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Bickering May Lose Us Bucks


The life that has returned to New York City waters has swollen old grudges stemming from turf and tactics. It is not the Sharks and the Jets (not yet, at least), but the tension is undermining the city’s ability to compete with other harbor cities at a very critical time.

Tens of millions of dollars in federal funds are at stake, with the federal transportation bill known as TEA-21 (Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century) set to lapse this fall. Recently the Bush administration released its $247 billion nationwide vision for transportation infrastructure, construction and repair over the next six years. (Click for a copy of the new bill, which the administration is calling SAFETEA). New York may miss an important opportunity to upgrade and repair its decaying waterfront piers and improve air emissions from ferries, as rival harbors such as Seattle and San Francisco (in pdf format) have been doing in recent years.

Bollards and fender piles are the nuts and bolts of water transit, as seen here at Bear Mountain

While New York has largely come together since September 11, 2001, the family of waterway users is becoming estranged. A recent New York City Council hearing showed just how frustrated people are with each other, as speaker after speaker ganged up on ferry giant New York Waterway for the volume and size of wakes that their ad hoc fleet is throwing off as they run back and forth across the Hudson.

Some of the worst offenders seem to be the fishing vessels that have chartered for some of the runs in the last 20 months. “We’ve got to get those fishing boats out of town,” said Tom Fox, president of New York Water Taxi, a 10-month-old upstart operation that just took on the Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan route that NY Waterway dropped when the Federal Emergency Management Agency stopped paying to subsidize it,

New York Waterway came well equipped to defend itself, as company president Arthur Imperatore , Jr. and three other representatives delivered a powerpoint presentation showing how much money the company is investing in a tracking system being developed by Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken so that the route and speed of every vessel in their fleet could be monitored in real time. “No one is spending more money than we are on trying to solve the problem,” Imperatore said.

But this did not satisfy others at the hearing. “I’ve never seen such a blatant case of blaming the victim in my life,” said one vessel captain.

This David versus Goliath story has been playing out for years, and costing New York as well. The last round of the federal transportation funds included special set asides for the states of Washington (in pdf format), Alaska and New Jersey totaling nearly $100 million. New York got no such set aside, and outside the considerable Staten Island Ferry investment ongoing, the other three boroughs have spent the last six years cobbling a ferry network together with the capital budget equivalent of krazy glue and duct tape: funds from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and, since 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

For a city that grew up from the shore, we have a real landlubber’s perspective on transportation. Looking around, California (in pdf format) is already hoping to add themselves to the gang of three to be eligible for the Ferryboat funding. And just when other transportation players around the country are lining up together to grab their share of the federal pie, New York Harbor interests are undercutting each other. Wake up, people, the boat is leaving the dock!

Zoning To Kill Manufacturing, and the Assault on Greenpoint


The NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) is on the brink of what could be a great urban planning disaster. It is preparing to rezone huge chunks of industrial land to promote housing development. This could result in a massive displacement of industry on a scale similar to the hundreds of thousands of residents displaced by urban renewal programs of the 1960s. Decades from now planners may wake up and ask how they can get back the 250,000 industrial jobs they lost (see last month's Land Use columnon zoning and industrial retention by Adam Friedman).

Industrial zoning (that is, land within the city's "M" zoning districts) keeps land prices in industrial areas low because property owners can't, for the most part, use their land for housing or other high-rent purposes. This in turn keeps rents low enough for manufacturing and other industries so that they can afford to operate in the city. One of the main reasons the city has lost almost a million manufacturing jobs in the last 50 years is that its small industries can't afford to pay higher rents, and so move to the suburbs. To be sure, industry has declined in most U.S. cities due to global restructuring, but New York City lost proportionately more jobs than the rest of the region. It is in fact one of the biggest losers in the country. As a result, the city has high unemployment and poverty rates.

The Department of City Planning's rezoning campaign began in the early 1990s, when the agency released a study that created a gloomy outlook for industry in the city. The study traced the downward trend of industrial jobs since the early part of the 20th century and, without any analysis of current trends, assumed that the decline would continue. This then became a self-fulfilling prophecy as the agency proceeded to eat away at industry's zoning protections. At the same time, government continued to shower benefits on the finance and real estate sectors. During the Giuliani administration, over $5 billion in tax incentives were given away to corporate and financial giants while the city had no coherent policy to hold on to manufacturers.

The city planning department's assault on industrial zoning is part of its strategic plan, which calls for the rezoning of "unproductive manufacturing areas" in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Hudson Square, Morrisania, and Bruckner Boulevard. The first victim of the agency's war on industry was Long Island City, which was rezoned in 2002 to make way for new office and residential development. Industrial zoning was preserved in a portion of the neighborhood, but property owners there will now face the temptation to speculate with their land and hold out for a future conversion to residential uses, when land values shoot up high enough and the political climate is ripe, that will wipe out the remnants of industrial zoning. The planning agency is now preparing a second assault on Long Island City.

The agency's crusade against industry got a big boost when Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his $5 billion plan to create 65,000 new units of housing. The plan explicitly mentioned utilizing the city's industrially-zoned waterfront land for new housing sites. What the planning agency forgot to tell the mayor is that the majority of the city's vacant industrially-zoned land is in Staten Island, much of the industrially-zoned waterfront is in active industrial use, and many of the vacant waterfront sites are vacant because property owners have been sitting on the land, speculating on the likelihood that the city would rezone it so they could make windfall profits on residential development.

Mixed Use Magic

A few years ago, embarrassed over its partisan anti-industrial policy, the Department of City Planning invented a new weapon. It's called mixed use zoning. While there already existed a number of small zoning districts scattered around the city that allowed limited residential and manufacturing in the same area, the agency created a mechanism that would let it institute mixed use zoning districts anywhere in the city. The new "MX" zoning district permits, under certain conditions, both residential and industrial development side-by-side and in the same building.

The city's Zoning Resolution lists as objectives of MX zoning: to encourage investment, recognize existing mixed use neighborhoods and enhance their vitality, shorten the distance between home and workplace, and promote the "most desirable land use" in accordance with "a well-considered plan." In theory, MX allows industries already in these zones to continue indefinitely. In practice, by introducing and legalizing residential uses, which generally bring higher land prices and rents, MX can force industry out. Conversions of industrial buildings to residential use are allowed, with some restrictions, in MX zones. MX zoning might not be bad for industry if the zoning were to be used as an instrument in a broader policy of protecting industry while encouraging new housing development. Instead, it is being used as a "back-door" rezoning from industrial to residential.

To preserve and develop mixed use communities, zoning should be based on a plan, as the Zoning Resolution states. The plan should identify an array of city policies to preserve and develop industry, including incentives, infrastructure and amenities. It should involve local industries and residents in a process where they can work together as partners. This can preserve industry and housing. Zoning alone can't preserve industry - indeed, zoning by itself doesn't guarantee anything - but it certainly can kill industry if there's no plan to save it.

Going After Greenpoint

The planning department's current target for rezoning is Greenpoint in Brooklyn. This mixed industrial-residential neighborhood of some 60,000 people is located along the East River and bordered by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens to the north. Recently agency staff presented a conceptual approach to rezoning in Greenpoint. It includes rezoning several small industrial areas for residential use, several large areas for mixed use, and maintaining a few small areas as exclusively industrial zones. Almost the entire waterfront would be rezoned, most likely for residential development.

But wait, Greenpoint has a plan! Greenpoint residents and businesses collaborated on a community plan that called for maintenance of the mixed use character of the neighborhood and revitalization of the community's waterfront. The plan was recently approved by the City Planning Commission and City Council. The Department of City Planning maintains that the Greenpoint plan provides the context for their proposed rezoning.

The Greenpoint plan proposes maintenance of the mixed use character of the neighborhood. The city planning agency proposes MX zoning as a means to accomplish this goal. The Greenpoint plan proposes public access to the community's industrial waterfront. The agency proposes residential and commercial development on the waterfront which, under the city's waterfront zoning, requires that private owners build and maintain waterfront promenades. (When waterfront zoning was created over a decade ago, the agency purposely declined to require industries to provide public access, thereby creating an incentive for communities to welcome the conversion from industry to residential development.)

But in many ways the Greenpoint Plan is just a cover for the agency's narrow approach based exclusively on zoning changes and nothing else. The Greenpoint plan is a general policy document. It has many good ideas for preserving and revitalizing Greenpoint as a mixed use community. It was the result of years of hard work by community volunteers. The agency fought every attempt to make it a plan that the city would promise to implement through concrete projects and budget allocations. After the agency took over two years to approve the plan, it was promptly filed away by city government.

At a recent community meeting in Greenpoint, planning staff denied that their rezoning would force any industry to move because of the "grandfather clause." Industries whose land is rezoned for residential use can legally remain forever as long as they don't cease operations for more than two years. But this "right" is worth nothing when landowners are faced with the enticements of converting their property to more profitable residential use. It appears that the agency is more interested in rezoning to encourage residential investment than mixed use communities. Richard Barth, the agency's executive director, told Crain's (May 12, 2003), "There are developers out there anxious for rezoning."

Planning agency staff also claim they would rezone only industrial areas where they found industrial employment had declined. However, Isabel Hill, a former planner for the agency, was quick to challenge the city's use of Department of Labor employment data to analyze job losses, noting that there are many errors when this data is used at such a small scale. Also, slated for rezoning are areas with obvious industrial successes. This includes the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, an award-winning consortium of small businesses that renovated five industrial buildings in an area the city writes off as declining.

One of the objectives of the Greenpoint plan is to develop new housing that is affordable and consistent with the scale and character of Greenpoint's low- and mid-rise housing. Greenpoint has a large low-income population, many renters receiving some form of public assistance. But rents have doubled over the last five years as gentrification pressures mount. Greenpoint civic groups have proposed that the Department of City Planning's new zoning should mandate or include incentives for low- and moderate-income housing. "Inclusionary zoning" like this is only an option in portions of Manhattan. However, the agency just fought and won a battle against any kind of inclusionary principle in the rezoning of a 110-block area of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

They will do the same in Greenpoint. The agency maintains that only high density, high profit housing on the waterfront will attract developers that are willing to provide waterfront access. To require developers to keep housing units affordable, they believe, won't work. However, these are bold statements offered with no proof. Experienced developers know that with current incentives and programs they can usually make more by building affordable housing. The speculators who have bought up pieces of the Greenpoint waterfront will, of course, continue to resist any efforts by the city or community to tell them what they can do. They want to make a windfall on a rezoning that will multiply the value of their property overnight. The prospect of such a windfall makes the developers shun "normal" development, profitable as it may be.

Unless the city's housing agency gets deeply involved in planning for the Greenpoint waterfront, we are likely to see rows of high rises there. The neighborhood's population could increase by 50 percent and tens of thousands of working families could be forced out. That is not a scenario consistent with the Greenpoint plan or the objectives of mixed use zoning.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Planners Network Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legislating NIMBY


Two very different projects, in communities half a mile apart, together offer a single lesson.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood with a housing shortage and one of the highest HIV infection rates in the country, a proposed supportive housing project for people living with HIV and AIDS barely survived a lawsuit filed by residents from the surrounding area. Developed by Pratt Area Community Council, a local community-based organization, in part with public monies (including State tax credits), the Gibbs Mansion at 218 Gates Avenue is considered by some to be a model of quality, affordable housing. Two thirds of the units are designated for formerly homeless and HIV-infected people. These residents are seamlessly integrated into a dignified and comfortable living environment with the other one-third of the residents whose only occupancy requirement is income-based.

Half a mile away, on the corner of Clermont and Park, under the shadows of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, neighbors were at first excited to see what they thought to be the development of condos. Then they noticed beds being moved in under the cloak of night. After all was said and done, a private developer had, in spite of existing code violations, successfully established a somewhat dubious hotel that was being subsidized by the New York State Department of Homeless Services for up to $95 a day per unit.

These two state-supported projects differ in many obvious ways, and in one way not so obvious but very signficant: People in the surrounding neighborhood learned of the Gates Avenue project before it broke ground. In the case of Clermont and Park, people learned of the developer's project after it was too late to do anything about it.

All around the city there are neighborhood skirmishes and feelings of deep resentment flaring up between community residents and those who seek to develop facilities that address social needs. And in the New York State legislature there is an attempt underway to meet the public's growing demand that neighborhood residents and public officials be given ample opportunity to weigh in on whether these facilities that claim to serve the public interest can set up in their collective back yards, particularly when public funds are used.

The Community Notification and Empowerment Act would require community notification and review of proposed state financed facilities in New York City. Senate Bill S71 and Assembly Bill 4795 propose that the local community board, borough president, state and city elected officials have the opportunity to submit their written recommendations, along with those of the New York City Planning Commission, to the lead state agency,

The bill, sponsored by State Senator Serphin R. Maltese and Assemblyman Scott Stringer, makes the argument that state funded facilities should undergo a review process similar to the City Charter Fair Share process, and that currently state funded projects are not required to undergo the same rigorous review as city projects. City residents, the legislation claims, are often uninformed and powerless with regard to the siting of state financed facilities, since there are no provisions requiring community notification and review of state financed facilities.

As fair minded as this may sound, this legislation has placed ordinarily populist-minded allies at odds with one another. Senator Velmanette Montgomery, a highly respected leader in Central Brooklyn whose voting record is consistent for the most part with Scott Stringer, for instance, strongly opposes this legislation. Her position is also shared by two highly prominent and influential not-for-profit policy forces, the Coalition for the Homeless and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.

Senator Montgomery's beef with this bill is that it could embolden misguided strains of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) movement, which in New York City at least has come to refer to a growing chorus of community board leaders, parochial-minded activists and others who assert power mainly by stopping neighborhood projects they feel threaten them or their property values. This can include anything from the dumping of toxic waste, a commercial chain that threatens a family business, or a facility for the mentally ill that represents, for some, a nest of undesirables. In Montgomery's opinion, worthy projects that function as a safety net in her district would be constantly thwarted and discouraged under this bill. In an incident that suggests her rather principled stance on this legislation may put some of her own political capital at risk, Montgomery's relationship with the powerful chair of Community Board #3, Sherronie Perry, was severely strained as a result of Montgomery's support of the 218 Gates Avenue project.

Assemblyman Stringer, who maintains that he and his senate colleague want the same thing -- a responsible and practical way for neighborhood people to decide what kind of social service infrastructure their neighborhood can support -- says "This is about fair share and the public's right to know two terms which have become legitimate rallying cries for social justice advocates." Stringer plays down the impact this bill will have and even asserts it is weak in the sense that it does not have the power to stop projects from being assigned to neighborhood sites. It is the lack of notification, he says, which prompts people to object to the building of certain facilities. Stringer believes that once the public knows what is being proposed, this will foster cooperation between facilities and neighborhoods. The best way, Stinger advises, to support worthwhile neighborhood-based projects is by educating people in the surrounding neighborhood.

Others are not buying it. Shelly Nortz, the Deputy Director for Policy for the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocate for the kind of supported homeless housing that is typically attacked by NIMBY forces, accuses this legislation as being disingenuous and wolf in sheep's clothing, warning that it is meant to turn the community development process into knots. Nortz says this legislation stands in the way of developing solutions to homelessness and poverty and recounts countless moments when supportive housing facilities have been doomed because community boards have been misinformed about the nature and details of the project.

One of the more popular tools that community boards use to flex their power, for example, is ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Process), which grants community boards authority in zoning changes and the disposition of city property. Sometimes the opposition to proposed projects can be reasonable and more than justified. But community boards, which are made up of mostly grassroot political appointees, some of whom have obviously too much time on their hands, often take their gate-keeping positions a little too seriously. Some community boards have reputations for being arbitrary, tyrannical and sometimes just plain self defeating, such as in the case of one board representing a predominately poor area that opposed the placing of a fruit and vegetable garden in a neighborhood park.

These issues cut to the heart of the distribution of power within neighborhood settings and test the claims of democratic action. They also force us to confront our values as a civilized society.

Shouldn't there always be a place for our elderly, our mentally ill, ex offenders, or anyone else who lives at the margins of our culture? At the same time, are facilities that ghettoize and stigmatize members of our community always solutions to poverty? And who can deny the claims of air share advocates who rightfully question why low-income and of-color neighborhoods routinely get dumped on and are expected to shoulder a higher social burden? Neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, the area that Scott Stringer represents, or say, Bay Ridge, don't have to contend with racist or class-based policy making. These areas also flex the kind of political and economic power and have the kind of resources that virtually pre-empts them from having to confront whether a facility housing recovering addicts, for instance, is welcomed in their area.

But Shelly Nortz rejects the idea that this bill even calls these kinds of questions, mainly because, according to the Coalition's Memorandum in Opposition, the bill applies to any entity that receives more than $80,000 annually in state compensation or those that receive more than half their operating revenue from the state. In her opinion, this bill does not operate on a level playing field because it singles out organizations that receive often small amounts of state funding. Organizations that do not rely on state funding are not subject to this notification process. We can not call it an issue of democracy or fairness until we start from a place where the same rules are applied to everyone.

One would even have a hard time claiming that democracy is exercised by community boards, whose members are not elected by the neighborhood constituencies they claim to represent. As one community advocate I talked to said, "This bill, by referring to community notification and empowerment uses the language that many activists speak and support, and few would argue against, but it makes assumptions about what constitutes community notification and fair share. These terms mean different things to different people."

Nonetheless, the momentum that NIMBY thinking has gained throughout the city may be reflected in this legislation. Unlike the past couple of years, when this bill has passed in the Assembly with an almost unwritten understanding that it would be defeated in the Senate, it recently passed the Senate finance committee. It still has a long way to go -- votes on both floors of the legislature and, if it gets past there, a trip before the governor -- but pass or fail, right or wrong, this bill frames and serves as a flashpoint for what will certainly be an on-going debate in New York.

Mark Winston Griffith, a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Essence and Spin, is also founder of the non-profit Central Brooklyn Partnership, which organizes people to build economic power.



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