tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20743459.post5845887435771940739..comments2024-03-28T05:19:17.215-04:00Comments on Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report: At MCNY panel, defending dissent and promoting the better way to develop (not like Atlantic Yards)Norman Oderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07618087999719667586noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20743459.post-25734149205042150622008-07-22T16:20:00.000-04:002008-07-22T16:20:00.000-04:00I want to mention a nicely succinct formulation I ...I want to mention a nicely succinct formulation I recall Alex Garvin using early in the evening before I asked my question. Paraphrasing what I remember, Garvin said, "We are doing a lot of what is referred to as `transit-oriented development’ and what I think we should be doing instead is providing a lot of `development-oriented transit.’"- Atlantic Yards is conceptualized as a `transit-oriented development.’ I will elaborate on this below.<BR/><BR/>The question I asked that evening was about achieving the kind of development that incorporates the benefit of community-oriented, bottom-up planning (which is therefore also more likely to get community support) while not necessarily being smaller in vision or scale than say, Hudson River Park. Too often “big” development plans lack creativity and insight and are imposed from above by people who fail to think beyond the straight-line shoreline that was proposed for Westway or the kind of bland repetitive elements criticized by Jane Jacobs: things that might seem exciting in a helicopter-view model or rendering but lack the natural vitality of real life. I think Henry Stern acknowledged the need to meet in the middle (incorporating more community generated changes) when he suggested that Westway could not be supported without qualification. Obviously, the many years Westway was under consideration the necessary qualifications were never addressed.<BR/><BR/>I think that much of what Mr. Garvin said during the evening, which is quoted in this AYR post, is consistent with considering the importance of Garvin’s juxtaposition of `transit-oriented development’ vs.`development-oriented transit’. It is interesting that he apparently thinks that not only would the latter form of inherently infrastructure-oriented development be better but that it would also diminish or avoid community opposition.<BR/><BR/>Recapping, recommending city investment to put light rail, bike lanes and trees along 21st Street in Astoria going west to the East River to create a new “public realm,” Garvin predicted tremendous amounts of new housing would be created and the community would NOT be opposed to the investment.- That is `development-oriented transit.’ <BR/><BR/>Similarly, consider the proposed extension of the #7 subway line to the Hudson Yards area. It is my understanding that this is a development plan that Garvin supports and has contributed his thinking to. It is proposed to be part of the plans to develop the West Side of Manhattan. This is the area of Manhattan just west of Penn Station and the proposed new Moynihan Station. It is projected that the extension of the #7 subway may cost about $2 billion; about 3/4 of this could be funded by tax-increment public bonds. The anticipated use of tax-increment bonds means that the subway line infrastructure improvement, by increasing the value of the neighboring property, would be paying for itself. How? It would be paying for itself by an a general increase in value to all the property in the area. In other words, unlike Atlantic Yards where Ratner is the SINGLE developer walking away with the increased property value, here the benefit and increase in property values would be distributed amongst MANY owners. While Ratner is being excused from paying property taxes in the case of Atlantic Yards, the MANY neighboring owners in the vicinity of the #7 line would NOT be excused from paying property taxes. Rather, the INCREASED taxes neighbors to the #7 line would pay as a result of the INCREASE in value of their property would pay for the bonds funding the subway. (The investment in Ratner’s project is actually blighting and decreasing property values of the surrounding neighborhood and properties.) <BR/><BR/>The above is an example of how well `development-oriented transit’ can work. Conversely, Atlantic Yards is `transit-oriented development.’ While there could be sense to building atop a transit hub or confluence of subway lines as in the case of the proposed Atlantic Yards, it doesn’t make as much sense when those subway lines are already overburdened. Just today there is a story in the New York Times about the problems with the #4 line which is expected to serve the Atlantic Yards site. That story echoes what has been written before and the information promulgated by our transit officials to the effect that all the City’s “numbered” lines (the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, though not the 7) are overburdened. Only the “lettered” lines like the A and the G, etc. still have fairly good capacity for increased ridership and trains. The Atlantic Yards plan for its site puts most of its density in the proximity of the “numbered” lines rather than in proximity to the nearby “lettered” lines. Also, and this can’t be emphasized enough, it makes little sense to put the public investment and subsidy in the pocket of private developer Bruce Ratner rather than increasing such things as the transit infrastructure that can benefit everyone.<BR/><BR/>The last section of this post, “The AY complication,” talks about the idea that, to an extent, Atlantic Yards involves funding for infrastructure. It hardly makes sense to give this notion any credence because:<BR/><BR/>1. The amount of public subsidy going to Atlantic Yards overall is colossal, $1.3 billion for the arena and at least somewhere between $2.5-3 billion overall. Therefore the $200 million or so going to Atlantic Yards is an infinitesimal fraction in the equation.<BR/><BR/>2. As AYR points out, the infrastructure is directed at benefitting just one project and just one developer to whom the public is giving a theoretical monopoly on a no-bid basis.<BR/><BR/>3. Money that was supposedly going to infrastructure is being diverted to other uses.<BR/><BR/>4. The investment in infrastructure is not being recaptured via taxes on increased property values in the neighborhood.<BR/><BR/>*****<BR/><BR/>I should note that there is a certain interconnectedness that should give Garvin’s comments resonance. The AYR post notes Henry Stern’s early postion on Atlantic Yards and asks whether it might now be modified. In his introduction of Garvin, Stern talked about the multitude of Garvin's students he hired in the Parks Department when he was NYC Commissioner. (He was Commissioner twice.) Atlantic Yards was also once regarded as Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff’s baby (though disowned in the end see: Atlantic Yards As Political Hot Potato http://www.dddb.net/php/latestnews_ArcTxtSrch.php).<BR/>Garvin worked with Doctoroff and Doctoroff publically adopted Garvin as a sort of mentor, after Doctoroff reportedly saw Garvin’s book in a Barnes & Noble. (See: “A Man with Plans” May 2001, by Mark Alden Branch http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_05/garvin.html and “It’s Alex Garvin’s Town; You’ll Never Live In It” by Matthew Schuerman, August 27, 2006 http://www.observer.com/node/39355?observer_most_read_tabs_tab=2)<BR/> <BR/>*****<BR/><BR/>I think it is worth noting that while Al Butzel can speak knowledgeably about significant community opposition efforts that were successful in the past, he is also currently involved in representing the Greenwich Village community opposing the proposed Rudin/St. Vincent’s Hospital expansion which would shrink the Greenwich Village Historic District by effectively selling off a portion of the district to subsidize St. Vincent’s by specially allowing the Hospital and a developer purchasing from them special permission to build at extra-high density. I have written more about that available at: http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/search/label/Rudin%2FSt%20Vincent%E2%80%99s<BR/><BR/>I think we need to be cautious about revisionist history that proposes that megaprojects that were defeated in the past would actually have been better than they would have been. Would Westway have been the equivalent of better Hudson Yards Park? Henry Stern criticized Hudson Yards Park as being a spindle of a park. Would Westway have been the same as the Hudson Yards park only bigger and more of what people love? Lest revisionist history take over, not all of Westway would have been park (or underground highway). Some of Westway would have been residential and some commercial. Mr. Butzle commented that, had time permitted, he had slides available demonstrating how little park would have been produced by Westway.<BR/><BR/>The danger of historical revisionism is that we denigrate the value of past community victories and thereby potentially lose sight of and fail to appreciate the value of those future victories it is now important to fight for.<BR/><BR/>****<BR/><BR/>The accumulating acronyms discussed were fun and most can be found in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY.<BR/><BR/>They are:<BR/>NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard<BR/>NIABY: Not In Anyone's Backyard <BR/>NOTE: Not Over There, Either<BR/>NOPE: Not On Planet Earth, <BR/>and<BR/>BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything<BR/><BR/>As I pointed out when I asked my question, NIABY in contradistinction to BANANA, is the proper term for Atlantic Yards because the Atlantic Yards is a bad project no one would wish upon anyone in any neighborhood. The opposition does not oppose other better projects that could be built over Vanderbilt Yards. It actually promotes them. It does not, defacto, oppose other projects elsewhere, but would be opposed to a project as objectionable as Atlantic Yards, squandering resources like Atlantic Yards no matter where or upon whom such a project might be forced.<BR/><BR/>Michael D. D. White <BR/>Noticing New York<BR/>http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.comMDDWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16693635186364315879noreply@blogger.com