When Metropolitan Life recently announced plans to sell Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town - two communities the insurance company built a half century ago to house the middle class - many New Yorkers wondered whether the residents would soon be priced out of their homes: "The city can't survive without middle-class housing," Senator Charles Schumer said at a press conference to save the two housing complexesfor the middle class. But a new report shows that the residents of an area that includes Stuyvesant Town already have the highest median income of any community in the city.
In the area with the second lowest median income in the city, Morrisania-Crotona in the Bronx, according to that same report produced by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU, there are high rates of crime and poverty, and low student test scores, but nevertheless the price of housing in the area is on the rise, more people are purchasing homes there, and more homes are being built.
Median Income:
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As New Yorkers obsess about real estate - some struggling to find a place to live, others worried about staving off eviction, still others hoping to get rich off the market - they all think they know what is going on in the housing market: Housing is scarce and expensive. But the picture is complicated, playing out differently in different neighborhoods, and the effect of the situation varies from community to community, as do the reactions to it.
So how does one get a good picture of what's going on?
City Hall released the latest Mayor's Management Reportlate last week, a legally-required document that the Bloomberg administration touts as "a public report card on city services affecting the lives of New Yorkers," but which critics see as a missed opportunity to help citizens piece together a picture of the state of the city, issue by issue, including housing.
The accompanying report put out by the Mayor's Office of Operations, however -- the online service My Neighborhood Statistics -- provides information broken down by community, and now features the latest data, from the fiscal year that ended this summer. Other reports, some by city agencies, others by private organizations, offer a closer and often more nuanced look at one of the issues of greatest concern to New Yorkers, the city's housing. There are surprises in these figures, but even more mysteries.
The city now issues about 20,000 building permits a year, up from an average of 7,000 in the 1990s. "And the increase is not just in Manhattan," says the Furman center's director Vicki Been. "When we had something of a boom in the 1980s, it was concentrated in Manhattan and a few parts of Brooklyn. But now, perhaps because the improvement in the city has lasted longer, there has been a real shift."
Racial Diversity:
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While the neighborhoods that had the most new permits issued in 2004 - Clinton-Chelsea and the Upper East Side - are in Manhattan, the number three neighborhood is Rockaway-Broad Channel at the southern edge of Queens, where 886 permits were issued in 2004.
Much available housing is for sale (rather than for rent) and at high prices, judging from information gathered by the real estate broker Prudential Douglas Elliman , which reports that there has been a 53.9 percent increase this year over the same period last year in the number of condos and co-ops on the market in Manhattan. These are both new apartments and those being re-sold.
What about affordable housing? The latest Mayor's Management Report notes progress in Bloomberg's 10-year New Housing Marketplace Plan, having started to build or preserve 17,393 homes in the fiscal year that ended in June. The program also financed or otherwise helped complete more than 13,000 homes. To further increase the supply of affordable housing, the report also points out the administration's approval of new "inclusionary zoning" - one for a site on the Williamsburg waterfront, the other for Queens Boulevard in Maspeth-Woodside -- that allows private developers to build taller buildings if they provide affordable apartments.
But City Hall has also taken steps to slow down construction of new housing in some neighborhoods, those that complain of overdevelopment, by rezoning to allow for less density (known as downzoning) in 20 neighborhoods last year. The Bloomberg administration expects to do this in other communities in the future, according to the Mayor's Management Report.
Meanwhile, rising interest rates, and higher costs for some building products and oil, could discourage new construction in the future -- or push the prices for housing even higher.
Permits for New Homes
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What housing there is in New York City -- houses and apartments, rentals as well as coops and condominiums -- continues to grow more costly.
In the city as a whole, the cost of a dwelling with two to four families has almost doubled since 1994, with Fort Greene-Brooklyn Heights seeing the biggest increase, according to the Furman Center report. The median price of a condo in the city rose by 12 percent from 2002 to 2003, with the largest increase in Chelsea/Clinton. The median monthly rent for unsubsidized housing increased from $831 in 2002 to $900 in 2005 (in constant dollars). While the greatest jump came in the area grouped together as Greenwich Village-Financial District, poor neighborhoods are seeing price increases too. In Morrisania-Crotona, home prices went up by almost 50 percent between 2002 and 2004.
The city government is feeling the effects of the housing inflation as well, according to the Mayors Management Report. Its spending on public housing has increased every year since 2002, and the cost of providing homeless shelter facilities has gone up.
Crowded Households
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And the increases continue, despite talk of a softening real estate market. At the upper end of the housing chain, Prudential Douglas Elliman found that the average sale price of a Manhattan residence increased by more than five percent between the second quarter of 2005 and 2006.
The city continues to lose low and moderate income housing. "We're losing more at one end than we're gaining in affordable housing at the other end through the mayor's plan," Victor Bach, a senior policy analyst for the Community Service Society, told the New York Times recently. "It's more difficult to make the argument that the efforts of the city in affordable housing, which deserve a lot of praise, are going to compensate for the market losses that occur through sales."
In 2005, city residents needed 100,000 more homes than existed in the city, the Furman Center estimates. And the city planning department Housing Consolidation report for 2005 found that in 1999 (the year it cites in the report) only 3.19 percent of the city's rental housing was vacant - well below the 5 percent rate considered the threshold for a "housing emergency."
As further evidence of the shortage, the Mayors Management Report says that the building department responded to 25 percent more complaints about illegal conversions of residential space.
Given the rules of supply and demand, such a shortage has pushed rents and purchase prices higher. But while housing costs have risen, New Yorkers' incomes have not. The median household income in the city actually declined in constant dollars between 2002 and 2005 - from $42,700 to $40,000. And in 35 of the city's neighborhoods, the poverty rate increased. According to the American Community Survey - which is available on the city planning department web site - more than 23 percent of city families with children under 18 have incomes below the poverty line.
Median Rent
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A general rule of thumb is that people should spend about 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities. By this measure, the Furman Center calculates, a family making $32,000 should pay no more than $800 a month on housing. But between 2002 and 2005, the number of apartments that that family could afford decreased by 205,000 homes.
Experts generally agree that the housing crunch in New York contributes to the number of homeless people. But, in the Mayors Management Report, Bloomberg says that the estimated number of homeless people living on the streets, in parks, under highways, and public fell by 13 percent - from 4,395 in fiscal 2005 to 3,843 in fiscal 2006. Advocates for the homeless, however, have disputed the accuracy of these numbers.
Depending on whom you ask, the housing situation offers a kind of good news/bad news dilemma in many communities. Falling crime rates have made previously depressed neighborhoods, such as East New York and parts of the South Bronx, more attractive places to live. And this has boosted costs.
The Mayors Management Report cites an array of improvements in services from a decrease in crime to cleaner street to smaller class sizes in the public schools. "Two-thirds of the things are going in the right direction," Bloomberg said upon releasing the annual audit. "A third aren't going as fast as I'd like, or in the right direction."
By going to My Neighborhood statistics, people can chart the improvement or decline in city services in their neighborhood, as defined by community district. Going to the pages for the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, for example, one sees that the area's streets have become appreciably cleaner since 2002 while parks have grown dirtier. Crime has gone down in most categories, while schools are less crowded.
But perusing the Furman report makes it clear that Bushwick is not any easier to figure out than many communities in the city. Even though Bushwick has the fewest number of places to live, and has the highest number of serious housing code violations, it also has the highest number of mortgages being taken out -- and among the highest notices of foreclosures.
Vacancy Rate for Rental Housing
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Any number of agencies, organizations and others compile number of the city's housing situation. Some offer a kind of consumer help - where would you like to live - others advance a political agenda and still others have more of a policy focus.
The city charter requires that the mayor issue two management reports a year: a preliminary report by mid-January and a final report by mid-September. The report for fiscal year 2006 was released last week with little fanfare - there was virtually no advance warning and the mayor did not offer visual aids or the general hoopla he has at times in the past.
The report assesses whether city agencies have met goals in a number of different areas. Housing information can be found in the sections for the departments of Housing Preservation and Development, Homeless Services and City Planning.
But by its focus on specifics, the report makes it difficult to glean information on big city problems. For example, the advances in providing affordable housing are concealed in two dry paragraphs about the New Housing Marketplace Program.
"It includes too many insignificant indicators, lacks any overview or sense of priorities, and says little or nothing about such major (and problematic) policies as the reorganization of city schools, big changes in homeless services, the costs of school construction, and high levels of overtime among the city's uniformed services, " Glenn Pasanen wrote in Gotham Gazette assessing last year's report.
Compiled by the Mayor's Office of Operations, this accessible program provides information about city neighborhoods as defined by community board. One types in an address (or an intersection) to get to an array of information, including complaints to the city's 311 line, health and education data, information about the condition of area parks and streets, crime and figures
The site takes data from city agencies, so there is no information on rents (since that is charged by private landlords) but there is data on housing complaints. Much of the data is raw - one sees the number of felonies in the neighborhood but it is not ranked or given as a rate so that people can easily compare one community with another.
The city planning department offers a number of reference tools on its site:
Serious Housing Code Violation
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New York City Census Fact Finder: The planning department's home page features a "GeoQuery" box. Typing in an address brings you to a map, showing the census tract and the adjoining area, and to tables with a lot of information from the 2000 census. Two pages focus on housing - one on characteristics, including vacancy rates, types of housing and so on; the other looks at costs.
The tool allows users to create the boundaries of their own neighborhood, combining adjoining census tracts and to get statistics on that area
In the case of Stuyvesant Town for example, one can focus on its census tracts from 14th to 23rd Street, rather than on the whole swath of the East Side up to 59th Street that comprises the community district. While the more tightly defined area is hardly poor, in 2000, more than two thirds of its households had incomes of less than $100,000 - bolstering claims of its middle class character.
Community District Profiles: These are portraits - each about 35 pages long - of each community district in the city, based on the 2000 census and broken it down by census tract. Some information is updated to 2003; other charts compare the figures for 1990 and 2000. It also lists community facilities - such as schools, libraries and hospital.
American Community Survey: This is essentially a 2005 update of the 2000 census, providing information for community districts with at least 100,000 people.
City Planning Commission Reports: In addition to providing a sense of what a neighborhood is like now, the site also offers links to reports on how the area might change. Visitors can search the commission reports section by borough, type , date and perhaps most conveniently by keyword. Typing in Williamsburg and inclusionary, for example, produces the report the commission report on allowing a 20 percent taller building
The city housing department produces this every few years. Its primary goal is to get information that can be used to evaluate rent control and rent stabilization laws, but the survey also includes a range of demographic and other information that can be used to help set housing policy. To gather this data, an adult in each of about 18,000 homes is asked a series of questions focusing on housing and its cost - the utility bill, whether an apartment is wheelchair accessible, if rodents are a problem and so on. The tables provide a wealth of raw statistical information but the report, published on the U.S. Census Bureau web site, but does not analyze the material on the site.
Number of Places to Live
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The Furman Center does analyze much of the data from the housing and vacancy survey, along with material from the city finance department and other sources, and puts it on its New York City Housing and Information system that offers information for the city as a whole and by borough and community district. They boil this down into the State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods-- available in hard copy and online -- that shows how each of the city's communities has been changing over the past four years and compares community districts, by ranking them on a number of indicators. It also interprets the data in interesting ways, devising, for example, an indicator of racial diversity and of income diversity.
Community groups use this data to address issues in their communities, such sa so-called predatory lending -- housing loans with excessively high interest rates or fraudulent terms. Groups working to address housing code enforcement - a key fight for many housing activists this year -- have also used it. (See related story, Housing Activists' Fall Agenda.)
Produced by the real estate company Prudential Douglas Elliman, these reports offer a very different perspective on the housing market, surveying the market for homes in Manhattan - loft, coops, condominiums, etc. They are the source of those stories, so beloved by the New York Times, of average home prices going above the $1 million mark.Â
City Hall has encouraged affordable housing in Manhattan for decades by the use of an innovative land use tool known as inclusionary zoning. This allows real estate developers to construct bigger buildings in exchange for allocating a portion of the new housing to people with modest incomes. Such measures were incorporated in the recent rezoning of Manhattan’s West Side.
This practice was extended to Brooklyn in June, when ground was broken at 164 Kent Avenue, an apartment building that will include 113 apartments for people of moderate income. Now it has come as well to one area in Queens, sections of Queens Boulevard in Woodside.
While the loudest voices in many local zoning battles in Queens have often been homeowners and neighborhood associations seeking to restrict real estate development, this time housing advocates played a prominent role in steering new private development in a way that insures some affordable housing.
Inclusionary zoning is also being considered in several other neighborhoods where zoning changes are proposed that would spur new development. In other words, it has now become an accepted norm throughout the city
Only a few years ago, affordable housing advocates were criticizing the administration for refusing to use this land use tool outside the sections of Manhattan where they have been in place for years. The City Planning Department refused to incorporate in the rezoning of Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, for example, much to the chagrin of local housing groups that were concerned that the city’s zoning would displace low-income households. The city’s planners argued that it was too cumbersome and wouldn’t work, and pointed to the relatively low numbers of affordable units created under the complex rules used in Manhattan.
Housing advocates made their case for a change in policy to candidates in the 2005 election campaign, and mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer came out with a strong platform calling for inclusionary zoning and other measures to beef up the city’s programs for low- and moderate-income housing. In October, Mayor Michael Bloomberg countered by expanding the scope of his long-term housing plan and for the first time endorsed inclusionary zoning.
Are we looking at a new day for land use policy, where a hot real estate market will also mean more housing to stem the growing deficit in affordable units for people who can’t afford market-rate housing? Do we have the perfect “win-win” situation where both private developers and low-income people come out ahead?
Perhaps it’s too early for housing advocates to break out the champagne. Here’s why:
These are all reasons for caution, but not cause for abandoning the concept.
“Inclusionary zoning has to be one among many tools for affordable housing,” according to Benjamin Dulchin, director of the Initiative for Neighborhood and City-wide Organizing at the Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers (http://www.anhd.org/) in New York. “It can help harness the private sector but it doesn’t let government off the hook.” There are four things that government can do now to promote affordable housing, says Dulchin. They need to:
This brings us back to the main purpose of inclusionary zoning. If the purpose is only to produce housing units, it may not have the numbers to show, and it could even backfire if it serves as a cover for market-driven displacement. The political impetus for such zoning in the suburbs was to open up housing markets that were exclusionary. The impetus for such zoning in New York is mostly to protect affordable neighborhoods, and not just to produce new affordable housing.
So the final question is an open one to the scores of non-profit housing developers in the city. You are the only neighborhood-based developers with a long-term commitment to not only create affordable units but make neighborhoods strong by insuring jobs, services and greater equity. How about a program that works the other way around: 20 percent market-rate and 80 percent affordable?
The best and most comprehensive case for inclusionary zoning in New York is “Increasing Housing Opportunities in New York City: The Case for Inclusionary Zoning,”issued in 2004 by the Pratt Institute Center for Community & Environmental Development and PolicyLink. The report includes the recommendation for mandatory rules and other proposals that would help the city move towards a more effective inclusionary housing policy. Before the next neighborhood battle, it might be worth dusting it off and thinking more about where we’re going.
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
Covered completely in ash from the collapse of the twin towers, the clothes in Chelsea Jeans in lower Manhattan remained in the store window for 13 months after 9/11, presented and preserved by David Cohen, the store's owner. In October 2002, his display was packed into hermetically sealed crates. Now the crates have been unsealed and the scene recreated, literally, as a museum piece. They are now on display in a glass case next to the cafeteria in the basement of the New York Historical Society.
New Yorkers are preparing to mark the fifth anniversary of September 11. There are exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and the Police Museum, retrospective panel discussions, a new movie and a new book that promised to stir up controversy, and a day of commemoration planned for Ground Zero itself, ending with the Tribute in Light, an art installation intended to be a one-time deal that has morphed into a periodic memorial
The permanent memorial, meanwhile, is still a series of architectural drawings.
Like previous anniversaries, the fifth anniversary will undoubtedly inspire not only reflection on the attacks but also on the progress that has been made in rebuilding the city. This September 11, though, there is little to mark except the passing of time. Ground Zero looks more or less what it looked like on its fourth birthday or, for that matter, its third. The general public is no longer following the debate what the memorial should look like, or what kind of retail stores should go there. The agency in charge of coordinating the rebuilding of the site – the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation – says it is "nearing the end of [its] mission", and had declared itself defunct.
Many of those involved say that the progress continues, even if it isn’t visible to the naked eye. The transportation hub, which has always been immune to the vitriol and stagnation of the memorial and the Freedom Tower, remains on schedule. Designs for the remaining three towers will be unveiled this week, the first time that plans for the entire site will be made public. The change in administration in Albany, many believe, will push forward turning this plan into actual buildings.
Each reassurance, though, seems to carry less weight with New Yorkers who marked the “symbolic beginning” of the construction at Ground Zero – the laying of the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower – over two years ago. This summer, the cornerstone was actually removed from Ground Zero, as newfound concerns about where on the site the Freedom Tower should be built arose. It has not returned.
When construction will be completed, or what, exactly, will be built are still open questions. Meanwhile the pain from the attacks themselves has been dulled by another passing year. Have we gotten over it?
"I think people are sick of hearing about closure," said Amy Weinstein, the curator of Elegy in the Dust, the exhibit at the New York Historical Society. "But I think that with the passage of time, things have changed. People have some perspective, a little distance, or a measured appreciation for how their lives have changed."
Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett believes that time has healed the pain enough to raise questions that would have been taboo in years past. His new book Grand Illusion questions former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's legacy as a 9/11 hero; in a recent interview he said he has long had the material to write the book, but held off until he and his publishers thought people would be ready.
"There had to be an adjustment period," he said.
For those most affected by the attacks – those who lost loved ones, those who are getting sick from exposure to the chemicals released in the buildings’ collapse, and those who live and work in the immediate area – life didn’t return to what it was before 9/11. Cohen of Chelsea Jeans, for example, watched as his store went out of business as downtown's economy dried up after 9/11. He moved his family out of the city he had immigrated to almost twenty years earlier, and started over in Florida.
Life in the city is different than it was before 9/11. In some ways, the changes are subtle, or have been internalized. In others, it remains unclear how the aftermath of 9/11 will play out years from now.
Security: The single factor that has changed the everyday life of New Yorkers more than anything else since 9/11 is the increase in security.
The most visible tightening is at the airports and in the air. But there is a greater police presence on the ground, and underground. Bags on the subways are searched randomly. Earlier this year the police department announced that it would establish a "ring of steel" around lower Manhattan, recording every person or vehicle to go south of Chambers Street. The project has been put on hold because of a reduction in anti-terrorism funding – an issue that has suddenly become a constant source of tension between New York and the federal government – but aggressive surveillance measures continue to be put in place by the government and by private businesses.
The Partnership for New York City, a business group representing major employers, recently surveyed its members, finding that their costs for security have risen between 10 and 20 percent, well over the average increase nationwide. Insurance costs for companies operating in New York have also spiked.
There is a social price as well, says Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is concerned about the city's willingness to subvert personal liberties for security. Often, the threat of terrorism is being used to monitor legal political activities in ways that would have been unacceptable before 9/11.
"When you don't feel the pain immediately, you don't notice the problem," she said. "It's very, very difficult to reverse practices like this."
Health: For years, officials have questioned whether there is a direct link between certain illnesses and exposure to chemicals released in the collapse of the Twin Towers. But just last week, the city sent guidelines to doctors for identifying illnesses related to 9/11. The state also recently passed a law giving more generous benefits to rescue workers whose illnesses seem 9/11-related.
The toll that 9/11 will eventually take on the health of those who worked on the rescue effort – or those who simply lived nearby – will likely continue for many years. But critics still say that there has been a failure to take responsibility for such sicknesses at all levels of government.
Economic Development: The aftermath of the attacks doomed individual businesses, like Chelsea Jeans or small manufacturers in Chinatown, who always operated on thin margins. But industries whose outcomes looked bleak several years ago are no longer struggling. Restaurants, tourism and retail, and the airline industry are operating at or above levels they were before 9/11. In fiscal 2006, the city's gross domestic product, a measure the comptroller's office uses to measure the city's overall economic output, surpassed its pre 9/11 peak for the first time since the attacks.
Some things, however, have changed.
Companies are also more apt for spread their operations geographically, instead of concentrating them in Manhattan. This, along with national economic trends, means that there are seven percent fewer finance jobs now than before the attacks, according to Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City.
Businesses want to ensure that they no longer rely solely on a single geographic location, she said, and have moved some operations out of New York as a result.
"That's probably a permanent dislocation."
The physical rebuilding of lower Manhattan – a project that gripped the attention of the city in a way unlike any before or since – has faded from the daily news. But what happens at Ground Zero remains vitally important for the city's economic – and emotional – recovery.
Lower Manhattan, says Wylde, has about 28,000 fewer jobs than it did before 9/11. This is roughly the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center, and "for obvious reasons, those jobs aren't back," she said.
Wylde and others see positive signs for the development of Ground Zero, but acknowledge that the project remains beset by frustration.
Transportation Infrastructure: The one piece of the plan for Ground Zero that has moved smoothly is the transportation hub, designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. A temporary PATH station already exists on the site, and is scheduled to be replaced by 2009.
One block away, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working on a new $750 million Fulton Street subway station. Critics have called the project unnecessary, but others say it will make the area a more attractive place to the businesses that will hopefully move into the offices at Ground Zero. It appears to be moving ahead on schedule.
"You have to realize the tremendous capital expenditure that's being made downtown to rebuild transportation, communication," said Brian Weld of Colliers ABR, a real estate firm. "The basic nuts and bolts of downtown are being entirely rebuilt."
A Better Business Climate? Even with improved transportation to the area, there have long been doubts that the commercial real estate market in New York could handle much new office space. There are signs today, however, that new office buildings would do well.
Demand for new office space is strong. Vacancy rates are falling, and rents rising. Much of what is available downtown is in older buildings without large blocks of space. Many feel it seems ready for new buildings.
7 World Trade Center: People looking to illustrate the strength of the market point to Seven World Trade Center, which World Trade Center site developer Larry Silverstein finished building in May. There were major concerns about the building's marketability, but it has filled about half of its 1.6 million square feet of office space. Weld takes this as a sign that the building is succeeding.
Despite the positive news literally surrounding Ground Zero, considerable concern remains about the signature pieces of the Ground Zero development.
Freedom Tower: The Freedom Tower, it seems, is immune to the sense of optimism about the prospects for commercial buildings downtown. It is commonly understood that Governor George Pataki sees it as his physical legacy to the 9/11 recovery, but many feel his political and personal commitment to the building has inspired him to push a project that may well fail.
The 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower would contain about 2.6 million square feet of office space. It is further from public transportation than other buildings planned for Ground Zero, and is perceived as a possible terrorist target. There are no committed tenants for the building.
Governor Pataki says that government agencies will take at least one million square feet of space in the building, but critics do not see that as a guarantee. Two of the three gubernatorial candidates have expressed concern over the financial prospects of the tower. Eliot Spitzer has called it a "white elephant". While he says he is committed to building it if elected governor, he adds that he would reassess the project if the one million square feet were not leased when he took office.
The Other Towers: Some involved in rebuilding share Sptizer's concern. The Regional Plan Association has said the towers along the east side of the site -- bordering Church Street -- would be a better investment. It may make sense to build these buildings first, they say, gradually introducing new office space instead of glutting the market.
Designs for the three buildings are scheduled to be unveiled this week. At the moment, they are scheduled to be completed by 2012.
The Memorial: Civic groups who have been involved in the rebuilding would see the creation of a memorial as the primary immediate concern at the site.
"The lack of a memorial, the lack of a plaza, is a key problem," said David Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Association. "I don't think there's a problem with the buildings coming on line one by one as the market demand increases."
But the memorial has its own challenges. There is still controversy over how the victims' names will be displayed. That, combined with a general uncertainty over plans for the site, has made fundraising difficult. To date, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is in charge of building the memorial, has raised $132 million. Estimates for how much it will cost to complete the memorial range from $500 million to close to $1 billion.
Cultural Buildings: As Ground Zero is beset by funding concerns on all sides, it seems that the cultural buildings planned for the site have been orphaned.
"It's not on anybody's funding timetable," said Ric Bell of the American Institute of Architects. "Where does that leave culture on the site?"
The End of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation: Despite these open questions, the agency formed to direct rebuilding announced this summer that it would soon go out of business.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation arranged the design competitions for the master plan for the site and the memorial, played a role in the controversies over the Freedom Tower, and passed out billions of dollars in public money for post 9/11 recovery.
"The LMDC had a mission and we're nearing the end of that mission," its chairman, Kevin Rampe, said at the time.
Most of the power over rebuilding has always rested with the governor, and many agreed that the organization had outlasted its usefulness. With a layer of bureaucracy gone, the decision-making would be sharpened.
"Not that they were a negative force, but the cacophony of voices I don't think was the most expeditious way to get decisions made," said Wylde of the Partnership for New York City.
The agency does have some issues it must resolve before it closes its doors, however. There are still tens of millions of dollars in grant money to be distributed. The agency says it does not have exact numbers on how much money it has, but newspaper reports indicate that there is about $45 million in "community enhancement" grants and another $7 million in cultural grants remaining. It is not clear who will distribute this money if the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation doesn't.
The agency has also not developed design guidelines to go with the master plan for the site. These would determine what the site would actually look like, from the actual buildings down to light fixtures and curbs. Failure to put such guidelines in place has been a sticking point for those who say they are a necessary part of the master plan.
"These questions will be resolved over the next couple of months, Michael Haberman, a spokesperson for the agency, said of the issues surrounding the grant money and the guidelines.
But Bell of the American Institute of Architects says that the agency's biggest failure has been its inability to get such guidelines in place. While an opportunity has been lost by not having them ready before design work began on the buildings, he says they are still "desperately needed."
Two weeks before the fifth anniversary of 9/11, New Orleans marked the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In many ways it was like the first anniversary of 9/11: the intense media attention, the public grieving, the sharp questions about recovery.
In response to criticism that rebuilding in his city was not moving quickly enough, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin made the comparison explicit.
"You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair," he said on 60 Minutes. Nagin was making a point that is regularly made in the editorial pages of New York's newspapers, by public officials, and even by those who are involved in the rebuilding itself. As a statement of fact, it is indisputable. But any public statements about Ground Zero are likely to evoke an emotional response. Nagin was criticized harshly, and soon said he regretted the remarks – on a trip he made to New York City last week to entice investors into contribute to the rebuilding of New Orleans.
"I will never again refer to that site as a hole," said Nagin. "It's a sacred site that's currently in an undeveloped state."
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