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NoLandGrab NoLandGrab's List: Urban Planning
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"Isn't it possible for historic buildings to be documented" rather than preserved, asked Greg Atkins, Markowitz's chief of staff. Responded Ruth Pierpoint of the New York State Historic Preservation Office, "I think that's probably the last alternative."
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C.B.A.’s: Coming to a Bar Near You Community benefits agreements—contracts between real estate developers and grassroots organizations to provide jobs or housing for local residents—are popping up all over without anyone much agreeing what they are and what they should and can do. Aside from a handbook published last May by some of the people who created the first C.B.A.’s in California (PDF), there has not been much, and yet these agreements are becoming part of the fabric of real estate development in this city. In March, the New York City Bar will hold a panel discussion on the topic March 13 at the association’s headquarters, 42 W. 44th St. Entitled “Community Benefits Agreements: Who is the Community and What is the Benefit?†and sponsored by the association’s land use, planning and zoning committee, the panel will include City Council Member Melinda Katz; Joshua Sirefman, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff; Carl Weisbrod, former president of the city Economic Development Corporation; and Brad Lander, executive director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development. It turns out that the bar association tackled C.B.A.’s once before. In a report to Mayor Ed Koch in June 1988, the bar association recommended the developers only be required to provide improvements that were included in the zoning code (such as building a subway entrance in order to get a density bonus) or that would mitigate environmental disruption that the project would cause (such as traffic). The report concentrated on the role of government, and less on community groups striking their own deals with developers. And back then these improvements were called “amenities†and had less to do with jobs—today’s hot topic in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, the Gateway Mall in the Bronx, and Columbia University's expansion in Harlem—and more to do with parks or senior housing. But throughout the 44-page report (included in “T
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Read more on Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project Ratner’s Yards pretty dense By Ariella Cohen The Brooklyn Papers A new analysis by a noted Brooklyn architect indicates that the Atlantic Yards project is just as bulky as the state’s plans for Ground Zero. The architect, Johnathan Cohn, came up with the startling conclusion that the 17-acre residential and office village slated to surround Bruce Ratner’s proposed Nets arena would include as much built space, per acre, as the Ground Zero project, which will include more than 8 million square feet of office and commercial space plus the world’s tallest building, the Freedom Tower. Cohn used a standard city zoning measurement called the floor-to-area ratio, or FAR, to compare Ground Zero’s bulk with that of Ratner’s 9.1-million-square-foot residential and commercial development. To calculate a FAR, building area is divided by site acreage. Cohn said he relied solely on the developer’s own square-footage numbers, but subtracted the arena — as well as existing streets that will be demapped and incorporated into the project — so that his numbers would reflect the situation at the remaining 17 acres. As a result, he calculated that the residential and commercial component of the project has a FAR of 12 — just a miniscule .12 lower than the bulk of what is proposed for Ground Zero. “Whether it’s all in four towers or spread over 18, we are talking about the same ratio of building to area,†said the number-crunching architect, a blogger at Brooklynviews.com. Because it is a state project that doesn’t fall under city code, Atlantic Yards would exceed the maximum permissible FAR in Prospect Heights. If approved, it will be the largest development ever built in Brooklyn. Prospect Heights artist Jon Keegan’s visual simulation of the Atlantic Yards project seems to back up Cohn’s concern about the project’s bulk. Keegan created the simulation (see p
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Redefining Economic Development by Mark Winston Griffith February, 2006 A fledgling coalition of some of the most prominent economic development groups in the city have been meeting over the last year to create a blueprint that offers a comprehensive and alternative vision of what development should look like in the Bloomberg era. “Re-Defining Economic Development†-- or RED NY, as this coalition’s efforts are called -- began as an attempt to make new development projects in the city more accountable. Its participants all have the conviction that New York’s prosperity should be shared more broadly throughout the city. Planning Sessions The roots of Re-Defining New York go back to a series of meetings in 2004 -– the Subsidy Accountability Strategy Session -- that were put together by Jobs with Justice New York, a group that organizes to support the rights of workers and increase their standard of living. At these meetings more than 40 organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Good Jobs New York and the Pratt Center for Community Development, attempted to figure out how to demand more public benefit from projects that received incentives and subsidies from the city and state coffers. The sessions didn’t produce the landmark organizing campaign that the participants had hoped for. But it did highlight the considerable economic development activism across the city. And so more than a year later, at a meeting in November of 2005, Jobs with Justice, along with Good Jobs and Pratt, again invited dozens of activists to participate in a series of meetings, this time called Re-Defining Economic Development (RED NY). At this November meeting, participants offered a look at their current campaigns for progressive economic development, including efforts to: expand the New York living wage law establish immigrant worker centers create green spaces in low-income neighborhoods connect development proposals to workforce
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Read more on Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project Study:Yards feces to canal; Buddy: Developers’ poop stinks By Ariella Cohen The Brooklyn Papers Tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage will flow into an already stinky Gowanus Canal if Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project is built, borough officials were told this week. The (very) raw numbers for Ratner’s mega-development — new residents filling several thousand apartments and hundreds of thousands of basketball fans flushing the toilet tens of millions of times per year — are being seized upon by project opponents as evidence that the development is too big. “These power-brokers don’t think their raw sewage smells,†said Carroll Gardens hell-raiser Buddy Scotto, who started raising his own stink about the canal when he went to Washington to lobby then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Scotto and other advocates of canal zone development worry that Ratner’s huge project might foul the air — literally — for other builders, such as Shaya Boymelgreen, who is building the 400-unit Gowanus Village on the banks of the canal. Columbia University hydrologist Franco Montalto cautioned that development of any kind would overwhelm the area’s sewage treatment plant in Red Hook. “Any big project will have an impact,†said Montalto, who briefed borough officials on his muckraking sewage report at Borough Hall this week. “But what’s different [with Atlantic Yards] is the magnitude of the impact.†No matter how glistening Ratner’s 17 skyscrapers and Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena will be, the sewage created in its bathrooms will flow into an antiquated, city-run sewer and waste treatment system — which gets overloaded when rainwater mingles with untreated sewage during heavy storms. As a result, 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater drains into waterways around the city each year. On the Gowanus Canal, there are 13 spigots spewing the b
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One need only look to the New York borough of Brooklyn, filled with spectacular, functional neighborhoods of varying price, race, and class structure, all with high densities (unless recently rebuilt with low-density, suburbanized housing). If Brooklyn were its own city, it would be the nation’s fourth largest, yet the dominant building type does not exceed four- or five-story row houses. Of course, all of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods evolved along expansive streetcar and subway lines. Of course, she wrote that before a growing population and rising property values began to put additional pressure on neighborhoods, especially for affordable housing.
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