The authors write about opportunity for Queens (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
The last several months have taken a tremendous toll on our local economy. Over 20 percent of New York City residents were unemployed in June, a level not seen since the Great Depression. Thanks to our frontline heroes and the leadership of our elected officials, we’ve flattened the curve and New York is winning its battle against COVID-19. Now it’s time to get New Yorkers back to work.
Through a community-centered process, with buy-in from local community boards to the Borough President to the City Council, we can take the restarting of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) as a moment to reinvigorate our economy, get Queens back to its pre-pandemic booming levels, and help the thousands of New Yorkers looking for a job or an affordable home.
Prior to the pandemic, a number of projects to open up waterfronts, expand industries outside of traditional business zones, and bring jobs and opportunity to Queens were in the works. Project sponsors were in deep dialogue with their communities, hosting workshops, inviting ideas and making adjustments well in advance of the formal approval process. We need to support and speed up these efforts so we can begin creating jobs and revitalizing our local economy right away.
Below are some projects that will benefit the local community and overall economy.
Flushing is one of our most vibrant communities, but it was one of the first Queens neighborhoods to feel the economic impact of the pandemic. The special Flushing Waterfront District is a project that would revitalize 29 acres of waterfront land, kickstarting the neighborhood’s economy with $2 billion in local, private investment, creating close to 3,000 jobs and generating $28 million in annual property tax revenue. The project includes an extensive road network that will alleviate traffic congestion, a comprehensive environmental remediation plan, affordable housing, and a publicly accessible waterfront with an extended shoreline and promenade.
Recently, Kaufman Astoria Studios, Silverstein Properties, and BedRock Real Estate Partners unveiled “Innovation QNS,” a $2 billion plan to remake an underdeveloped five-block section of Astoria. The plan, more than 25 percent of which is set aside as public open space, calls for 2,700 units of mixed-income housing (including 700 that will be permanently affordable) and space for neighborhood-focused shops and restaurants, community health and wellness facilities, and startups, small businesses, and nonprofits in the creative industries. This substantial private investment in Astoria will create 3,700 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent jobs.
It was recently reported that City Hall would be pulling out of plans to revitalize 28 acres of underutilized waterfront land along Anable Basin and the East River. The YourLIC project would create a resilient, seven-acre waterfront park, commercial space for new and growing industries, up to 5,700 apartments (including up to 1,400 permanently affordable units) and abundant community space like new public schools, a workforce innovation center, and space for arts and culture. The developers for this project, MAG Partners, Plaxall, Simon Baron Development, and TF Cornerstone, were brought together to create a comprehensive plan with community input. They should be applauded for this proposal that will bring significant public and private investment and up to 26,000 permanent new jobs in diverse industries into the neighborhood. We cannot let this opportunity slip through our fingers.
Regional transportation projects are also one of the biggest job creators in New York. In particular, the redevelopment of JFK and LGA airports are expanding economic opportunities for both Queens and the region. The ongoing $8 billion transformation of LGA has already created thousands of local jobs, will unify the airport with new facilities and, most importantly, provide a reliable and convenient public transit alternative with AirTrain LGA. On the horizon, it is critical we also complete the development of JFK, which invests $13 billion in new and expanded terminals and supports over 15,000 jobs.
The longer these projects are delayed, the longer it will be before we can begin creating tens of thousands of jobs and generating millions in tax revenue for the city. These projects will catalyze economic activity that supports existing small businesses at a time when so many of our mom and pop neighborhood establishments are hanging by a thread. As our city and state budgets are being slashed due to declining revenue, we cannot walk away from billions of dollars in private investment.
We have an opportunity to not only rebuild our local economy, but to make it stronger, fairer, and more resilient than it ever was before. And we can do it in a way that creates affordable housing, makes our roads less congested, helps us combat global warming, and contributes to our thriving arts and culture scene. The time to act is now – let’s get Queens and all of New York working again.
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Tom Grech is the President and CEO of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. Carlo A. Scissura is the President and CEO of the New York Building Congress. On Twitter @QueensChamber & @CarloScissura.
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FlyNYON open door flight (photo: Michelle Young, Untapped New York)
For New Yorkers living below the flight paths of what helicopter companies consider to be photogenic or interesting neighborhoods, Labor Day weekend was sheer hell. And, ironically, very few of those noisy, polluting, low-flying helicopters flew from New York-based heliports.
Our New York City skies are being colonized by New Jersey. When I was writing a story on helicopters in 2012, helicopter pilot and then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg scoffed at the popular reform proposal to ban heli-tours from New York City-owned heliports. The flights will just move to New Jersey, he said. Indeed they have.
The incessant low-flying air traffic tormenting parks and neighborhoods is nearly all coming from outside New York’s boundaries. Helicopter companies headquartered across the Hudson and suburban locations in Connecticut—but mainly New Jersey—have taken full advantage of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s covid policies that prevented New York-based heli-tours from reopening until late August — and then under restrictions, with the Downtown Heliport only open to tours on Fridays and Saturdays.
But New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy had no such scruples.
And not just any New Jersey helicopter company is flying above us—but FlyNYON, the sightseeing company whose doors-off tour crashed into the East River in March 2018, killing five passengers. There are other heli companies to be sure, but FlyNYON is famous for evading federal safety regulations by classifying its doors-off tours as photographic in purpose rather than for tourists. In today’s world dominated by social media, photography doesn’t mean a few pros, it means lots of tourists taking selfies to post on Instagram and other sites. The flights are fun, says Untapped New York, combining “photography, adventure, and one of the best ways to see New York City on its doors-off helicopter tours.”
To many New Yorkers below, however, FlyNYON helicopters sound worryingly dangerous. They’re all old—they average 30 years—and loud. They rattle ominously as pilots maintain them at slow speeds hovering over residential neighborhoods and Central Park, then flying down the East River before heading back over Manhattan, especially Chelsea and Ground Zero, right before they hit the tourist trifecta of the Brooklyn waterfront, Brooklyn Heights, and Governors Island. There are also popular spots for hovering in Queens, such as the Noguchi Museum and Gantry Plaza State Park. Helis head back to New Jersey by crossing the Hudson to Newark (some to Teterboro) or flying down to Staten Island and over to Kearny. The point is to keep tourists as close to the ground as possible, regardless of noise and pollution. These days FlyNYON freely advertises: “Take the Perfect Shoe Selfie over NYC,” accompanied by a photo of bare feet hanging outside the heli.
To the FAA Central Park is a Road for Helicopters
To make sense of what’s happening in the skies of New York, it’s helpful to remember that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the federal regulatory agency overseeing flight, simultaneously asserts its jurisdiction aggressively and refuses to act. "Any helicopter may fly over Manhattan," an FAA spokesperson told Our Town newspaper. "The FAA has designated a specific route over Central Park to allow flights from either side of Manhattan or to reach destinations outside New York City. This corridor is known as the Central Park Route and runs from West 72nd Street to the northern tip of Roosevelt Island." There’s something slightly obscene about a federal agency regarding New York’s cherished Central Park as a traffic corridor, but that’s the attitude.
Restrictive Agreement in Shreds
FlyNYON’s relentless flights over New York make a joke of the hard-won 2016 agreement by which helicopter companies based at the Downtown Heliport agreed to (1) avoid flying over land, (2) reduce the number of flights by 50% on a tight schedule, (3) not fly on Sunday, (4) ban flights over Governors Island, and (5) turn around before the George Washington Bridge when flying up the Hudson, which in practice meant 79th Street for most flights.
Since FlyNYON operates out of New Jersey, and not the Downtown Heliport, it is free to defy the agreement’s restrictions, as are all tour companies flying from any non-NYC helipad. Heli-tours now operate on Sunday, and pilots fly where and when they want with abandon.
Perhaps even worse, many flights violate common decency, continuing to fly hours after dark, which means they turn on powerful searchlights so that their passengers can see the ground. Some tour companies fly until midnight, especially in Lower Manhattan.
How do I know? FlightRadar tells me so.
Technology Uncovers What Government Hides
For years Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and other elected officials tried to get helicopter companies to display their identification numbers clearly, much like city buses or police cars. Yet the city’s attempts to force identification of helicopters and to control quality-of-life issues like noise and pollution were preempted by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 1997. As a district judge in National Helicopter v City of New York, she permanently enjoined the city from imposing a mandatory 47% reduction in helicopter operations at the East 34th Street Heliport, designating tourist sightseeing routes, excluding heavy Sikorsky S-58Ts from sightseeing flights, and mandating that all helicopters be marked for identification. A federal appellate court subsequently allowed the city to restrict operations while permitting Sotomayor’s ban on markings to stand.
But now technology has effectively preempted the courts. FlightRadar lays it all out for us: the helicopter call sign, registration, serial number, age, route at any given time, calibrated altitude, vertical speed, squawk, and more. When Sotomayor ruled against the city, she effectively blocked us from the information that FlightRadar now routinely gives us.
Not only do many heli-tours regularly fly the forbidden routes over land, Central Park, Ground Zero, and Governors Island, they do so with complete impunity and at extraordinarily low heights, such as 300 feet. And they hover wherever they like.
The agreement specifically forbade flying over Staten Island, which many pilots now do because it’s an efficient route home to New Jersey
You can check this for yourself using FlightRadar’s app or its computer site, either of which will quickly find your current location and display the aircraft above you. A helpful feature is the color scheme. The trail behind an aircraft changes with altitude. Below 100 meters the trail is white, above 100 meters, the trail switches to yellow, and then to green up to 2,500. The categorization gives you a fast, visual idea of who’s flying too low.
Commuter Helis Fly Fast and Low
Many anti-heli-tour advocates stop short of protesting commuter flights, perhaps figuring that it’s hopeless since the FAA classifies transportation as essential, and the FAA fights like a tiger for its turf. Yet commuter flights can be among the noisiest, huge Sikorskys thundering like freight trains across the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn into Manhattan at 400-1,000 feet.
What’s more it’s pretty clear looking at FlightRadar and other tracking sites that so-called commuter flights often take low-flying side trips over forbidden landmarked sites, presumably by pilots responding to requests from customers.
Given the covid shutdown of its economy, New York has had far fewer commuter flights this August, and few of the Hamptons flights that drove crazy those in the flight path last summer. Nonetheless New Yorkers should be thinking of the future, and what happens as life starts to return toward and to ‘normal.’
New Jersey Also Suffers
Intrusive as the helicopters are for New Yorkers, they’re also bad for New Jerseyans in heli paths because they fly ever lower as they move across the Hudson. This can be seen readily on @SkyCirclesNYC’s Twitter feed, which tweets about aircraft flying in circles over the New York metro area. Many of the same helis that loiter over Central Park return home and loiter over Hoboken, Jersey City, and other pretty waterfront areas — and they fly at a truly scandalously low height of 300-500 feet.
Any effort to reconfigure New York’s nightmare in the skies will need to join with New Jersey, as the rejuvenators of the old coalition, StoptheChop, well know. Both states are part of the name: NY/NJ. Many eminent New Jersey officials support the coalition, including both senators, but Gov. Murphy is missing.
Can Legislation Save Us?
The most recent proposed bill is a local law to amend New York City’s administrative code to reduce noise by chartered helicopters, prohibiting any helicopter not meeting stage 3 noise levels from taking off or landing at city-owned heliports. The bill was introduced in July by City Council Members Paul Vallone (Northeast Queens), Ben Kallos (Upper East Side, Manhattan), and Margaret Chin (Lower Manhattan), who represent areas subject to heli blitzes.
The federal Improving Helicopter Safety Act of 2019, introduced in October by Congressional Rep. Carolyn Maloney and co-sponsored by Reps. Jerry Nadler and Nydia Velázquez, would prohibit nonessential helicopters from flying in covered airspace of any city with a population of over 8 million people and with a population density of over 25,000 people per square mile (that’s New York City, of course) — including waterways within the city’s jurisdiction. The bill would be a start, but it’s basically gone nowhere.
The next demonstration of heli onslaught may be today — 9/11. Will helicopters be prohibited from continuing their pattern of hovering over and buzzing Ground Zero, once collectively acknowledged as sacred ground? Or will the federal government persist in their position that any helicopter may fly over Manhattan unimpeded today and beyond?
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Julia Vitullo-Martin is a long-time editor and writer on cities. On Twitter @JuliaManhattan.
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Note: this article has been clarified with up to date information about the 2016 agreement and which companies run which heliports.
A student ready to learn during a pandemic (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)
I’ve been scared for a long time now, but not like this.
My colleague, Sandra Santos-Vizcaino, was the first New York City teacher to lose her life to COVID-19. Today — Thursday, September 10 — I return to our same school without the confidence my district has the resources to provide the expensive equipment, testing, and contract tracing necessary to safeguard the lives of our students and the teachers, administrators, and staff.
Once there, I will face the greatest challenge of my teaching career: providing an excellent education to students suffering from pandemic-related stresses and academic decline. While I am eager to learn best practices to pull this off, our professional development funding has been decimated. Soon, it might be my actual job that’s cut.
New Yorkers are tough, and city teachers like me are as tough as they come. But our communities are tapped out. While I will do everything I can for my students, I’m asking the federal government to do what it can for schools.
Congress must provide $250 billion in additional stimulus funds for education. Not only will this address the immediate health, safety, and academic challenges, but also the long-term effects the pandemic has had on learning across the country. These include support for new teachers entering in the next school year; incentives to expand learning time for students; and measures to help teacher candidates of color realize their passion.
But most importantly, we need these funds for student mental health and well-being. Students’ social-emotional health was the number one concern in a recent scientifically-representative survey of New York City teachers conducted by Educators for Excellence. After meeting the basic needs (making sure every student has a teacher, that all are safe, and everyone can access remote learning tools), we must tackle the trauma students face so they can be in a place to learn.
But this is hard work. And it takes resources.
The pandemic has made supporting the whole child an unprecedented challenge, especially for teachers like me working with special needs students, often from low-income households. These students require stability in their learning in order to thrive, consistency they often lack in the rest of their lives.
For one example, one of my students living in a shelter shuts down at even the slightest change to his environment, severely restricting his ability to learn. Others struggle to communicate their needs verbally, and remote settings or ones that require facial coverings will make it difficult for their teachers to give them everything they need to learn.
These vulnerable students need resources to succeed, from counselors to work through the anguish of quarantine and the death of loved ones to prioritizing them for in-person instruction and individualized attention.
But the places teachers normally look for resources are tapped out. After crippling budget cuts at the local level, the State held back 20% of all schools’ aid for July and August. The federal government is the last place to which we can turn.
Our representatives know we’re all hurting. There have been several attempts at a further stimulus package for schools, but they keep falling through. As this school year begins around the country, I hope our politicians will begin to feel at least a fraction of my fear, so this desperately needed funding comes through in time. Without it, members of our school communities will die — and the wellbeing and futures of countless children will be irreparably harmed.
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Deirdre Levy is a special education teacher in Brooklyn and a member of Educators for Excellence-New York.
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