Superfund the Gowanus? No!!!

“It may take time but with the EPA we will know that it’s being done right, by the experts, once and for all.” http://www.superfundgowanus.org


Well, that’s hopeful thinking. The EPA may be experts at diagnosing a problem; listing the pollutants in the contaminated area; but they are not experts at solving the problem. Having the EPA manage the clean-up will be like having a contractor come to fix your kitchen; demolish it and then leave – not for months or years but decades. And, unlike the nightmare of a normal remodel you won’t be able to find another contractor because the EPA is, at that time, the only game in town. You won’t be able to call your local TV channel for an expose, nor will the Better Business Bureau be able to help you.

It would be best to have the EPA list the problems and to confirm that the work was done as promised.

Why is the EPA not the answer? The Brooklyn Paper editorial (July 10, 2009) in favor of the Superfund explains it perfectly.

The feds favor an approach that identifies polluters … and then forces them to pay for their toxic handiwork. That process is often mired in litigation. ...

You think? First the sued companies have to still be in business; then the government has to prove liability and the extent of the liability; and finally the company has to have the funds to be able to pay for the clean-up. This is a stupid, do-nothing approach. The right approach is to get developers who want to capitalize on the area to pay a portion of the clean-up funds; have the City, State, and Federal governments pay for the rest of the clean-up and have their investment repaid by the tax dollars that would result from the sale and use of the reclaimed properties. This would be a true example of “stimulus spending.” We would create usable and more valuable property generating millions of tax dollars per year.

The developers would have an incentive to get the job done – the EPA doesn’t. We wouldn’t trust that developers would do the job correctly so the EPA will verify that the toxins are encapsulated properly, removed and disposed of according to law.

New York, Brooklyn, the Gowanus and neighboring communities will get beautiful new homes, shops, and a “river walk.” Local, State and the Federal governments will get tax dollars from the sale and use of these properties and then could spend the monies in a myriad of ways.

We need to get this area cleaned-up; we don’t need years or decades of lawsuits; tens of millions of dollars spent on lawyers; more bankrupt companies with more unemployed workers before anything is even started. We need this started now so that in 5-10 years Brooklyn is even more beautiful than it is now.

If you don’t want the area to change then Superfund the Gowanus. If you want to bring in new housing, new shops, new jobs; a beautiful river walk; millions in tax revenue for schools and a social safety net then the Superfund is not for you.

BID Madness

Why is this catching on now? Not because NYC is falling apart. The garbage is being collected, the streets are safe, graffitti is not out of control so why are BID coming to Brooklyn? They will probably succeed in creating one on Fifth Ave in Park Slope and are trying to create a BID on Court Street (Cobble Hill and Carrol Gardens).

So what's going on here? I don't know. My guess is power, personal power. Several people want something done in the neighborhood; they want to do it; and they want to get paid for it.

How do you get new streetlights put in -- streetlights with a retro 19th C feel? Start a BID. How do you put the neighborhood stores on the map? Start a BID. How do you get a start in community politics? Oh that's easy be president of the local BID. And guess what? You can get paid doing what you love by taxing all the neighborhood businesses and building owners.

I would not be so adamant against BIDs if they weren't created in such a dishonest fashion; if the BID was a voluntary organization; and if people could disolve their membership in the BID if they no longer wanted to be part of it. But that's not the case. A BID is not voluntary, at least not once its started. You cannot opt out of it if you are within the BID's jurisdiction.

Worst of all is the means by which a BID is started. Did you know that when the vote takes place that if you do not vote NO, if you abstain, or did not know of the pending vote, that your vote counts as a YES vote? That's right the voting is not limited to the people who actually vote. If 51% of the voters either vote YES or do not vote at all then the BID goes through.

This is disgusting and any and all supporters of a BID who employ such dishonest methods ought to be considered as thieves and shake-down artists.

So Who's a shill?

So what motivates the anti-development forces? Many seem to think that people who promote new development are “shills” for big developers. In that vein are anti-development folks shills for large Manhattan landlords? Are they just fronts for rental apartment owners who don’t like the fact that Brooklyn is siphoning off people who otherwise would have been competing to live in NYC apartments? Are they shills intent upon helping Manhattan landlords drive apartment prices up and vacancies down? Yeah, that’s the ticket, anti-development folks don’t believe a word they say; they’re just shills for Manhattan landlords.

Encourage Building Owners to Build the Maximum Available

Instead of down zoning whole areas of NYC we ought to be doing everything we can to encourage owners of buildings to build to the maximum available to them. Take a look at this photo. It’s more than a photo of a bar and two restaurants, it epitomizes the waste and opportunity cost that is holding New York and Brooklyn back. Here are three – among many – one story buildings on Fifth Ave. There could be, and should be, another 3 or 4 floors of apartments and commercial space. We ought to be doing everything we can via the tax and zoning code to persuade the owners of these and other buildings to build up. We need more housing. We want more people to move to NYC and Brooklyn; for them to pay taxes here; for them to buy goods and services here. Our city needs to attract and keep people here. One of the best ways we can do that is to dramatically increase our housing stock.

NYC is famous for wasting opportunities such as the West Side railways, Governor’s Island and now, foolishness on top of foolishness, we are wasting a golden opportunity. Investments go in cycles, right now people are intent on investing in their homes (yes there are speculators but we’re not talking about them here). If they don’t buy here in NYC, they’ll buy elsewhere – and pay taxes elsewhere, and shop elsewhere.

Down Zoning Reduces the Value of People’s Homes and Inflates Prices

For those people who think nothing about the down zoning. Consider this – you are devaluating people’s property, you are reducing the amount of housing stock and you are inflating the cost of apartments, especially for lower-income people.

Yes property can be worth less and still have inflated housing prices. Doesn’t make sense to you? Let’s look at an example. If a property is restricted to having 2 apartments instead of 5, even if the price of each of those two properties doubles the property will be worth less than if there were 5 apartments at the original price.

Example: Because of zoning restrictions two apartments go up in price from $100,000 to $200,000. The property is now worth $400,000. However if there weren’t zoning restrictions the building could have had 5 apartments. Let’s say that as a result of the increase in housing stock the value of each apartment stayed at $100,000. The property with 5 apartments at $100,000 is worth $500,000, the property with 2 apartments is worth $400,000. We have here a simple example where down zoning devaluates a person’s property and still inflates the cost of housing for everyone else.

Those of you who are concerned about housing prices and making this city more affordable should keep this in mind: every time you restrict building you take away from the owner of the property, you take away from other property owners in the neighborhood and you increase the cost of housing for everyone.

Gowanus Against Development

Well, it looks as if another group of people have fallen prey to the anti-development nonsense.

Hello, if there’s any area in Brooklyn that badly needs development it’s the Gowanus. How can anybody be against turning the Gowanus into Brooklyn’s version of the San Antonio River Walk?

The Gowanus used to be a cesspool. You had to close your windows while driving over it the stench was so bad. And now, only a few years after the clean-up began, you can see the potential. Can you think of anything more beautiful than brownstone streets with restaurants and shops lining the Gowanus? How can anybody who loves NYC be against that?

Well some can. Once again the primary fear is that poor and working class families will be pushed out. Again, the solution is more housing not less; more upper-middle class housing not less.

"They call it gentrification, I call it genocide," she said. "They're killing neighborhoods."

This fear is not irrational, but blaming new construction is.

From Open Sewer to Gentrification [NY Times]

For some history on the gowanus check out gowanuscanal.org

I Stand in Opposition to the Down Zoning

I stand in opposition to the down zoning in the south slope in particular and in Brooklyn in general. We don’t need less building, we need more. Much more. The south-slope needs more 5 and 6 story buildings such as we have in center-slope. I have never heard anyone say that center slope is oppressive. The current zoning limit of 55’ is fine. Since people are so concerned about the scale of the new buildings enforce the building limit – don’t allow height variances for any reason.

However the down zoning restricts the FAR to a ridiculous amount. If people are concerned about the height of the buildings why limit the FAR? How do fewer and smaller apartments help the community? This is the key flaw in the down zoning and the main reason I stand in opposition to the proposed plan.

Restricting housing means higher prices for everyone. We need more housing -- and for those of you concerned about affordable housing -- we also need more large apartments, more upper-middle class housing and we need it now. When middle class people can’t afford housing in middle-class neighborhoods they find it in poor and working-class neighborhoods. And since they have more money they out-bid their working class neighbors for the apartments. As the neighborhood changes – gentrifies -- housing prices rise and poor and working-class people are unable to stay. If you’re concerned about working class people make certain that middle and upper-middle class people have housing. If they don’t have housing the poor will suffer.

Restricting housing supplies means more than higher prices. It means that the middle and upper-middle class will look elsewhere for housing. Jersey City, for example, is booming and will continue to grab an every higher percentage of upper middle class and wealthy families who could have been living here, shopping here – which means more jobs – and paying taxes here.

As conscientious Americans we want more people living in cities. City-dwellers consume less energy and produce less pollution than do our suburban-sprawl counterparts. We should be promoting life here in NYC and for that to happen we need more apartments, more large apartments, more buildings not less.

The above is a transcript of what I had intended to say at the City Council Meeting. I was angry beyond belief at the "I've got mine, f**k everyone else mentality" that I ad-libbed a little too much.

Brooklyn is Booming

My dream, and the dream of a lot of other people, is being realized. Shops and restaurants are coming as are off-off Broadway venues. This is a good thing. We all recognize that there can be over-development. Nobody wants fifty families in an area where once there were three and we all recognize and appreciate that our government officials have the right and responsibility to oversee and limit development.

At issue is what is being done and how it is being done. We have competing values, we want to limit the height of buildings and maximize the building of new homes.

We have a housing shortage. For years people have been leaving NYC as soon as they’ve been economically able to. Our population level was maintained because new immigrants kept arriving. Now we have a problem. Middle class immigrants are staying and the children of those who left a generation earlier are coming back to NYC. Not only that but some of those same folks who left are retiring, not to Florida, but here in NYC where they’re within walking distance and a quick cab ride to everywhere they want to go.

The downside is that the poor and the barely surviving working class are being squeezed out of their homes and unable to find housing at an affordable price. Middle class families: teachers, university professors, architects, artists, engineers and other professionals are buying up 2, 3, and 4 family houses for the same price that would get them a 2 bedroom place in the city. They want more space for themselves and their children but, in taking over an entire building for themselves, they reduce our available housing stock and displace 1, 2 or 3 families, usually poor or struggling working class.

We could solve some of our housing shortage by preventing one family from living in a space allocated for two, three or four. Thankfully we haven’t done that. That would be a horrible mistake. But we are making other mistakes as tragic.

This zoning plan is enshrining building decisions made by developers one hundred years ago. This is Brooklyn, not Nebraska. Why are we romanticizing two-story, quickly built wood-frame buildings? We need to maximize the availability of housing units and, just as importantly maximize their size (square footage). We need more, many more large apartments to supply the demand of growing families. We need apartments so that middle class families don’t feel that their only option is to take over a three or four family row house for themselves.

The good news is that we can satisfy this need without building bigger buildings. The bad news is that we have to change our archaic zoning laws, and we all appreciate how difficult that task is.

Another reason for maximizing building is tax revenue. How many tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in tax revenue are New York City’s coffers going to lose if we continue this hastily constructed, counter-productive zoning change? That’s a lot of teachers, firemen, street cleaning crews, etc... Jersey City, for example, welcomes development. Upper-middle class and luxury condos are being built there at an amazing pace. For every New Yorker who relocates there we loose a tax payer. We want to entice the well-off to live in New York, to live in Brooklyn. Their taxes help pay for social services and their daily purchases bring businesses and help provide jobs for everyone.

Construction equals construction jobs. Maybe it was my years working construction that makes this resonate in me more than others but construction puts food in the bellies of tens of thousands of New Yorkers; allows many of them the where-with-all to go to school get college and graduate degrees and let them, in their older and greyer years, do something a little less bone-weary than swinging a beater and climbing columns. Construction is a good thing. Yes, it is noisy and disruptive, and change can be disturbing but let’s be reasonable. Let’s promote the building of 5 and 6 story buildings throughout South Brooklyn.

Statue of Minerva

There are so many people now mentioning the Statue of Minerva in Greenwood Cemetery. Nobody cared, mentioned or knew about the Statue until anti-development folks found a talking point. I’ve spoken to people who’ve lived within a block from the Statue for their entire life who never knew it existed. These are people who played ball on Seventh Avenue and 22nd Street as kids 40 years ago; who got married and had their own kids play ball there. I’ve been on numerous tours through Greenwood Cemetery and have, over the years, spoken to several amateur historians interested in the cemetery and the statue was never stressed if mentioned at all. The statue was drawn out of obscurity for one reason only -- as a means of halting the development on Seventh Ave between 22nd and 23rd Street.

If you care about the symbolism of the Statue of Minerva -- that it is returning a salute to the Statue of Liberty -- what you would care about would be that people would have interest in the history of their neighborhood, in the Revolutionary War battle that took place here in the summer of 1776. We all remember Bunker Hill and the Boston Tea Party but who remembers that the first significant military conflict between the British and the Colonialists took place in Brooklyn, from Greenwood Cemetery to Brooklyn Heights.

In fact if those who evoke the Statue of Minerva so often actually cared for the symbolism and for the history that it represents they could do so without stopping new development. It would matter little if the statue was moved over 10 or 20 feet or if it was placed on a higher pedestal. The exact spot on which the Statue rests is not important, it’s the heights on which the battle raged, where Greenwood Cemetery now rests that’s important.

This battle is costing the developer hundreds of thousands of dollars. Good!, you say. Why? How does putting money in the bank’s hands instead of the developer help you or the neighborhood? The project has already been scaled down. Now the developer has to take a chunk out of the building – to let the Statue of Minerva to see the Statue of Liberty. The developer also has to build a full-scale mock up on the site for people to see that the view is not obstructed. How about a trade? Instead of taking out a chunk of the now smaller building let’s move the statue over ten feet, or twenty feet and place the statue on a pedestal. In exchange for letting the developer build; for reducing legal and finance costs the developer could put money into local organizations such as the Old Stone House that actually promotes the Battle of Brooklyn. Every year this organization and others like it promote walking tours, lectures, demonstrations and reenactments of the Battle of Brooklyn.

If you’re truly in love with the history and the symbolism of the Statue of Minerva that would be a far better tribute than having the statue return to obscurity a few months after the building has been completed.

More Housing Now

The purpose of this site is to get more apartments built in Brooklyn. Right now people are stopping new housing from being built because they are more offended by developers -- who could also be called home builders -- making money than by the fact that there is not enough housing in Brooklyn. This site is for you, making the argument that housing is what we need and that developers have a role to play.

Others simply do not like change. Some fear the change because they think they will be forced to move and don't see where could go. To these people I say that that is why you should support more middle and upper-middle class housing. Middle class people have to live somewhere. If housing isn't built for them they will buy out poor and working-class housing.

Some don't like the demographic change. Their neighborhood is changing around them; the smells and institutions that have existed for a generation or more is slowly disappearing. It's a traumatic experience for those living through it and should not be belittled. However, this is the story of New York. Your parents displaced the demographic group that existed before you and those people felt just as bewildered and just as dismayed by the disappearance of what they held dear. I sympathize, but as with all immigrant groups before you who were displaced, this is the Brooklyn experience.

Some don't like the middle and upper middle class because they are wealthy and don't want to live among them. Too fucking bad. Maybe now you'll won't go out of your way to prevent luxury condos. They wouldn't be coming to your neighborhood if they had a place to live elsewhere.

Loss of Sunlight

At times, when new buildings are built, they block the sunlight from their neighbor's property. This is a real issue and, we the residents of this wonderful city, should arrive at a standard compensation for the loss. This should not, for any reason, be cause to stop construction but some form of compensation should be arrived at.