City Is Rezoning So Coney Island’s Lower-Income Residents Will Have Place to Buy Back-to-School Shoes, Clothing and Stationery? Right. Sure Thing!

(Purnima Kapur, the Director of City Planning's Brooklyn Office)

Here is a mystery revealed: One of the main reasons the Bloomberg administration is rezoning Coney Island and eliminating a huge amount of amusement park area is so Coney’s lower-income residents will get something the city says those residents most desperately need: places to shop for back-to-school shoes, clothing, books and stationery. Do you believe that? Sure! Don’t believe the city even said such a thing? Read on.

Prior NYU Symposium Coverage: How Believable That the City Shrinks Available Acres to Create an Amusement District?

But first, in our last post we wrote about the Bloomberg administration’s avowal that the “primary” “objective” in eliminating a substantial amount of the amusement area at Coney Island through its proposed rezoning is “to create a new and enhanced . . . year-round vibrant open and accessible amusement district.” These quotes are from Purnima Kapur, the Director of City Planning's Brooklyn Office, speaking Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at “Which Way Coney Island? A Symposium on Its Future,” at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

The idea that the city is eliminating amusement acreage in order to “create” an “amusement district” ought to be sufficiently counterintuitive on its face to invoke extreme suspicion, but in our initial coverage of Ms. Kapur’s symposium remarks we found additional reasons why the idea that the city is truly committed to saving Coney’s amusements Strikes us as unbelievable. Elimination of amusement acreage has always been harmful to Coney’s amusement industry before. Empirically, the city’s plan to “save” the amusement area has had exactly the opposite effect in the five years it has been pursued. Meanwhile, city “parkland” is not used for amusements as once promised but for parking lots (and the city is even proposing to de-map it.) Lastly, the city seems indifferent to preserving historic Coney Island icons. (See: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, The City to the Public: “We’ve Got Your Coney Island: If You Want It Back, Better Do Exactly As We Say. . ”)

A Main City Goal: Shopping for the Under-Employed?

Now let’s look at the believability of a second of the city administration’s averred objectives in eliminating amusement park acreage: Providing (needed) shopping for poor people. (The city says that such shopping does not now exist in Coney Island.)

At the symposium, Amanda M. Burden, the Chair of the New York City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning, set the theme by describing the Coney neighborhood as a low-income one having severe unemployment problems. Ms. Burden (emphasis supplied):

. . .Coney Island, if you don’t already know, as you’ll hear tonight, is a neighborhood of about 50,000 people most of whom live in public housing and have twice the unemployment rate as any place in the city.

Ms. Burden handed things off to Ms. Kapur, her deputy, to pick up where she left off speaking in terms of wanting to address the community’s needs, a speaking specifically about the residents’ shopping. Ms. Kapur said (emphasis supplied):

. . . . a neighborhood of 50,000 people many of whom live in poverty, many of whom live in public housing or in subsidized housing and have higher rates of unemployment and poverty compared to the rest of the city.

. . . we want to create opportunities for people who live here and continue to still live here, in terms of providing jobs but also in terms of bringing to them services that they’ve lacked. As Amanda said, what we heard, the refrain is, come September when school opens, people don’t have a place to take their children to buy a pair of shoes: They have to go out of Coney Island to do something as basic as that. Book stores, stationery, grocery stores, clothing stores: The neighborhood really lacks services and amenities that many of us as New Yorkers take for granted.

Do these remarks seem somewhat persuasive? They were directed to an audience at the NYU Journalism School, essentially members of the city intelligentsia. From what is being said, the situation of the poor at Coney certainly appears dire: They can’t even buy back-to-school shoes or stationery for their children. These remarks by Ms. Kapur and Ms. Burden seem designed to convince us that their Department of City Planning has done its homework, investigating life in the community at an intimate level of detail that would assure us that they truly care about the community. That, of course, assumes that these remarks are to be believed. Don’t assume!

Checking the (Shopped-For?) Facts

One of the first rules of journalism is check your facts. If you don’t, you are writing fiction.

It turns out that Ms. Kapur, Ms. Burden, and the folks at City Planning don’t care enough about the community to find out what the facts of shopping life in the community actually are. Either that, or they don’t care enough to tell the truth.

There’s no place to buy back-to-school shoes in Coney? Then why does the April 2009 edition of the local Astella Action News newsletter feature an article (page 16) on Sneaker Town Sport Gear, at 1504 Mermaid Avenue? (See image. Click to enlarge.)

Here is a clip from that article:

And, aside from being well-stocked with sporting goods and clothing, the store offers a multitude of services. With their state-of-the-art equipment, they customize team, school, camp uniforms, and T-shirts, with silk screening, embroidery, and heat-pressed-on designs.

Astella Development Corporation which publishes that local newsletter has a website with a “Coney Island Merchant Directory.” The directory is fairly useful though it could use some updating both in terms of deletions and new additions. Still it provides a reasonable overview of the Coney merchants.

No Coney Island shoe stores? The site lists three of them though one of them apparently recently closed. We’ll see if it is replaced by another. The two remaining stores both carry children’s shows but Sneaker Town is likely to offer the best choice. No Coney Island clothing stores? The site lists seven, including: Forever Young Kids Wear, 3T Family Wear, K & K Sports and two jeans stores.

No Coney Island grocery stores? The site has a listing for four supermarkets and then, separately and without duplication, the site lists twenty-seven delis, grocery stores, and supermarkets and mini-markets. The site also has a listing for a meat market, Major Prime Meat Market, better known as Jimmy’s (Jimmy Prince) meat market. Recently closed, it is time to remove this listing but Jimmy, over 80 years old, was apparently a fixture in Coney with one of its oldest stores, opened in 1932. We understand that Jimmy, who was with the store since 1949, was an activist to save Coney and is now working with the Coney Island History Project and that we may be seeing a documentary* about him. The question has to be asked: Would Jimmy’s have closed without the land speculation the city’s strategies in the neighborhood have been encouraging? (The business had been passed on to Jimmy by the previous owner.)

(* Click on “Jimmy Prince Speaks About His 50 Years in Coney Island” to hear Jimmy express a few of his opinions about the negatives of proposed Coney Island development, including: “Why should so few deprive so many of the joys and pleasures that Coney Island has brought” and describing Coney as a “diamond” that just has to be “put in the right setting.”)

Back-to-school stationery? In a lot of neighborhoods we know, people get school supplies at a place like Rite Aid. The Astella Merchant Directory lists a Rite Aid together amongst ten other pharmacies. There are also three variety stores listed and eight “bargain stores,” of which three are apparently versions of the 99-cent stores where we sometimes get stationery items. Of course, if you live in a less dense neighborhood like Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope, even though these neighborhoods might be more upscale, you probably have to leave the neighborhood to go to a store like a Staples, a better place to buy in bulk, but Staples and their competitors also deliver and take orders on line. (Competition from such on-line delivery vendors may be reducing the presence of local neighborhood stores everywhere.)

It is true there is only one bookstore, but almost everywhere local bookstores are being replaced by big centrally located stores and the on-line discount shopping available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Refraining from Overstatement?

We don’t mean to overstate our own case by describing Coney Island as a shopping nirvana. It isn’t, and given the low incomes and need for employment in the area you wouldn’t expect it to be. But the city is willing to overstate its case, describing it as an area that lacks the “basics” that other “New Yorkers take for granted.” The city’s willingness to overstate makes us think that the city is probably just as willing to overstate what it really intends to do for the impoverished residents of the local community. Is the city really proposing to sacrifice waterfront amusement area to provide back-to-school shopping opportunities for lower-income people or actually to put in luxury housing in the neighborhood?

(* Standards as to what some of us take for granted or may expect can differ. Ms. Burden is reported to have decided that Harlem’s 125th Street needed to be rezoned because she and a friend couldn’t find a good restaurant in the neighborhood after a Roberta Flack concert.)

A Sincere City Interest in Producing More Coney Affordable Housing?

This brings us to another point. Is the city really intent upon building affordable housing in Coney? Isn’t it really the waterfront luxury housing that is the point? Frankly, it is not necessarily a bad thing that the city is focusing on building housing other than affordable housing in order to even out the housing mix in Coney Island. As both Ms. Burden and Ms. Kapur pointed out, Coney’s problems stem partly from the fact that such a high proportion of its population is in “public housing” or “subsidized housing” with high “unemployment and poverty” with “twice the unemployment rate as any place in the city.” If the city identifies this as the problem, they doubtless don’t want to add to it and there is sense in their not wanting to. But then the rhetoric about adding new affordable housing is intended to be deceptive to the community. The real goal is the higher-income units, the same way that the real shopping opportunities that the city likely wants to create are for higher-income people.

We wonder whether, in the end, new low income units will ever be created at Coney Island at all. There is a possibility that developers could just get credit for fixing up or maintaining existing affordable units in the neighborhood, not producing new ones. Who knows what will ultimately happen, what the city will finally be committed to, after it has won the right to eliminate amusement acreage.

What About This Affordable Housing Program Not Yet Being Used in Coney?

In terms of providing new affordable in the area, we previously suggested the following:

The New York City Housing Partnership programs may be building exactly the right kind of housing for this purpose. The housing involves at least one residential unit that is owner-occupied. There can be associated rental units which the owner rents out. The program can also build multi-family housing consisting of owner-occupied condominium or co-op units. The program is perfect for scatter-site infill building wherever there are vacant lots or where owners of smaller structures are willing to sell. Use of the program would probably also contribute to safety in the neighborhood, something else local residents are expressing an interest in.

(See: Monday, November 17, 2008, The Coney Island Crowd: Plans Unveiled Tonight.)

Coney Island’s Astella Development Corporation administers sales of homes under the above described program in the Coney vicinity. If you go to their website you will see listings for the following: Schaffer Cluster Homes, NH Emmanuel Homes, Malta Homes and Pacific-Dean Homes. Unfortunately, none of these projects involves homes being offered in Coney Island proper, though they are marketing to Coney Island residents. This kind of affordable housing program could represent a step up for current community residents (freeing up their existing units) while keeping them in the community. When such units outside the community area are marketed to Coney residents those residents stepping up are syphoned out of the community.

If the city would direct these kinds of program resources to produce units in Coney Island, suitable new affordable Coney Island housing could be created for which waterfront amusement area would NOT have to sacrificed. That housing could be produced without waiting and it could already have been produced without the destructive attack on the waterfront acres. This is the sincere effort we think city ought to be pursuing. Not sacrificing amusement area waterfront would also mean not sacrificing associated jobs.

If It’s Not About Amusement, Shopping or Housing - Could it Be “JOBS?”

Recapping: The city suspiciously says it wants to eliminate amusement area acreage (to create an amusement area). We have asked whether the city is really sincere in saying it wants to create shopping for lower-income people, and whether it truly wants to create more low-income housing. The last thing the city says it wants to create- - something that is always dangled before the poor when “economic development” is touted- - is “jobs.” Does the city really want to create jobs? The history of the destruction of Coney’s amusement area has been a history of the destruction of jobs. The amusement area once provided all sorts of jobs. Now, severely contracted, it provides far fewer.

(Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush)

The night of the symposium another member of the panel, Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, the Executive Editor of El Diario/La Prensa, spoke of the illusion of jobs that are offered in connection with development schemes like Coney Island pointing out how construction jobs are not only temporary, they tend to be given to people outside of the communities they are dangled before. The important jobs to a community are the permanent jobs that stay in the community. Yet the permanent jobs associated with the amusement will inevitably be fewer with a shrunken amusement area. In the past, amusement areas that provided jobs were torn down and replaced by housing for people who need jobs. It didn’t work. What is the future to be?

A Plan That Capitalizes on Coney’s Real Asset?

Are these approaches of doubtful city-sincerity and doubtful efficacy what Coney Island or New York City really needs? We keep coming back to the core issue: How, in shrinking the amusement area, can the city be capitalizing on Coney’s true strengths? To quote Ms. Burden’s own description of Coney, “It is one of the most, if not THE most unique and beloved beachfront destinations in the entire world . . . “totally unique because it’s an urban amusement park. It holds a place in the hearts of people across the world” and “Most, New Yorkers, Many New Yorkers think of Coney Island just as the amusements.” Or to quote Ms. Kapur: She says the most “obvious” and best “known” aspect of Coney “IS the amusement district.” Why, if the “amusement district” is already the most obvious and best known characteristic of Coney Island does that “amusement district” then need to be “created” and why should those same Coney Island amusement district acres be dispensed with to do so? We think the city has yet to come up with good and sincere reasons for what it is proposing.

Still Possible to Send Written Testimony to City Planning Commission

The City Planning Commission is still taking written testimony on its proposed Coney Island plan; testimony should be submitted soon. (Monday, May 18, 2009 is the deadline if it relates to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, though other testimony can be submitted later.) See their hearing procedure notice for instructions.

The City Planning Commission needs to be told that there are certain minimum alterations that need to be made to their plan for the Coney Island we know and love to survive. For a list of the minimum revisions that should be made to the city’s proposed plan, reflecting what is recommended by the amusement community and its ally, the Municipal Art Society, see: Monday, April 20, 2009, All Eyes Are On. . . . Coney Island.

We suggest you write and demand a better plan for Coney Island, one that would be sincere and effective.

The City to the Public: “We’ve Got Your Coney Island: If You Want It Back, Better Do Exactly As We Say. . ”

We were at “Which Way Coney Island? A Symposium on Its Future,” at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 where we heard some things about the way the city is telling its Coney Island story as it tries to eliminate a substantial amount of Coney’s amusement area through a rezoning. We also have suggested response to the city. Your letters need to be sent to the City Planning Commission.

A. Burden Opening: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity, This Administration, This Summer Only

Amanda M. Burden, the Chair of the New York City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning, made the first guest presentation. (BTW: While most of us might think of Ms. Burden as a linchpin in the Bloombergian development establishment, the city’s nyc.gov website says that Ms. Burden is an apparently self proclaimed “civic activist.” That has to leave people wondering what all the rest of us opposing Bloomberg style development are supposed to call ourselves?)

The city’s Coney Island rezoning proposal converts Coney Island amusement areas to commercial space and apartment buildings. Before Bloomberg maneuvered the City Council into overriding two voter referendums so as to grant him an extension of term limits, the city administration’s official spiel was that its Coney Island rezoning had to be passed this summer because a subsequent administration (Anthony Weiner’s?) would likely do something far more destructive. Now that conventional wisdom is predicting that Bloomberg will get his third term (if for no other reason than the lack of candidates running against him), the city has had to change its sales pitch. Ms. Burden offered the current version of the city’s new spiel.

Ms. Burden described the city plan for Coney Island as “a comprehensive plan” that “is really finely calibrated.” She then said (emphasis supplied):

And it can’t be done piecemeal. Next week City Planning will have its hearing on Coney Island. I hope people come and testify and recognize that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because another administration would never undertake this very, very complex plan. If it doesn’t succeed this summer this administration will never undertake it again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the only way for future generations to enjoy Coney Island forever and in perpetuity as the magic that it always was and can be and that will serve the neighborhood of Coney Island as an economic generator with housing for all people and jobs and a beachfront destination for the entire world.

Of course, the idea that “it can’t be done piecemeal”is eminently debatable. We think a gradual, steady building up of Coney based on current amusements is exactly what is called for. The notion that there can only be an all-or-nothing proposition simply serves to get the city off the hook in dealing with the urgency of taking the action that it can and should take now. For instance, the city owns Coney Island acres, mapped a s “parkland,” that for a long time it has allowed to be parking lot areas that detract rather than contribute to the Coney experience.

Ms. Burden seemed to be very nervous during her presentation and we noticed that she left immediately after finishing her remarks so that she was not available to engage with either the evening’s panelists or the audience afterward. Leaving, she turned things over to her deputy, Purnima Kapur, the Director of City Planning's Brooklyn Office.

Ms. Kapur: Identifying the Recent Accelerated Loss of Coney Amusements in the Last Four or Five Years and A Cause

Ms. Kapur spoke about the recent accelerating loss of Coney Island amusements in the last four or five years. Interestingly she did so without identifying what we think has been its obvious cause, something about which she also spoke without making a connection between the two.

Here is Ms. Kapur on the accelerating decline of Coney Island amusements in the last four or five years (emphasis supplied):

But as we started to look at the history of this amusement area, what we realized is how much it has declined from its heyday which was about a century ago when there were three active vibrant amusement parks in the vicinity of each other. Over the years through the course of the 20th century* and then going into the 1970s** gradually these amusement parks have been disappearing. That pace of disinvestment and loss of amusements has accelerated really deeply in the last four or five years with speculative land transactions that have gone on. Last fall the last remaining large amusement park called Astroland was shut down and today when you go to Coney Island there is less than three acres of active amusements, Deno’s Wonder Park which has the Wonder Wheel is the last remaining park to remain there with some uses along Surf Avenue and Mermaid Avenue.

(* This was when Robert Moses replaced many acres of active amusements and associated jobs with housing occupied by people in need of jobs. ** This was when the city took title to active amusement area land that had formerly been Steeplechase Park, turned it into “parkland” theoretically to ensure future amusement area use and then never followed through in using that land for amusements even though they kicked out the amusements that were there.)

Here is Ms. Kapur on that which exactly coincided with that accelerating decline during the last four or five years: The launching of the city plan to supposedly “save” Coney Island amusements (emphasis supplied):

This is a plan that is an interagency effort. Many city agencies under the leadership of the Department of City Planning and the Economic Development Corporation have been working a long time to develop this plan. It started about five years ago with the formation of the Coney Island Development Corporation and the mayor’s strategic plan that was issued for Coney Island. Since that time the city and its partners have been engaged in a very intensive outreach at the community level to local stakeholders, with property owners, with amusement operators and the plan that I am going to present today is the result of that intensive outreach.

We don’t think it could be more obvious that the real estate speculation blamed for the recent accelerating destruction of Coney Amusements began with the launching of the mayor’s strategic plan and the “outreach” to property owners about the planed rezoning and reduction of amusement acreage.

Kapur on Leadership of Her Agency City Planning and EDC

The last above quote from Ms. Kapur is valuable for what we intend to discuss in a minute: She talks specifically about how the mayor’s strategic plan is an “interagency effort” of "many city agencies under the leadership of" her agency “the Department of City Planning and the Economic Development Corporation.”

In a moment we will see how Ms. Kapur seems to disavow that “leadership” when pressed by fellow panelist, Dick D. Zigun of the Coney Island Side Show (with a little help from a question we asked).

Dick Zigun: Why Won’t the City Take Obvious Actions To Help Coney?

Our ears perked up when, during his presentation, Dick Zigun asked about the way the city was NOT doing things it could be doing to send critical signals about the city’s commitment to a long-term preservation of an iconic Coney Island:

To the City: While you are dealing with Thor [Thor Equities a developer/land speculator], Yes, you are making little changes and we appreciate that. But. . . Where is Amanda [Amanda Burden, Ms. Kapur’s boss, who we noted earlier left, leaving Ms. Kapur in charge.]? There are some substantial things that infuriate us that you are not doing.

OK: So, on your slides you show us the Shore Theater and you talk about how important an icon that is. Now, you know my organization spent the money, hired the consultant, did the application to Landmarks Commission where it is sitting and sitting and sitting. And all it needs is a phone call from Amanda or from [City Councilman] Dominic Recchia to get it calendared at the Landmarks Commission and that has not happened.

You show slides and talk about how important Nathan’s is and yet your own plan upgrades the Nathan’s property to fifteen stories and in your environmental impact statement you concede that, although you are not calling for the demolition of Nathan’s, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the value and taxation of real estate and your own study says that in ten years Nathan’s Restaurant is likely to be demolished and replaced by a theme Nathan’s in a fifteen-story building when all you have to do is call for fifteen stories on that property with a setback of two stories on Surf Avenue, and yet you have not done that! Why aren’t you doing these things? It would mean a great deal to us.

It would not only mean a great deal to Dick Zigun and company, it would tell everyone else in the city that preserving historic Coney is a priority. Envisioning the destruction of Nathan’s as the city plan currently does (even if it does not call for it) sends the opposite message. (See: January 22, 2009, Dog gone? Nathan’s could be victim of Coney success, by Mike McLaughlin, The Brooklyn Paper.)

Our Question Follows Up About Whether the City Really Sees Saving Coney As Urgent When the time came for the audience to ask questions we thought back to what Mr. Zigun had said about what the city was not doing to save Coney Island and we questioned the city’s real sense of urgency. All of the factions . . . the city, land speculator Thor Equities, Taconic Development, the Municipal Art Society. . . have adopted the amusement community’s theme and language about saving a vibrant, iconic, edgy, open, accessible amusement district. Therefore with the same language being used, it becomes a question of looking beyond words to see what people are actually doing and spotting the real differences in the several proposals. Here is what we (MDDW) asked, which generated a long, and we think telling, exchange between Mr. Zigun (DZ) and Ms. Kapur (PK):

MDDW: I am looking for the real differences because I notice that there is a tendency for everyone to adopt very similar sounding rhetoric about the amusement areas. So the real differences are that the Municipal Art Society is proposing the largest amusement area. Why, in terms of real differences. . . I understand that the city is proposing temporary things this summer, but with all this urgency when we say that it has to be “this administration and this summer,” why can’t we have urgency about some of the permanent things: So the questions that were asked about the Shore theater and having Landmarks act now: respecting the preservation of Nathan’s, why can’t there be an urgency about acting to do those things? Otherwise it sounds like a threat, this business of: “this administration,” “this summer,” right now!

PK: I cannot speak for the Landmarks Commission about the urgency for landmarking the Shore Theater as it currently is built, is built to a higher FAR than we currently are rezoning the area for, so there is no incentive for it to be torn down.

DZ: But why don’t you make the phone call that I’m asking for?

PK: I wish I could simply just make these phone calls.

DZ: You can. You can. You are the city!

PK: I think you give me credit for more power than I have.*

DZ: Amanda can’t? If Amanda can’t, the mayor can.

PK: I think that our plan lays out the importance of all of these things and retaining them in this area. We will let the Landmarks Commission make the decision about its landmark’s eligibility.

(*Ms. Kapur seemed rather upset at this point.)

(Image of Shore Theater above from Coney Island USA at ConeyIsland.com)

We Interrupt This Exchange To Bring In Landmarks Commission Chairman Tierney

The above exchange continues further, particularly about Nathan’s, and we will return to it momentarily. First, we want to switch to a follow-up by interjecting a relevant exchange we had with Landmarks Preservation Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney last week when we attended the recording of the WNYC special “The Places That Bind” with Rosie Perez, in which Mr. Tierney participated as a panel guest.

The Places That Bind, which is about the stresses our communities are under from development, will be broadcast:

Saturday, May 16: 7am on 93.9FM
Sunday, May 17: 9pm on Am 820

We recommend you tune in. We will discuss the show further after it is broadcast. After the show was recorded, we had a chance to ask Commissioner Tierney (RT) a question we (MDDW) were unable to ask during the show. Here is our exchange (emphasis supplied):

MDDW: When a neighborhood has goals for preserving its heritage, to what extent does the Landmarks Preservation Commission coordinate with other agencies like City Planning and the Mayor’s Office?

RT: A lot. Always. Definitely, work all the time with Amanda Burden. I work with CAU, I work with who handles the community assistance unit, with the community boards. We get very. . . We have our own community meetings where we have not only elected officials but other parts of city government. We are working with them all the time.

MDDW: In this regard, if the Coney Island heritage is important to the city, and City Planning acted on it. . . had a hearing on it yesterday . .

RT: Right.

MDDW: Why hasn’t Landmarks moved to preserve the Shore Hotel? [correction Shore Theater.*]

RT: The Shore Hotel is on our list. We are looking at it.

(* A possible very desirable adaptive reuse that people hope will be considered for the Shore Theater is as a boutique hotel.)

Ergo it seems odd that although Ms. Kapur says that her agency is leading a many-city-agency “interagency effort” and although Chairman Tierney says that he “Definitely” works “all the time with Amanda Burden,” Ms. Kapur says that somehow Ms. Burden or the mayor can’t make a phone call to stress to the Landmarks Preservation Commission the importance the landmarking of the iconic Shore Theater has to the future of Coney Island as an amusement area.

Back to the Zigun/Kapur Exchange

Here, picking up from where we left off, is the rest of the Zigun/Kapur Exchange. We think that Mr. Zigan scores more points, but we let you evaluate for yourself the ways in which Ms. Kapur justifies the city’s inaction with respect to preserving Coney Island icons:

PK: I think that our plan lays out the importance of all of these things and retaining them in this area. We will let the Landmarks Commission make the decision about its landmark’s eligibility. As far as Nathan’s is concerned, Nathan’s is owned by Nathan’s. This is not a property that, you know, if we rezoned, they have reason to uproot themselves and go somewhere. They have been in the neighborhood for a very, very long time. There’s a business, you know, incentive to keep them there. And we do have setbacks actually, on Surf Avenue, which, you know, with your sort of encouragement and assistance we have brought down to forty feet on Surf Avenue.

DZ: Point of clarification, . . .

PK May I finish first?

DZ: Let’s just stick with Nathan’s: It’s owned by the Handwerker family and leased to Nathan’s, and your own impact statement says you are creating an environment, an economic condition that ultimately will lead to the demolition of a two-story building.

PK: That is not what our EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] says. What our EIS says is that there is a development potential to actually add to the Nathan’s building. There is nothing saying that Nathan’s should be demolished. The property that Nathan’s owns actually extends deep into the block and there is nothing stopping them from building additional buildings that set back from Surf Avenue. It doesn’t say that you have to demolish Nathan’s to actually make it.

DZ: No, but there is an economic encouragement that will ultimately lead to that.

PK: I don’t believe so.

DZ: Why don’t you offer a setback on that one particular piece of property?

PK: Calling for . . ., unless that is a landmarked building, calling for that setback there doesn’t make any planning sense.

DZ: But it makes sense as to what Coney Island is about and saving another icon. Like the Cyclone, like the Wonderwheel, Nathan’s is important.

PK: We totally agree with that and think that Nathan’s is financially viable and the owner of their own business and we hope, you know, our anticipation is that it will continue to be there.

DZ: It is NOT owner-occupied. The Handwerker family owns it and leases it to the corporation which is no longer their business.

PK: But this is their flagship store. This is where Nathan’s started. They have a business incentive to keep it as business owners.

Entrusting Coney’s Future to the City: In the End Doesn’t it Lead to The End of Coney?

(Image of Nathan's from Brooklyn Paper story. NNY's Image of Astroland rocket below.)


The city is asking us to entrust Coney Island and its future to their plan, a plan that involves hacking away at Coney’s amusement area acreage for more Bloombergian real estate development. We find ourselves feeling rather like we have received a ransom note after a kidnaping. We are being told we have to approve the turning over of more acreage for Bloombergian-style real estate development if we ever want to see our beloved Coney Island in good health again. We even find ourselves wondering if Coney’s severed body parts, like the Astroland rocket, will wind up being returned to us piecemeal. We don’t trust the kidnappers who created the jeopardy in the first place. Jeopardy began with the introduction of the mayor’s “strategic plan” and his administration’s “outreach” to property owners. That, we believe, led quite clearly to the sudden wave of real estate speculation. After that, there is little disagreement: Everyone attributes the recent accelerated decline of the Coney Island amusements to that speculation.

With kidnappers you frantically try to discern evidence fo good faith, desperately hoping that you will find it, but we don’t see any real evidence of good faith on the city’s part. The city already holds “parkland” that was supposed to be used for amusement area, but the city uses it as parking lots. The city doesn’t act to preserve iconic sites at Coney; it only holds them hostage, perhaps never to be released. All we seem to know for sure is that the city wants commercial real estate development. The bargain the city proposes that amusement areas be shrunk as acres are peeled off for other uses is one that has never before worked for Coney’s good health or the preservation of the amusement areas. And though it hasn’t worked before, the city says: “Trust us.” Many kidnapings wind up unhappily. The ransom is paid and the kidnapped does not survive. That is our fear here.

Still Possible to Send Written Testimony to City Planning Commission

The City Planning Commission is still taking written testimony on its proposed Coney Island plan; testimony should be submitted soon. (May 18, 2009 is the deadline if it relates to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement though other testimony can be submitted later.) See their hearing procedure notice for instructions.

The City Planning Commission needs to be told that there are certain minimum alterations that need to be made to their plan for the Coney Island we know and love to survive. For a list of the minimum revisions that should be made to the city’s proposed plan, reflecting what is recommended by the amusement community and its ally, the Municipal Art Society, see: Monday, April 20, 2009, All Eyes Are On. . . . Coney Island.

We suggest you send your own note in response to the ransom note we have received from the Bloomberg administration and that you demand that those specific listed changes, at a minimum, must be made, because we demand that our Coney Island be returned to us alive and healthy.

Watch It Bud . . How “Bloomie” Are Things After Bloomie’s Falls? (Revisited- #3)

This is our third post in a series where we are watching the Honey Locust trees on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade this spring to see how well they might recover from the Waterfalls project that was self-congratulatoryly masterminded by Mayor Bloomberg last year. Our first two posts were:

Watch It Bud . . How “Bloomie” Are Things After Bloomie’s Falls? (Monday, April 27, 2009).

and

Watch It Bud . . How “Bloomie” Are Things After Bloomie’s Falls? (Revisited- #2) (Friday, May 1, 2009)

So far the news has been bad and continues that way: Trees are not recovering well. At least one mature very large tree may not come back. (See photo above, click to enlarge.)

Depending upon how badly affected individual trees are, the dieback induced by the salt shock causes new budding growth to be much further from the tips of the branches or tree limbs. The large mature tree that appears barren and almost totally dead has virtually no newly sprouting growth from tree limbs but has new sprouting that is atypically mostly directly from the tree trunk itself. Other of the more substantially stressed trees show this trunk-sprouting reaction to a greater or lesser extent.

Different trees that were close to the falls have been affected to differing extents. Last summer and fall Parks Depart workers spent substantial time and energy trying to rescue the trees and counteract the effect of the salt by pouring streams of water on the trees closest to the salt-spewing Waterfalls. It is possible that some trees benefitted more from these rescue effects that others, possibly because they might have had more water poured on them.

(Last fall)

Here are pictures showing the status of the “bud watch” today.

A Control Group: Healthy Honey Locust Trees That Were Far from the Waterfalls

Here are photos (click to enlarge) of healthy Honey Locust trees budding. (As we previously noted, you have to walk far to get a good control group because the salt spay from the falls affected trees on the Promenade to some extent as far away as Clark Street.) On the healthy trees the buds are opening robustly all along the branches right out to the tips.

Most Damaged Honey Locust Trees

Here are photos (click to enlarge) of Honey Locust tree buds on trees that were near the Waterfalls and are struggling to come back. (See also the opening photo.) On some the budding is not as robust and there is no budding at the branch tips indicating that there may be a fair amount of dieback from which the tree will need to recover. On others large limbs are showing little sign of life. If anything, these trees ought to be further along at this point since they are located where they get more sun.

City Council Races (33rd and 39th CDs): Candidates’ Positions on Development and Effective Action They Would Take to Stop Atlantic Yards (Part III)

This will continue our review of the positions of the City Council candidates for the 33rd and 39th Districts on the subject of development and Atlantic Yards in particular. In all, looking at all the candidates’ positions together with the positions of the two City Councilman (David Yassky and Bill de Blasio) they will replace (who are running for other offices, Comptroller and Public Advocate), we are inventorying the position of a total of 15 candidates who all express opposition to Atlantic Yards. We are asking, as the acid test, how such opposition will translate into effective action to stop the Atlantic Yards project if these candidates are given the powers of elected office.

Part I of this series reviewed the surpassing importance of city development issues in the City Council races and the way these issues are being reported upon in the race.

Part II of the series inventoried the positions of the candidates for the 33rd District and focused on the question of what “effective action” to stop Atlantic Yards entails.

Here to conclude our series, here are the stated positions of the candidates for the 39th City Council seat together with such commentary of our own as we deem appropriate.

(As noted in Part II, the response below are derived from CBID questionnaires available at CBID’s main site for endorsees and in archive for the other candidates.)

(Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn has a series “Breakfast-of-Candidates” offering personal portrait and background information, currently available for candidates for the 39th for which we are including links.)

The candidates for the 39th City Council District met in a Park Slope Civic Council Candidates Forum on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. We are making an audio recording of the evening available. The forum also provided us with some interesting quotes we will include as appropriate below. (Here is an initial OTBKB report followed up by a good comprehensive account of the evening: Wednesday, May 06, 2009, A Funny Thing Happened at the Forum (39th Edition in Park Slope).)

(Note that candidate Craig Hammerman, who dropped out of the race in the beginning of April, is not included in our stock-taking.)

For the 39th (Bill de Balsio’s current City Council seat):

1. John Heyer (breakfast interview link)

A) My position has not changed. That area is sorely in need of development, but we need to ensure that affordable housing is priority one. I don’t agree with the use of eminent domain for private residential development, but I do consider the Arena a public good, which limited use of eminent domain may be used to accomplish.

B) Now that the Carroll Gardens contextual rezoning appears to be going through, we need to focus on what’s best for the Gowanus Canal, in addition to fighting for affordable housing at the Atlantic Yards.

We found Mr. Heyer’s written statement of his position the most ambiguous and difficult to interpret. We therefore called him up for clarification. (Ambiguous statements from politicians in the context of Atlantic Yards can be treacherous and can leave one feeling betrayed when desired change does not materialize.) It turns out that Mr. Heyer expresses a more thoroughgoing opposition to Atlantic yards than one might suspect from reading the above.

Mr. Heyer has been described as a protege of the very politically active Buddy Scotto, for whose funeral business he works. Mr. Scotto and his daughter are also very active in local Carroll Gardens/Gowanus real estate ownership and development. Mr. Scotto is strenuously opposing a more thorough clean-up of the Gowanus Canal through a federal superfunding of the canal. Mr. Heyer, who has two jobs, also works in a full-time (35 hours a week) position as an assistant to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, one of Atlantic Yards’ most notorious and ceaseless boosters (also a recipient of developer funds). Taking advantage of flex-time Heyer is able to take mornings off to earn $10,000 a year from his funeral director activities. He is also a small business owner, married, having a baby and buying a new home.

Here is what more we learned by talking to Mr. Heyer’s about his position on Atlantic Yards. While he thinks that eminent domain can be properly used to acquire land for the arena, he does not think it should be used for the rest of the project, such as for the block where the Ward Bakery Building was. Though Pacific Street has to be closed between the two blocks where the arena would go, Mr. Heyer is against the unnecessary closing of Pacific Street and Sixth Avenue. He said that the street grid provides the desirable “look and feel of our city.” He recognizes that without the superblocking involved with closing the streets, the project would need to be cut back and be less dense, but he is in favor of a smaller, less dense project anyway. While he is in favor of the arena, he is against the public taxpayer funding of the arena that has been proposed. That funding and the foot-in-the-door aspect of the developer’s getting a monopoly on 30+ acres of real estate is pretty much the developer’s profit-motivated raison d’etre for the project. Accordingly, without it, the Ratner project would probably be dead.

Mr. Heyer was not familiar with the UNITY Plan’s proposal to add additional streets to the site but said he favored a street grid to avoid fostering a sense of “private communities” something for which the Atlantic Yards design has been criticized, and that city streets should be favored to create the feeling of bringing people into an area. Mr Heyer objected to the density of the project, rejecting idea that an “entire metropolis” should be squeezed into a few square blocks.

As Mr. Heyer questionnaire says, he is a proponent of creating affordable housing, we asked him if he was in favor of taking the project away from Forest City Ratner in order to bid parcels out to get maximum value from the subsidies. He said he was unsure about taking from Ratner any parcels Ratner already owns, whether or not those parcels were acquired through the threat of eminent domain. Although Mr. Heyer was receptive to the principle of bidding out project development where possible, he wasn’t sure what Forest City Ratner simply already had the right to do. He said he felt that where property is not already owned by Ratner subsidy should be made available for development by other owners. When we pointed out that Ratner did not have an as-of-right expectation for the coming upzoning being provided by the Empire State Development Corporation’s zoning override, Mr. Heyer said that it was a problem that this was being done through the state rather than being done though a public process where the community would be able negotiate for what it wanted. We pointed out that Governor Paterson could put a halt to the project and take it back to the drawing board.

On the question of the Ward Bakery Building, Mr. Heyer said that people should be paying attention to preservation of historical assets like the Ward Bakery because “they just don’t make buildings like they used to” but that if Ratner owned the Ward Building he had the right to tear it down. “Unless it was landmarked?” we suggested. “Right, unless it was landmarked,” Mr. Heyer agreed. We did not go into how the city had avoided such a landmarking. Mr. Heyer said that he liked preserving historic old buildings and noted that doing so is also the greener, more environmental approach and that it also keeps the character of the area and a desirable variety of building styles. He suggested that it was desirable to avoid the way everything was becoming so “cookie-cutter.”

We asked Mr. Heyer about ESDC’s blight finding. He said that there were properties in the area that were definitely not blighted, but that he didn’t know enough about the site to be able to say although he thought that 20 years back there was definitely blight in the area. At the same time he said that when the Ward Bakery building was in use there wasn’t blight.

We asked Mr. Heyer about the windfall Forest City Ratner was getting by paying the MTA less than the value it could be getting for the Vanderbilt Yards site the MTA is supposed to convey to Forest City Ratner if the project is allowed to proceed. Mr. Heyer complained about the lack of oversight over the MTA saying:

This could be taken as another clear example that the MTA just has bad business dealings. How can we continue to trust this organization, the MTA when they’re constantly. . . They are supposed to be serving the public and I have yet to see that happen. It is complete mismanagement, everywhere. Would you, personally, if you are looking to pay your payroll . . sell your car for less money? I don’t get it! It just seems like bad business to me. I don’t trust or believe anything the MTA, does.

I asked Mr. Heyer about calling a moratorium on the doling out of benefits for the project as others have called for. Mr. Heyer said Forest City Ratner should not receive any special benefits, only what others would be able to receive. (We think that would kill the project. We were not sure Mr. Heyer considered that to be the case.) Mr. Heyer, however, said that he did not think it was proper to keep the project “the way it is now” or “the way it was originally proposed” by Ratner.

Mr. Heyer expressed support for Develop Don’t Destroy and its litigation to secure community involvement. He said:

Listen it’s great when you have a community like Brooklyn and it is able to form a group like, for instance, Develop Don’t Destroy because that’s how we wind up trying to get the best project possible for Brooklyn. Otherwise people would come in and they would run all over us. We need to have these conversations.

(We notice that Develop Don’t Destroy was what came to mind rather than Brooklyn Speaks.)

Finishing up, Mr. Heyer said that we had asked him some questions during the interview that caused him to think about some things he had not previously thought about.- The questions we were asking Mr. Heyer pretty much follow the outline of Atlantic Yards “inherent subquestions” we set forth at the beginning of Part II of this piece, which we suggested should be borne in mind when reviewing all the candidates’ positions. Probably all the candidates and all current political officeholders should be asked these questions.

In the end Mr. Heyer said that the mayor and the governor should be answering to the people on the Atlantic Yards project. We asked him whether he thought that the people could demand that the mayor behave differently. “Sure,” he said, “don’t elect him again! This project is far from shovel-ready. Don’t elect the man.” (Note: At Tuesday night's forum the candidates were unanimous in saying Bloomberg should not be elected to a third term.)

We found our conversation with Mr. Heyer very interesting. The one thing that bothered us though was that he is apparently willing to let Forest City Ratner get permanent benefits from its acquisition of property through the threat of eminent domain. We think that Forest City Ratner has done the community many wrongs, including its vandalous destruction of the Ward Bakery. We think that being too casual about allowing the Ratner organization to benefit from those past wrongs would be to encourage the same sort of wrongs in the future.

We talked with Mr. Heyer again after the Tuesday evening candidates forum where candidate Brad Lander (answering a classic question) expressed strong opposition to Atlantic Yards. We asked Mr. Heyer whether he agreed with Mr. Lander which he said he essentially did. For more, see our coverage of Brad Lander’s position below.

2. Brad Lander (breakfast interview link)

In 2005, I co-authored a highly critical “preliminary planning assessment”of Atlantic Yards (http://www.prattcenter.net/pubs/bay-report.pdf), which criticized the project for excessive public subsidies, misleading cost benefit analysis, excessive scale, inadequate traffic and infrastructure plan, etc. I remain opposed to the project. I helped lead the successful effort to insure that Atlantic Yards would not receive an additional $200 million tax subsidy under the 421-a tax exemption. Because I am opposed to the project, I am opposed to the use of eminent domain to construct it.

My campaign conducted a survey of over 300 community residents. 74% want any new development built by responsible contractors, to include affordable housing, be environmentally sustainable, and fit contextually into the neighborhood. 23% say they have had enough development and don’t want any more. I have a strong record of results, both in our community and citywide, fighting for requirements that any new development include affordable housing, be built by responsible contractors, address infrastructure and environmental issues, and strengthen neighborhoods.

Positions on a range of specific development issues facing the 39th City Council district (including the Gowanus Canal area, the Stable Brooklyn & Carroll Gardens rezonings, etc.), and on citywide development policies (to give communities a real voice in a comprehensive planning process, insure that infrastructure issues are addressed, guarantee responsible contracting, etc.) are on my website.

For additional perspective on Mr. Lander’s views on development generally (before we get back to his views on Atlantic Yards) we want to point out his answer to another question on the CBID form (question B1) as follows:

2. I have stood up successfully against corruption and the excesses of the real estate lobby. I helped lead the largely successful fight to reform the 421-a program, which was giving away hundreds of millions of dollars each year for luxury housing development (an effort strongly opposed by the real estate industry). I was the lone voice calling attention to corruption at the Pataki-era NYS Housing Finance Agency, which helped lead to a full-scale restructuring of the agency. I have supported many community groups in community planning and organizing efforts in response to plans created by developers or the City with little public input. I am not accepting contributions from PACs, corporate lobbyists or developers.)

Mr Lander also brought up the subject of the New York State Housing Finance Agency in his oral remarks at the CBID evening, saying that he delivered reform to the Agency. He said:

We totally cleaned up the New York State Housing Finance Agency which under the Pataki administration had become a corrupt candy store.

We have this to disclose. The allegation that public agencies can be corrupt is interesting and something that people should bear in mind. The agency Mr. Lander is talking about, the New York State Housing Finance Agency, is where we used to work and Mr. Lander is talking about a time when we were there and had significant responsibilities with respect to what Mr. Lander is talking about. (We are absolutely not endorsing any of Mr. Lander’s conclusions about either the Pataki or Spitzer administrations, but we would like to believe that one of roles we performed successfully when at the agency was to prevent corruption. We’ll have to save dealing with this further for a later post.)

Although the Mr. Lander’s questionnaire response says that Mr. Lander is not accepting contributions from “developers” we clarified (with a question we asked at the CBID evening on the 23rd) that he does accept contributions from nonprofit developers. There may be some qualitative differences but there are overlapping issues. ACORN has a nonprofit development arm and Domino is being developed by a developer who has both a for-profit and a nonprofit arm.

At Tuesday’s May 5, 2009 Park Slope Civic Counsel meeting Mr. Lander was asked our question (handed in on a card) previously asked of candidates for the 33rd as discussed in Part I of series:

What Brooklyn project is the biggest boondoggle and the most destructive to the borough and the city and what effective action would you take to stop it?

He provided a splendid answer. Although, in this case only Mr. Lander was asked the question during the forum proper, we compensated by verifying personally that the other candidates endorsed or basically agreed with what Mr. Lander said which was as follows:

I’ll take Brooklyn Atlantic Yards for 500! Or $5 billion I guess, or whatever the total cost of the project is. I think its pretty straightforward. It was so badly planned that it is essentially collapsing under its own weight and hopefully we will have a chance to do the right thing, but I don’t know. Isabel Hill is in the audience. She made the fantastic film, Brooklyn Matters. If you want to know what is wrong with that project you should ask her for a copy. You know, from start to end that project was oversubsidzed and didn’t respect its residents. It was wildly out of scale. Its urban design: private parks as a playground for condo owners. You know it’s wrong in every way. So I certainly would be happy to see it fail. I think the question facing us, is what to do about it given that the ESDC and the MTA have given them essentially ten years of rights to waste the land, how are we going to wrest control back. I think that’s going to mean working with a lot of other elected officials to try to put pressure on so we can do the right thing there because we don’t want this gargantuan albatross.

Afterwards, the moderator commented that the question was a “bit of a softball,*” but it really wasn’t. If you note, Mr. Lander was weak on the subject of the effective action that could be taken to end the project and take control back. (How about just settling the law suits in the project opposition’s favor? Or denying funding? Or not having the PACB approve the altered project?)

(* The audience laughed in recognition when the question was asked and laughed again when Mr. Lander with knowing relief comedically commenced his answer.)

Going back to Mr. Heyer: Mr Heyer told us that he agreed with Mr. Lander that Atlantic Yards, were it to be built, was the worst boondoggle, particularly as originally proposed, but only provided it was actually built. He said that unless and until it was built he would save that honor for bad development that had actually materialized such as building on Fourth Avenue pursuant to the recent rezoning.

3. David Pechefsky (breakfast interview link)

[Mr. Pechefsky, a Green Party candidate is not a Democrat and was not seeking the CBID’s endorsement. Therefore he does not have a completed CBID questionnaire form on file.]

After Tuesday’s Park Slope candidates forum, Mr. Pechefsky told us that he endorsed Mr. Lander’s statement that Atlantic Yards was the worst boondoogle. He told us:

Yes, I do endorse his answer. I think we have to figure out how to retake over that space. I mean, frankly, what’s the project right now? It’s totally unclear to me. So the question is. . and also I think we’ve got to look at the agreement about the city money that went in there, all this capital money going in there and there was some claw back provision if they didn’t provide the affordable housing in a certain period of time so we could recoup some of the city’s capital money so we have to go back and really look at the details of that agreement and see what options the city has. . . . That agreement needs to put on the table and looked at. I haven’t heard people talking about that. . . . That $200 million in capital money that was pumped into that project, that money is now nowhere! So yeah, I think we have to figure out how to go back and reclaim that space and do something good with it.

4. Gary Reilly (breakfast interview link)

My position has not changed: against. I am against government funding for sports arenas generally, and against this type of clubby development process as well. I do not believe this was an appropriate use of eminent domain. I am in favor of decking over the Vanderbilt yards for development, but utterly opposed to both this project and the process.

Overdevelopment is a serious issue throughout the district; besides damage to existing communities, scattershot development patterns undermine the goals of concentrated development in, for example, the Downtown core.

We also asked Mr. Reilly if he endorsed Mr. Lander’s statement. He said:

Absolutely. Yes. I don’t think there is anything that comes close in recent times from the process that it went through to the sweetheart deal with a major developer to the superblock, you know which has been discredited, to using public money for a sports arena, which are all things which are just execrable at the planning level, to eminent domain.

Mr. Reilly told us he studied development law in law school and we had a discussion with him about what the U.S. Supreme Court would decide as and when it might ultimately grant certiori to hear a case on point with the facts of Atlantic Yards. We think we can convince Mr. Reilly that the abuses in the Atlantic Yards situation have been such that the Supreme Court (largely following the thinking of Justice Kennedy) will find that the standards of its Kelo ruling were not complied with. (See: Saturday, July 19, 2008, Reality Denied! and Saturday, June 28, 2008
Kelo case drew the line in the wrong place.) One question is how soon the court may be ready to grant certiori to such a case. It is worth noting that with the retirement of Justice David Souter that day may come sooner and with it we may also see retrenchment from the Kelo ruling itself.

5. Josh Skaller (breakfast interview link)

I have opposed the Atlantic Yards project from the beginning and my position has not changed. I have worked with Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn for the last five years. I think Atlantic Yards stands as the poster child of bad development for many reasons -- including the use of public funds going to private developers, the abuse of eminent domain, the exclusion of community input at every level, the dismissal of any reasonable options or modifications, the selling of public land at below market-rate prices, etc.

I am not afraid to lead on development issues. That’s why my name appears alongside CBID’s on the environmental lawsuit brought by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.

Responsible development of the Gowanus Canal is an important issue in the 39th District. I have always held that the canal and nearby brownfields should be cleaned up and deemed safe before any development is approved. We simply cannot risk that people will become ill from the toxins present in the water and the land. Accordingly, I support the designation of the canal and nearby brownfields as an EPA Superfund site. We have a golden opportunity to do this development the right way. It will not be quick, but the clean up will provide jobs and will ensure both that property values will go up in the long run and that the Gowanus area will prosper in the future.

We will note that Mr. Skaller was the only candidate present at a City Hall News breakfast event to confront ESDC head Marisa Lago with a question about whether Atlantic Yards should be continuing at this point. (See: Wednesday, April 15, 2009, Permission to Speak Frankly: How We Know More and Less From Breakfast Interviews With Marisa Lago.) Note that on the evening of April 23rd CBID endorsed Mr. Skaller.

At the Park Slope candidates forum on Tuesday we noted that Mr. Skaller (whose general theme during the evening seemed to be reform) managed to bring his answers to at least two questions that didn’t, on their face seem to be about Atlantic Yards, around to the subject of big development and Atlantic Yards. When asked about the problem people have finding places for their children in public schools, he related it to an overall lack of “urban planning” when big developments like Atlantic Yards were done. That brought to mind an Atlantic Yards Report article from te day before about how the mayor’s office is unwilling to commit more resources to the neighborhood should Atlantic Yards be built. (See: Monday, May 04, 2009, Mayor's Office: maybe to new schools if AY is built, no to a new 78th Precinct stationhouse.)

Mr. Skaller also related the struggles of mom-and-pop stores to the competition from big, subsidized projects like Atlantic Yards. This we thought was a better answer than that given by Brad Lander who expressed willingness to institute commercial rent regulation, admittedly a longshot. The idea of commercial rent regulation scares us, as does the idea of more direct forms of subsidized supposed support for mom-and-pop stores. We don’t think the answer is to subsidize these small businesses to compete with subsidized developments and big stores. We think the answer, before anything else, is to cut out the subsidies to the big stores and developments that drive the mom-and-pops out of business.

6. Bob Zuckerman (breakfast interview link)

I was, continue to be, and will remain opposed to Atlantic Yards. It is a project that is way out of scale for the neighborhood, and the one good thing to come from this recession is that it will hopefully result in the project’s demise. It is not an appropriate use of eminent domain. As for other development issues, we need to ensure that future development is contextual and at an appropriate scale, and we must move towards building green.

Mr. Zukerman also said he would endorse Mr. Lander’s statement that Atlantic Yards was the worst boondoggle and what Mr. Lander said should be done about it. Mr. Zuckermen also said:

I have been against it from the very beginning. I wrote a letter to. . I was on the community board at the time, but I wrote a letter to the Empire State Development Corporation, which you can Google Bob Zukerman and Atlantic Yards and you will see all my criticisms of the project. So I am very much against it, always have been and continue to be so.

Googling, we found Mr. Zuckerman’s September 29, 2006 letter. It is a good start but we think he is going to have to write something stronger to get the point across with the people at ESDC, who are not very attuned to listening to community criticism of a developer’s project.

We had one other development question for Mr. Zuckerman. During the forum he received attention and took substantial amount of flack for being the only candidate who said he needed to think a lot more before he could make up his mind about superfunding the Gowanus site. We asked him about his relationship to Carroll Gardens/Goawnus area developer Buddy Scotto. He said:

Here’s my relationship. Buddy is on the board of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation of which I was most recently Executive Director. I’ve taken a leave of absence. I’m now on leave to run full time for City Council. He’s one of many board members. Buddy is actually not supporting me in this race. He’s supporting John Heyer. I think that’s enough on that, right?

Mr. Heyer is the only candidate opposing superfunding of the canal. All the other candidates support its superfunding.

de Blasio: Current City Councilman

Here, for reference from the same CBID questionnaire is the postion of Bill de Blasio, the current City Councilman for the 39th. Mr. de Blasio is currently running for the office of Public Advocate.


7. Bill de Blasio

I became a supporter of the project because of the groundbreaking affordable housing program, jobs and other community benefits, and felt it to be an appropriate use of eminent domain. I have said publicly that no further public subsidies should be granted or demolitions allowed until there is evidence that the Community Benefits Agreement will be adhered to. It is also essential that surrounding neighborhoods have a larger, ongoing role in the project.

Given that we thought that Mr. de Blasio’s statement was one of the weakest statements in opposition to the project, we asked Mr. de Blasio’s office whether they would like to provide a supplement further fleshing out his position. They have not, so far, responded. We feel it will be appropriate to review in a future piece the possible importance that the Public Advocate’s opposition to Atlantic Yard may have in stopping the project.

In the meantime, we should note that while Mr. de Blasio’s statement seems weak he has called for a moratorium on the project. Mr. de Balsio has said:

"I am livid at the New York Times interview with Ratner" in which the developer announced that the project would be scaled back and that massive amounts of affordable housing would be seriously delayed or eliminated. "There was no discussion with the community before he went on record," Mr. de Blasio said, adding that the changes put "the entire community benefits agreement up for question."

Last night, Mr. de Blasio said he supports "a moratorium on demolition until there is a written plan" that "confirms what will be built when and confirms affordability" and that he "can't support" an arena-only plan.

(See the Gowanus Lounge: Tuesday, April 15, 2008, De Blasio Calls for Moratorium on Atlantic Yards Demolition.)

These de Blasio statement were back before the term limits extension when de Blasio was still running for the office of Brooklyn Borough President. At the same April 2008 meeting he is quoted by Brownstowner:

The Councilman also said that he thinks the entire development should be reviewed again by the state if Forest City Ratner is now conceiving of a vastly different project, particularly one that reneges on its promised affordable housing. "I held out hope for the project because of the amount of affordable housing it would create, as well as the number of jobs it would bring," he said. "But I have been constantly disappointed in the lack of community involvement...I've never seen anything that's been mismanaged so fundamentally in terms of community involvement."

(See: April 15, 2008, De Blasio Blasts Ratner on AY Obfuscation.)

Where Is the Effective Action the Community Deserves to Stop Atlantic Yards and Which Would Be Consistent with Elected Officials’ Opposition to the Preject?

So we have got to ask: Where is the moratorium? Why does ESDC keep working on this project even as it becomes recognized as increasingly alien to the public benefit or even those benefits that were originally elusively and deceptively promised?

Bill de Blasio is a very bright, capable and influential City Councilman seeking higher office. Why has he not been effective in opposing a project so unjustifiable and so universally despised? And here is the trap to avoid. If Mr. de Blasio gives lip service to opposing the project like almost every other politician, how do we know that those seeking to take his City Council seat will not be similarly ineffective? As we look at the candidates, that is what we are trying to discern.

We have at least one starter suggestion. This is a project that continues even though it has no visible means of support. The governor has never said one public word in support of the project. Even the mayor, key to the project’s survival as he is (and as seemingly assured of reelection by his billions), avoids public statements of support for the project. The mayor avoids even mentioning Atlantic Yards and we think his plan of preference if for it to play political possum until he has procured his desired third term. Governor Paterson, (to whom the mayor has not been kind) could certainly prevent that. How?

In this post we have reviewed the positions of fifteen candidates, two entire fields of candidates. As they all oppose Atlantic Yards as probably the city’s worst project and one that desperately needs to be stopped, why can’t those candidates all unite to approach Governor Paterson and tell him in one voice to abandon this folly? (They can send a “CC” to the Bloomberg administration.)