Street co-naming block party June 29 honoring the late James Caldwell, former head of 77th Precinct Council and controversial Atlantic Yards CBA signatory BUILD

At a ceremony June 29 starting at noon, the northeast corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights/Crown Heights will be co-named for James E. Caldwell, the longtime President of the 77th Precinct Community Council, political activist in Crown Heights and Prospect Heights, and former Executive Director of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD).

BUILD, a group set up to both provide job training and support for the project, was a key signatory of the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). Developer Forest City Ratner funded its CBA partners, violating best practices for such agreements.

Caldwell, known to many as "Mr. C.," died in May 2021 at age 69, long after BUILD had shuttered.

It was also long after a bitter lawsuit, filed by BUILD trainees who charged they were promised a path to union construction careers, was settled by Forest City, which, in testimony released publicly, evaded responsibility but deflected blame to Caldwell.

The arc of Atlantic Yards

However much I was critical of BUILD, and sometimes Caldwell himself, he was always ready to talk, and argue, during our encounters over the years. And Caldwell was sincere in his hope--maybe closer to a belief--that the project could help people in his community.

Still, he'd grown a little more cynical about his patron.

The last time I spoke with Caldwell, as I wrote, he observed that Forest City’s treatment of BUILD reflected “the way Black people have been treated” in American history.

The company, he said, could’ve gone to union leaders and demanded a path to union apprenticeships for those in BUILD's pre-apprenticeship training program (PATP), rather than claim that program fed union PATPs, but “they didn’t fight for us.”

Indeed, as I reported, the construction unions, one Forest City executive said, were wary of a new program, and the company didn't want to jeopardize contract negotiations. So the BUILD's coveted training program could not lead to union careers.

Caldwell told me he still thought the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project had been good for the community, and he hadn't regretted support for it. Given the project's stall, and the lack of provision of jobs and affordable housing, I wonder what he'd say now.

A political person

He was a political operator, shifting his allegiance if it meant effectiveness. As PoliticsNY reported May 10, 2021:

Caldwell was originally a Black Democrat who shifted his party affiliation to Republican during the Donald Trump Era but has recently returned back to his original party.

Here's video of Caldwell testifying at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Finance Committee meeting June 22, 2009, supporting concessions requested by Forest City to enable the project:

 

Note that he acknowledges that he's paid as the head of BUILD, but the job-seeking people he brought with him were not.

At Community Board 8

The street co-naming discussion, at the June 27, 2023 meeting of Community Board 8's Environment/Sanitation/Transportation Committee, was brief. The main speaker was Brian Saunders, Caldwell's successor as Community Council President.

"James E. Caldwell... was a pillar of this community," Saunders said. "He did a lot for people in this community, the Black and brown community. He was a man of great integrity. He did more for others than for himself... He helped forge relationships with police in the community."

James Caldwell at oversight hearing,
May 29, 2009. Photo by Tracy Collins

Also speaking was Tammy Meadows. who shot photos for the Community Council and who said losing Caldwell was "a huge loss to the community." 

She cited his work helping fellow veterans get medical care, helping youth get jobs, and fighting the city's problematic Third-Party Transfer Program (TPTP), which caused longtime homeowners of color to suffer deed theft.

(See journalist Stephen Witt's recollection of his friend/mentor/source Caldwell, including the TPTP, as well as Caldwell's support for Atlantic Yards--and my critique of Witt's Atlantic Yards take.)

More from Meadows

Later, Meadows described Caldwell to me as as "more of a father figure/ mentor. I was pointed in his direction during my first desire to become engaged in the issues of the community as  block association president. He didn't wave me off, give me mediocre advice, nor was he pretentious. He taught and led from a place of inclusion and compassion wrapped in his faith in God! I will never forget that."

Meadows, at a July 2009 public hearing on Atlantic Yards, made a resonant observation: "You know, I really appreciate the debates on both sides because it has also forced people who never -- who normally don't even speak to each other to actually say something, to actually listen to each other and to actually hear what the other side had to say. And then at the end, they meet in the hallway and they finally discuss and realize that they too are just humans and just trying to make ends meet."

Illuminating those debates, Caldwell was a character in The Civilians' 2020 play-with-music, In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards (my review), which quoted one of his common explanations for his willingness to embrace the project: “We don’t normally get the chance to sit at the table." 

About the arena

At CB 8, Saunders added, "Also he’s one of the reasons why I guess in Barclays Center is where it is right now. When everyone said no, he was the first person to say yes."

That's not quite true. Note: Caldwell didn't create BUILD--that was the work of Assemblymember Roger Green, with Darnell Canada and Eric Blackwell as leaders. Caldwell stepped in after the latter two left.

As a consultant hired by Forest City Ratner reported, CBA signatories were compensated for community support, not program goals, and perceived as "fronts."

But even some Atlantic Yards opponents supported honoring Caldwell. "I definitely disagree with Mr. Caldwell over Barclays," commented longtime activist Connie Lesold at the CB8 meeting, "so it means something that I'm speaking for a street naming for him."

"Mr. Caldwell was out there on the streets in a major, major way for people who had housing problems.
He was out there for tenants and homeowners, not just one or the other," Lesold said. "He answered calls in the middle of the night from tenants, elderly seniors, and those were the people he was most concerned about, and he would go to the house and help them to resolve whatever problem it was."

"He once took a whole busload full of people down to the Supreme Court in Brooklyn to picket the court over... senior citizens losing their housing," she said.

Lesold noted Caldwell's willingness to let anyone speak at meetings he ran and his support for veterans."I just wanted to make sure that people really understood the full range of his concerns and particularly how seniors cared about him."

I'd observe that Caldwell wasn't the only person with a track record of local credibility then asked to take on new roles in organizations supporting Atlantic Yards.

The role of remembering

"That's why we put names on these street posts, right?" mused committee Chair Robert Witherwax. "To keep these people alive in our memory and to prompt the question from the newcomers: 'I wonder who that was.'"

In a handout for the September 14, 2023 general meeting of Community Board 8, the printed summary--as read by Witherwax--noted that Caldwell was former President of the the 77th Precinct Council and the former "Executive Director of Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development (BUILD), the community organization designed to implement the Community Benefits Agreement for the then Atlantic Yards Development Project."

Note: BUILD was one of eight organizations that signed the CBA, so it didn't implement it. Nor did any of them, actually. 

That was Forest City's job, and it failed to do so, fully, and failed to hire the promised Independent Compliance Monitor. And the signatories were too underequipped to go to court and force Forest City to do its job. So it's a complicated legacy.