’ve gone through a very roller-coaster ride over the last four weeks. I am hopeful that things will calm down. I expect that, regardless of who is president... there will be some sense of confidence in the country and in the economy, and that, as Washington makes it clearer of what it expects of its financial institutions, money will come back into the market and the 17,000 units that were started in June will ultimately be built.”

“So, have we overdeveloped? I don’t think we’ve overdeveloped,” he concluded. “Manhattan is not some small town. I think we have to be able to be able to blend what is the best of this city with the ability to build what is new and creative and to bring new architects in and new space in that’s going to be the home of the employers that want to be here and the home of the young people, that 1.6 average means that young people want to be in this city. It’s an exciting place to live, work, and play. If we decide to end that growth, they’re no longer going to want to come to New York City.”

Except some of them are living four and five and six to an apartment built for two, and immigrants have it worse. Wouldn’t an investment in the public realm make more sense?

A community planner’s take

Angotti, who directs the Center for Community Planning and Development at Hunter College and, in Brooklyn, notably worked on the UNITY plan for the Vanderbilt Yard, recently wrote the book, New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, which includes pieces he wrote as Land Use columnist for the Gotham Gazette.

“The problem is not development or no development. The problem is not growth or no growth,” Angotti said. “The problem is what kind of development and what do you mean by development? And development isn’t only development of buildings. In fact, primarily, when I hear the word development, I think about people, neighborhoods, communities. This is what makes New York City the vibrant place that it is. And we are going to be facing some decline in real estate growth and real estate development one way or the other — whether it’s those people who got their foundations in the ground just to get the 421a or others who bought land out in Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx expecting that their day was coming — there’s going to be abandoned land.”

Then he turned to everyone’s favorite whipping boy: “Atlantic Yards--Forest City Ratner bought 22--no, they didn’t buy it. They got the state to threaten condemnation of 22 acres in Brooklyn; now, there’s no way they’re going to finance it and we’re looking at probably 20 years or more of parking lots.”

While the site is 22 acres, some 8.5 acres is a railyard that was belatedly put up for bid by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, not subject to condemnation. While many are concerned about indefinite interim surface parking, whether that’s “probably 20 years or more” remains speculative.

Angotti apparently anticipated that criticism, saying, “This is not a wild speculation, because we know that the federal urban-renewal program in the ’60s and ’70s left a lot of vacant land, left a lot of blight in our neighborhoods, all because of the argument that our neighborhoods were slums, were blighted and that the offer of shiny new development was going to turn the community around and make our lives better. And it didn’t.”

Then again, shouldn’t we have learned something from the federal experience and become more nimble?

Alternative plans

Angotti, like Garvin, thinks New York City doesn’t plan, but, rather than focusing on the macro--Garvin’s public realm--his book profiles neighborhood activists who developed alternate plans in response to unwelcome plans imposed by the city. In Cooper Square, part of the East Village, “they beat Robert Moses,” though it took 45 years, and managed a plan that includes 60% low-income housing. (Could that work today?)

In the Melrose section of the Bronx, the group Nos Quedamos (aka We Stay), the city’s plan was, like some other low-density plans aimed at suburbanized development in devastated neighborhoods yet accessible by mass transit, going to become a “haven of single-family homes.”

“This belies the story that is always thrown around, that communities are NIMBYs, Not in My Backyard, that they don’t want any development,” Angotti said. “What they did in the Bronx was say, ‘Yes we want development, but we want higher-density development, because this low-density development is not going to serve our people, Our people are not going to be able to afford to buy the homes.”

(Indeed, Melrose Commons is generally considered to be a successful urban plan and a prudent use of eminent domain.)

Then he pointed to the Atlantic Yards opposition, notably the “UNITY plan, an alternative, much more interesting architecturally, it’s also high density, but not the extreme of Forest City Ratner's megaproject, and doesn’t include an arena.” (Forest City Ratner has countered that, well, the plan doesn’t have funding. Then again, smaller plots would be easier to bid out than one megaproject. And it's hardly clear that FCR's plan now has funding.)

“So, in looking at the downturn, we should be looking to support people who care about their neighborhoods--many people who fought for years against negative things... waste treatment plans, to get control of their neighborhood, then gentrification hit, they were threatened with movement,” he said. “They get together and ...we want development, we want the kind of development where we want it, when we want it, and in a way that doesn’t force us to move out of our neighborhoods.”

“Real estate-driven policies,” he said, are the “same set of policies that got us into the fix. Deregulation. Lower taxes, tax abatements, end rent regulations, because that’s the problem, why you don’t have growth. The result has been devastating. Devastation has already occurred. East New York is foreclosure haven. People are losing their homes because of foreclosure crisis.”
While deregulation certainly fostered the foreclosure crisis, the question is what regulation might work going forward.

Real estate vs. manufacturing

Then, taking up Spinola’s formulation, he said, “Yes, we have an addiction to real estate in New York City. That is a problem. It’s called substance abuse. Having your budget depend on one economic sector is very risky. The economies in the world that survive and grow are those that are diverse and grow all sectors. Unfortunately, real estate growth in the last 40 years in New York City has been at the expense of manufacturing, one of New York City’s great strengths and often a cushion for those periods of time when the real estate industry takes a dive.”

“Manufacturers have been pushed out by real estate speculation in places like Williamsburg and Greenpoint,” he said, “which might be great for residential, luxury towers... but hasn’t been great for small businesses.”

Interestingly, at the panel a week later, both Garvin and Birch seemed skeptical that manufacturing could remain in cities. Still, there is a place for small manufacturing and also, quite possibly, for green building.

Just a “nice idea”?

“Isn’t community planning just kind of a nice idea that this professor dreamed up?” Angotti asked rhetorically. “My book is about the real stories of real neighborhoods that developed their own visions out of struggles and protests and insisted that these visions be taken seriously. The problem is that the whole history of city government involvement in planning has been one of deregulation and no planning.”

He looked back at the early 20th century, noting that, while real estate interests supported the subway system, it was done without any public planning and coordination, so “we don’t have a mass transit system of high quality outside Manhattan.”

While rejecting reformers’ calls for a comprehensive city plan, he said, the city “instead adopted a zoning resolution instead relying on zoning rules. Zoning was the answer to planning... It’s basically a set of rules and regulations by which private property owners can subdivide their property and develop. It can be part of planning, but it’s not a good substitute for planning.” There he sounded in harmony with Garvin.

Angotti went on to say that planning must deal with facilities and services and schools: “The zoning resolution doesn’t deal with them at all. So, rezoning 87 neighborhoods in New York City, which the Bloomberg administration brags about, is fine, maybe, but what does it mean for the quality of life or our neighborhoods? Not necessarily anything.”

Moment of agreement

Interestingly enough, Angotti found himself agreeing with Spinola that a lot of neighborhoods in the outer boroughs should have been upzoned, rather than downzoned, “because there was great potential for development in the outer boroughs that was not taken advantage of.”

Then he returned to the whipping boy: “Instead, we have the lunacy of concentrating development in Atlantic Yards. The third largest transit hub, yes, and they call it transit-oriented development, but there’s no improvement to transit. They're putting in a huge parking garage. So, this is not really planning.”

“Community planning has to deal with public spaces,” he said, again reaching a point of agreement with Garvin. “Zoning doesn’t deal with public spaces. How do you create those, our sidewalks, our streets?”

Angotti concluded by suggesting that “we have to plan not just for the next building boom, but seven or eight generations ahead.” Yes, it’s a long time, he said, but “can you image if people had thought of the negative consequences of developing cities around the private automobile?”

A non-sleazy developer

The developer representative was Yvonne Isaac of Full Spectrum, which calls itself “a national market leader in the development of mixed use and mixed income green buildings in emerging urban markets.”

“Fingers are going to be pointed at us, we’re a sleazy developer,” she says, self-mockingly. She said she spent the last 12 years as a developer “down in developer heaven, which is Atlanta, Georgia.” (She added, “Is Atlanta overbuilt, my answer to that is yes, as for New York, no.”)

“I’ve looked around at real estate porn, what is overdevelopment?” she asked rhetorically. She gave three examples: overdevelopment harms neighborhood character, neighborhood appearance, and the overall ecosystem.

She pointed to the “first energy-efficient condo built in Harlem,” built on a brownfield “left vacant by urban renewal for almost 30 years.” (Here's the web site for the Kalahari.)

“We believe in equitable development,” she said, which “includes more people than it excludes.” Given some 7600 acres of brownfields in the city, she said there’s a lot of opportunity. Indeed, Full Spectrum has built another project on a brownfield, but the financing can get sticky. If land is public, and they don’t have to pay, and there are multiple financing programs, such mixed-income programs can work.

In fact, while supporting blended-use and infill projects, and transit-oriented development, Isaac pointed to the development of infrastructure as a crucial jump-start to future development.

Scott Stringer's take

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who cited several of the land use initiatives that has distinguished his office from its counterparts, tried to bridge the difference. “The reality is that we’re going to have to start thinking about development and land use in a perhaps different way than we traditionally think about it, where we pit community against developer” he said.

“We have to be able to plan proactively for the city,” he said, explaining that he had
depoliticized the appointment process for Community Boards, filled vacancies, added urban planning students as interns, and provided “vigorous training in land use and zoning.” All true, but it’s hardly clear that, as Stringer said, “we now have created a level playing field.”

In remarks that surely would provoke ire among community activists, Stringer suggested that his response to Columbia University’s West Harlem expansion resulted in a reasonable compromise. “We knew the university had to expand,” he said, “but we also knew that Columbia, left to its own devices, would not coexist with the West Harlem community, but would perhaps overrun it.”

So the “very strong result” didn’t regard Columbia’s own plan--he didn’t mention anything critical, say, of consultant AKRF--but a larger area. “We could not undo 40 years of animosity and hostility to the university, but we could perhaps create the opportunity for expansion and also put in place a rezoning, from 125th to 155th, that would be the community’s opportunity to determine height and density, determine affordability and perhaps at the end of this day.... be able to preserve the West Harlem community in a way there are no protections to preserve that neighborhood today.”

Finding the balance

“That’s the new paradigm we face in the city. I’m not against development. Steve Spinola’s right. We’ve got to continue to create a skyline. Real estate has consistently paid for schools, paid for cops, paid for teachers. That is an industry that we need to continue to support,” he said. “At the same time, we ought not simply give the real estate industry carte blanche in our neighborhoods. The real fight and struggle is how do we balance the needs of neighborhoods and responsible development.”

So he wasn’t emphasizing the public realm, though he did then mention the importance of figuring out how to plan for school construction.

If Garvin has pointed out the possibility of decking over highways and rail cuts, Stringer has sought other places ot develop. “Right now, the Housing Authority is talking about 30 million square feet of excess air rights that those developments can generate and perhaps 100 million excess air rights over the city,” he said. “We want to figure out how those tenants, in some way, they will benefit. It’s a very complicated issue.”

He also pointed to the plethora of still-vacant property, not abandoned buildings of three decades ago but properties warehoused by owners waiting for a better deal. “I want New York City to do what Boston and other cities do, a citywide vacant lot and building count,” he said, alluding to a previous report from his office, which also pointed to taxation as a way to generate development. “Only when we do an inventory can we do what you’re talking about, professor, a full planning process.”

Stringer closed with a nod to “the infrastructure that will accommodate growth” and a recognition of people who “created neighborhoods that everybody wants to live in.” Community Board reform is first step, he said, but a Charter Revision Commission should look at the land use review process to “figure out ways to give people more of a voice.”

Affordable housing

An audience member questioned the city’s policy of optional inclusionary zoning, which gives developers density bonuses in exchange for affordable housing, saying it relies on a hot market.

Angotti noted that advocacy groups called for mandatory inclusionary zoning, but the Department of City Planning and REBNY opposed it. “A lot of upzoning was justified, sold on the basis people would get back 20% affordable housing.” He contended that “more affordable housing is being displaced by the new luxury housing than is being created.” (That’s hard to quantify, and probably depends on whether we consider indirect displacement. The data on Williamsburg/Greenpoint, for example, is murky.)

Angotti blamed the federal government for stopping its support for low-cost housing.

Spinola said he agreed “that the federal government has walked away from housing.” Otherwise, he didn’t agree: “The bottom line is, it costs money to build housing... We recommended a program called 80/20 [affordable]... I believe it has worked. The concept that you can simply require builders to build affordable housing, and the community always wants you to build a school--there’s a certain point where it does not economically work.... My members do not build for the purposes of making a loss... My members will build if it economically makes sense. The city of New York is at a point where it is running out of subsidies.”

Isaac commented slyly, “I know we didn’t make as much money as other, more venal developers,” but agreed that there not enough subsidy to make certain projects work.

In comments on the New York Times web site, Benjamin Hemric, a follower of Jane Jacobs with a libertarian bent, suggested, “When you look at what originally made — and still makes — New York City great, almost all of it is a product of unplanned development by real estate speculators — and NOT a product of government planning by either City Hall or local community groups.”

Beyond Jane Jacobs

At the panel last week, Garvin recalled meeting Birch at conference in Dallas "many many years ago," reacting to the apparent obliviousness of other urban advocates to issues of finance and physical structure.

"You have to remember that, in this country, thank goodness, Jane Jacobs wrote her book," he recalled, "but what happened was, the entire field began to believe that all you have to do is have a public meeting and social action would produce the best results. I don’t think that’s true. I’m all for public participation."

He referred to the Listening to the City exercise for Ground Zero sponsored by the Regional Plan Association (which is by no means universally beloved), "Anybody who was at the Javits Center in 2002 or saw it on television will know that I rely on the public in order to stop things from happening that are not exactly desirable. Nevertheless, you need to have a set of theories, you need to have a framework."

The China example

“I’ve just come back from China; in 25 years, the investments that they made in infrastructure would make your hair stand up,” Birch said. “There are some issues, they’ve displaced a few people in doing this”—there were some murmurs from the crowd at the Municipal Art Society—“but nonetheless the focus with which they’ve created infrastructure in their cities is really extraordinary.”

The trade-off—a seeming acceptance of government tactics that make Robert Moses look soft—led one audience member to call Birch’s “derationalization of human consequences… just appalling.”

Birch apologized for being flip, but noted that China expects more than 300 million people—the U.S. population—to move to the cities in next 25 years. “We have to find ways to create the infrastructure we need,” she said. “There will be displacement... We have to find ways to accommodate that displacement.”

The audience member suggested new decision-making processes to ensure fairness.

“We need inclusiveness, we need decision-making, but we need ways to get to decisions that will balance citywide needs with neighborhood needs,” Birch allowed. “And that’s something we have not figured out how to do.”

It was an echo of author Robert Caro’s reflection on Moses: "the problem of constructing large-scale public works is one which democracy has not solved."

Plain Dealer: 2012-13 is more likely Brooklyn arena scenario (if it even opens)

A Cleveland Plain Dealer article headlined Bad news for Brooklyn summarizes the roadblocks facing the planned Atlantic Yards arena:

1) Delays: The $1 billion Frank Gehry-designed Brooklyn project, which once promised to be opened by late 2009, now may not be ready until the 2012-13 season, a full two seasons after James' free agency. But, in reality, there's a chance it may never open at all.

Actually, 2009 was the official date when the project was approved in 2006. When the project was announced in 2003, the opening date was promised to be 2006. But it's worth pointing out that the newspaper at least chose 2012, not 2011, as a target for the opening date. Forest City Ratner still says 2011; I think 2012 is a more realistic best-case scenario.

2) The need to renew the Barclays Center naming rights deal by the end of the month: Barclays recently said it is still supporting the project but here's two things you don't want to be doing these days if you are a real estate developer: attempting to get new financing or re-negotiating terms with an investment bank.

I have speculated that, at the least, Barclays will aim for a better deal.

3) Bruce Ratner's apparent attempt to sell the team, or parts of the team. Still, the head of the NBA is confident: Before last Tuesday's Cavs opener in Boston, NBA Commissioner David Stern said he had been assured all the financial and judicial issues would be settled and the Nets would be in Brooklyn "at some point."

In other words, it's still all in flux. But Cleveland superstar LeBron James, a friend of Nets part-owner Jay-Z, becomes a free agent in 2010, which means a new arena in Brooklyn likely wouldn't be available for at least two seasons.

Then again, there is a new arena in Newark.

As election approaches, cities get short shrift in campaign, but infrastructure issue rises

With the focus on swing states and swing voters in the presidential campaign, we’ve heard very little about urban policy and associated issues like urban housing, though there has been discussion about the general issue of infrastructure, which involves transit, bridges, roads, and more.

In fact, the New York Times, in its wonkish collection of issue briefs doesn’t even have a page devoted to urban policy, another indication of how little attention the issue gets.

Democratic nominee and campaign frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a White House Office of Urban Policy, thus acknowledging urban issues, though as Harry Moroz noted on the DMI Blog, for months Obama’s urban policy mostly conflated “urban America” with “urban poverty” until it was adjusted to acknowledge cities as drivers of prosperity and innovation.

Whitman's excuse for McCain

John McCain, by contrast, has no urban policy, and last Friday, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, the host raised the issue with McCain’s surrogate, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.

“Senator Obama’s web site has a long urban policy page," Lehrer said. "McCain’s does not have any urban policy page. What should we make of that in our area?”

Whitman dodged the question: “That talks about where they think they’re going to win electoral votes. It’s a simple as that. It doesn’t mean the administration wouldn’t care about these areas. Right now, they’re talking about winning an election…”

She quickly changed the subject, but Obama’s surrogate, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi easily pointed out that Whitman had a tough job.

The growing chorus

The issue of urban policy also involves infrastructure, which may be becoming a consensus issue: infrastructure investment can both put people to work and also rebuild the country. Such infrastructure would support general needs rather than be targeted to specific megaprojects.

David Brooks, the mildly conservative New York Times columnist, on Friday promoted infrastructure investment in a column headlined National Mobility Project. (Some letter-writers thought he emphasized highways a bit too much.)

Obama promises a “National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs per year and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.”

It also promises to “re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account."

The issue of urban policy is a lot more important that some of the blinkered public discourse, as the candidates battle over undecided swing voters.

In gathering information on AY, much opportunity for cognitive dissonance

Could it be that ACORN's Bertha Lewis, who isn't really up on Atlantic Yards, only looks at the official Atlantic Yards web site (below), while Jon Benguiat of the Brooklyn Borough President's Office, like others trying to keep up, checks No Land Grab (bottom) every day?

(Click on graphics to enlarge)



What's missing