The Time’s Week in Review section had a piece on the fallout from the “viral” marketing campaign to pay local bloggers to promote Absolut’s new Brooklyn brand of vodka. In case you missed it (and you probably did), the whole thing spilled over after the latest Brooklyn Blogfest, when some people took exception to the lack of transparency on the part of the Blogfest’s organizers and local blogs that were shilling for Absolut. This isn’t about the Blogfest itself – clearly that was an above-board sponsorship arrangement, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s also nothing wrong with bloggers getting swag to promote a product. Just tell us. If you’re getting something for promoting a product, let your readers know. It’s that simple.

And while I’m on the subject on blogger ethics (a favorite topic of professional journalists, it seems), if a blogger cuts and pastes an article without crediting the original publication, that’s plagiarism. If a reporter doesn’t give credit for a lead dug up by a blog, that’s poaching. If your publication has “a policy” of not crediting blogs or not crediting stories that have been “independently verified”, you work for a sleazy publication. It’s that simple.

For the past year or two, the nondescript garage on North 1st between Berry and Bedford has been under renovation. A few months ago, the work revealed something a bit more descript – the ghosts of an old city health clinic. The clinic was constructed in 1938 on the site of what was the village of Williamsburgh’s first public school, and sold at auction in 1988 for $33,000.

CB1’s Public Safety Committee is meeting this evening to review liquor license applications. There are 26 applications on the docket (11 new, 14 renewals and 1 alteration) – a pretty light month by CB1 standards.

Here’s the full list:

Alterations:
Small Giants Inc. – 197 Bedford Avenue (alteration)

New:
302 Metropolitan Avenue Inc. – 302 Metropolitan Avenue
645 Manhattan Avenue – 645 Manhattan Avenue Breukelen Bier Merchants Inc., dba Breukelen Bier Merchants – 182 Grand Street
Brooklyn Winery LLC, dba Brooklyn Winery – 213 North 8th Street
Fidel Corp., dba Le Barriquou – 533 Grand Street
North 12th Restaurant Co. LLC – 74 Wythe Avenue
Parish Hall LLC, dba Parish Hall – 109A North 3rd Street
Peck Sheb LLC, dba Crif Dogs – 555 Driggs Avenue
Queen Bear LLC – 188 Havemeyer Street
Vertuccio’s Pizza on the Park Inc – 232 North 12th Street
XXXVII Inc., dba Sebastian – 340 Bedford Avenue

Renewals:
659 Grand Street Inc., dba Last chance Saloon – 659 Grand Street
Cyn Inc. – 216 Bedford Avenue
Justyna O. Ruszczyk, dba Northside Liquors – 105 Berry Street
La Nortena Restaurant Corp. – 170 Marcy Avenue
Mykonos Grill Corp., dba Santorini Grill – 167 Grand Street
Pates & Traditions LLC, dba Pates & Traditions – 52 Havemeyer Street
Polmost Food Corp, dba Associated – 802 Manhattan Avenue
Raul Lopez dba Tecate Restaurant – 133A Harrison Avenue
S & B Restaurant Corp – 194 Bedford Avenue
Sakura 6 Inc. – 837 Manhattan Avenue
Segundo Heras, dba Undici Restaurant Corp. – 929 Manhattan Avenue
South End Distributing Corp., dba A.B.C. Beverages – 73 Montrose Avenue
The Subway Inc – 527 Metropolitan Avenue
Zebulon LLC – 258 Wythe Avenue

When: Thursday, June 3 (6:30 p.m.)
Where: CB1 District Office (435 Graham Avenue, corner of Frost Street)

For those of you that forgot to mark you calendars, tomorrow is Rezoning Day. That’s right, it is five years since the City Council approved the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning. On May 11, 2005, the City Council and the Mayor’s office finalized a package of promises that paved the way for the enactment of the rezoning.

Since it’s Rezoning Day, you might be wondering how the City is doing on all of the promises it made in 2005. I certainly am – so I did some poking around.

Things have slowly improved on the open space side of the equation in the past year. The first phase of Bushwick Inlet Park is now open as a soccer field (and a rather nice one at that). 0.28 acres down, 28 to go. Unfortunately, no headway has been made on the acquisition of the rest of the future Bushwick Inlet Park, so there is no waterfront access, no picnic area, no dog run, no bosque, no gardens and no great lawn. A waterfront pier opened last year at Northside Piers, the first taste of the publicly-accessible waterfront that one day is to run from North 3rd Street to Newtown Creek. That day is still far off, even for the Northside – the esplanades at 184 Kent, Northside Piers and the Edge are still not publicly accessible, and construction activity on land has rendered the pier a part-time amenity.

Up in Greenpoint, waterfront access is farther out on the horizon – there can be no waterfront esplanade until there is waterfront development. Work is soon to be underway at Transmitter Park, so maybe the public will have a real park to enjoy by the time we get to the 6th anniversary. But that’s the good news for Greenpoint. The bad news is that sludge tank is still where it has been for the past five years – smack dab in the middle of a proposed waterfront park. And 65 Commercial Street is still in the hands of the MTA, which means that it too is still not a park.

Over the past year, there have been some positive developments on the parks and open space front, including the beginning of construction of McCarren Pool, the opening of a skate park at McCarren, and the opening of a playground at East River State Park. Technically, none of these are a direct result of the 2005 rezoning. But they are all welcome improvements to a community that ranked 39th City-wide in terms of per capita open space before the rezoning. Since 2005, Greenpoint and Williamsburg have added a lot more people (with more to come), but we haven’t really added that much more open space. Certainly not enough to increase – or even hold the line on – our open space ratio.

On the affordable housing front, not much has changed since last year’s report. Two waterfront developments are nearing completion, and both of those are generating affordable housing units through the inclusionary housing program. But none of the other waterfront sites are remotely near breaking ground, so what we see now is what we’re going to get out of that program for a while.

Upland, no developers that I know of have opted in to the inclusionary program. One development was supposed to create a dozen or so off-site units of affordable housing, but the market rate portion of that project is stalled (or nearly so), and the affordable portion of the project is still an empty lot. Other than that, the upland inclusionary program has not lived up to the City’s expectations.

City-owned sites aren’t faring much better. Some affordable units were created at Cook Street using a City-owned parking lot. The rest of the City-owned sites are meandering their way through the approval process. In the 2005 Points of Agreement between the Council and Mayor’s Office, 20 City-owned sites were identified for the development of 1,345 units of affordable housing. To date, none of those units of housing has been constructed. The closest to completion of the 14 units of senior housing being developed by North Brooklyn Development Corporation at the former Herbert Street Police Station. Only 1,331 units to go.

What’s the hold up? It took the City close to three years to issue RFPs for a series of small sites and one pretty big site (Greenpoint Hospital with 265 units). It then took the City two years to award the Greenpoint Hospital RFP – the result being that not a spade of dirt has been turned on any of these sites. But at least they’ve been awarded – that MTA site at 65 Commercial is also supposed to generate air rights that will create 431 units of affordable housing. Once the city acquires those air rights. And once someone buys them from the City and builds affordable housing next door. In other words, not any time soon.

Manufacturing jobs continue to suffer as a result of the rezoning, despite numerous promises and programs that were supposed to make manufacturing viable in the small pockets that were still designated for such uses. The problem is that bars, restaurants, bowling alleys and hotels continue to be more viable uses than manufacturing in the Bushwick Inlet area – no surprise, given that these few blocks were completely surrounded by new residential use in 2005. The continued success of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center show that manufacturing is still viable in Brooklyn, but the sector is easily suffocated by short-sighted policy decisions.

A yar ago, things were looking brightest on the good growth front. Writing about sensible growth last year, I said:

Finally, there seems to be a recognition that contextual growth matters, and that simply throwing more market-rate housing at the affordable housing problem ultimately leads to more displacement, a more overburdened infrastructure and a less livable neighborhood.</

This was written in response to a follow-up action by the City and two contextual rezonings, all of which restricted height and created a manageable density level upland from the waterfront. These actions – covering over 200 blocks – were all a direct result of promises made in 2005 and they were important steps forward for Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Another important step forward was the community’s decision not to support Quadriad’s 20-story on Berry and North 3rd Street.

But now we have Domino to contend with – a rezoning that makes 2005’s rezoning look downright quaint. That isn’t necessarily the City’s fault. The Council, in 2005, required the City to “work expeditiously to commence public review” of the Domino rezoning. That public review has commenced, largely on Domino’s terms. Hopefully the City will scale it back and retain the affordable housing.

So there you have it – the state of the rezoning, 2010. Things are looking up on open space, even if we have a long, long way to go. The outlook is less rosy on affordable housing, downright bleak on industrial retention and murkier on sustainable development. Not exactly flying colors.

Just how much money are the Domino developers making off of their project? No one knows, and CPCR, the lead developer of Domino has refused to say.

But the Greenpoint Star’s Dan Bush has found an answer. And if the numbers he has dug up are remotely based in reality, that answer is a lot. Almost half a billion a lot.

The problem is, the numbers may not be based in reality – they are three-and-a-half-years old and come with a host of caveats. Dan’s article is very well-reported, and sorts through the numbers pretty carefully, as well as the problems with them and what they might or might not mean. I strongly suggest you read what he has to say before reading on here.

The numbers Dan found came from the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which appears to have prepared the document in order to determine the impact of the landmark designation of the refinery on the overall project. HPD and CPCR both claim that the developer had nothing to do with the production of the numbers, but the basic structure of the development scenarios analyzed mirror CPCR’s actual development proposal quite closely, so clearly HPD some idea of what it was doing and what CPCR was planning at Domino (the document was prepared about 9 months before Domino released its plans publicly). For instance, the total number of units in all four scenarios is between 2,100 and 2,400 (Domino is proposing 2,200 but the zoning would allow up to 2,400). The total number of affordable units is between 630 and 714 (Domino is proposing 660). (One key difference is that the target number for affordable units is 35% – Domino only proposed 30%.)

HPD analyzed four development scenarios, with net profits in the $380 million to $450 million range (between 42% and 50% return on cost). Those are huge numbers, and remarkably, they only cover a portion of the project. They exclude all of the development on the upland site, and they assume no income from retail or parking on the waterfront parcels. They are also based on a full residential build out of the waterfront parcel, and we now know that about 20% of the site will be commercial office space, not residential (the office space was added to the scope of the project after 2008).

Of course the big caveat is that HPD’s numbers were done in late 2006, a very different market from today. HPD’s analysis assumes that market-rate units on the waterfront will get $900 per square foot. Both HPD and CPCR say that those numbers are out of date – late 2006 was near the top of the market, the world has changed since then, we don’t know when we’ll see those kind of numbers again, etc., etc. But according to StreetEasy, the average asking price at the Edge is $926 a foot, and the average sale price is $918 per foot. There may be some gross/net apples/oranges in this comparison, but $900 a foot for prime waterfront may not be too far off the mark, even in today’s market.

So what does it all mean? Well first off, CPCR has never said that it isn’t going to profit from the development. While the Daily News continues to operate under the misapprehension that CPCR is a non-profit, for its part, CPCR has always said that this a for-profit venture. And certainly Domino’s investors – led by developer Isaac Katan, who acquired the property in the first place – expect to make a profit.

And there is nothing wrong with that. We live in a market-based economy and without profit, we would have a lot less housing – affordable and otherwise – built. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that there huge potential profit here – considering the low price that CPCR and friends paid for the property ($55 million in 2004 – between $23 and $27 per buildable residential square foot by HPD’s calculation), the project should be profitable. CPCR has spent tens of millions of dollars just developing the plans for the project and getting them approved – those are not non-profit numbers.

The thing is that CPCR decided early on that what every other waterfront developer got in 2005 was not good enough for them. They need more – specifically, more market-rate density. A lot more market-rate density. And in order to justify that more, CPCR is saying that their project is different. They have to pay to rebuild the wharf for the waterfront esplanade. They have to pay to preserve the refinery. They have to cross-subsidize the additional affordable units with additional market-rate units. (None of these expenses are necessarily extraordinary or unexpected – every waterfront developer has costs associated with constructing bulkheads, piers and esplanades; CPCR is not the only developer on the waterfront with historic preservation costs; HPD assumes that there will be up to $70 million in housing subsidies available for the waterfront portion of the project. But I digress.)

In order to account for all of these unique factors, CPCR says that it has to have more market-rate units and a series of special permits to allow greater height, reallocation of floor area throughout the site and a huge number of parking spots. All of these permits and extra density come at a cost to the community and the city. Increased market-rate density means accelerated secondary displacement on Williamsburg – Southside and Northside. It means that the amount of available open space per capita drops throughout Williamsburg. It means thousand more people on Williamsburg’s buses and subways. It means thousands more cars on Williamsburg’s streets.

Given that CPCR needs so much more, and bases its case for all the “more” that it needs on “unique” factors and economic viability (the project “just doesn’t work” at lower density), the Community Board and local politicians are right to ask for some transparency in the process. None of these people are looking to kill Domino, but they do want to make sure that the community and the City get a fair deal. CPCR and its partners say they are giving the community a fantastic deal, but without transparency, we all have to just take their word for it.

So where does that leave things? Well, until CPCR does share, the only numbers the public has to work with are the numbers in the HPD report. And they are big. Very big.

NYC Transit released its annual ridership report, and to no one’s surprise, ridership is down across the system.

Except in North Brooklyn.

Of the 423 subways stations in the system, only 65 saw an increase in ridership in 2009. More than half (38) of those stations are on lines that pass through Williamsburg and Greenpoint. And it’s not just the trains that pass through that are gaining ridership – more and more people on getting on the train in Williamsburg and Bushwick.

The Lorimer/Metropolitan Avenue stop on the G and L lines had an 11.5% increase in ridership – the fourth highest increase for any station in the system. (The stations in the top three slots all have very low ridership, so a small numerical increase can mean a big percentage increase for them – Lorimer/Metropolitan has a third-again more riders per day (11,707) than that top three stations combined (8,400).)

The Bedford Avenue L station saw a 4% increase in ridership, to a daily average of 18,525 riders. At 6.7 million riders per year, Bedford is one of the most heavily-trafficked stations without a transfer. The other stations ahead of it in this category are mainly along the 6 line in Manhattan.

Bedford Avenue is also one of the top seven-day stations, with only a 15% drop off between the level of weekday usage and the level of weekend usage. And in terms of weekend ridership, the Bedford Avenue station is the 25th busiest in the system (it’s 53rd in terms of total ridership). In other words, don’t expect to get a seat on the weekend, either.

11 of 22 stations on the L line (including First Avenue and Third Avenue) saw an increase in ridership. Over on the J/M/Z line, things are really picking up. Almost every station on the Brooklyn/Queens side of the line (22 of 30) has seen an increase in ridership. The Marcy stop is the most heavily trafficked outside of Manhattan, where most of the stations are hubs), with 8,241 riders per day.

The G train also saw an increase in ridership at many of its stations (9 of 17, by my count). However, both of the Greenpoint stations saw a drop in service of roughly 3%.

Overall, all of the Williamsburg and Bushwick stations on the J/M/Z saw an increase in ridership, as did the Bedford, Lorimer, Morgan and Jefferson stops on the L, and the Metropolitan and Broadway stops on the G.

And all of this is for 2009 – before most of the waterfront developments currently under construction are occupied and before a slew of inland developments came on line. But there’s always room for more.

The Brooklyn Paper is reporting this morning that a deal has been reached on the Rose Plaza development. The final deal is very much along the lines of what I intimated last night – 30% affordable housing, 74 apartments at 3 and 4 bedrooms, and all of those larger, family-sized, apartments at below-market rates1. The deal, brokered by Councilman Steve Levin, is set to be voted on this morning by the full City Council.

This is huge.

The developer’s original proposal was for 20% affordable housing, the minimum required under waterfront zoning. Many affordable housing advocates in the neighborhood supported the project at 20%, but the Community Board and the Borough President both thought that the series of special permits sought by the developer warranted a higher level of affordable housing. CM Levin thought so, too, and stuck to his guns.

The result is a private development on the waterfront with 30% affordable housing and a density and scale of development that is compatible with all of the other waterfront zonings in Community Board 1 – from Division Avenue all the way up to Newtown Creek.

In other words, that elusive balance between affordability and sustainable density has been achieved.

Huge.

1. My understanding is that the levels of affordability would run from about 60% of AMI up to 120%, exactly what the Community Board asked for.↩

Seems like everyone is having fun with the whole hipsters-hate-the-census meme – even NPR got into the act over the weekend. The funny thing is, “Williamsburg” as the City is defining it pretty much equals Hasidic South Williamsburg. Not that the hipsters are doing that well – the response rate for most of North Brooklyn just plain sucks.

(South) Williamsburg leads the race to the bottom at 31%.

Bushwick and Greenpoint? They’re hovering at about 40%.

Northside and Southside Williamsburg are at about 43% (just besting the Borough average).

And East Williamsburg? A gold star for 48%.

While hipsters aren’t necessarily the problem, there is a certain lack of civic thinking in foolishness like this quote from a clerk at Academy Records:

I guess it’s laziness and like, what’s the point? When it comes down to it, nobody wants to fill out like another form that’s just like getting sent to your house that really relatively has nothing to do with your life… I mean people would do if they got like five bucks.

UPDATE: I see FREE Williamsburg got here first, complete with map links, which show that the Southside and East Williamsburg are up over 50%.

According to Gothamist, Brooklyn has the lowest response rate for filling out Census forms, and Williamsburg is dead-ass last in the borough.

This is not good.

You’ve heard it all before, but the census is used to determine all sorts of things for the next 10 years. If Williamsburg’s response rate remains low, Williamsburg will be screwed in terms of city, state and federal in the coming decade. The census will also determine what our electoral boundaries are when redistricting comes along – everything from our council districts on up to congressional representation.

If you haven’t received a census form (loft dwellers, I’m looking at you), you can pick one up at any number of places right in your neighborhood (Metropolitan Pool and Los Sures to name just two). (Click on the Find Questionnaire Assistance Center here to find more.) If you are worried that the city will find out about your loft, don’t be – the census doesn’t share that information.

The Daily News thinks that Marty Markowitz should approve the Domino rezoning. In an error-filled and poorly-reasoned editorial that sounds like it came straight out of the developer’s press release, they pretty much say that it is the City’s responsibility to ensure the developer’s profit:

The project would resurrect the 11-acre tract occupied by the shuttered Domino sugar factory. It would incorporate the plant’s landmark sign and 1880s architecture while providing a 4-acre waterfront park and an unusually high proportion of affordable units.

All true. The project would also reduce the available open space per capita for Williamsburg and CB1, and it would incorporate an unusually high number of market-rate units, which would stress our already over-stressed infrastructure. Which is why a lot of progressives in the neighborhood think the plan needs a lot of work.

All the criteria for creating an important asset for the city are in place. But anti-development forces backed by local Councilman Stephen Levin and his mentor, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, have risen in opposition…

40-story towers, 1,800 new housing units and 30% affordable housing is hardly “anti-development”. That is what the community voted for, and it is a much better plan than what Domino proposes.

The would-be developer, the Community Preservation Corp., is a nonprofit that has built 136,000 units of affordable housing, including 21,000 in Brooklyn – 1,600 in Williamsburg alone.

Wrong. The would-be developer is a for-profit partnership between Isaac Katan and Community Preservation Corporation Resources (CPCR). CPCR is the for-profit development arm of the not-for-profit mortgage lender Community Preservation Corporation (CPC). Over the past 36 years, CPC has financed 136,000 units of affordable housing, and over the past 18 years, CPCR has built a fraction of that number of housing units. The Domino project would be CPCR’s largest new development project by an order of magnitude.

CPC [sic] spent $60 million to buy a tract that is walled off, blocking public riverfront access.

That was a bargain in 2004, when CPCR bought the property, and it is still a bargain in today’s market.

At the direction of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, CPC [sic] will maintain the famed Domino sign, as well as the main building’s distinctive facade – adding $50 million to construction costs…

CPCR has been complaining about the cost of preservation (and wharf construction, open space, affordable housing and just about everything else) for years. And local residents and the community board have been asking for financial details for years so that they can judge the value of the trade offs for themselves. But CPCR has been unwilling to share (if the Daily News has seen the financials, maybe they would like to share).

And judging by this picture, CPCR is doing a pretty lousy job of maintaining the famed Domino sign.

Where a developer typically agrees to charge affordable rents for 20% of a project’s units, CPC [sic] has pegged the proportion at 30%. The group also is proposing to set rents well below typical standards for affordable housing.

Good deeds here are in danger of being severely punished. Lopez and the local community board say that at 2,200 units, the development would be too dense.

CPCR’s own Environmental Impact Statement also says that it is too dense. The affordable housing is great, but without sound, sustainable planning, affordable housing just ends up being a rather thin silver lining for bad development.

They foresee subway crowding as construction progresses over five years or so. Give us a break! By that argument, nothing should ever get built.

Actually, it is 10 years or so. But give us a break – why should the city (which is broke), the MTA (which is even more broke) and the community (which is already suffering from overcrowded public transit, lack of open space and an overburdened infrastructure) be forced to pay the true cost of a private developer’s boondoggle? If CPCR wants to build 2,200 residential units – 25% more than other developers were allowed to build in similar waterfront projects – why doesn’t CPCR pay for the upgrades to our transit system? Why doesn’t CPCR pay to make the open space impact neutral, or – God forbid – increase the per capita open space for a neighborhood that ranks 39th out of 51 in the city? Instead, they just throw their hands up and tell the city “It’s your problem, you fix it.”

The fate of the Domino project will speak volumes about the future of the city. Right now, it is headed toward a replay of the disaster in the Bronx, where Borough President Ruben Diaz stopped development of the Kingsbridge Armory – along with 2,200 permanent jobs.

Unlike Kingsbridge, the community is not asking that this project be killed. The modifications requested ask that it be scaled back to the level of development approved everywhere else on the waterfront. That is still a huge project.

Mayor Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who can make up for her role in killing Kingsbridge, must get foursquare behind Domino. If they can find a way to scale the project back a bit while maintaining financial viability – and affordable housing – great.

Otherwise, they need to stand fast.

So Williamsburg should pay the price to make up for a bad decision in the Bronx? That makes no sense whatsoever. If the council and the mayor’s office can’t find a way to scale the project back “a bit” (and the community has given them a pretty good roadmap for what “a bit” is), they should send the developer back to the drawing board.

CPCR is the developer here, they are the ones who should be taking on the risk. That’s what developers do. That’s not what the city does.

Bloomberg has a special duty because his landmarks commission boosted CPC’s [sic] costs by $50 million, forcing up the size of the development.

Um, no. Trying to lay this all at the feet of landmarking (or politics) is a desperation move by CPCR. The “bonus” they are seeking is worth far more that the $50 million they claim historic preservation is costing them.

If CPCR thinks landmarking is truly such a burden, they can apply for special permits through LPC or file for hardship relief. Those processes are there to provide relief for owners of landmark buildings. But the city is under no obligation to “make it up to them”, and under even less of an obligation to take the developer’s word on the costs and the hardships.

The city has a choice: The Domino sign can be a beacon of the future or a sad epitaph.

Yes, an epitaph for irresponsible, unsustainable development would be sad.