Despite a demonstration on the steps of City Hall and apparent racial division among its members, the City Council excluded the revered and rebuked Sonny Carson from a street-naming bill at its stated meeting on May 30, turning a normally routine procedure into a controversy. The council also -- and much less contentiously -- adopted a bill to strengthen the repair process for the city's most dilapidated buildings and a measure requiring building owners to submit up-to-date floor numbering lists to the fire department.
The council rejected an amendment by Councilmember Albert Vann to commemorate Carson, a controversial black activist, on a four-block section of Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The vote was 25 to 15 with 7 abstentions. The bill, some council members said amid boos and hisses from the audience, represented a battle between the desire of one neighborhood to honor an activist versus reluctance by others to commemorate a man who many see as divisive.
"The issue is not just Sonny Carson," said Vann. "It's the community's prerogative."
Last month, the parks committee voted along racial lines to remove Carson's name from a street-naming bill (Intro 556). Throughout the street renaming debate, council members opposed to the designation have cited Carson's criminal record and anti-Semitic comments.
Inside the council chambers, where jeers reverberated from a packed mezzanine, Councilmember Charles Barron accused Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who opposed including Carson's name on the street-naming bill, of hampering a community-driven process. Exceeding his two-minute comment period, Barron said the speaker divided the governing body more than the late activist could ever split the city's communities.
One of many members who defended their votes, Quinn reiterated her stance opposing Carson's inclusion in the street-naming bill, contending any recipient of a city honor should be a uniting figure, not a dividing one.
"I think it is incredibly important that when we rename streets in the City of New York, when we give somebody a higher governmental honor…. that when we do that we make sure those individuals who we honor are people that sought to bring our five boroughs together," Quinn said in a press conference prior to the council vote. "I don't think Sonny Carson embodies those core values."
Normally, the street-naming process is kicked off by a recommendation from a local community board. It is then brought before the council by an individual member, approved by the parks committee and formally endorsed by the council in one of two package street renaming bills submitted every year. Vann's amendment at the stated council meeting was a last-ditch attempt to reincorporate Carson's name on the package bill.
Following the amendment's rejection, the council approved the remaining 51 honorary designations, which included the likes of modern dancer Alvin Ailey and 1920s state Senator Mark W. Allen, by a vote of 40 to 4 with 3 abstentions.
In an attempt to rid the city of habitual housing code violators, the City Council unanimously approved the Safe Housing Act -- a bill aimed at New York's most dilapidated buildings.
Currently, improvements to buildings are done primarily on a quick-fix basis through the city's Emergency Repair Program, which often addresses rat and other vermin infestations, a lack of heat and hot water and broken front doors. Although the current program attempts to fix the most hazardous problems as quickly as possible, it leaves many of the more complicated and repetitive improvements simmering.
Going beyond the emergency repairs now conducted by the city, the Safe Housing Act (Intro 561) would single out 200 distressed buildings a year and require the completion of long-term improvements. An owner notified by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has four months to fix all heat and hot water violations as well as 80 percent of all hazardous and immediately hazardous violations.
Introduced by Quinn and Councilmember Letitia James, the bill requires that the owner of the distressed building fund all of the mandated repairs and pay any outstanding fees from the previous repair program.
The year following a building's inclusion in the safe housing program, the housing department will monitor its compliance -- at least every three months -- and require the building manager or owner to participate in a building management-training course.
Buildings selected for the program -- estimated by the housing department to cost $10.1 million in its first year - must have a history of housing code violations. If owners do not cooperate with the program, the city will conduct top-to-bottom repair work through a contractor and subsequently send the owner a bill. If the owner continues to be uncooperative, the city could eventually take over the building, Quinn said.
"The goal of this bill was to come up with a piece of legislation that could take significant steps forward to preserve affordable housing in our city, and to take the worst buildings in the City of New York and make them highly livable buildings, and to hold bad landlords accountable," Quinn said in the press conference prior to the council meeting. "I hope the message this bill sends is that if you are a slumlord, your days are numbered in the City of New York."
The bill, James said, should target the city's worst offenders and support populations who often suffer from poor housing conditions, including communities of color, immigrants and seniors.
In conjunction with legislation signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg this week, the City Council approved a bill (Intro 496) requiring buildings over 150 feet provide lists of floor numbers lists to the fire department if the floors do not comply with standard numbering
When Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle’s plane crashed into a high-rise last year, first responders were faced with non-standard floor numbering -- when one floor does not correspond with its actual story, such as one level being titled the 25th floor when it is really the 24th . This labeling can affect the fire department's ability to address a disaster or emergency quickly, council members said.
Introduced by Councilmember Gale Brewer, the bill attempts to address a growing trend to give floors a higher number than their actual story in order to increase the apartments’ market appeal and value. The fire commissioner will develop rules outlining the filing procedure, which will be conducted electronically.
Citing "the deplorable lack of information available to New York City's firefighters," Brewer said, "the inability for the fire department to quickly retrieve accurate building information wastes precious initial response time and is life threatening for our first responders and those in need."
The bill follows legislation approved earlier in May (Intro 553) by the council that requires that the building department notify the fire department when it issues permits for substantial renovations --changes that could also affect the fire department's response time.
The City Council also approved a Business Improvement District (Intro 555) for Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn -- a vibrant commercial site in downtown Brooklyn. The area comprises 314 properties and is valued at nearly $357 million.
The district, introduced at the request of the mayor, will make way for the collection of a special tax to improve the area, according to a committee report. The extra funding, set at $765,000 for the first year, will go primarily toward cleanup to retain a strong local business presence, a spokesman for downtown Brooklyn Councilmember David Yassky said.
In March, a fire ripped through a two-family home on Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx, killing 10 people, including nine children. It was the largest loss of life in a fire since the Happy Land nightclub tragedy in 1990.
Investigators cited a number of factors that contributed to the horrific event: a wooden staircase, the lack of a sprinkler system, and smoke detectors without batteries. Still the house complied with the city’s building code, the regulations meant to ensure the safety of New York’s 950,000 structures.
Recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took what many view as a significant step toward preventing future tragedies by proposing a massive overhaul of the city's building code, the first in nearly 40 years.
Under the proposed regulations, for example, all new buildings over 55 feet tall, which would include the Bronx home, would be required to have a more fire-resistant stairway, automatic sprinkler systems, and hardwired smoke alarms that sound in every room. If the house on Woodycrest had been built today under the new code, the city argues, the residents probably would have escaped alive.
However, some question the unintended consequences of the new regulations: specifically, if they will drive up the cost of construction and in turn, increase the cost of housing.
“I have concerns about mandating that two- and three-family houses have sprinklers and how much it will cost,” said City Councilmember Erik Dilan, who chairs the Housing and Building Committee.
In its revised building code, the Bloomberg administration tried to strike a tenuous balance between safety and cost. It sought the help of 400 professionals – architects, union leaders, contractors, developers, and safety advocates – who volunteered more than 300,000 hours to help draft the 1,300 page document.
“Nobody ever wants to deal with the details,” the mayor said, “but these are the things that make this city affordable and livable and safe.”
Even though the city held a press conference to announce the new code, last minute revisions still are being done before it goes to the City Council at the end of May. Then over the next few months, the details will be rehashed again in public hearings. If approved by council, the new code would go into effect in July 2008
Then the biggest challenge, some argue, may be enforcing it.
The last major overhaul of the building code occurred in 1968. While lawmakers have made some amendments to it since, the regulations were essentially piled on top of existing mandates, creating loopholes, redundancies, and conflicting rules.
Attempts to revise the code in recent years have been thwarted by the competing interests of various parties – developers, architects, contractors, unions, safety advocates and environmentalists – each with their own agendas.
"When the mayor asked me to write a new building code, I wasn’t sure it was possible," said Department of Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster. "It hadn't been possible in 40 years."
Experts say two factors created the climate that made the current revisions possible. First, the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 gave many of the stakeholders the political will to sit down and work out a new code. And Bloomberg, who keeps a check list of his administration’s accomplishments, promised to do it when he was a first a candidate in 2001 and worked to keep that commitment.
Perhaps the biggest change is that, if approved, the city’s code will for the first time be modeled after the International Building Code, which governs construction in most U.S. states. In adapting the code for New York City, the committee modified it to address the city’s density, small lots, and variety of structures.
“This is a significant development for New York City,” said Carl Galioto, a partner at the architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. “We will have a building code that is better informed by national standards.”
The primary goal of the building code is to ensure safety of New Yorkers by mandating how each new building is constructed.
If approved, the code would require:
- Automatic sprinklers in more residential structures
- Hardwired smoke detectors in most residences
- New pipe systems and secondary water supplies to help firefighters get water to taller buildings.
In response to the World Trade Center collapse, new skyscrapers would include:
- Wider stairways
- Fireproof, pressurized stairways
- Stronger walls around stairs and elevator shafts
- Glow-in-the-dark exits signs
- And construction to withstand high winds and other extreme events.
"There's a lot in this code that's going to make the town a lot safer," said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta at the press conference announcing the revisions.
Still, some critics say that there should be additional safety measures.
Last year, the New York Times reported that many of the recommendations from a major federal investigation into the World Trade Center collapse are still being debated.
Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, for example, questions why the steel joists which did not hold fireproofing in the World Trade Center when the fires burned at extreme temperatures would continue to be allowed in tall apartment buildings
"If we aren't allowing them in office buildings, we shouldn't be allowing them in residential buildings, or any high rise for that matter, until we figure out a way to properly fireproof them," Corbett told the Associated Press.
And even though the city learned valuable lessons from the Woodycrest Avenue fire in the Bronx, the proposed changes still fall short of the fire safety standards in some other large cities. For example, in many locations across the country, a two-family house like the one that burned in the Bronx must have two exits; in New York City, many two-family houses are allowed to have only one exit.
“In Chicago there would have to be another way out,” Larry Langford, a spokesperson for that city’s fire department told in the New York Times after the Bronx fire.
In addition to mandating what kinds of safety features each building must contain, the building code also regulates practices on construction sites. And workplace safety is a growing concern.
There were 29 construction related deaths in the year leading up to September 30, 2006, a 60 percent increase from the 18 deaths the year before.
The Bloomberg administration has made some changes to try to address workplace safety. For example, currently a safety manager is required only when a building 14 stories or more is under construction. The new code would extend that requirement to buildings 10 stories and up.
But overall, much of the new code would not substantially change the regulations that govern demolition and construction sites, according to Henry Kita of the Building Trades Employers' Association.
"In many cases the International Building Code was not as specific as the current code," said Kita.
New York City construction costs have been increasing by 20 percent a year, according to some estimates. The Bloomberg administration syas it worked to contain cost in the future.
Proponents of the new building code say it would be easier to understand and follow, especially for contractors from outside the city. It would reduce the complex process of getting the city to approve new and less expensive materials and equipment. And the buildings department would accept online applications and allow for less frequent license renewal, which will save contractors time.
Some believe this streamlining of the process could help spur the creation of more affordable housing.
“If the administration succeeds in securing its adoption, the impact should become quickly manifest in the increased volume and lower cost of new homes in the outer boroughs, where the cost of construction is a much greater factor than in Manhattan,” wrote Peter Salins of the Manhattan Institute.
However, Marolyn Davenport, the senior vice president the Real Estate Board of New York, is concerned that construction costs could actually go up under the new regulations. And she argues some provisions serve no other purpose than to allow contractors to charge more for their work. For example, the current code and the new code both require that new ceilings must be hung on a metal grid.
“There is no benefit,” argues Davenport. “It just allows someone to make more money.”
Mayor Bloomberg's proposed plan also calls for new environmental measures that he says may cost more in the beginning, but will save money over time. The code would require more efficient heating and cooling systems and that all roofs be painted a reflective color.
But experts say it is difficult to tell if the new rules would affect construction costs until it is put into practice.
"On the question of cost, the jury will be out for a while," said Henry Kita of the Building Trades Employers' Association.
Despite concerns about some of the costs of new regulations, City Councilmember Erik Dilan, who chairs the Housing and Buildings Committee, said he believes that "most of the issues have been hashed out" and that the new code will be approved by the end of the year, if not earlier. In that case, the new code would go into effect in July 1, 2008.
And those who drafted it made sure that it won’t be another 40 years before it is revised again. It includes a provision that requires it to be reviewed and updated every three years.
“This is not the end of a process, it is the beginning of the process,” said Carl Galioto, a partner at the architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.
Once the code is approved, assuming that it is, its regulations must be translated into reality at worksites throughout the site. The City Council has particular concerns in this area. For one, some members question the policy that allows builders to "self-certify," their projects, meaning architects and engineers can decide if their projects are in compliance with regulations. The policy saves the city time and money, because the buildings department then only audits about 20 percent of the self-certified projects. But critics say some architects and engineers approve construction plans and methods that would not pass muster with inspectors.
In February, the City Council passed two bills on the issue. One would bar those who have previous violations from self-certifying future projects. Another punishes those who falsely claim their projects are in compliance with zoning regulations. Both bills are still sitting on the mayor’s desk awaiting a signature or veto.
However, Queens Councilmember David Weprin wants to eliminate self certification for one-, two-, and three-family homes altogether.
"The Department of Buildings has completely lost control of the honor system that allows builders and architects to sign off on their own work," Weprin said at a news conference last month. "As a result, we have developers acting with complete impunity with the only people that are truly watching being the community members."
The real challenge, some say, is to ensure that the new regulations are followed.
"The code is only as good as its enforcement," said Kita.
The Department of Buildings already has a full workload. Every year, the city agency reviews over 65,000 construction plans, issues over 158,000 new and renewed permits, and performs over 320,000 inspections. And the number of complaints is rising.
A 2005 City Council investigation found that the Department of Buildings was struggling to keep up with the high volume of complaints and was slow to respond, particularly in Queens.
Complaints about after-hours construction work – builders work at night in an effort to finish the project on time and avoid inspections -- have risen from 635 in 2001 to 6,160 in 2006, according to a recent article in the New York Post. At the same time, the number of violations written by city inspectors increased only from 59 in 2001 to 249 last year.
The Department of Buildings says that it has hired more staff, increased its inspections by 18 percent, and now responds to 93 percent of non-emergency complaints within 40 days, according to the latest data.
Some officials are also troubled by the rash of building collapses in recent months, each connected to renovation projects or new construction.
In March, a five-story building in East Harlem caved-in, closing subway service for hours. In Soho, a dilapidated building fell down before it could be properly demolished. The Greenwich Village bar Chumleys – once a hang-out for literary figures like E.E. Cummings, Allen Ginsberg, and Norman Mailer – closed its doors after its chimney collapsed. And most recently in Brooklyn, a 200-foot-long piece of roof of a building slated to be torn down for the Atlantic Yards project tumbled to the sidewalk below.
These events have become so routine that the real estate blog Curbed has started a building collapse betting pool so readers can leave tips on the next catastrophe.
"In the Bronx, we only have seven or eight inspectors," said Camilla Pinkney-Price, who works in the office of State Senator Ruben Diaz. "Until we get that corrected, buildings are going to continue to collapse."
Related Articles:
NYC’s Construction Boom (2007)
Reforming the Building Code (2004)
The Department of Buildings (2002)
Immigrant Construction Workers (2001)
Related Links:
History of Building Code
Review Proposed New NYC Construction Codes
FAQ about the new Construction Code
Benefits of the Proposed Codes
Learn more about the Model Code Program
Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it “New York City’s next great neighborhood,” the city’s “first green community,” and an “integral part” of his long-range sustainability plan, plaNYC2030. He was talking about Willets Point, a polluted 160-acre industrial area between Shea Stadium and Flushing that the city hopes to redevelop.
But will the “new” Willets Point really be all of those good things? In the pursuit of “jobs and housing,” will anyone check to see if the new development is really sustainable?
The city’s idea is to put 5,500 housing units, a hotel and convention center, a million square feet of retail and 500,000 square feet of office space in an area that how has 225 businesses and employs some 1,800 workers. The Iron Triangle, as Willets Point is often called, has a large concentration of auto repair and service businesses, the largest distributor of Indian foods in the U.S., and several waste transfer facilities. A section of the area lacks public sewers, which the city has neglected to install despite repeated requests by business owners.
The claim that the Willets Point plan will be green rests on the promise that the existing contaminated land will be cleaned up, the new community will be transit-oriented because it’s on the Number 7 line, and maximum use will be made of energy efficient and other environmentally friendly building technologies. But since this is being sold as a “green and clean” model for New York City, this is the time to ask some hard questions.
Green Auto Repair:: Could the city do more to “green” the existing auto repair shops, rather than simply closing them down or pushing them out? If the plan goes through, hundreds of mechanics in Willets Point will be forced to operate in low-tech storefronts and neighborhoods where the most logical location for dumping crank case oil is the city’s sewer system. Instead, the city could create an auto center using the latest pollution-prevention technology. This could sustain the livelihoods of area workers instead of threatening them.
Who Benefits?:: Sustainability and green sound nice, but the question is always what and who gets sustained? The Willets Point proposal seems to do a pretty good job at sustaining real estate development in Queens. The city’s Economic Development Corporation has been negotiating the plan with big developers whose main commitment is to sustain their investors’ returns.
Clean Up or Clean Out?: Why does the whole area have to be cleared before environmental hazards can be eliminated? This sets an unfortunate precedent for cleaning up contaminated areas: You have to wipe everything out and start from scratch. Examples of remediation that don’t require massive relocation are plentiful.
Economic Effects: Sustainability should mean sustaining the economic livelihoods of people as well as preserving the environment. But under this plan, the thriving local economy in some immigrant communities in Queens could be overwhelmed by megaprojects and their corporate tenants.
The Future of Businesses:The city promises to offer job training, counseling, English language classes, legal and other services to workers who would be displaced by the Willets Point development. Business owners will be bought out. But even with such assistance, the many workers and businesses who have been in Willets Point for decades and even for generations, have created networks of clients and other businesses that would be difficult to rebuild if everyone is scattered. And a number of the businesses have already sold their land to speculators, so they won’t really reap the full benefits. One of the canons of sustainability is preservation and strengthening of existing economic and social networks.
Living with the Jets: Is this the right place to put housing? Willets Point is directly in the flight path of LaGuardia airport and bordered by highways. If you think the planes are annoying during Mets games, imagine living there. To minimize the irritation to residents in such cases, developers generally install double-paned windows and construct fully climatized buildings, but this means people are stuck inside with their windows closed to keep out the noise and contamination. This hardly seems consistent with a green community.
Increased Congestion: How much parking will there be in and around this “transit-oriented development?” This phrase “transit-oriented development” can be used to sell just about any project in New York City which, after all, has subways and buses everywhere. But as is the case with Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, many projects do not call for any additional transit capacity, so the development invariably means more crowded trains and buses – and more people opting to drive. The Number 7 subway line is already over capacity at peak hours and platform crowding is alarming. With climbing ticket prices, more and more Mets fans will be come to the game in with their SUVs. And since Willets Point is planned as a regional “destination,” its economic success will rely on drawing suburbanites who are less likely to use mass transit. At best, the area would be a bigger park-and-ride hub for suburbanites than it already is and the added traffic will further clog Queens' highways.
What about Corona? In his announcement the mayor mentioned the downtown Flushing plan and the city’s commitment to promote development in Flushing. But Willets Point is right next door to Corona, one of the city’s largest and most diverse Latino neighborhoods. It looks like the new residential enclave will be walled off from Corona, its retailers will tap stadium and convention business, and the project will have little spillover effect. Bloomberg may have had tacos in Mexico City, but will anyone check out Corona when they go shopping or to a Mets game in Willets Point?
Whose Parks? The city plan puts a park in the dead center of the new development. This “public” space will effectively be a backyard for the new tenants, walled off and disconnected from Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the Corona neighborhood.
Green and Grand or Blean and Bare: It will probably be another year before Willets Point gets through the city’s land use review process, Cleanup and development will undoubtedly take at least another five to 10 years. Changing economic conditions and future mayoral administrations could leave the project to languish or die, letting a once-active business district lie fallow for many more decades.
The Big Picture:: This all leads to the final question. Are megaprojects, like the one planned for Willets Point, consistent with the vision of sustainable development. Or would more modest efforts, aimed at nurturing existing neighborhoods like Corona, be more sustainable and cost-effective?
Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning.Â