Looking at multiple new developments underway along Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal
You can’t help noticing all the development in Brooklyn’s Gowanus or everything that is being built that lines the once notoriously infamous Gowanus Canal. But before there was that development there had to be a rezoning to permit it, and, for that, there had to be a vision to boost that rezoning into reality.
And when that vision was offered, one thing that was touted was that the Gowanus Canal could become Brooklyn’s “Riverwalk,” the bustling area that helps identify San Antonio, Texas as a beckoning city with a distinctive destination that serves as a draw for tourists and everyone else.
Well, as they say, if your gonna “talk the talk” you gotta “walk the walk.” Which means if you're gonna do your Texas, San Antonio River-talk, you gotta do your Riverwalk too, for real, or sort of for real, or, at least as real as its gonna get in New York.
The scale of the San Antonio River along which you find Riverwalk’s 2 ½ mile 30 foot wide, boat-accommodating developed stretch is reasonably comparable to the Gowanus Canal’s similarly 100 foot wide, boat accommodating 1.8-mile length now being developed. That’s probably why comparisons were generated.
But some things are different; not just the climate.
Riverwalk is promoted as having some of San Antonio's most spectacular hotels, night clubs, bars, shopping centers and businesses . . . and—
San Antonio’s Riverwalk is lined with more than a score of restaurants, two baker’s dozens is the higher number that approaches accuracy.
So to “Riverwalk” the Gowanus you would think that the Gowanus would need a few restaurants, in fact to be similarly lined with restaurants– Wouldn’t you?
Well here’s the plan to bring the canal's "Riverwalk" up to snuff with San Antonio given the caveats that apply.
Gowanus Canal Restaurants: A Practical Plan
The caveats relate to the fact that Gowanus is a superfund site. That phrase uses the word “super” in not a good or complimentary way. For many memorable years the Gowanus waterway was famous for its noxious stench. Maybe it immediately made people about the legends of the canal being used as a dumping ground for dead bodies by the likes of the mob. But the putrid stink probably had more to do with the build up of healthy organism-slaying toxins from the years of industrial use and garbage dumping.
The original idea when the Gowanus Creek was transformed into a man-made canal was that a continual flow of water would cleanse and keep the whiff of rot from building up. A ship’s propeller was installed at the head of the canal to pump water through a tunneled pipe from Buttermilk Channel, the tidal strait that is the span of water between Brooklyn and Governor’s Island.
The water became stagnant when that propeller soon broke and went unfixed for years.
A better flow of canal water?
With development of the canal in the offing, there have been fixes. In 1999 it was fixed and the direction of the tunnel's flow was reversed so that its water flows in from Buttermilk Channel, rather than the other way. In 2014 the configuration was changed to three pumps in the Flushing Tunnel Pumping System replacing the propeller and increasing the flow.
But that’s not all that’s needed for relief from the effects of the canal’s toxic history. The toxins are settled in the canal bed way down deep. They are settled so deep that the thinking is that no amount of dredging to remove them all is economically possible. You can’t go deep enough. The plan is to dredge and dredge somewhat deeply, and then cap the still toxic floor of the canal remaining with sand.
Of course there is some worry that with a huge hurricane, like the hurricane that Superstorm Sandy started out to be, the tumult would rip up and down below all the nice clean sand, stirring up and distributing what was laid down. Sandy, which was reported to have had the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded for a North Atlantic storm brought in a storm surge wall of water from the harbor fourteen feet above what is normally ever the very highest. Luckily, in some ways, it was all relatively serene as when Sandy actually arrived, its winds, a mere 17 miles an hour, weren’t anything comparable to a hurricane’s.
No doubt, the dredging does good, but there is more than an economic price to be paid. Last fall, the spirited Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Boathouse Jam crew was gathered to play its Blue Grass music sessions on the waterside promenade by the new, already built buildings alongside the canal. (They gather Wednesday evenings April through October.) At the same time, several hundred feet away a barge was there to do dredge work. Not only was there conversation amongst the gathered musicians about how powerfully awful the smell being pulled up from under the shallow bottom was, there were expressions of sincere concern about how healthy it was to breathe and for how long.
Blue Grass jam: Gowanus Dredgers filling the air with spirited music where sometimes the air is filled with evil aromas.
Restaurants along the canal? It’s not yet been zoned for restaurant. And apparently the NYC Health Department has some objections and is not going to change its mind.
The answer?: A practical one. . .
Big television screens are going to be the answer. Even if you are just a general consumer, really big television screens are now readily available- Even in 2019 you could get an LED screen 292 inches wide measured diagonally– In other words 24 feet.
Right now the biggest TV screen in the world is on the edge of the Las Vegas strip, in the Venetian Resort entertainment complex. It’s 515 feet by 367 feet.
What’s called for to serve the Gowanus is simpler. The walk will be lined with screens that show you, full scale, the fronts of attractive restaurants. A range of cuisines will be represented.
Motion detectors will detect when a passerby comes close to the projected door of any imaged restaurant. At that point, a change in the computer-generated image will activate and a beckoning figure will come to the door of the restaurant. It may be a sultry young woman with curves if you are a man (or we are mindfully told by city officials, if you “identify as one”), or an invitingly mysterious young man in a dark suit may appear if you are a woman. That figure will hold out their hand to you with a scannable QR code in its palm . . .
. . . scan the QR code with your phone and you will be supplied with a map and walking directions to go up the hill to a restaurant as depicted that will serve you a delicious meal on nearby Smith Street (two blocks away) or Court Street (three blocks away).
A demonstration (to be held for city officials, restaurant chain executives, and members of New York’s key real estate families) of the prototype TV screens that will be used to accomplish the replication of San Antonio’s Riverwalk on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is scheduled for today, April 1st, at one of the Gowanus Canal construction sites.
Double height streetery - Fifth Avenue in Park Slope- last spring it was single height.
(* Also spelled 'streateries')
Mayor Bill de Blasio, (“Build de Blasio” as he is affectionately known by some in the real estate development community) has an even worse plan with respect to his use of “Covid emergency” declarations for a privatizing takeover of public space to enhance private real estate ownership in New York. It’s an even worse plan and attorney Arthur Schwartz of Advocates for Justice says that he’s going to fight and defeat it. Mayor de Blasio's plan is that he wants to turn property owners’ street occupation rights into even more development rights than previously imagined.
Schwartz noted how he had already sued when the City Council unilaterally decreed the Open Restaurants Programpermanent and he confidently predicted that he would not let this new, expanded and even worse version of that “Covid emergency” based declaration get one wit further. Respecting Schwartz’s earlier legal action see: The Village Sun (Real News For The Community)- Locals to sue city over ‘illegal’ Open Restaurants program, by Lincoln Anderson, March 9, 2021
Schwartz previously attacked the de Blasio and the City Council for using the “Covid emergency” as an excuse to make `Open Restaurants Program’ permanent by passing a law (Intro 2127-A), November 15th of last year, that gave the mayor’s Department of Transportation and whatever any other agency the mayor designated unfettered power to create a permanent program to give the streets away for ‘restaurants.’ In the lawsuit Schwartz brought pro bono (representing an ad hoc coalition of community groups under the umbrella name “New Yorkers for Safe Open Streets” a.k.a. S.O.S.) Schwarz pointed out that this extensive delegation of power to the mayor and his agencies amounted to “unconstitutional” changes to the city’s zoning laws bypassing community input and “totally ignoring” the City Charter’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), a process that specifically requires zoning change review by community boards, the borough presidents, the City Planning Commission and the City Council.
Schwartz said that the permanent long-term giveaway of streets to neighboring properties was a privatizing handout to landlords, and that:
basically, property owners would be able to charge higher rents due to the permanent availability of the parking lane for use for additional seating.
In other words, with higher rents being charged, there would be no benefit to restaurants or restaurant owners.
Ultimately, the community activist attorney* said, the Open Restaurants program post-COVID would not benefit restaurants, only landlord property owners who would be able to charge higher rents due to the permanent availability of the parking lane for use for additional seating. “You can’t be doing this without any parameters at all,” says Schwartz adding to his objections, “there isn’t even the slightest framework to hem in the mayor and his agencies from doing absolutely anything they want or can imagine.”
(* NOTE: Arthur Schwartz is the same community activist attorney who successfully represented WBAI free speech radio, "Radio for the 99.5%," the only truly listener supported public radio station in New York City, in fending off a potentially privatizing attack on the station that involved the surreptitious and illegal shutdown of the station in October 2019.)
The Village Sun article includes this overview analysis by Schwartz, “speaking to The Village Sun,” he said:
what is currently being seen with the Open Restaurants diktat is part of a wider problem of community disenfranchisement perpetrated by City Hall.
“To me,” he said, “it’s part of an approach taken by the city that is also reflected in the recent proposal by [Council Speaker] Corey Johnson to create a ‘zoning czar’ that would shorten the ULURP process, where decision making on land use is getting more and more centralized and less involving the affected communities. This is imposing the will of the mayor on communities without their having a say.”
Those of us who have been watching the effect of Covid on city real estate are worried that this will also compound consolidating ownership: Are we are going to be seeing greater consolidation of property ownership in a city where a limited number of real estate families already dominate excessively given the squeeze of high property high taxes from a stressed city in need of income while store fronts are vacant as Mom and Pops close because of the virus? Mom and Pops, unlike the big box stores, don’t have a parallel web-sales presence to help carry them through. Big real estate owners also seem to have an affinity for big-box chain stores where they can replicate deals over swaths of property. . . All this in a city where City Hall has been handing out huge acreage swath to single owners, like the Atlantic Yards (now “Pacific Park”) project, Hudson Yards, Willets Point, the Columbia takeover of West Harlem, etc. often with the aid of eminent domain abuse seizures of property from smaller owners. And now public streets and sidewalks will be consolidated in that ownership.
Mayor de Blasio has defended making the `Open Restaurants Program’ permanent saying that assuring that permanence will induce the construction of sturdier outdoor enclosures to accommodate restaurant patrons. He notes that many of the streeteries initially built last spring were ramshackle affairs, thrown up often so improvisationally that they constitute unsettling eyesores to the community. "Knowing that you can keep, rather than quickly scrap what you build, will generate investment in far lovelier enclosures as people think in terms of a future and build with that in mind," said de Blasio.
Irving
Place is one of the streets where sturdy streeteries are expected to be
greatly expanded under the new de Blasio permanence program.
Mayor de Blasio’s new edition of the `Open Restaurants Program’ is supposed to be initially be launched mostly by new regulations issued by the mayor. Ideas for it started to get generated when Evan Moore a Department of Transportation Deputy Director was conferring and trading expertise and thoughts with Max Tolstoy of the Department of Buildings. With the streeteries built last year becoming more permanent and with the continuing need for such legal “outdoor” spaces to accommodate patrons given the prospective bans on indoor restaurant space, a number of the streeteries were informing the city that they were going with the expedient of building second stories to their “outdoor” space.
Moore and Tolstoy quickly realized there were implications to be considered. For instance: `Should staircases meet any prescribed code standards?’ This led to trying to think through possibilities through on a more integrated basis. `Should second stories only be permitted for those who had built sturdier structures making use of the outdoors, for instance, those with locking doors, and operable glass windows?’ Then it was realized that with outdoor staircases possible, maybe even lifts and sidewalk elevators being used, especially if wheel chair access is to be nondiscriminatorily provided, why not consider putting some of the new outdoor space structures on the roofs of shorter buildings?
Irving Place is a good small street to see in microcosm many solid doors and sturdy operable windows on streeteries.
Thinking multidimensionally this way, and thinking of building upwards in general, Moore and Tolstoy realized they had a tool to work with that they hadn’t been thinking about, known to those who understand the zoning code and regulations as "FAR," for Floor to Area Ratio. The FAR concept, already in the code and thus already available, prescribes that how much and how tall you can build in terms of total square footage will be determined as a multiple of the dimensions of the real estate you own absent any structures. Thus, formally recognizing the right to permanently occupy what was parking lane space as the addition to the owned property that it actually is, means that all building owners with such space attached have additional FAR with which to build higher and more real estate.
Mr. De Blasio, immediately blessed this concept with the caveat that any new space built with the additional FAR coming available would have to be deemed “outdoor” space for a period of time, a period of time that would also have to have some conceptual relation to the period of time that people think that Covid, at least as a crisis, is expected to be around. Furthermore, the space would also have to be deemed restaurant space throughout that period. De Blasio further specified that, somewhat along the lines of some of the legal concepts of `adverse possession’ or `possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ the Moore Tolstoy Open Restaurants Program should henceforth start requiring that parking lane street acquisitions and everything built under the program should be built with a certain level of sturdiness and meet certain minimums of protected enclosure in order to be considered certifiably consummated.
On
19th Street and Park Avenue, one of the city's streeteries is now
rebuilding in a sturdier fashion planning to take advantage of de Blasio
program loans for structures of greater permanence.
“But you can’t just expect that people will be able to do all this building under the program with insufficient resources to do so,” said de Blasio. That is why eligible owners applying to City Hall for approval will be able to take out loans from the city, “Sturdier Construction Underwriting Motivation” loans. Modeling the program on the federal Covid program Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, these loans will likewise be forgiven if the structures built are sturdy enough to stand for one year. The loans will be funded by tax-exempt bonds issued by Goldman Sachs. The City’s former deputy mayor for housing under de Blasio, Alicia Glen will get a finder's fee for the bond transaction. Although Glen is not now with Goldman, she came to work for de Blasio as Deputy Mayor for Housing from her previous position with Goldman where she led Goldman Sachs’s Urban Investment Group. Glen said that it required a lot of thinking, `to whom the loans should go,' but that Goldman was advising that loans should, for logical reasons, go to the property owners, not the restaurant operators. She said this was the advice the city was going to go with.
Most
of the streeteries on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, the neighborhood from
which de Blasio originally hails, are expected to go to two story
editions
Because most of the loans are expected to be forgiven rather than repaid, the source of funds for bond repayment will have to come form another source. Goldman has decided the bonds will be tax-increment bonds. Instead of any repayment funds having to come from the real property owners acquiring new properties and building rights under the program, the bonds will be paid off by higher taxes (tax-increments) that the rest of each neighborhood’s properties will pay. This is justified, says Glen, by the additional value and overall uplift the new building and dining spots will add to the neighborhoods. To encourage their acquisitions, the street property acquiring owners will be exempt from real estate taxes for five years.
Arthur Schwartz says he will fight the new Moore Tolstoy Open Restaurants Program for all the same exact reasons he brought his lawsuit against de Blasio’s initial Intro 2127-A version of the program prior to these new expansive interpretations, and he emphasizes that this version has all those same faults, flaws and unconstitutionalities, while at the same time "being ten times worse" . . Schwartz says he is absolutely confident he will prevail. . .
. . . Nevertheless, mayor de Blasio is set to boldly announce, in a press conference today, the Moore Tolstoy Open Restaurants Program along with Goldman's imminent issuance of its tax-increment bonds for the“Sturdier Construction Underwriting Motivation” ("SCUM") program loans. That should make a lot of restaurant landlords happy, this first day of April, April 1st.
Another streeterie in Park Slope that just went to two stories in March.
Mid-Manhattan Library and behind it 10 East 40th Street on left and 445 Fifth Avenue on right. Would these three buildings be torn down to put up a very much larger building?
As people should know by now, an important part of the New York Public Library’s Central Library Plan (CLP) is the sale of its very heavily used Mid-Manhattan Library. In fact, there is plenty of reason to suspect that a goal of selling off that building may be the main reason that the NYPL is pursuing the CLP. We’ll come back to that momentarily.
If the CLP goes through and the Mid-Manhattan library is sold, how big would the building be that replaces it?
Testimony delivered by Don Christensen at Assemblyman Micah Kellner’s June 27, 2013 hearing on the sale of New York City public libraries provided information and grounds for analysis to strongly suspect that 10 East 40th Street, the building directly adjacent to the Mid-Manhattan building to the east, is likely to be torn down and its lot combined with Mid-Manhattan’s to build something very big. As Mr. Chistensen pointed out, 10 East 40th Street is one of the “shaded buildings” on the Mid-Town Rezoning map “built prior to 1961 and . . particularly targeted for replacement with more modern and taller buildings.” The map Mr. Chistensen provided with his testimony appears below. See: Tuesday, July 2, 2013, Startling Testimony at State Assembly Hearing on NYC Library Sales.
This was "ATTACHMENT D" to Mr. Christensen's testimony- click to enlarge
The only thing that makes it truly worth tearing down big buildings is building much bigger ones. So one way to speculate about how big the replacement building for Mid-Manhattan would be is to imagine all three of these buildings torn down and replaced by a single building proportionately much bigger than the already very big 10 East 40th Street and 445 Fifth Avenue buildings, themselves much bigger than the Mid-Manhattan building. (See the picture at the beginning of this article and below.)
Again, Mid-Manhattan Library and behind it 10 East 40th Street on left and 445 Fifth Avenue on right- Click to enlarge?
Another way of getting a sense of how big a building might replace the Mid-Manhattan Library is to judge by the colossal amount of energy and resources that are very strangely being devoted to pushing the Central Library Plan through. When all is said and done, the Central Library Plan provides virtually no benefit for the NYPL or to the public it is mean to serve. More correctly, it should probably said that it is destined to end with the NYPL significantly worse off than it started off. In the end:
• The NYPL will have reduced the space of two major libraries of significant stature, Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business Library, representing an aggregate of about 300,000 square feet of library space, and squeeze the those two libraries into just 80,000 square feet in the back quarters of what has hitherto been the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, a world-class institution.
• In that process another 80,000 square feet of space will be sacrificed and lost, the fabled research stacks of the Central Reference Library, an integral part of the building’s Carrère and Hastings design, structure and function.
• As Mr. Christensen's testimony also pointed out, the entirety of the space that is intended to replace the Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business libraries will be accessed through one small door deep within the 42nd Street building.
• The shrunken space housing the remnants of the two former libraries of stature will be non-expandable. This is despite the fact that:
• SIBL was completed (and sized) at 160,000 square feet in1996, only a few years ago, and
• the previous plan for Mid-Manhattan, last in effect in 2003, called for almost doubling its size by adding another 117,000 square feet.
• Much of the research collection of the Central Reference Library will become highly inaccessible as it is moved to storage in Princeton, New Jersey.
• The circulating and reference collections of Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business Library will also be banished and, if kept at all, will become relatively inaccessible because the only way to shrink the two large libraries into such small space is to get rid of books and librarians. That is why the NYPL is so busy working hard to get rid of books in preparation for the envisioned move.
All of this will be done at enormous cost, effort and years of construction.
The plan has still not yet been completely designed or finally costed out, but it is expected to run at least $350 million in public money, of which at least $150 million will be taxpayer dollars, altogether a likely a net negative for the NYPL after selling its real estate. Would anyone care to guess whether $425 million is actually the more likely neighborhood of the figure that these total expenses come in at?
The CLP was conceived in 2006, perhaps 2005, according to NYPL Chief Operating Officer David Offensend. It won’t be completed until at least 2018. Are these things ever completed on schedule or on budget?
The deal will probably be a “stop-watch deal” (with the NYPL selling Mid-Manhattan only after completion of the CLP construction) so the condition of the real estate market and what Mid-Manhattan can eventually be sold for, the ultimately likely loss to the NYPL, will not be known for years.
And what will be the ultimate benefit for the NYPL of all this shrinkage and reduction of resources at such enormous expense?: Running much smaller shrunken-down library space with fewer librarians and fewer books will cost less to operate. . . .
. . . Really? Why go through such gyrations to achieve a purpose that is essentially antithetical to providing library services? With money that could have been used to provide library services?
There really is no reason to be jumping through all these hoops, mobilizing such terrific energy, spending all these public and taxpayer dollars for such a stupid result. That’s what ultimately causes us to infer, of necessity, that the building that replaces Mid-Manhattan is going to be a very, very big building. Something must be fueling all this silliness. What else could it be?
(FYI: Citizens Defending Libraries has a petition now with over 13,000 signatures, most of them online, opposing the sale and shrinkage of New York City libraries to create real estate deals.)
This Noticing New York post will do something unprecedented: I will turn over most of what you will be reading here to someone else's voice:the startling hearing testimony of researcher Donald Christensen. I doubt that you will be disappointed!
I'd like to think that, even if readers will be reading work authored by another, they will feel as if they they are reading one of Noticing New York's better articles. I hesitate to make that assertion because you might think I am trying to flatter myself: The insights, research upon which they are based, and the way everything is expressed in what you will be reading is superb.
State Assemblyman Kellner's Hearing on Sale of NYC Libraries
Above, Assembly Members Micah Kellner and Joan Millman listen to NYPL President Anthony Marx's testimony. Photo from Jonathan Barkey
Last Thursday, June 27, 2013, Assembly Member Micah Kellner, Chair of the Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, held a public hearing at 250 Broadway in Manhattan on the sale of New York City library buildings to private developers. The better part of what you be reading constituting this post is the stunning testimony delivered at that hearing by Donald Christensen, a professional researcher.
The hearing was very well attended with many of those attending testifying quite eloquently although some, like Mr. Christensen, set a very high bar. Citizens Defending Libraries and The Committee to Save the New York Public Library were among those testifying with a slew of others about the sell-off and shrinkage of libraries around the city, including the Central Library Plan, Donnell and libraries in Brooklyn. Testimony concerned the cost of these plans, the proposed destruction of the historic, irreplaceable assets, and how the plans donot benefit the public. The sell-offs resulting in shrinkage of the library system and assets owned by the public include destruction of the famed research stacks of the 42nd Street library on Fifth Avenue behind the lions, Patience and Fortitude. I personally testified as part of Citizens Defending Libraries of which I am a co-founder. Testimony from Citizens Defending Libraries, including mine, is available at CDL's web pages)
Overall, between 50 to 60 people signed up to testify. Though the room was filled to capacity (about 130 people were there) with every seat taken, not all of those who signed up to testify made it to the hearing and some who made it to the hearing to testify were not able to wait until the end of the day to deliver their testimony orally (though they were able to submit their testimony in writing): The hearing, scheduled for 10:30 AM, got underway before 11:00 AM and lasted until just after 6:00 PM. Other than the library heads, Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and Linda E. Johnson, president of the Brooklyn Public Library, nobody who spoke on Thursday spoke in favor of selling the libraries.
Press Coverage
Times story on Marx and the hearing
A most detailed account of the hearing from Susan Bernofsky can be found here: Friday, June 28, 2013, Saving the New York Public Library. Video of it is now up on the Assembly’s website where a transcript will also be supplied.
The best news for opponents of the library sales was that the Times coverage, by Robin Pogrebin and prominently featured in Friday’s main art section (see above), raises the hope that these issues are beginning to get the kind of coverage they deserve. Recently, Times reporter Joseph Berger worked mention of Citizens Defending Libraries (and accompanying link) into an updating story about the improved prospects for survival of the Pacific Branch library (Berger has also tracked the fate of libraries in an updating story about school sales were thwarted by community opposition). That mention was a helpful adjustment for the fact that reference to Citizens Defending Libraries had been removed from the earlier Times front page story about city libraries and schools being sold.
Ms. Progrebin’s latest article didn’t refer specifically to Citizens Defending Libraries but its theme was how NYPL president Marx has needed to retreat in the face of questions about why the NYPL was proceeding with an obviously very expensive Central Library Plan when it did not yet have a design or cost calculations. See: Critics Prompt New Review of Library Plan, June 27, 2013.
Landmark West! emailed the Times story picking out what may be its most telling line:
Mr. Kellner questioned, “If we don’t have a design yet and we don’t know cost, why has the N.Y.P.L. applied for and been granted building permits?”
The math in Marx's statements about how he was calculating that there was public benefit to the CLP also did not seem to work out unless one ignores and does not treat enormous taxpayer expenditures ($150 million) as being an expense. In my testimony, which followed President Marx's, I offered to comment on Mr. Marx's remarks but that didn't happen, given time constraints and the long list of those signed up to speak next.
Lack of Response By Library Officials to the Public
I would have pointed out that Mr. Marx said that the NYPL was listening and responding to public to make adjustments to its Central Library Plan, but that when Citizens Defending Libraries met with the NYPL's Chief Operating Officer, David Offensend, (May 30, 2013), we asked Offensend to describe in exactly what ways the NYPL has incorporated public feedback in updating its plans and the list he gave in a two and half minute response was sparse, although he also emphasized that the NYPL didn't have a "final design" and was "still working at it with the architects":
• The NYPL will "use more of the historic stack materials in the new design" to "memorialize what they look like"
• "People have expressed concern about how people will travel through the building" and accommodation of the larger number of people the NYPL has spent time "designing what the architects call the circulation, meaning how people move around and through the building" with "considerably more square footage open to the public. . so we are working hard on that"
• Signage and wayfinding, ways to improve the visitor experience.
• The NYPL, as of September, "agreed to a build out a portion of the Bryant Park stack to maintain many more books on site"
When we get to Mr. Christensen's testimony, remember the points above about the flow of pedestrians and crowds through the building and signage, wayfinding and visitor experience.
During his June 27th hearing testimony Marx also mentioned the accommodation to critics of building out the stacks under Bryant Park (this was actually the first of the items when Offensend `ticked' off his list). The problem was that at the same meeting where Offensend cited this as being a revision to the plan in response to public comment he contradicted himself with an earlier statement describing the build-out as being part of the original plan.
He said that the plan had begun by 2006, perhaps as early as 2005, and that in discussion there had been concern about the amount of space available. He said the NYPL hired the Gensler architectural firm, which was looking at the space issue and that the firm said, "The thing to do to create the right amount of space is to remove the
stacks, which is the main thing here, to create that much space." Offensend continued immediately (emphasis supplied):
And the librarians were like, well, `we'd have to figure out where to put the books.' And we did have that second level underneath Bryant Park, and we did calculate that, fully built out, it could accommodate about the same number of stacks that were in the stacks. So that was part of the original plan. The librarians were very excited about it because they said that nobody uses those books very much, anyway.
So was building out the stacks actually part of the original plan or one of the NYPL's very few ostensible responses to public feedback? I offer the above Offensend quotes without endorsement of whether I think the information stated in them is true, only to note the information given and the contradictions. The other problem with building out the supplemental stacks under Bryant Park now in order to accommodate more books is that use of those stacks was always, for decades, the plan to accommodate future growth and needs, not present ones. It was supposed to accommodate at least another ten years of future need. . . .
. . . One other thing that COO David Offensend conceded at our May 30th meeting with him was that if the NYPL's calculations about space needs were incorrect, or if with growth in the future the consolidated Central Libray Plan library needed to be expanded, there was no capacity to accommodate such expansion.
Had I continued my testimony at the hearing, I would have pointed out that the NYPL's lack of response to public reaction, together with Tony Marx's math that seems to assume that taxpayer dollars spent on the CLP don't have to be calculated as a cost in any cost benefit analysis, indicate a disdain for the public. Rather similarly, in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Public Library does not wish to accept Citizens Defending Libraries as a representative of the public while the "Friends" of the library group has been given a lead role on the Brooklyn Heights Library "Community Advisory Committee" to represent the community even when that "Friends" group apparently believes it is never allowed to disagree or take issue with the BPL.
Elected Representatives Present at the Hearing
Testimony from all the following elected officials was all highly critical of the library real estate deals: City Council members Tish James and Steve Levin, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, State Senator Bill Perkins (by his representative, Michael Henry Adams). Those Assembly Members asking the library heads for information, including Kellner and Millman, were also highly skeptical of the planned sales.
Reportedly Dejected Ms. Johnson After Hearing
BPL's Linda Johnson seemed to attempt a friendly conversation with Councilman Levin out by the elevators right before he went in to testify critically about the BPL’s sales. Word is that the BPL's Linda Johnson was morose and cranky as she rode down in the elevator leaving the hearing, complaining about all the opposition to her planned library sales. She was headed for a meeting of the BPL trustees later that evening. There at that 5:30 PM meeting she was greeted by community activists who held up signs about saving the Pacific Branch. They stayed for most of the trustees meeting, but, according to the reports I received, unless Ms. Johnson saved her remarks for the very end, she never acknowledged the activists present, nor told the trustees anything about that day’s hearing.
Through To the Bitter End
While the Times picked out the testimony of Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning writer and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, who testified early in the day, as being of exceptional interest, as indeed it was, there was superb testimony throughout the day and you had to wait until the very end to hear some of the best of it, including Mr. Christensen’s.
Mr. Christensen was on one of the very last panels with former librarian Rita Bott who also provided some especially insightful testimony that I should perhaps publish in another follow-up. A coincidence: It turned out that, as a librarian, Ms. Bott had assisted Mr. Christiansen with research years ago but they had never formally met.
Because the testimony from Mr. Christensen that follows below is as long as it is I have not observed the usual Noticing New York convention of indenting to indicate that the text appearing is supplied by someone else. Also, to assist the reader with some "wayfinding" guideposts I have myself provided some subheading interjected between soem of the paragraphs.
Here then, without further ado, is the testimony (video available at CDL's YouTube Channel) Mr. Christensen presented.
TESTIMONY FOR COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES AND EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY HEARING JUNE 27, 2013 PRESENTED BY DONALD CHRISTENSEN
Thank you for this opportunity to provide information I have concerning the topic of this public hearing. This hearing serves as a unique platform to create a public record of the facts, concerns and probable impact of the library's radical plans for reducing ready access to the library's resources for members of the public that the charter of the library promises to serve. Perhaps this public record will be reviewed by the people who are orchestrating this radical - and destructive - plan because until today there has been virtually no input allowed from anyone outside the small cadre of people intent on a singular agenda that has little to do with the goals that until recently guided this once-great institution.
Going Back In Time: The NYPL Standards For Serving The Public That Used To Apply
To prepare for today's testimony I read through the papers of the former Director of the library during the years of the formation of the Mid-Manhattan Library as it exists today at 40th Street and Fifth Avenue. His name was John Mackenzie Cory. He was on the staff of the library from the early 1950s until the late 1970s. All of his papers covering the transformation of the Mid-Manhattan building from the department store known as Arnold Constable are preserved in a large file box in the manuscript department of the Main Library building. That collection of papers includes all the correspondence, personal memos of everything from telephone conversations to notes gathered at lunch meetings, copies of internal reports from various Trustee committees, copies of legal interpretations concerning the Mid-Manhattan property as a real estate investment as well as various "white papers" and "confidential reports" that define the sequence of events and thoughts that show the path for the development of that facility. The records of Directors of the Library are sealed from public view for 20 years. That means we won't be able to access such records of the current director and those of the recent past to find out exactly what they have been up to for another 20 years, in which case it might be too late. But we have Mr. Cory's papers and they reveal a lot. I also had the opportunity to review the minutes of the Branch Library Council, which oversees a part of the actions of the branch libraries, including Mid-Manhattan, from the years 1949 through 2002. Those minutes and the other papers in the Branch Library Council file box at the manuscript department also reveal some interesting things.
While I went through these papers I took copious notes and had copies made of salient documents. Unfortunately, I cannot share with you copies of those documents. I have them with me, but I cannot copy them or quote from them for any type of publication (including the 20 copies of this testimony) without permission of the library. I have not been able to secure permissions. So I will have to paraphrase what I found in those papers.
There are two basic issues I'd like to cover today in the short amount of time I have. First, the goals and intentions of the Mid-Manhattan library as defined by the people of John Mckenzie Cory's era in comparison to what the current regime wants to deliver to the people of New York. Second, to look at the Mid-Manhattan property as piece of real estate. As everyone in this room knows, this whole current plan is really a real estate story, apparently designed to make someone really, really rich while impoverishing the cultural and intellectual texture of the city of New York.
Why Mid-Mahattan Was Developed And Serves The Public The Way That It Does
First, why Mid-Manhattan was developed. Since the late 1940s the Library wanted to move the small circulating facility out of the main building so that the main building could concentrate on the research aspect of the library that was the basis of its formation as opposed to the goals of the branch libraries. They first considered other ways of expanding the space within the main library. For example, there was a plan drawn up to tunnel under the terraces surrounding the building. That plan was scratched because they wanted a general circulating/general research library that was both visible and easily accessible. They did not want to hide it within the marble fortress of the Main Library. Also, they wanted a facility at a location nearby the main building. The idea was that if someone's research need was beyond the resources of a general research library, a patron could readily be sent to the main library and have their research needs handled immediately.
In 1961, the building housing the Arnold Constable department store came on the market. The department store did not own the building and never had. The store was just a tenant and in 1961 they had a lease that would not expire until 1979. Still, the library bought the building with the specific intention of taking over the building in 1979. The department store went out of business in 1975 and vacated the building. In 1967 the department store vacated the top three floors of the building and the first manifestation of the Mid Manhattan library branch opened on those top three floors in 1971. After the department store completely vacated the building, a series of recommendations were made about how to use the space. There was a lot of pressure to rent out the first floor for commercial use to get money to run the library. But a stronger faction within the library argued that such a thing would go against the goal of making the library fully visible from the street and readily accessible right off the sidewalk. To make it even more inviting they increased the size of the window on the façade of the building so that people could see in and see that it was a welcoming place to enter.
Another option that was rejected was the possibility of purchasing the Columbia University Club building on West 43rd Street, which was on the market for a time prior to the full expansion into Constable building. That option was rejected because the 43rd Street location was not visible enough.
After the commitment to the Mid-Manhattan along with its street level openness and easy accessibility, millions of visitors found that the concept has been very successful.
Accessibility and Burying Replacement Library Space Where The Research Stacks Now Exist
But now we are faced with a different idea. This idea strives to hide the general library deep in the bowels of a formidable building behind three massive walls of marble and far, far away from ready access from the street. This idea more closely matches the idea of burrowing under the terraces that an earlier - and wiser - generation of library leaders rejected as inappropriate for serving the general public. And how will this hidden facility welcome people into it or even let people know it is there? I doubt very much that they will put a sign over Stephen Schwarzman's name on the building to tell people what they might find inside.
As far as accessibility goes, this plan is a nightmare. I counted how many stairs and how many strides it would take to get to that location. Now, I might point out, it takes about 10 strides at the Mid-Manhattan library to get from the street into the actual library space - and it's on one level. In contrast, you have to climb 29 stairs and you have to take 62 strides to get from the sidewalk to the first door of the building's entrance. Then you have to take another 88 strides to get from the first door, traveling through two more doors to finally get to the top of Sir Norman Foster's flamboyant and vulgar staircase to look up at a seven-story high empty atrium and then climb down more stairs to reach the main level of the so-called library. It would take half a day to get to and from that space and only if you are in good shape.
(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) NYPL Architectural rendering of second and last of two similarly sized small doors that would lead to what was formerly the research stack space
But before you could get to Sir Norman's atrium, you would be forced to pass through one small door to get into what is now the Gottsman exhibition space and then through another small door at the other end of the Gottsman space before finally getting to Sir Norman's staircase when to begin your descent. Those two small doors supposedly are to serve both as the ingress and egress to and from the atrium space. At the Mid-Manhattan building, in contrast, there are three doors to enter and in different locations there are five doors to exit. And even then there are sometimes lines to get in or out. But Sir Norman's design doesn't take such traffic flow into consideration. Maybe Sir Norman doesn't know what it takes to get a million people a year in and out of a building space if there is only one door for both paths of action. The library has produced a video* that shows how easy it would be to get to the Sir Norman's atrium by seeming to show you floating through these little doors like Peter Pan with no other people around and no obstructions. In reality, it would more likely look like the army of cards in Alice in Wonderland slamming up against each other to get through the White Rabbit's little door. I can imagine that Sir Norman doesn't have to worry about crowds of ingress and egress when he visits the library building because I'm sure he is gestured in with: "After you, Sir Norman." When I look at the lack of doors to accommodate any reasonable type of ingress and egress flow of people, I notice that there are spaces at the rear wall of the Astor Hall that separates the Hall from the Gottesman Exhibition Hall that could be knocked out and more doors put in. Although the Astor Hall has an interior landmark status, I understand that the landmark definition does not extend to that back wall. I wonder if the current leaders of the library and Sir Norman would have any problem with knocking out portions of that wall - and vandalizing that space -- once they realize that people couldn't all get in and out of the single small door that is there now?
[* (Added by NNY 7/4/'13) There is a five minute NYPL produced video "A First Look at NYPL's Central Library Plan" that contains the Peter Pan fly through accelerated to finish in 30 seconds (just the 30 second fly through is available here: "NYPL's accelerated Peter Pan fly through a single door.") Viewers are cautioned that the film is very deceptive in it depiction of space and some other respects, something that Noticing New York will have to deal with in a subsequent post. The NYPL's also has a one-minute version of the fly through on its site titled "Explore NYPL's 42nd Street Renovation."]
Certainly, the distance from the sidewalk to Sir Norman's atrium would be an insurmountable expedition for a lot of people who currently use the Mid-Manhattan location with ease. And that doesn't even begin to address the needs of disabled people. Will people in wheelchairs be sent on an excursion to 42nd Street and up and down ramps and elevators instead of simply traveling directly off the street like they do now at Mid-Manhattan. Maybe the library could have Sir Norman design a sign to hang out front to express what they might really mean with this obstacle path for disabled people: "No cripples wanted."
(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) On left: Reality, light traffic through first door. On right: NYPL Architectural rendering of second door, and only entrance to the space meant to replace two large libraries - Is that couple conveniently diminutive?- Click to enlarge.
(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) What it looks like when more people use another of the library's similarly sized doors
(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) NYPL rendering from the inside showing the one small single door entrance.
Sir Norman's Vision?
In short, what we are getting here is the closure of a completely open democratic space and in its place we're getting a hard-to-get-to and hard-to-access area that's really designed to keep people out for elitist use by people who have the time to get there and the knowledge of where it's hidden. And let's be frank here, who could look at that huge atrium space and not see it for what it really is: A dramatic party room to be used occasionally by a handful of rich people. All fully equipped with a Sir Norman staircase to enter onto and sashay down so that party goers gathered below can admire the clothes of other rich people.
And, by the way, why couldn't the library leadership find an American architect? After all, the trustees of the original building were able to find American architects. But I guess it's less fun to say "I'm taking the B train to Union Square to meet with the architects" than to say "I have to go to London to meet with Sir Norman."
Lost, Inaccessible Library Materials (Including Materials On The NYPL Itself)
This whole Sir Norman dynamic sums up the elitist tone of this entire Central Plan. This new space isn't for the little people. It just another club room for today's moneyed oligarchs, their avatars and sycophants.
And to claim that the traditional use of the Main Library as a superb research center has been maintained even though most of the books have been moved elsewhere - like New Jersey - is a total lie. While I have used that research library for over 30 years, my recent experience shows exactly how wrong-headed and dangerous this method is proving to be. When you go to the main library, you don't know what materials are on-site or off-site. The on-line catalog accessible via the internet at home is of little help. You can try to order off-site materials via the internet, but the library cannot promise when the materials will be ready to be examined. In fact, if you ask for them to arrive on a certain date, you cannot ask whether or not they will be there until AFTER the date is passed! (See ATTACHMENT A.) In addition, because there is no librarian to assist you in navigating through the search process, you are often sent the wrong materials. Moreover, a lot of materials have already been lost. For example, I wanted to look at the New York Public Library's Annual Reports from 1958 through 1962 to see what was said about the purchase of the building that is today Mid-Manhattan. Well, those volumes have been lost. (See ATTACHMENT B.) I had to be sent to the Butler Library at Columbia University to look at them. (See ATTACHMENT C.) The New York Public Library has LOST the documents of their own history. Tragically, it's not too surprising since the current leadership of the library apparently has total contempt for the treasures in their care as they throw these materials up and down the New Jersey Turnpike in a cavalier fashion. I can report with confidence that the librarians working at the Main Library are completely frustrated with this nonsensical system that will guarantee further deterioration of the collection as it travels back and forth from storage in another state instead of just traveling up and down on small elevators from the stacks. And why? Again so that a few rich people can have another dramatic party room?
ATTACHMENT A- click to enlarge
ATTACHMENT B- click to enlarge
ATTACHMENT C- click to enlarge
Delving Into Real Estate Deal Aspects of Central Library Plan
The successful and ideal profile of the existing Mid-Manhattan building as fulfilling the goals of being a visible, accessible, democratically welcoming center located right on the street compared to the hidden, inaccessible, elitist nature of the proposed plan to move within the Main Building butts up against the reality of the real estate of the Mid-Manhattan building. This prime property is ripe for development. But who would get it? Who is poised to make the big money with its ownership? But more importantly, why should the library give it up since, obviously, they could never be able to recapture such real estate if the nature of libraries changes again at some time in the future. Plus, considering the library's past failures in successfully getting good prices for the real estate they have already sold, why should they be trusted not to throw this one away as well?
The unique placement of the Mid-Manhattan buidling finds it at the edge of the Bloomberg initative calling for the updating of buildings within what is called the East Midtown Rezoning Target Zone. Attached is a map of that area. (See ATTACHMENT D.) Shown on the map are shaded buildings that were built prior to 1961 and are particularly targeted for replacement with more modern and taller buildings. You will see on this map that the building directly adjacent to the Mid-Manhattan building to the east is one of those shaded buildings - 10 East 40th Street. The Mid-Manhattan building occupies 2-8 East 40th Street. The library building itself is NOT within the Target Zone, but, again, the adjoining property is.
ATTACHMENT D- click to enlarge
The Wohls
10 East 40th Street is owned by a group headed by real estate mogul Larry A. Wohl. Wohl's father and Wohl's father's partner Norman Levy bought 10 East 40th in the mid 70s. The two buildings - the library building and 10 East 40th - has a long and complex interwoven history that is too complicated to get into here. The two buildings were built by the same man - Frederick Vanderbilt - who owned them until death in 1938. There are aspects of the two buildings that overlap. Because of this interwoven connection, Norman Levy and Wohl's father were in constant contact with John Mackenzie Cory and other library executives over one matter or another affecting both buildings.
Then in the mid 1970s after the department store decided to vacate the building and before the commitment was made to fully develop the Mid-Manhattan branch, Levy and Wohl made a very generous offer to buy the building. This sent the library leaders to assess the situation seriously. They drew up an analysis of 6 options, including selling the building to Levy and Wohl. The library as well as the whole city was in dire financial straits at the time. But in the end the library leaders took the high road. They recognized that the building offered the best option for the goals they wanted to achieve to serve the needs of a general library. They turned down the purchase offer to follow the ideals of the institution - visibility and accessibility, no matter what the cost. Even though they didn't really have the money at the time.
Obviously, today if 10 East 40th could be a target for demolition and replacement with a super skyscraper, then a new building that could occupy both 10 East 40th and the Mid-Manhattan building site would make that super skyscraper even more super. I doubt that that observation has escaped Larry Wohl. And he has the money to do it. In addition, Mayor Bloomberg has apparently jumped on the "tear down the Mid-Manhattan building" bandwagon. Attached is an "agreement" from 2008 from the Mayor's office allowing the library to vacate the Mid-Manhattan building and sell it. This so-called "agreement" looks more like a commandment than an agreement, since no one from the library signed it. (See ATTACHMENT E.)
Has that observation of linking the two properties of Mid-Manhattan and 10 East 40 escaped the notice of the current leaders of the library? I doubt it. But, would they stick to the principles that their predecessors under the leadership of John Mackenzie Cory showed when they turned down an offer of ready cash from Wohl's father in order to fulfill the goals of the institution of reaching out to the users of the public library by having a space visible and easily accessible. Sadly, I doubt that as well.
They'd rather have the hidden Sir Norman party room kept pristine by keeping people out through three barriers of marble walls and time-consuming journeys to keep it available only to people with a lot of time and cut out such groups as lunchtime users who now run quickly in and out of Mid-Manhattan.
I don't know if Larry Wohl has maintained the type of constant contact with today's library leadership that his father and Norman Levy enjoyed with John Mackenzie Cory. We won't know for another 20 years when we will be able to examine the papers of Mr. Marx and his advisers.
Wohl's Writing On The Wall?
But the other day I got a little clue. Walking past the two buildings where they join on East 40th Street -I noticed that a large advertising sign for Mr. Wohl's leasing corporation, Joseph P. Day Realty, was announcing space for lease in 10 East 40th. The sign extends far into the side of the library building. (See ATTACHMENTS F and G.) This sign, in other words, encroaches on the library property, apparently with impunity. Is Mr. Wohl already assuming ownership of the library building? Are the leaders of the library already assuming that that will be the case?
ATTACHMENT F
ATTACHMENTS G
Is it much of a leap to imagine how much richer Wohl would become with control of that corner of real estate? And is it much of a leap to imagine how much less access the people of New York will have to library services as a result?
As the library continues to give away its real estate to make others rich, the losers are the people of New York.
* * * *
And that, dear friends of Noticing New York, is the startling testimony that was presented by professional researcher Donald Christensen at Micah Kellner's June 27, 2013 Assembly committee hearing about the sale of libraries in New York City.
Video is below or, best way to see it, available at CDL's YouTube Channel.
Bigger building Walentas' Two Trees Development wants to build with zoning change. Click to enlarge- (or withhold vital city services to enlarge?)
When I was in urban planning school in the 1970s I came up with what I thought was a great idea. I was especially proud of it because it seemed to me that no one had thought of it before. It wasn’t in any of the reading I’d done, nor anything like it. Although I have now read all of Jane Jacobs’ books I don’t remember her addressing anything like it. (It should be understood that Jane Jacobs, the great urbanist and thinker, did not consider herself an urban planner, but rather a critic of that profession which earned her scorn for being capable of so many arrogant mistakes.)
My urban planning student idea concerned the placement of those things that society needs but that neighborhoods shun hosting in their midst. My quintessential example at the time was a prison. Other examples are trash disposal or trash incineration sites or sewage treatment plants. It occurred to me that to make things more equitable, the things shunned should be paired with things neighborhoods might want. So I thought of putting the local jail for incarceration together on the same site or in the same building with a local police station. I know that not every neighborhood wants a police station. (Police, among other things, tend take over local streets with parking, often angled to fit more cars in.) But when I was conceptualizing this it was in the '70s: Crime was higher and I happened to grow up in a Gramercy Park neighborhood where the local police station and police academy seemed to be viewed as a benefit.
An example of this idea being effectuated in real life is the 28-acre Riverbank State Park built on the roof of North River Sewage Treatment Plant jutting out from Harlem’s Hudson River shoreline between 137th and 145th Streets. The city got a sewage treatment plant and in return the people of Harlem got the amenity of park, although some would say that Harlem nevertheless got the short end of the deal accepting a plant other communities didn’t want and was then doubly shafted when the park was completed late with promised park amenities failing to materialize and the park budget being repeatedly cut. It was even closed for a while in 2010. The sewage treatment plant opened in1986 with noisome smells not under control. The park, planned from the beginning, finally opened in May of 1993.
A view of the plant and park from New York City's website
As you can readily see from this one real-world example there is a lot of Devil-in-the-details in making such a plan work. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some genius in the essence of it. Nevertheless, since this the idea for putting a park over the North River Sewage Treatment Plant goes back to at least 1973 when funding was obtained for it, a few years before I was in urban planning school, I can’t successfully claim that I was the first one to conceive of pairing that which is desirable to a community with that which is not.
That Was Sort Of A Good Idea, But Here's A Bad One
It may seem strange that I am beginning an article with an idea that I credit as having meritorious aspects as my preface to excoriating the astoundingly horrible new urban planning strategy that this article is really about. That really horrible new approach to city planning, which I urge communities to reject out of hand and refuse, absolutely, in any way to collaborate with, is the strategy of withholding basic city services in order to bribe/blackmail communities into accepting bad development that they don’t otherwise want.
I am beginning with a potentially good idea as prelude to discussing this really terrible practice in order to make important distinctions, even if a few of them might seem subtle. The distinctions are important for people to understand and appreciate how bad this new practice is.
In that previous Noticing New York post you can read about the smoking gun e-mails that showed that government officials were intentionally holding back on providing a much needed community school in order blackmail the community to accept a bigger Walentas developer Dock Street project project than the one the community had previously rejected. (That Walentas Dock Street project was strong-armed through the City Council by Speaker Christine Quinn, in an unusual move, over the objections of the local city council member.) You can also read how essentially the same thing is now being done with another Walentas project near BAM, where a library is being promised if the community tolerates nearly doubling the size of that project.
Libraries and schools are essential community services and provision of them should not be conditioned on putting through bad development. I’ll discuss this more in a moment. First a segue to make distinctions.
A Number of Distinctions Worth Making (This Way You Don't Have to Go To Urban Planning School)
Brooklyn law School's Feil Hall as seen from the Brook of the Brooklyn Detention Center, 2008
What we are talking about here is not any of the following:
• Planning measures that “mask” objectionable development. A number of years ago, in the early 2000s, I communicated with Borough President Marty Markowitz (as a private citizen ) to support a variance to allow greater height and density for Brooklyn Law School’s Feil Hall, being built to provide residences for law students. I am a fan of development and favor adding density when appropriately done. (I am also an alumni of the law school.) I made the argument that added density in this area of town, near a confluence of subway lines, was good. (I later worried that Mr. Markowitz might afterwards havethought that this was a valid argument for the extraordinary density of Atlantic Yards- It is not.) I also made the argument that adding density at that location on Brooklyn’s State street near court street would help mask (by helping to overwhelm them) the negative aspects of the jail there, the Brooklyn House of Detention. I guess I was sort of hearkening back to my earlier planning school idea. Years later there was another thing I wondered about my communications with Borough President Markowitz: Whether I had inspired his plan launched later to hide the Brooklyn House of Detention in a sandwich between two new abutting condominiums. The scheme, perhaps not so harebrained as you might think, could have somehow worked. But only if the functions of the jail were not interfered with.
• Cleaning up after a landfill. After the many years a landfill is in operation clean-up goes on for many more years frequently to create a park. It might sound similar to the exchange in Harlem where a park accompanied a plan for waste disposal. By contrast, the period during which the negativities of the landfill are endured are so removed in time from the day when the benefits after clean-up are finally enjoyed, it is not the same thing. It is not concurrent: The population that endures the negatives may ultimately with the passage of time and community change be generations different from the population that one day benefits in what maybe a gentrifying neighborhood.
• Developer fees. Many suburban communities jump on the chance to charge subdivision developers fees that will pay for the assumed additional costs of a growing community: enlarging schools, police and fire departments, building roads, etc. The wisdom of such approaches can be debated. In New York City we tend to do the opposite, the wisdom of which is also subject to question: We try to encourage new development by exempting it from paying taxes. Doing both, charging fees and encouraging through exemption from fees/taxes is essentially chaos, which, unfortunately doesn’t mean that it doesn’t sometimes happen. It absolutely does. If you exempt new development from fees then you hope that in a big city like New York all the other taxpayers can carry the load. But if you get a big surge in development across the city or a single really big project in one location, suddenly overburdening existing services, then you are arguably in the same situation that causes suburbs to argue that, as a matter of policy, they should charge fees when big developments come on line.
• Inclusionary zoning. In New York City “inclusionary zoning” is a term used to describe the creation of “affordable” housing units in new construction or development by requiring in the zoning code that such new development contains a percentage of such units. The term evolved as an antonym term and counter to what is referred to as “exclusionary zoning,” the prime example being when a suburb creates zoning restrictions such as large minimum lot requirements aimed at making it too expensive for lower-income families to reside in an area. A practice like minimum acreage zoning thwarts the provision of more affordable housing a free market would otherwise provide. In New York City it is different, almost the opposite: The free market doesn’t incline itself to provide affordable housing for lower-income families in gentrifying neighborhoods and inclusionary zoning is intended to serve as a counter to free market decisions. Whenever one decides to counter the natural choices of the free market sober thought should be devoted to whether the intervention is, indeed, as wise as believed.
In one respect the city’s inclusionary zoning may be thought of as a good tool to buffer the rampant market forces unleashed by government when it significantly upzones an area, potentially clearing an area almost as effectively as urban renewal (although rebuilding is more likely under this scenario). It is what in Noticing New York articles I have referred to as a “death sentence” by density. Upzonings, especially abrupt and big ones, can result in the removal of many affordable housing units that might have happilypersisted without such provoked redevelopement. Inclusionary zoning requirements can reduce the incentive to rush forward with demolitions and can also help replace the affordable units that disappear when they are demolished. For the city to offer an elective option to developers to build at greater density if they include affordable housing units is probably bad policy (even if it might buttress the legal defensibility of the practice) because there isn't a true either/or involved: Developers will always make the election that is best for them, not for the public. They will obey the math of what the market dictates. Meanwhile, the most desirable They will obey the math of what the market dictates. Meanwhile, the
most desirable density to have in an area is what it is, irrespective of the number of affordable housing units created. And what should be
the desirable number of affordable units replacing old ones should
simply be whatever it is, irrespective of density. The two should not
be intermixed and then left to a developer's decided vote on what is
best for them, not the public. Bottom line though, a policy of steering
the market so that it replaces units it is destroying and would
otherwise fail to provide is not the same as that other strategy we are
about to return to and discuss again: the ploy of withholding basic city
services to blackmail the public for tolerance of otherwise undesirable
development.
The Brooklyn House of Detention (2008) proposed to be sandwiched between two condominiums
A Tale of (Maybe Two) City Libraries
Pacific Branch Library 25 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217, on Pacific Street right near the "Barclays" arena
The library that is proposed to be put into the Walentas building if the community tolerates the upzoning of that building is being talked about by the Brooklyn Public Library system as a replacement that would help serve as a premise for the BPL to sell another library, the Pacific branch library at 4th Avenue and Pacific Street. The community has been fighting to preserve the Pacific branch, not wanting to see it demolished. So it makes sense that many community activists see this as a doubly-damning strategy: Blackmailing for a library conjoined with the removal of a wanted library. Consequently, many activists oppose the library in the Walentas building simply because of the way its creation would put the Pacific library in much greater jeopardy of being closed, sold and demolished. That blackmailing for the greater density is also involved is icing on this cake.
(* Landmarking, of that Library at the community’s behest, the first Carnegie Library opened in Brooklyn has been held up by Robert Tierney, Bloomberg’s City Landmarks Commissioner since 2004.)
Another activist I spoke to noted how the demand for library services is growing, that the city is a lot denser in these neighborhoods (and growing wealthier). So he offered the idea: Why not have two libraries? Why not have two, especially, if as originally conceived, the library that goes into the Walentas building is an entirely different kind of library, a performing arts library or a kind of artsy library oriented to a more upper echelon sort of crowd visiting BAM across the street? (Note that these "trades" raise all sorts of risks of `bait and switch" deals, particularly since the public has so little ability to enforce them.)
In other words, (and this is something I could conceivably get behind and endorse): The calculation was that two libraries are better than one. So the thought was: Let’s demandtwo.
Don't Encourage Them!
That’s fine, but only so long as the community does not engage in this kind of bargaining for public benefit. The community should not be agreeing to tolerate undesirable extra density for the Walentas building in order to get a library. Why? . . .
. .. Because, What is the expression?: “It only encourages the bastards!”
Each time such a blackmailing scheme works, each time the community engages in such negotiations, it makes it seem more right, more expected, more the status quo. It becomes ever so much easier for city planning officials to do it again.
Bad development is bad development. Good development is good development. Bad development* doesn't become good development because the community has been bribed with a library or other essential city service that should have been provided anyway.
(* Such trading for bad development is, for example, the story of Atlantic Yards. The question must be asked with respect to Atlantic Yards: Was the-- fake-- promise of “affordable housing” and doing inside deals with Ratner an excuse for ACORN and other signers of the so-called “Community Benefits Agreement” to approve, no questions asked or judgment exercised, a mega-monopoly, inordinate subsidies, absurd density, bad design and giving up public streets and avenues. . .Very few of the people opposing Atlantic Yards are able to forgive what Bertha Lewis of ACORN and other signers of the Atlantic Yards “CBA” did when they sold out the community in this regard.)
The reason these schemes that blackmail through the withholding of basic services should not be tolerated is because it becomes a potent incentive for the powers that be in this city to look for other basic services that can be withheld to bargain for other exchanges, other bad development harmful to the communities of New York. Ergo, the proposed increase of density for the Walentas building needs to be evaluated entirely on its own: It is either a good or a bad thing and should be approved solely on that basis. It cannot be bargained for by withholding basic services.
It's axiomatic: You don’t negotiate with hostage takers. You might talk with them to try to bring them back into a more human frame of mind, but you do not negotiate with them.
One parting word: You may be interested to know that there is a Citizens Defending Libraries petition (Save New York City Libraries From Bloomberg Developer Destruction, now about 7,800 signatures- with which I am involved) objecting to how libraries are being sold and underfunded and New York’s library system shrunk because the system’s focus has become the creation of real estate deals for developers.
One of the stated reasons underlying the petition’s stance:
Libraries should not be hostages for development. The city should cease the practices of bribing the public into approving bigger and denser development and pressuring communities into accepting libraries housed in smaller spaces with fewer services.
NOTICING NEW YORK & NATIONAL NOTICE are both independent entities managed by Michael D. D. White of Hop-Skip Enterprises. Michael D. D. White is an attorney, urban planner and former government public finance and development official. *** Noticing New York covers New York development and associated politics. National Notice covers national policy and economic issues *** Contact: MichaelDDWhite(at)gmail.com
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