“Charity?” We Begin to Groan

Here are a few observations it is time to pull together.

NY Times Front Page: Bloomberg Using His Private Charities and City Money To Press for Third Term

Yesterday the New York Times had a front-page story (Bloomberg Enlists His Charities in Bid to Stay, by Michael Barbaro and David W. Chen), picking up on one of our own stories, about how Mayor/Billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg is using control over his “charitable” giving to press “many of the community, arts and neighborhood groups that rely on his private donations to make the case for his third term”. Notwithstanding the “His Charities” in the article’s headline, the article is about how Bloomberg has extraordinary leverage over the groups’ finances by using both:

1.) his “private” (read that as “secret” too) giving through his media company, Bloomberg, LP, and also
2.) our city money with contracts overseen by his city staff.

Follow-up on Original New York Times Story

The Times ran a follow-up today, (Criticism of Bloomberg Over Nonprofits’ Support, by Michael Barbaro) about a number of the city’s political figures' “harsh” denunciations of Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration for asking the nonprofit groups to support City Council legislation that would allow Mr. Bloomberg to seek a third term in office. The article added that the Bloomberg administration was also similarly coordinating support statements from union leaders. The article quoted Gene Russianoff, a senior lawyer for the New York Public Interest Research Group, as saying that asking groups who receive city money to support the term limits bill “looks like an administration desperately abusing its power to stay in office. It just does not pass the smell test.”

There was similar follow-up on WNYC today.

True Charity?

Isn’t it overdue that we notice how many ways this “charity” thing has gotten dangerously out of hand and that the “charity” we are seeing is in many ways not so real?

A quote worth considering:

"Those who give, hoping to be rewarded with honor, are not giving, they are bargaining"
Philo Judaeus

Christine Quinn’s Fake Charities and Term Limits

As nearly everyone knows, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was embroiled in a messy political slush fund scandal a relatively short time ago. What was the instrument by which Quinn was busy illegally routing monies? Fake charities! (See: Quinn Raises Less Money Amid Inquiry Into Council, By David W. Chen, July 13, 2008).

Quinn was in the middle of running for mayor when she was caught in the scandal. We speculated, as the Times did later, that her imminent support for a repeal of term limits for Mr. Bloomberg was linked to the way her political prospects had been weakened by the fake charity scandal. In a story reporting on Quinn’s angst about reversing her decision to support Bloomberg’s continuation in office* (Quinn’s Silence on Term Limits May Reflect Conflict of Ambition and Past Stand, by Michael Barbaro, October 7, 2008.) the Times wrote:

Leading the effort to revise the current limits could be advantageous to Ms. Quinn, who was ensnared in a messy scandal this year involving Council budget appropriations for dozens of fictitious community groups. A third term in the Council could give her four years to put that embarrassment behind her.

*(We believe it was fairly clear that Bloomberg did not announce that he was going to pursue a repeal of term limits until after Quinn was on board, but officially her decision to reverse herself on term limits was played out after Bloomberg’s announcement, with the Times reporting in the above article the requisite stage-managed drama concerning how agonizing the decision was going to be for Ms. Quinn. Once Quinn was out with her position she started making the decisions of others on the issue difficult in another way: She is reportedly using City Council chairmanship assignments to manipulate the City Council vote. See: Quinn Targeting Term Foe's Plum, by Sally Goldenberg and David Seifman, October 15, 2008. The same story reports that Bloomberg defended her manipulations, saying: “Her job is to corral people and convince them to support legislation, . . .This is an administration-sponsored bill . . . Do you really want us to not go out and promote [it]?”)

Marty Markowitiz’s Not-So-Real Charities

How many steps removed from Christine Quinn’s fake charities are Marty Markowitiz’s “charities,” which are politically motivated and politically funded? The charities can be used as pseudo-campaign funds, but whereas there are limits to what companies can donate to politicians’ campaigns, there are no limits to what companies can donate to pet political charities used as pseudo-campaign funds. Further, Markowitz uses the charities to supplement the incomes of people working for him in non-charitable capacities. (Is there more we need to know about how and to whom charities are being used to pay salaries?)

Taxpayer Money

Markowitz also put taxpayer money directly into his “charities.” A New York Post editorial (Beeping Marty, October 13, 2008) notes that Markowitz’s directed “no-bid city contracts worth nearly $700,000 to” to one of his “charities,” Best of Brooklyn raised “the same questions as the City Council's nonprofit scandal earlier this year.” They were speaking of the aforementioned scandal involving Speaker Quinn. Even more taxpayer money was funneled in from City Hall by the Bloomberg administration. In a story appearing after the Post’s editorial (Sure Pays for Marty to Be Mike's Buddy, by Rich Calder, October 14, 2008) the Post reported that “Since 2003, the Bloomberg administration has handed out at least $2.7 million in taxpayer cash to three nonprofit groups Markowitz set up to fund "free" concerts and other pet projects, a Post investigation has found.” The Post says the amount the Bloomberg administration has given is between $2.4 million and $4.8 million of taxpayer dough over the last five years, and that Markowitz's groups also got between $544,724 and $834,724 from state agencies.

Money Back From Companies Doing Business With The City

The donations received from companies doing business with the city are difficult to distinguish from outright kickbacks, which is not to say they can or should be. Markowitz is famous for his irrational and unqualified support for Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards megadevelopment. Because of Markowitz’s support, Atlantic Yards stands to get over $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies for the project, plus effect a 22-acre land grab with associated eminent domain abuse and zoning-override windfalls. It has now come to light that since 2003, when Atlantic Yards came into the picture, Markowitz’s “charities” have pulled in between $680,000 and $1,00,075 from various Ratner-affiliated companies and allies.

For the informed, it is pretty obvious that Atlantic Yards stands to have devastating effect on Brooklyn, yet Markowitz supports the megadevelopment unquestioningly. Atlantic Yards Report provided an excellent litany making it clear how indefensibly irrational Markowitz’s support is: Monday, October 13, 2008, Marty "bought and paid for"? Following up on the Post's scoop.

Even if these cannot be legally proven to be kickbacks, the same Post editorial mentioned above states that “the Markowitz-Ratner relationship appears to be evading city campaign-finance regulations.” Similarly, Markowitz saw his nonprofits get at least $170,000 in donations from the cruise ship industry when he helped convince the city to open a cruise ship terminal in Red Hook.

How Real?

Do the Markowitz charities exist other than for the purpose of politically self-serving artifice? Markowitz took office in the beginning of 2002. His principal charity, Best of Brooklyn, received its IRS ruling in 2002. The Brooklyn Paper reports that Markowitz’s Borough Hall spokeswoman said she is uncertain whether Markowitz would be involved with the charities after leaving political office and unclear whether the charities will even continue to exist after Markowitz leaves office. (See: Marty’$ borough haul, by Mike McLaughlin, The Brooklyn Paper, September 18, 2008.)

Markowitz’s three pet charities are: Best of Brooklyn, Inc., the Martin Luther King Concert Series and the Seaside Summer Concert Series.

Round and Round

These charity things keep going around in circles. The respective sponsorship pages for the Seaside Summer Concert Series and the Martin Luther King Concert Series say that they would like to acknowledge the outstanding support of: Mayor Michael Bloomberg (plus two of his deputy mayors) and Christine Quinn, NYC Council Speaker.

From Bloomberg, LP

Perhaps the charities should not just be thanking Bloomberg in his capacity as Mayor. Carolyn Greer, the director of public events in Markowitz’s Borough Hall, is a civil employee who gets salary beyond her civil salary from the Markowitz charities. According to Bloomberg, LP, Ms. Greer is the individual with whom the Mayor’s media company, Bloomberg LP, communicates in connection with its philanthropic donations to the Martin Luther King Concert Series and the Seaside Summer Concert Series. What those donation amounts might be is, as yet, unreported. When called by Noticing New York about how much money “private” Bloomberg, LP donates, Ms. Greer did not return phone calls.

More To Investigate?

This just in: In an editorial in today’s paper, the Post calls for an outside third party to investigate Markowitz’s charities. They suggest Brooklyn District Attorney Joel Hynes. See: Marty Markowitz's Millions.

How Real is Bloomberg’s Charity?

Back again to Speaker Christine Quinn, once upon a time the woman who would be Mayor. It would be ironic if, by virtue of being side-lined in her run for Mayor by a fake charity scandal, her support for Bloomberg’s attempt at another term creates an environment where Bloomberg’s own charities are themselves now perceived as scandalously less real.

Quinn’s path to the office of Mayor was going to be her close alliance with a popular mayor. Quinn’s support of Bloomberg now could be a very bad move that ends her political future. It is not clear that Bloomberg’s popularity would survive a possible third term, or that it will survive what is now coming to light about the motivations and uses associated with what was once considered his largess.

What Marty Markowitz engages in on small scale with his charities you see reflected on a much larger palette in the wealthy Bloomberg’s activities. Among other things, Bloomberg wears more hats.

Waterfalls as a Focus

In our original October 15th story observing how Bloomberg’s control over charitable giving seemed tied in with a general unwillingness to recognize limits, we focused on the many-sided lead Bloomberg took, adopting the New York City Waterfalls as an object of his attention. The less than completely successful New York City Waterfalls were the recipient of various sources of funds Bloomberg was able to direct to it in his multiple capacities. The Waterfalls are a project of the Public Art Fund. Our timing was apt given what happened the next day.

Public Art Fund Testimony: Not a Coincidence

Several hours after we posted our Waterfalls article, we were at the City Council hearing on term limits when Susan Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund, appeared to testify in support of the Bloomberg-proposed exception to term limits. (See: Friday, October 17, 2008, At the term limits hearing, AY opponents and supporters make their mark.) The front page New York Times story mentioned the Public Art Fund’s testimony supporting the Mayor’s cause twice. The first time, they cited the Public Art Fund amongst several other charitable organizations and observed that “None of the officials disclosed their financial ties to the mayor’s charity when they testified.” Then, mentioning Ms. Freedman’s testimony specifically, the Times reported that the Public Art Fund “has received more than $500,000 from Mr. Bloomberg.”

Private $ = Secret $

The “private” charitable giving that is being used to exert pressure is more insidious because it is “secret” and undisclosed. Part of my original story was about the difficulty in obtaining this information and bringing it to light. All of the following refused to inform Noticing New York how much money was donated by Bloomberg, LP to the Waterfalls: The Mayor’s Office, The Parks Department, Bloomberg, LP and the Public Arts Fund. While the New York Times reported that Bloomberg, LP donated a minimum of $500,000 to the Public Art Fund, it is still in question how great the Bloomberg donations actually are. Further, what the Times reported about the amount Michael Bloomberg directed to the Public Art Fund is only a fraction of the story.

Public Art Fund: Beyond $$ the Times Reported

As we noted in our earlier article, apart from what the Times reported, the Public Art Fund received a minimum of $2 million dollars in federal money that was channeled to it by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, half of whose board is appointed by Bloomberg. The LMDC, which manages the World Trade Center site redevelopment, was created after the 9/11 disaster to assist with the lower Manhattan recovery. It receives federal money (such as was passed on to the Waterfalls) intended for the ongoing disaster recovery efforts.

Moreover, while Bloomberg used his media company to be lead sponsor of the Waterfalls, he was doing the same thing with a City Hall-based charity that he controls, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. The Mayor revved up the City Hall charity after coming into office. Both the Bloomberg, LP giving and the City Hall-controlled giving were characterized as “private” money, and both would have been at least in the same minimum amount. That minimum amount would be substantially above what other listed donors gave. Were we to assume that the minium amount for the lead sponsors of the Waterfalls was $500,000 (that could easily be low), it would mean that, by virtue of all of the above, Bloomberg has directed at least $3 million to the Public Art Fund, which would be several multiples of what the Times reported. Then there is the money I described coming from organizations doing business with the city. As noted above with respect to Mr. Markowitz, it is not so easy to distinguish these from kickbacks.

Information Please?

I contacted the City Hall-based Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City to find out how much the fund had donated to the Waterfalls. I was put in touch with Jason Post, the same Mayoral spokesperson who is handling press inquiries on the management of term limits. As of this time I have not been furnished with information about the amount. Meanwhile, I again contacted the Public Art Fund and inquired about the $500,000 figure the Times had obtained. The Public Art Fund refuses to confirm that the information in the Times about how much money the Public Art Fund has received was accurate. It was pointed out to me that the Times was not reporting a figure of how much was received by the PAF in connection with the Waterfalls. That would possibly be a subset of the total amount they might have received.

In addition to the “donated’ amounts described above that Bloomberg sent fairly directly to the Public Art Fund, there are appreciable additional amounts that went to the PAF from entities receiving substantial benefits and subsidies in dealings with the city. My earlier article goes into detail, noting that contributors of this ilk predominated among the “givers.”

Money Back From Companies Doing Business With the City

Bloomberg is in a very similar position to Marty Markowitz when it comes to the large donations that came in from Forest City Ratner. There are those who would say that Bloomberg’s continuing support for Atlantic Yards is no more logical than Markowitz’s, since his administration seems to have clearly acknowledged Atlantic Yards as a mistake. Once again. As with Markowitz, because of Bloomberg’s support Atlantic Yards stands to get over $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies for the project, plus effect a 22-acre land grab with associated eminent domain abuse and zoning-override windfalls.

Charities That Receive: Do They Do The Right Thing?

When donations with strings attached are offered to charities that are created to do good, can those charities be counted upon to the do the right thing? Or do charities that take money from those with a political agenda tend to fall under their sway? The Times article says that it is difficult for charities to do the right thing.

In Saturday’s Times article:

“It’s pretty hard to say no,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the mayor. “They can take away a lot of resources.”

In today’s follow-up article:

Many of the organizations contacted by the administration rely on Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire, for tens of thousands of dollars a year in private donations and millions in city contracts, making it difficult to turn down the request, these leaders said.

The Community Suffers

If these charities do the wrong thing, they do so at the expense of the citizenry. If the public has picked a method like referendum to make the decision on term limits and twice used it, public choice and process should not be overridden. Public process should not be infected by people who do not advocate their true and considered beliefs in hopes of collecting additional contributions.

We think that overturning term limits in the special self-serving way proposed by Bloomberg is wrong. Among other things, it is wrong to change the rules in the middle of this 2009 electoral cycle. The timing was last-minute, with the public being the last to know (long after real estate developers). If Bloomberg or the City Council wanted to change term limits, they missed the boat for doing it in this 2009 election cycle: They know the process; if it was ever going to start, it should properly have been started long ago.

Charities doing the wrong thing may pocket money for themselves, but the greater good of the community suffers.

What do charities selling out at the expense of the community look like? The Ratner organization’s donations in connection with both the Markowitz and Bloomberg charities have been cited as objectionable. Let’s stick with Ratner for one more example. Bruce Ratner's Forest City Ratner runs charities and donates money for questionable purposes, questionable because they are self-serving. The end goal of their activities is to make private, personal profit and Rater has a record of doing so at the expense of the public. For instance, the New York Observer reported an apparent result of a reported lobbying meeting that Bruce Ratner had with Mr. Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris:

In December 2005, right as the debate over the Atlantic Yards complex was heating up and before the city made several crucial decisions about the project, Forest City Ratner gave between $450,000 and $1 million to a nonprofit closely associated with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Patricia Harris was responsible for coordinating charitable giving matters for Mayor Bloomberg.
(See: Forest City Ratner Gives to Coney Island Carousel, Other Bloombergian Public Projects by Matthew Schuerman, April 1, 2007)

Familiarity of a Quote: Ratner and the Brooklyn Museum

The Philo Judaeus quote at the beginning of this post may strike some as familiar: "Those who give, hoping to be rewarded with honor, are not giving, they are bargaining".

It was one of the quotes we offered at a community demonstration to admonish the Brooklyn Museum for the way it sorely wounded the communities of Brooklyn by inappropriately “honoring” Bruce Ratner in exchange for donations. The timing of the museum’s award was highly inappropriate since Ratner had an overriding goal of pushing through Atlantic Yards at substantial cost to the community and the rest of the public.

What did the Brooklyn Museum get from Ratner for this misadventure? Atlantic Yards Report reported about Ratner donating over $200,000 to the museum. (Thursday, April 03, 2008
How much has FCR given the Brooklyn Museum? At least $200,000, with more coming) There were also various conflicts of interest involving people on the Brooklyn Museum board which may have caused the museum to go off on the wrong track in the decision it made. Joanne Minieri, president of Forest City Ratner, was on the museum's board. (See: Thursday, March 13, 2008, At the Brooklyn Museum gala, honors for (and $ from) Bruce Ratner)

This is where we leave off writing this post, but if you want to read more about how far astray the judgement of nonprofit institutions can go when tempted with “donations,” read the letter of protest sent to the museum in connection with that event.

Building the Right Landmarks Case; Wrong Building

In yesterday’s editorial, The Missing Landmarks Commission, the New York Times starts making some valuable points about how the city Landmarks Preservation Commission needs to function, but the Times focuses on the wrong building. The building they wrote about was a building cared about by Manhattan’s uptown elite.

The Times editorial makes these points.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission should be a vital part of the planning process in New York City.

* * *

Moving as slowly as it does — and nearly always without public hearings — the landmarking process is routinely outflanked by developers. What is clearly missing is the political will needed for the landmarks commission to do its job.

* * *

No one wants to see the city frozen by overly rigid landmarking. But New York is such an extraordinary place because of both its past and its future. The commission — in full consultation with the public — should play a critical role in balancing the two.

We disagree with the Times about its solution, a solution that focuses on what we identify as the problem if we don’t want a process which, as they suggest, is “routinely outflanked by developers.” As the Times notes, it is the mayor “who appoints the commissioners.” The Times’ expresses its envisioned solution thus:

What is clearly missing is the political will needed for the landmarks commission to do its job. For that, it must have the full backing of the mayor, who appoints the commissioners.

We think that the solution that would truly result in the political will for the landmarks commission to do its job would be if the commissioners had greater independence from the mayor.

Such political will might also come with a different mayor, one less enamored by developers and one who is not so rich that he can use his wealth to overturn term limits. Is the Times editorial page doing penance or trying to make up for the damage it has done by its earlier editorial on term limits? The editorial page previously expressed the belief that Mayor Bloomberg should be unleashed to serve a third term by a special exemption from term limits, but then yesterday's editorial vaguely hopes that the Mayor will begin reining in developers, something he has never been willing to do. How valid could such hope be? As we arrived to testify at the City Council term limits hearing on Thursday, we saw Mr. Bloomberg leaving the building with a stressed- looking Amanda Burden, Chair of the City Planning Commission. Given that Bloomberg’s massive effort to specially repeal term limits was the order of the day, we must wonder what that was about. The City Planning Commission (like the Landmarks Preservation Commission) also works extensively with developers. Would it be grossly naive to imagine or hope that Ms. Burden was actually working to do something good on that day, for instance that she might have been working “behind-the-scenes” (as was once ostensibly the case) to urge reduction of the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment?

The Times yesterday used as its editorial’s focus point the reworking of Edward Durell Stone’s eccentric building at 2 Columbus Circle into the new home of the Museum of Arts and Design. Reviews have been mixed but not altogether negative. Saving the original version of the problematic and controversial Stone building, referred to as the “lollipop building,” was once a cause celebre. The Times notes:

Despite a public debate over the fate of Stone’s building, the Landmarks Preservation Commission never held a public hearing. The commission’s chair — with the encouragement of the Bloomberg administration — had the matter shelved.

The Bloomberg administration may have inappropriately deprived the Stone building of an appropriate and proper hearing by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but it did not deprive influential Manhattanites of a voice. The Times itself helped. In a now rather famous op-ed piece alleging process failures, Tom Wolfe lambasted the Commission: Op-Ed Contributor, The (Naked) City and the Undead, November 26, 2006. The harsh piece was conspicuously exceptional for the Times in its length, and it dealt in depth with the real problem of the commission’s lack of independence from the office of the mayor. The harshness made for deliciously fun reading but was probably a bit unfair; the Commission is highly capable and does do its job excellently when permitted by the Mayor.

Was there a better building upon which the Times could have built its case? Yes, the Ward Bakery Building in the footprint of the proposed Atlantic Yards. The building, which was in use until the mid-1990's, was being bought and sold by developers and probably would be under development now, soon to be adaptatively reused, had it not been for the advent of Bruce Ratner’s endeavors, blighting Prospect Heights and Fort Greene in pursuit of personal wealth. Now it looks as if an empty Ward Bakery Building site will spend two or three decades as a parking lot unless the city finally kicks Ratner out. The Ward Bakery is one building on an entire block with other worthwhile buildings that is being condemned unnecessarily, purely to generate eminent domain and zoning-override windfalls for Ratner. For instance, the block is nowhere near the arena that is supposedly justifying Ratner’s 22-acre land grab.

Unlike the eccentric Edward Durell Stone building at Columbus Circle, the Ward Bakery Building was noncontroversially beautiful, fully functional, and had a long and important history in the neighborhood. The Edward Durell Stone building was finished relatively recently (in 1964) and, among other flaws, admitted little exterior light. It was technically old enough for landmarking, but it is not clear that it should have been. (If Columbus Circle is looking a bit desultory right now has less to do with the reworking of the Stone building than the mallishness of the Time Warner Center and the familiar Trump cliches of the Gulf and Western building Trump reclad.)

On the other hand, the older white terra cotta Ward Bakery Building should have been landmarked. We have been told that Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Robert Tierney confided, off-the-record, an interest in considering the building for landmarking, but expressed that his hands were tied. Any notion that the recently-used building was not in condition to be adaptively reused is most assuredly pretext. Everyone is aware that pretexts flow with abundance for Atlantic Yards. (It looks as if the Ward Bakery Building is sturdy enough so that its demolition is turning into a significant amount of work.)

I am reasonably sure that people of influence had Mayor Bloomberg’s ear to express both sides of the argument with respect to the highly controversial Edward Durell Stone building. Compared to what the Ward Bakery Building received, you might even say the Stone building had a hearing that was fair in its two-sidedness. Nor was there the situation of a rapacious, subsidy-stealing developer. Although it should have been absolutely clear that Ward Bakery Building should have been saved and adaptively reused (who could have argued otherwise?), the communities and people of Brooklyn are not like Manhattan. We do not have the ear of the Mayor to forestall the “outflanking” of developer Bruce Ratner’s unfair, one-sided access to Bloomberg. Which is not to say that Manhattan communities don’t sometimes have their work cut out for them: Witness the Rudin/St. Vincent’s proposals.

Noticing New York has solutions to propose. Two, in fact. For the Landmarks Preservation Commission: Greater independence from the mayor. As for Ward Bakery Building? Before Forest City Ratner is ever permitted to do business in New York again, reparation should be paid to the community. Forest City should be required to fully fund a careful and historically accurate recreation of the entire white terra cotta Ward Bakery Building, complete with all of its layered arches. (We will have someone else build it.) Developers have to be made to think twice about the “benefits” of outflanking proper process to rob communities of their valuable assets and history.

Self-Congratulation “Befalls” a Man Who Would Know No Limits

This is to assess what deserves congratulation and who should be handing out the congratulations that are given. We also use this opportunity to examine the largess of New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

New York City Waterfalls Art Project; Update on Environmental Damage

We previously wrote that Olafur Eliasson’s “New York City Waterfalls”art project, with its attendant environmental damage, was not an unqualified success: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, “Yeah, sure. Bad for the glass.” (Inartful Clues to New York City Government?).

The art project’s salt-waterfalls were shut off this week but this week’s Brooklyn Paper bore more news about the level of environmental damage their salt-spewing has done (A salt of the earth! By Sarah Portlock). The level of salt in the spewed-upon surrounding soil is amazingly high. The salt level in the soil by the River Café where the above picture of denuded trees was taken Labor Day week is 10 times normal.

Salt levels were also disturbingly high in soil of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade gardens where, as of the beginning of September, there was significant damage to trees for two full blocks extending between Pierrepont and Remsen Streets. Though attenuating over distance, it is clear that the spay went even farther, detectably affecting the honey locust trees as far away as Clark Street, yet another exceptionally long additional block away. In theory, the waterfalls were to be turned off to avoid damage when winds were unusually high but just weeks ago it was “raining” on Hicks Street from a bight clear blue sky as wind-carried spay traveled two blocks inland from the falls. (For pictures of the Promenade trees denuded in August see the previous post.)

A Self-Congratulatory Award for the Waterfalls Project

Here is another recent update about the falls, which was also mentioned in the Brooklyn Paper article, that is exceptionally telling. On September 26th, well after the problematic effects of the salt spray provoked alarm, Mayor Bloomberg awarded the city’s Doris C. Freedman Award to The New York City Waterfalls for its contribution “to the public environment.” The Mayor’s award to the art project is more remarkable if you take into account the under-reported fact that the Mayor’s own media company, Bloomberg, LP, paid for a substantial portion of the Waterfalls art project with a tax-deductible donation. The Waterfalls cost $15.5 million. Of this, $13.5 million was sponsored by “private” donations. Heading a short list, Bloomberg, LP is set forth as a project “lead supporter.” Rather self-congratulatory?

To be fair, before we have at it, it should be admitted that the environment that is supposed to be improved when the Doris C. Freedman Award is given is not specifically the “environment” one is talking about when one talks about the environmental assessment that the city botched when considering the Waterfalls project. Rather, when the award is awarded we are speaking in terms of “greatly enriching the public environment” in a sense that has extended to public art and performance in past instances. The award has in the past been presented to urban life, design and architecture improvers like William H. (Holly) Whyte, to the Greenmarket Farmers Market network and its founders, Barry Benepe and Robert Lewis, to Margot Gayle, and to Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts and its founder, Halina Rosenthal. The award has also been given to those presenting art in public environments, like Dancing in the Streets and Battery Park City Authority for its public art program in Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park.

Mayor Bloomberg’s award to this Bloomberg-funded art project was probably meant to acknowledge the Waterfalls project he sponsored as being in the same league as the Christo and Jeanne-Claude creation of The Gates Central Park project that received the award in 2005. (It has frequently been commented that the Waterfalls were not as impressive as the Gates.)

A Self-Referential Loop; Bloomberg With Many Hats

All the same, whatever the nature of the award, doesn’t it all seem incredibly self-referential?

How self-referential? Consider:

The Mayor’s media company funded the project (tax-deducibly). The Mayor’s Parks Department and other agencies then considered whether to “approve” the project. As Shane McAdams writes in the Brooklyn Rail, the fact that the project “had received the blessing of Michael Bloomberg (as well as a generous helping of his own cash). . .certainly helped grease the bureaucratic gears, making it easier to secure building permits and expedite what would otherwise have been a Byzantine logistical process.” Of course, we must remember the botched environmental assessment for which Bloomberg’s city is responsible. The project was announced with a press release by Bloomberg as Mayor wherein he promises “the Waterfalls will have little impact on the environment.” The worth of the Waterfalls was then publicly assessed at $55 million by the head of the Mayor’s Economic Development Corporation. (Calculating the Worth of East River ‘Waterfalls’, By Ken Belson, June 28, 2008) The project was reported upon as a news event by the Mayor’s media company (New York's East River to Host Artist Eliasson's `Waterfalls’ , By Henry Goldman) which in good reportorial form discloses that “The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. The company is one of several private sponsors of the project.” The project was next reviewed as “art” by the Mayor’s media company. (Eliasson's Waterfalls Make Instant Monuments for N.Y. Harbor, Review by Carly Berwick) In both good and not-so-good form that article concludes with the warning that Ms. Berwick “is an art critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own” but this article does not mention that the art is funded by Bloomberg itself. Next, after doing unexpected environmental damage the project is given a city award by the Mayor himself.

No Relief From Disaster; Funds from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation

Of course, there is other money in the project. $2 million in federal Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was provided by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Half of the sixteen directors of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation are appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, so this money is once again traceable to the Mayor.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was set up after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to plan the reconstruction of the lower Manhattan World Trade Center site and distribute federal funds aimed at rebuilding downtown Manhattan. The lack of progress at the World Trade Center site has been criticized and plans for its redevelopment have been cut back because of scarcity of funding. It could be asked exactly how helpful to LMDC’s reconstruction goals the decision to fund the Waterfalls was. Of course, the city has previously been known to go far afield in distributing resources the federal government had made available for downtown Manhattan’s recovery after the attack. “Liberty Bonds” specifically authorized by the federal government to aid in downtown Manhattan’s recovery were used as far uptown as Chelsea Piers to build the Frank Gehry “Dirty Iceberg” building opposite the piers (the IAC building).

According to LMDC’s website, LMDC gets “funds awarded under the HUD Disaster Recovery Initiative and for other program management purposes” and “HUD and the Disaster Recovery Grant Reporting System are collecting information regarding the use of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds awarded under the HUD Disaster Recovery Initiative and for other program management purposes.” Does HUD then need to be told that $2 million in federal Community Development Block Grants were used for the Waterfalls art project rather than something more directly related to “Disaster Recovery?”

Bloomberg Wants More Control

Bloomberg wants to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s functions to turned over to him and made a city function. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (Opinion: There Should Be No More Excuses At Ground Zero, September 10, 2008) he wrote:

We will ask Gov. Paterson to dismantle the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and hand over its development responsibilities to the city. Although the LMDC, a conduit for federal funds, must remain a legal entity, turning over its other functions to the city would eliminate one redundant layer of bureaucracy.

Knowing What Was “Privately Donated” by Bloomberg

How much of the $13.5 million privately donated money was actually donated by Bloomberg, LP? However large Bloomberg’s principal chunk is rumored to be, you don’t know how much it really is because it hasn’t been reported. Noticing New York has tried to find out. Noticing New York has inquired about the amount by contacting those who have, or should have, the information. The Mayor’s Office referred us to the Parks Department. The Parks Department declined comment, referring us to the Public Arts Fund. Bloomberg, LP also referred us to the Public Art Fund to whom Bloomberg gave the money, saying that Bloomberg, LP never discloses figures about how much money the Mayor’s media company is donating. The Public Art Fund did not supply the information either. They informed us that:

It is the policy of the Public Art Fund not to release details about donations raised from the private sector.

Donations in support of The New York City Waterfalls started at $100 and included the $2 million received from LMDC.

Influence of Donations

Because Bloomberg, LP giving is clearly an extension of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s influence, the Mayor’s heavy personal giving to so many of the city’s cultural institutions has been viewed as a problem. People have pointed out that giving quietly immunizes the Mayor from criticism. Institutions receiving the money are apt not to express criticism of the Mayor and each institution has associated with it huge numbers of New York’s most influential (and wealthy) citizens whose impulses to criticize the Mayor are probably also largely neutralized.

Loops: Strategic Use of Charities and Donations

Are the Mayor’s personal donations politically strategic? We may not have the information about the Mayor’s personal “munificence” to clearly assess the question, but an indicative pattern can be seen in the way that the Mayor has distributed public taxpayer money. The New York Post investigated and reported that the Bloomberg administration has handed out $2.7 million in city taxpayer cash to three nonprofit groups that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz set up. (See: Sure Pays for Marty to Be Mike's Buddy, by Rich Calder, October 14, 2008.) These are groups Markowitz himself has improperly favored financially with taxpayer funds and which he uses in politically strategic ways. (Oh the circles upon self-referential circles we can find when these “charities” are involved!) Has Bloomberg exercised restraint from politically motivated strategy when it comes to his undisclosed personal largess that he hasn’t similarly exercised when he distributes taxpayer money? It would seem unlikely. Has Bloomberg personally donated to Markowitz’s charities?

More “Giving” In Store; Bloomberg Percentage to Go Up

One thing we know about Bloomberg’s giving is that with the advent of the new Wall Street fiscal crisis, Bloomberg while predicting that overall charitable support for New York arts groups and institutions will be going down, is advertising that he will be increasing his personal donations at this time. If predictions and advertised promises bear out, then you can expect Bloomberg’s proportional influence to go up.

The Non-comfort of Other “Private” Donations; Forest City Ratner

Are we comforted that there were others contributing in addition to the $2 million from the Lower Manhattan Development and the direct lead sponsorship from Bloomberg LP? Probably not. Why should we be comforted when another company high on this list of principal contributors to the Waterfalls is Forest City Ratner Companies. Predicated on Bloomberg ’s stalwart assistance, Forest City Ratner Companies is demanding over $2 billion in misguided taxpayer-financed subsidies for their proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment in Brooklyn, with more than $1 billion alone just to subsidize a private franchise basketball arena.

The Non-comfort of Other “Private” Donations; the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City

The Public Art Fund’s list of private sponsors for the Waterfalls project consists of five categories. First on the list are “lead supporters”. Bloomberg. LP is one of the four lead supporters. Another is the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. Ostensibly this fund is an independent private 501(c)(3), but if you want to know more about it you have to go to the New York City government website, nyc.gov, where you will find a message about the fund from none other than Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While technically a donation from the fund may qualify as a “private” donation, it makes you think about what “private” really means. It certainly appears that it was additional money that Bloomberg was able to deliver to the project by virtue of his public position as Mayor.

The Non-comfort of Other “Private” Donations; the Lauders

Next on this list are “major” supporters (of which Forest City Ratner Companies is one of seven). Together with the Ratner Companies on this list is the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Foundation. Leonard Lauder is the brother of Ronald Lauder, who in a flagrant ploy only days ago negotiated a billionaires’ pact with Bloomberg: Lauder will support the repeal of term limits so that Bloomberg can run for a third term as Mayor and, in exchange, Bloomberg will appoint Lauder to the head of a charter revision commission so that Lauder, who does not believe in the repeal of term limits for anybody else, can reimpose term limits before any subsequent officeholder can take advantage of their repeal. (See: Ethics Complaint Filed Over Bloomberg-Lauder Pact, by Michael Barbaro, October 9, 2008 and Lauder and Bloomberg Strike a Deal, by Michael Barbaro AND Sewell Chan, October 8, 2008)

The Non-comfort of Other “Private” Donations; Real Estate and the Mets

There are 18 “generous” supporters, 64 “additional funds” supporters and 29 “assistance has been provided by” supporters. The list is predominated by other well-known real estate developers besides Forest City Ratner. It includes the “New York Mets Foundation, Inc.” The Mets are similar to Foret City Ratner in that they are involved in controversial tax-exempt financing for another sports venue, the new Mets stadium. Even when you get down to level of the smallest donors, influence is perceptible in that there are many companies that are obviously construction industry subcontractors.

“Self-referential” Becomes “Self-reverential”

I have used the term “self-referential” several times above but certainly when Bloomberg directs huge sums to the real estate and sports franchise industries and they, in turn, give that money back to a project the Mayor is taking the lead in sponsoring, the result becomes a mind-boggling self-referential loop. When Bloomberg, as Mayor, then awards the project he himself sponsored with a city award for merit, the “self-referential” becomes “self-reverential.”

Self-reverential Elimination of Term Limits

These self-referential loops were to have been broken by term limits, but taking the “self-reverential” one step further Bloomberg has proposed elimination of these limits. He has proposed their elimination in the middle of this ongoing 2009 mayoral election cycle and his focus is to eliminate them particularly as they would apply specifically to him. I noted above that with the advent of the new Wall Street fiscal crisis, Bloomberg is advertising that he will be increasing his charitable giving to New York art groups and intuitions, while predicting that overall charitable support for these institutions from other sources will be drying up. With a disconcerting simultaneity, Bloomberg has also used the advent of the fiscal crisis to argue that only he himself has the knowledge to address the crisis for the city and that he can properly assist the public only if he is exempted from term limits and granted a third term as mayor. How self-reverential can you get? Inaccurate too, I believe. Did Bloomberg offer one predictive statement about this crisis coming to pass? There were those who did. I know of no special acumen on the part of Bloomberg that would make him suitable to the role. It may be the reverse because, as a crisis-insider, he likely lacks perspective.

Third Term the Charm to Crack the Silence?

It has been suggested that Bloomberg’s flow of charitable donations silenced criticism from people and organizations. Those people and organizations expected him soon to be out of office because of term limits. Why should they have picked a fight when they didn’t have to? Why should they bite the hand that feeds them? When it comes to the Waterfalls, why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Let us hope that the equation whereby silence makes sense changes when those same people and organizations that have been silent perceive that Bloomberg might continue in office for four or more additional years. Let us hope we all realize the importance of bringing out into the open honest and forthright assessments about Bloomberg policies that don’t work. Let’s hope that we come forward with our own assessments, rather than leaving it to the Mayor to give himself awards and proclaim that only he is fit to be Mayor.

Choice Discussions: Modifying the Grand Army Plaza of Olmsted and Vaux

The Design Trust for Public Space has now announced the “People's Choice Award” in its “Reinventing Grand Army Plaza” design competition. We earlier looked at the submissions in terms of overall principles: Sunday, October 5, 2008, Modifying the Grand Army Plaza of Olmsted and Vaux.

Leonard Lopate Show Discussions

There was a very worthwhile discussion of the competition and redesign issues on last Thursday’s Leonard Lopate show. Visiting the show’s website, I picked up on the fact that there had been a longer discussion on a prior program (February 6, 2008) which I recommend for those wanting to reflect on these issues in depth.

The October 9th discussion was with Deborah Marton, who is executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space, and Shin-pei Tsay (of Transportation Alternatives), who was involved in submitting a design called "A Parade for Brooklyn: Cultivating Local Flavor for Grand Army Plaza." Her design got an honorable mention in the competition. The half-hour February 6th discussion, again with Deborah Marton, included Tupper Thomas, President of the Board of the Prospect Park Alliance and Administrator of Prospect Park.

In following up I’d like to concentrate on certain of the proposed solutions for dealing with the traffic patterns in Grand Army Plaza, particularly on proposed reconfigurations that turn Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula of extended park space off Prospect Park. There was also discussion about, and relevant to, the proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment which I will review before concluding.

People’s Choice Award to “Canopy”

The People’s Choice award went to “Canopy”, an intricate design that works with a treatment of Flatbush Avenue and its Eastern Parkway connection as a main thoroughfare and covers it over with elevated green park. Canopy, by Anne-Sophie Coué, Christian Matteau, Stephane Mauget and Chrystelle Sanaa of Nantes, France, was also tied for first place as part of the earlier formal competition by a panel of judges.

Canopy eliminates the West Drive roads that now provide car traffic into and out of Prospect Park, allowing Grand Army Plaza to become a peninsula off Prospect Park. (More on this later). Vanderbilt Avenue, Union Street and Prospect Park West would lose their more direct connection to Flatbush and Eastern Parkway, pushing traffic out into the encircling Plaza Streets (East and West) which have been serving as quieter residential streets. Covering over Flatbush allows a maximum extension for pedestrians of the plan’s newly created peninsula off Prospect Park. The expense of covering over Flatbush probably makes this plan a less likely proposition. Nevertheless, covering Flatbush in some way is probably instinctively attractive to all us. As the Thursday Lopate discussion noted, submerging roads below grade in the area is not practical since there are subways running under the plaza. Elevating the park to cover the roads is possible but still expensive.

Grand Army Plaza as a Green Peninsular Extension of Prospect Park

Transforming Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park is an attractive proposition that more than one competition submission took up. The idea would be that you could walk from the park to the plaza and reach its triumphal arch without having to cross any car-trafficked roads. Pedestrian walks and bike lanes would still flow where it might make sense. The Grand Army Plaza oval is between Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Big roads tend to divide neighborhoods. Conversely, pedestrian paths and bikeways serve to knit them together.

The idea of making Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park cannot be implemented unless the West Drive roads in and out of Prospect Park are either eliminated or closed to car traffic. Elimination would be consistent with the evolving consensus that car traffic in Prospect Park should be either reduced or eliminated. The West Drive roads traveling longitudinally through both the plaza oval and the neck of the park’s entrance absorb a huge amount of space, so elimination would provide a big pay-off in acreage that would possibly be associated with a lot of greening.

Turning Grand Army Plaza into a peninsula off Prospect Park also is not possible without severing roads that complete the traffic circle loop, such as the stretch of road that allows Union Street and others to flow east to Eastern Parkway and to Flatbush Avenue headed south.

"A Parade for Brooklyn” Honorably Mentioned

The design "A Parade for Brooklyn: Cultivating Local Flavor for Grand Army Plaza" by Lori Marie Gibbs and the above mentioned Ms. Shin-pei Tsay is somewhat similar to Canopy, similarly treating Flatbush Avenue and its Eastern Parkway connection as a main thoroughfare. It gives the roads a similar course through the plaza. The design pays attention to better accommodating the farmer’s market that uses the open space just outside the park by its McKim, Mead, and White designed central gates. Unlike the Canopy design, there would be no covering over of roads. Similar to Canopy, it eliminates the West Drive car roads into and out of Prospect Park, but it doesn’t go all the way to take advantage of this because it doesn’t turn the plaza into a connected park peninsula. Instead it leaves the circle of traffic intact flowing all around the plaza. The design would push a lot of traffic out to the quiet Plaza Streets which become the new traffic circle.

Achieving a Peninsular Extension by Replacing Current Traffic Circle With a “Traffic U”


Tied for first place with the Canopy design was “Please Wake Me Up!” by Guillaume Derrien and Gauthier le Romancer of Paris, France. Please Wake Me Up! is most worthwhile for the traffic design it creates that turns the inner plaza (not the entire plaza) into a peninsular extension of Prospect Park.

Basic Benefits

Except for the design’s interruption of the traffic circle pattern that currently makes a complete circuit around the interior roads of the plaza, the design is surprisingly similar to the presently used version of the Olmsted and Vaux design. Also, like Canopy and Parade for Brooklyn, car access into Prospect Park on the West Drive in and out of the park would be eliminated. The design would keep in place the raised berms that surround the plaza with their sound-baffling effect for the outer residential area. The design would also be good in that it would not tend to push a substantial amount of traffic flow out to the quieter encircling residential Plaza Streets.

Substantially Different Traffic Flow

The new, U-shaped flow of traffic under the plan would be substantially different from the current flow. Among other things, it would tend to quiet traffic substantially. It maintains all the connections between major traffic arteries. Those connections might be less flowing, but that would contribute to the quieting effect. Substantially less overall space would be devoted to roadway, particularly because of the elimination of the West Drives. There is some opportunity for further shaving down the design’s roadway space though automobile-centric advocates might argue for going the other way.

The circle-replacing design makes its U-shape traffic pattern work by flowing traffic in two directions around the plaza. Bidirectional roads would calm traffic. The plan also changes directions of some surrounding streets.

Plaza Street East would flow in the direction opposite to what it does now but it would remain substantially as quiet and little-used. It would no longer take in traffic from St. John’s place and it would take in Flatbush traffic from its southern end rather than from the north.

Prospect Park West would flow two ways instead of just southerly. Again, as noted, two-way streets tend to be quieter. It would also make Prospect Park West less attractive as a speedway to those rushing down from Flatbush Avenue.

Union Street looks as if it would become a one-way street going only southwesterly.

A Fat vs. Rectilinear Interior Plaza

On paper the plan lays out the interior plaza peninsula with pleasing rectilinearity. It is probably a mistake to do so because it shrinks the peninsula. The surrounding streets will be quieted, but the surrounding traffic and its noise will be uncomfortably distracting because of its closeness to the center plaza. As a practical matter, in the immediate term, a preponderance of the inner plaza’s trees and shade would be lost. Double rows of mature 60-year-old trees on each side of the interior plaza would be sacrificed. Making the plaza smaller than what it could be if a more buffering fat oval were retained would deal with noise less effectively. Further, any green space that cleaves to the inner sides of the berms will be used less effectively than green space that fattens the interior plaza.

A general fattening of the interior plaza with a more organic shape of the roads would be preferable. In addition, fattening might allow other opportunities to add to and collect green spaces together with the larger pedestrian spaces. It might allow for some moderate berms and other sound-baffling features around the inner plaza. Perhaps thought should even be given to eliminating entirely the sidewalk that currently travels inside the existing berms and reallocating that space to the interior plaza. The berms with their elevated height could be used to launch access walkways into the plaza, elevated over arches. These could be built at the end of a phased-in redesign.

The Hugely Wide Eastern Parkway and Its Greenwway

Looking at the proposed U-shaped traffic pattern, the relative size of the six-lane Eastern Parkway looks huge. In the plan Eastern Parkway is shown as six lanes. Eastern Parkway once met the plaza with six principal lanes. Currently, Eastern Parkway joins the plaza with five+ principal lanes (three west-bound lanes, two east-bound and a wide lane-dividing space) plus, in addition to those five principle lanes Eastern Parkway has laminated next to it an adjacent residential service street. This service street is five lanes wide when it joins the plaza. Two lanes are used for parking and in the center there is space without lane markings wide enough for three cars to stand abreast before entering the plaza. In other places the service road is only four lanes wide. In all, that is the equivalent of more than ten lanes of Eastern Parkway traffic at the entrance of the plaza.


There may be a superabundance of roadway but the Eastern Parkway greenway that was also designed by Olmstead and Vaux stops unfortunately short, missing the opportunity to make it all the way to connect with Prospect Park. The full greenway stops just east of the Brooklyn Museum. A version of the greenway, a 50% echo, runs the short stretch of blocks traveling in front of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and adjacent park. The greenway stops entirely across the street from the architecturally beautiful public library.

Clearly there is an opportunity to widen, improve and connect the greenway to the plaza, going west from the Brooklyn Museum.

The Lopate Discussions and Traffic

The Lopate show discussions are interesting if you want to pick up fascinating historical trivia about the plaza and its design, including how many time the arch and plaza have been renovated. The city Department of Transportation spent $400,000 on plaza renovations as recently as the fall of 2007 (video available). I didn’t know, for instance, that Grand Army Plaza was once the location of Brooklyn’s “death-o-meter”, which in 1927 posted the borough’s traffic accident figures to discourage fast or careless driving.

More important, it is refreshing to hear discussed at length on the public airwaves the kind of informed urban design concerns that were being discussed on the Leonard Lopate show. After all, the plaza is a central Brooklyn landmark and symbol encompassing a total of 11 acres. In the more recent program there was nuanced discussion of the value of keeping all the plaza uses on one level. It was suggested that interaction of mixed uses would quiet the car traffic by buffering it with other uses.

The handling of the car traffic is key to making the 11 acres work. Traffic is, in fact, the `driving’ need for redesign. In both Lopate discussions it was emphasized that the reason that the Grand Army Plaza design needs to be addressed is that things changed since it was designed by Olmsted and Vaux: The automobile was invented.

The Two Lopate Discussions and Atlantic Yards

In my last post on the competition I noted that the UNITY plan, a preferential plan for the development of the Vanderbilt Railyards (instead of the foundering Atlantic Yards plan), presciently took the Vanderbilt Railyards’ relationship with Grand Army Plaza into consideration. (The UNITY plan envisions creating a new public square to the north on Flatbush Avenue.) The two Lopate program discussions were interesting for their discussion of how the proposed Atlantic Yards interrelates with Grand Army Plaza. We were, after all, listening to people thinking about urban planning issues.

The First Show- Traffic-Considerations

Clearly, there is an immediate link in terms of traffic handling. Flatbush Avenue flows through Grand Army Plaza and because it also flows by Atlantic Yards would flow through the new plaza to the north suggested by the UNITY plan. (BTW: I think we may be able to look forward to a community-sponsored competition for that new plaza.) Vanderbilt Avenue also flows through Grand Army Plaza as well as right past the Vanderbilt Railyards.

(Some references in terms of scale might be important. The proposed Atlantic Yards site is only 40% over the Vanderbilt Railyards site. It is interesting to note that, at about 11 acres, Grand Army Plaza is 25% larger than Vanderbilt Yards and about half the acreage of what Ratner proposes as his AY footprint. You can, as an interesting exercise, imagine 50% of the 22 acre Atlantic Yards being squeezed into the plaza area by imagining eight crazy Gehry-style skyscrapers plus a one-half of a Nets arena squeezed into the area. The buildings, should be imagined as ranging from 51 stories (previously and maybe again 60) down to buildings in the 20-story range. They would mostly be at the taller end of this range. For quick reference, the new 114-unit Richard Meier building going up on the plaza which has set-backs is just 15 stories. It Makes you wonder what the left-over and shadowed Atlantic Yards green open-space would be like!)

The current flow of car traffic past the Atlantic Yards site, particularly on Flatbush is already a significant problem which the arrival of the currently proposed version of Atlantic Yards will make substantially worse. (See: Atlantic Yards Report; Thursday, August 21, 2008, 60,000 vehicles daily at Flatbush and Atlantic? A closer look; Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Marty said “get real” on traffic/parking, but ESDC didn’t agree much and the New York Times; A Traffic Knot, Pulling Tighter, By Nicholas Confessore, January 8, 2006.)

The first Lopate conversation discussed the traffic relationship, observing on the air (at 23:13 in the broadcast), that a listener named Andrew posted a comment raising the problem:

I welcome the efforts of the design trust to rethink Grand Army Plaza. We have to do it now before the Atlantic Yards mess brings an additional 10-15k cars into the neighborhood each day.

Lopate said he was sure that this was something that would have to be thought about. His guests agreed, noting that a traffic study would have to be done. Would the U-shaped traffic pattern of “Please Wake Me Up!” have a beneficial effect on upstream Atlantic Yards traffic? These things will certainly need to be thought about.

First Show: Brooklyn Development

Atlantic Yards was mentioned three times in the February 06, 2008 show. In the discussion participants used an almost respectful tone about the megadevelopment, referring to it as if its prospects were reasonably definite. It should be borne in mind that Lopate’s discussion guests were, at the time, clearly fishing for money and cooperation from the city (and perhaps elsewhere). There were innumerable respectful references to the city agencies whose cooperation had been obtained for the plaza project and one remark provoked Tupper Thomas to remark how she would be “thrilled with $30 million.” This might explain why neither of Lopate’s guests offered the kind of negative aside about Atlantic Yards one ought to expect from people sensitive to and involved with good urban design.

Atlantic Yards, when it was mentioned, was mentioned as a reason the Grand Army Plaza needed to be addressed. Lopate brought it up first (at 13:23 in the broadcast), saying that Atlantic Yards “isn’t all that far away” and “will change the whole look of Brooklyn.” Tupper Thomas (probably thinking of the incredible immensity of Ratner’s Atlantic Yards) responded, indicating that she had given thought to whether the undesirable height of Atlantic Yards project would negatively threaten the plaza and Prospect Park. She explained defensively that “we are much higher up,” and that as one of the “highest points in Brooklyn . . .we will still have fabulous views straight down to Manhattan.” (Really? The Williamsburg Savings Bank rises up if you look down Flatbush.)

Earlier in the program Ms. Marton had been pointing out the very brisk pace of Brooklyn development, giving statistics on how many building permits were being issued every day. The next time that Atlantic Yards was brought up, Leonard Lopate was noting optimistically how funding ought to be readily available. Ms. Marton responded, attempting to confirm this optimism, citing the “energy in the borough” and the “intensity of development”, listing development projects, including others that could be considered controversial (Coney Island and Domino) (at 17:55). She spoke about “a groundswell to have Grand Army Plaza realize its potential.” In this vein, the importance of Brooklyn as a tourist destination was also invoked.

Second Show: Brooklyn Development

The second Lopate discussion last week was different. There was no direct mention of Atlantic Yards. With the passage of the intervening eight months, Atlantic Yards is increasingly recognized as an undefined and ever more unlikely project. There was mention, however, of how successful Prospect Heights is. Mr. Lopate was talking about the effect of the plaza’s design on its division of Prospect Heights from Park Slope (at 10:50). He observed how we are seeing “much more gentrification of Prospect Heights” and suggested that Prospect Heights will “probably look like Park Slope.” Park Slope was named in 2007 by the American Planning Association as one of America’s 10 great neighborhoods “for its architectural and historical features and its diverse mix of residents and businesses, all of which are supported and preserved by its active and involved citizenry.” (See: New York Times, Park Slope and 125th Street Are Named ‘Great Places’, by Sewell Chan October 4, 2007.)

Lopate noted that “On Prospect Park”, the new aforementioned Richard Meier designed building on the plaza, was very-high-priced housing. The last time we checked it contained the second most expensive apartments in Brooklyn, second only to "One Brooklyn Bridge Park" being built under the BQE at 360 Furman Street in what is the new Brooklyn Bridge Park.. There was no mention in the discussion that Atlantic Yards-induced blight has actually forestalled development activity that was underway in Prospect Heights near the yards. Newly renovated buildings are intended to be demolished and Atlantic Yards will also dislocate existing low-income tenants.

Second Show: Money, Time and Planning

The second discussion, occurring only last week, naturally dealt with the economic downturn and the implicit difficulty in obtaining funds in this new environment (at 13:15). The suggestion was made that slow economic times are a good time for urban planning because urban planning is “not a fast activity” and times like these afford a “chance to give proper thought” to what is being done. It was pointed out that Grand Army Plaza is iconic and has every asset so that there is no reason why it should not be a showplace of the borough. That’s pretty much what I think when I look at the Williamsburg Savings Bank sitting beside Vanderbilt Railyards. Let’s hope we take the opportunity to give proper thought to Grand Army Plaza (as the city seems willing to do) and to designs for Atlantic Yards/Vanderbilt Railyards (which the city has not been willing to do).

Future Grand Army Plaza Community Meetings

Reinventing Grand Army Plaza competition submissions will no longer be on display in Grand Army Plaza after Monday, October 13th, but the Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo), which coordinated with the Design Trust to create the competition, will be hosting community meetings to discuss what should be done. GAPCo’s website has a number of elucidating videos and other resources. At the community meetings it will be possible to make suggestions that take the best ideas from all the plans.

A recent Brooklyn Paper article discussing the plans, A winning vision for Grand Army Plaza, by Sarah Portlock, October 10, 2008, is also available for reference.

The Subsidy Ball: The Rudin/St. Vincent’s Proposal

The trick to keeping tack of what is going on with the Rudin/St. Vincent’s Hospital development proposals now being evaluated by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission is to keep your eye on the ball. The ball is the special subsidy that would result if St. Vincent’s gets the new package of real estate rights it is asking for.

City Economic Development Corporation Testifies: Hundreds of Multi-millions in Subsidy

The LPC is having a series of hearing on this. At yesterday’s hearing, Michael Meola, an executive vice president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, testified that if St. Vincent’s is allowed to tear down and replace with requested greater density the landmark O’Toole Building, St. Vincent’s would collect a $160 million subsidy. As we will explain, that subsidy would be at the expense of the Greenwich Village community. In addition, St. Vincent’s would garner even more subsidy at community expense on the site across the street if, as proposed, St. Vincent’s is able to sell it to the Rudin Organization for development with the additional increases in density it proposes. A precise value for the subsidy that might be collected on that second Rudin development site is hard to assess. It would depend upon how much extra density and building Rudin and St. Vincent’s are ultimately allowed in connection with the Ruden development. Rudin and St. Vincent’s seem intent on getting everything they can: They even have their eye on tearing down one of the buildings in the current St. Vincent’s complex Rudin would acquire so that they can max out the number of underground Greenwich Village parking spaces that can be built to bring them profit.

Plan Cannibalizes Greenwich Village Historic District to Create Density

The current revised coordinated plans Rudin/St. Vincent’s propose for the two sites involve shrinking the boundaries of the Greenwich Village Historic District by punching down from the north with two stabs of significantly increased density and modern construction. Five existing smaller buildings now owned by St. Vincent’s would be replaced with a 299-foot-tall medical building and (including those parking spaces) a 233-foot tall luxury condominium. Noticing New York testified at earlier hearings on the subject. (See: Friday, July 18, 2008, Rudin/St Vincent’s Proposed Greenwich Village Development, also Friday, July 18, 2008, Rudin/St Vincent’s Proposed Greenwich Village Development- First Proposals and the collected links related to Rudin/St. Vincent’s also available by clicking on “Rudin/St. Vincent’s” at the bottom of this post.)

Calculation of First $160 Million in Subsidy

Mr. Meola probably didn’t intend to state that St. Vincent’s would be getting a $160 million subsidy if it is allowed to extract the landmark O’Toole building from the historic district and replace it with a new building of much greater density. That might not have sounded as supportive of the project as he was trying to be. At the hearing, Mr. Meola presented a chart with information about other possible sites on which to build a new St. Vincent’s hospital. In response to questioning by the commissioners, he equated another possible site on his chart, “Site #5," with the O’Toole site.

The comparison that was made is where identification of the subsidy comes in. Site #5 was another privately-owned site that was fully compliant with the hospital’s needs in terms of location, real estate square footage and zoning. Mr. Meola’s analysis was that the entire package of real estate rights in connection with Site #5 package had a value and estimated purchase price of $225 million. By contrast, the O’Toole site, though it has a footprint similar to Site #5, is not zoned to permit sufficient density for what St. Vincent’s wants to build and is encumbered by the landmark building and historic district restrictions which affected the building when St. Vincent’s bought it and which St. Vincent’s now wants to remove. Therefore, not surprisingly, Mr. Meola said that based on an appraisal, the O’Toole site should be viewed as currently worth a much lower amount; only $65 million. Voila, in this comparison, you have the before-and-after picture you need to compare two sets of real estate rights. It makes perfectly clear that permission to extricate and exempt the O’Toole site from the historic district and rezone it for much greater density carries a value equal to the difference between $225 million and $65 million. $225 million is the value of the full set of real estate rights St. Vincent’s wants and $65 million is the value of what St. Vincent’s bought when it acquired, more cheaply, a landmark building in a historic district.

Support for St. Vincent’s from Officials Accountable to Mayor

As noted, Mr. Meola works for the Economic Development Corporation. That means Mr. Meola essentially works for and is accountable to (term-limited?) Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. In Mr. Meola’s testimony we saw an effort to support the project, which support we attribute to the Mayor. We saw that support also in the testimony of Rima Cohen, Director of Health and Social Services in the Mayor’s Department of Health and Human Services. She testified why St. Vincent’s choice to build on the O’Toole site might be considered optimal. Seth Cummins, Chief of Staff of the City’s Office of Emergency Management, another mayoral agency, testified, among other things, about why St. Vincent’s choice of the O’Toole site might be desirable if we remind ourselves the city could be threatened with storm surges in the event of hurricanes. (The testimony, which stressed the perils of global warming, seemed interestingly out of sync with the lack of concern about storm surges that has been shown in connection with the new laboratory facilities being proposed for Columbia University as it expands into West Harlem: Columbia Ignores Peril, When Klaus Jacob talks, important people take action. Except the important people paying him, by Elizabeth Dwoskin, in the Village Voice, Wednesday, October 1st 2008.)

Alternatives: Scrutiny from the LPC Commissioners

Mr. Meola received scrutiny at the hearing in form of questioning from the commissioners. He was asked about why, as represented in his chart of comparable sites, EDC was only thinking in terms of other privately-owned sites since there are possible city-owned sites where St. Vincent’s might relocate and the city is very involved in a number of large-scale developments around the city. Atlantic Yards was mentioned but the nearer Hudson Yards, also talked about, is more apropos to this discussion. There was talk about the unfolding changes in the economy. We will probably be figuring out better over time what such changes mean. I doubt that people testifying at the hearing were really dealing with recent changes in view of the time lines that probably affected everyone’s preparations for the hearing. Think about it though: If we segue from an expanding NYC real estate economy into something else, folding different projects into each other to conserve effort and resources and concentrate development where it is most needed is likely to become an attractive option.

Supportive Testimony from State Department of Health

In addition to the city employees accountable to Mayor Bloomberg who testified in support of the Rudin/ St. Vincent’s plan, there was testimony by employees of the New York State Department of Health that also sounded supportive of the plan. The New York State Department of Health regulates hospitals and seeks to ensure that good health care is delivered throughout the state. At the same time, DOH also does everything it can to hold down the cost of health care. Noticing New York has observed that this is relevant when the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners considers the “hardship” part of St. Vincent’s application, which was the purpose of this particular hearing:

Hospital accounting in New York State is far from easy, counterintuitive and, at best, can only be understood by experienced insiders. Regulations involving highly complex reimbursement formulae force hospitals to operate constantly on the brink of artificially narrow and rather manipulable profit margins.

(See: Rudin/St Vincent’s Proposed Greenwich Village Development)


Temptation of a Seemingly Free Health Care System Subsidy

Also relevant to DOH testimony in connection with hardship is that when DOH considers the Rudin/ St. Vincent’s proposal, it has a rare and temptingly unconventional opportunity to infuse at least $160 million in subsidy into a hospital in its health care system at no cost to the state. Again, as previously noted, the amount could be substantially more than that $160 million, depending on what kind of comparable special subsidy is approved for the portion of the transaction involving the Rudin-developed parcel. The hundreds of millions are almost like free money except that it comes at the cost of the community giving up its strong interest in having historic district regulation to preferentially benefit St. Vincent’s. Also, while DOH may thereby see St. Vincent’s assisted in this way in this particular special instance, no such similar help will be available to other health institutions that are not similarly in historic districts that can be dismantled, chopped up and burned for the firewood of health care system subsidy.

Possible Awkward Precedent for Dismantling Historic Districts

Concern has been very legitimately raised that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will set a very awkward precedent that would apply to all non-for-profits if it approves St. Vincent’s hardship case. If permitted, it would be in the financial interest of almost any not-for-profit to shop for properties subject to historic district restrictions so that their not-for-profit status can then transform the value of such property by eviscerating the restrictions to which they are subject.

When asked about this at the last hearing, expert outside land use counsel for St. Vincent’s acknowledged the problem by suggesting that perhaps it ought to be addressed by creating a rule that if not-for-profit institutions bought historic buildings and held them long enough, aged their holding sufficiently, then buildings could be torn down. The exact structuring of this rule was suggested because it would serve to bless St. Vincent’s demolition of O’Toole. (I believe I remember that St. Vincent’s bought O’Toole 27 years ago, after the Greenwich Historic District was created.) Such a rule would be highly ironic. Our city buildings become eligible for landmarking and historic designation when and because they age; thirty years is the minimum. Should we have rules that say when buildings age sufficiently they will be protected, but then when they age for another good stretch of years they will thereby exit those same protections?

As for the question of not-for-profit ownership of historic district buildings eviscerating restrictions, at least most other not-for-profit institutions are not regulated by an institution like DOH or whose concerns about cost parallel those of DOH. DOH has a unique and vested interest when they testify concerning hopes to keep hospital construction costs down.

Consideration of Alterative Plans Under Hospital Owner’s Control; Not DOH’s

Testimony on behalf of the Department of Health was given by Director of the Division of Health Facility Planning Neil Benjamin and DOH architect Tom Yung. Mr. Yung’s testimony was the most pertinent and the most interesting.

Mr. Yung testified (remember, keep your eye on the ball that St. Vincent’s particularly chosen plan, if allowed, will garner it over $160 million in special subsidy) that the process of generating alternative proposals when a hospital construction proposal is being considered is a process that is left in the control of the hospital facility operators. He said that this is because health facility operators can run through the evaluation of alternatives quicker and more easily than DOH. If consideration of alternatives is a process left in the hands of the facility operator, then wouldn’t one expect an operator like St. Vincent’s to be biased toward a proposal that puts hundreds of extra millions in their pocket? In fairness to DOH, it is probably not used to dealing with the particular and unusual real estate temptations confronting St. Vincent’s in connection with the O’Toole site. If generating and comparatively evaluating alternatives is so complicated that facility owners have such an edge on DOH, then how does DOH ever expect to catch up if the facility owners slant evaluations they develop and present?

DOH’s Handling of Required Historic Review

Mr. Yung was asked whether DOH had done any evaluation of the proposal from a historic standpoint. That was a fair question because the job of the Landmarks Preservation Commission is preservation and the hearing was about the evaluation of historical assets. Mr. Yung said that it was a little known secret that he was the department’s Historic Preservation Officer. We must comment that Mr. Yung’s presentation revealed him to be excited and informed about the hospital’s architectural plans. He had obviously spent a lot of time visiting the hospital and assessing those plans and the hospital’s architectural needs. As for his attention to issues of historic preservation, when the commissioners asked, he told them that his first meeting about the project with the State Historic Preservation Office (SHIPO) had just taken place only the week before. (Review of the historical impact by DOH and SHIPO is required as part of state Environmental Quality Review Act, SEQRA, procedures.)

Well-attended Hearing

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has had multiple hearings about the Rudin/ St. Vincent’s proposal. All of them have been very well attended. As with prior hearings, the hearing venue was moved to a location that would allow greater public attendance. The Greenwich Village community has a fervent interest in blocking what St. Vincent’s is attempting to do. Yesterday’s hearing was at the New School’s Swayduck Auditorium (Fifth Avenue at 14th Street) which seats 215. When I arrived at the hearing, it was not easy to find a good seat. This was for a hearing where the community could only listen and not speak.

Credit Crisis and the Subsidy Ball

The hearing concluded with a tossed-out aside that, with the credit markets the way they are, maybe nobody will be building anything. Perhaps this was an off-topic effort to be topical. On the other hand, keeping one’s eye on the subsidy ball, difficulty in the credit markets could diminish Rudin’s nearer-term interest in developing its portion of the project. And if the city offered to move St. Vincent’s to other land it has available, St.Vincent’s might find the comparative attraction of the $160 million O’Toole site subsidy diminished.