So the administration that asked for a blank check to go to war – and promised to use it responsibly – now wants a blank check to fix Wall Street? The administration that did a heckuva job, Brownie, in New Orleans (and hasn’t exactly impressed us in Galveston), wants us to trust them to get it right on Wall Street? The administration that has stretched every inch its been given into a light year, wants 700 billion inches, no strings attached?
Why do I get the feeling I know how this story ends?
Wall Street has got itself in a hell of a pickle, and they need help. Part of that pickle is the complete lack of regulation and oversight that leads to a transparent and open market (yes, regulation fosters a more open market), and for that we can blame Washington. Part of that pickle is the fact that Wall Street made some incredibly boneheaded investments.
Once again, Republican fiscal conservatism has broken the bank. Democrats, as usual, need to take the grown up view, act responsibly and clean up the mess. But let’s not hand Bush & Co. a blank check. Get it right, and get it in writing. Retain all avenues of congressional oversight. Yes, Henry Paulson seems like an grown up, sensible person. But he still works for George W. Bush. There is one chance here, don’t screw it up. Again.

Dennis Holt, in the Eagle, thinks that trying to save good jobs in Brooklyn is a lost cause. His main point is that the Brooklyn waterfront is not going to rise again as a industrial powerhouse – you know, containerization and all that. And he has a point. But only up to a point.

In the first place, we have seen that containerization is viable on the Brooklyn waterfront (at least in Red Hook, and on a far more limited scale that it ever will be on the Jersey waterfront).

Second, we are beginning to see that some of the discarded waterfront uses actually served an important civic purpose. I’m talking in particular about graving docks and dry docks, which, it turns out, we actually need more of. Too bad the best graving dock in the metro area was filled in for Ikea. Two years after the fact, and that move is already looking pretty short-sighted (the more so because Ikea and the graving dock could have existed side by side).

Third, and most important, the plight of industrial Brooklyn is not the plight of the waterfront. Despite decades of hemorrhaging jobs, Brooklyn still has a very active and vital industrial base. These jobs tend not to be on the waterfront, but rather in the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the waterfront (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Navy Yard, Wallabout, Red Hook, Sunset Park – not to mention Maspeth and Long Island City across the creeek). Perhaps that is a vestige of the historic waterfront access, but it is also very much a tribute to the exceptional transportation network in NYC – both excellent truck access to the Manhattan market and a first-class mass transit to bring workers to work. These jobs tend to be better paying, and at a range of skill levels. They also tend to attract local workers, bringing stable employment, good pay and good benefits to low-income neighborhoods.

With all the recent rezonings, businesses are caught in a double squeeze. Residential rezoning on the one side makes industry unaffordable (in the rezoned areas of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, there is practically no industry left). On the other side, the remaining industrial zones are becoming prime territory for complying, non-industrial uses precisely because they are next door to burgeoning residential areas. I’m talking here about clubs, boutique hotels, bowling alleys and the like (yes, I’m looking at you Bushwick Inlet – but the same thing is happening in Bushwick and East Williamsburg). These businesses drive up the cost of industrial space because they can pay twice as much per square foot as the industrial users.

When this happens, the jobs don’t disappear, they just move somewhere cheaper. In this case, somewhere cheaper is often New Jersey, sometimes Long Island City or Sunset Park. This, in turn, puts local residents in their own double squeeze. On one side, good paying low-skill jobs are are moving out of the neighborhood. They may be replaced by service jobs, but those tend to be less secure, pay less, and come with fewer benefits. On the other side, as the formerly industrial areas around them rezone to residential and get built up with luxury condos and the like, there is a secondary displacement in the surrounding residentially-zoned areas. Rents go up, harassment goes up. The affordable housing that comes with the rezoning is supposed to solve this, but it is a drop in the bucket compared with the formerly affordable units that are being lost.

So yes, Brooklyn’s waterfront probably has better (and certainly more profitable) uses than industry. But Holt misses the boat when he equates industry with the waterfront and extrapolates that to say that industry in Brooklyn is not viable. It certainly is viable, its just been pushed to the edge of extinction by rezonings and other forces. And its not just factories and jobs moving to New Jersey. In the process of deindustrializing Brooklyn, we’ve exacerbated the forces of displacement on the residential side.

Walkscore is a pretty nifty website that calculates how “walkable” your neighborhood is. On a scale of 0 to 100, I come out as an 88 – not really a surprise, given that we are in the middle of New York City (my office gets a 100, but most of the places I could walk to from there aren’t worth the trip). The 88 means that just about everything I need is within 7/10 of a mile of my house. Six or seven years ago, this would not have been the case – there was not a restaurant next door, a bar two blocks away, a bookstore within four blocks or a pharmacy within 10 blocks. It was still a walkable neighborhood, you just had to be a little more ambitious.

There are a few idiosyncrasies about the site (which is intended as a real estate marketing tool). For instance, the nearest movie theater to my house is the Riverside Dance Festival in East River Park, Manhattan. In fact, all of the “nearby” theaters are in Manhattan. Fair enough, but the site lists the walking distance for Riverside as 6/10 of a mile, which I’m pretty sure would require walking on water to be true. I took the bridge, it would be easily twice that distance. Also, some of the locations are just plain wrong – the site tells me that the nearest pharmacy is a Rite Aid on Metropolitan and Kent. (Its really referring to a Rite Aid on Metropolitan in Ridgewood, but for some reason.)

Strangest of all, though, is that the “walkability” score takes no account of public transportation. There are two bus lines within three blocks of me, and two subway lines within about 10 blocks, giving me walking access to all of New York City. Yet nowhere is public transit mentioned.

People in Williamsburg and Bushwick are, on average, more overweight and more obese than the citywide population. This has resulted in much snark on the interweb about skinny hipsters, but the problem is real, and likely tied in to the socioeconomic realities of our neighborhoods.

The report, “Keeping Track of New York City’s Children”, was prepared by the Citizen’s Committee for Children (an executive summary (pdf) is here). The picture it paints for north Brooklyn is not pretty – in just about every measure, our community districts come out in the bottom quartile. This is particularly true of the districts that comprise Bushwick and Bed-Stuy; Williamsurg and Greenpoint proper fare slightly better.

At least some of the blame lies with economics. According to City-Data.com, the median income the five north Brooklyn zip codes is barely half that of the comparable New York City figure. In order from low to high, the median household incomes (2005) are:

• 11206 (East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy): $21,679
• 11221 (Bushwick and Bed-Stuy): $25,912
• 11237 (Bushwick): $26,840
• 11211 (Northside and Southside, some areas east of the BQE): $27,378
• 11222 (Greenpoint): $39,0081
• Kings County: $37,332
• NYC (all boroughs): $43,434

Those bottom three zip codes roughly correspond to the Bed-Stuy and Bushwick community districts tracked by CCC (its not a direct correlation, though). In the CCC study, these districts consistently fall in the lowest quartile for all measures of children’s health. Overall, the children in these districts are at the highest risk to their well being.

• 44% to 58% of children live below the poverty line
• 13% to 16% of adults have diabetes
• 22% to 26% of adults had no fruits or vegetables in the previous day
• 26% to 30% of adults are obese

As noted, Williamsburg (north) and Greenpoint fare slightly better. In terms of obesity, these northern community districts fall into the third quartile, at 22% to 26%. In the other measures noted above, these districts also generally fall into the third quartile.

All of north Brooklyn (all five zip codes) fall into the fourth quartile in terms of number of grocery stores and supermarkets per square mile.

Given all this, its no wonder that north Brooklyn has such high levels of obesity.

1. The difference between Greenpoint’s median income and the rest of north Brooklyn is striking.↩

The good news/bad news on the water taxi keeps rolling in.

The latest good news (via this press release) is that the City Council is funding a new water taxi service between Far Rockaway and Lower Manhattan, with service starting May 12. On the North Brooklyn front, the City has secured federal funds to build new docking facilities in Northside Williamsburg and Greenpoint as part of expanded water taxi service on the East River. And, the City is ponying up $1.25 million to construct a new launch facility at Schaefer Landing.

The bad news? Well, service on the East River (Schaefer and Long Island City) won’t resume until July (you may recall that it was supposed to resume in May, er June). And the expanded service (which I presume will include a landing at the Edge and Northside Piers) won’t start up for another two years. Presumably between now and then the new residents in the Northside waterfront district will find a way to squeeze on the L train. When its running.

Actually, there is even more good news (really) in the press release. First, the MTA is studying how to connect bus service to the ferry landings, and second, EDC is working with the Real Estate Board to find “ways for impacted developers to support the East River ferry service” (I think both of these are very good ideas). Further, with the help of federal funding, a water taxi stop will be added to Roosevelt Island.

Issues of local timing (and false promises) aside, this package of funding and service expansions is good news for the long-term viability of ferry service in New York City. By subsidizing the expansion of service, the city (and feds) will hopefully create a critical mass of ridership that will sustain commuter ferry service on something more than a seasonal basis. Hopefully too, this will result in the critical mass necessary to make fares more affordable to more New Yorkers (under the current plans, the Rockaway Service will be capped at $6 each way – only a dollar more than the 10 minute trip from Schaefer Landing to Lower Manhattan). Hopefully, too, these subsidies will be enough to keep New York Water Taxi afloat – but their ability to run an efficient and successful business remains a big question mark in all of this.

Engine 212

Photo: jUSTINYC

This piece of news slipped quietly under the radar. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, NYC’s Economic Development Corporation has awarded the former Engine 212 site to the People’s Firehouse and NAG. The groups will invest an “estimated $1.3 million in the redevelopment of the Wythe Avenue site into the Northside Town Hall Community Center and Cultural Center to provide a permanent home for both organizations”.

PFI and NAG were always the leading contenders to take over 212 (ironic, in that they both fought the closing of the firehouse so fiercely). Still, its great news that this neighborhood institution will continue to serve the neighborhood, and that two worthy local non-profits will soon have new homes. Thanks to all the pols who made it happen.

Sodafine
Photo: Sodafine

Not so suddenly, Grand Street has become a thriving retail strip.

The April/May 2008 issue of WG (the newish Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts paper) has a great article by C. C. McGurr on the retail renaissance along western Grand Street. By her count, there are 62 businesses operating on the six block stretch from Kent to Marcy (I can think of at least two or three establishments that were left out). The eastern portion of the strip is dominated by food & drink, but throughout Grand Street, the diversity of retail is pretty impressive. More impressive is the fact that (by my count) about 50 of these 62 establishments have opened since 2001. Better still, there have been relatively few closures in that time (regrettably, Alioli was one of them). And these numbers don’t include the stores and restaurants on the avenues just off Grand Street, easily another dozen, if not two.

McGurr blames the BQE for the demise of Grand Street’s retail in the post-War era, but I’m of the opinion that the BQE actually helped Grand Street. What makes the western portion of Grand Street so special is that is not a through street. The relative lack of vehicular traffic gives the strip a quieter, more relaxed feel. Combined with the low-scale buildings fronting on a wider street (at least west of Roebling), this makes the street much more open and pedestrian friendly. Compare Grand Street to Metropolitan (in the extreme), or even Bedford Avenue, and you’ll see what I mean. (As for the BQE, ten years ago, most of Williamsburg’s historic ground floor storefronts were boarded up or converted to residential, and the BQE was not responsible for all of that.)

[WG has a website, but no web presence. If you want to see the article, pick up a copy at a local store, bank, etc.]

Back in the coldest, darkest days of winter, when New York Water Taxi suspended service on its East River route, the company said that service would resume on May 1. In February NYWT pulled the water taxi dock out of Schaeffer Landing entirely. At the time, it was reported that the dock was to replaced with a smaller, permanent dock.

Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge the other day, the dockless void in front of Schaeffer landing got me wondering about when that new dock was going to appear. The good news is that it will reappear – service to Schaeffer Landing is as part of the new summer schedule for NYWT.

The bad news is that the resumption of all commuter service on the East River has been (very quietly) pushed back to June 2. And they’ve shortened the evening schedule – the last boat out of Wall Street will now leave at 6:07 (there used to be a 7:00 boat).

But at least service will be back in June.

A month later than promised.

Assuming the dock is in place by then.

191 – 199 Grand Street

With all the vitriol passing back and forth over the Grand Street rezoning, perhaps its worth remembering why the City embarked on contextual zoning studies in the first place. Five or six years ago, when the City was first pulling together the large Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning (aka the waterfront rezoning), R6 zoning was seen as pretty innocuous. Most developers opted to use the quality housing provisions of R6, which comes with height and density caps similar to those of R6A and R6B zoning. The height factor provisions were primarily used for center city development, not residential developments. Starting around 2003, Brooklyn began to see more and more of “height factor” buildings, some of them small and some them very large. Because vast stretches of residential Brooklyn are zoned R6, the proliferation of height factor buildings in what heretofore were low-rise rowhouse-scaled neighborhoods was a huge concern for both the communities involved and for the Department of City Planning (DCP). At the same time, the burgeoning housing boom was also resulting in abuses in R6 quality housing development, particularly with regard to the “community facility” bonus, which developers were using to boost narrow street FAR from 2.2 to as high as 4.8 FAR. These quality housing megabuildings, together with the new “finger buildings” allowed under height factor zoning were clearly a threat to the low-scale character of much of residential Brooklyn.

In many neighborhoods, R6 zoning has been in place since the 1961 zoning was instituted. For much of that time, there was little or no new development in residential Brooklyn, and what development there was generally fit within the comfortable confines of quality housing zoning. But as developers and architects started to push the envelope on R6 zoning, it became clear that what had been a acceptable zoning class for more than 40 years was suddenly a major threat to the character, scale and density in many neighborhoods.

So the City embarked on a series of rezonings. The Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront rezoning (enacted in May, 2005) was already underway, and most of the inland blocks there (more than 150 blocks) were switched from R6 to R6A or R6B. In response to the problems that had been cropping up with R6 development, the Borough President and City Council pressed the Bloomberg administration for a study all of the R6 areas within Community District 1 for potential contextual rezoning. It was this action, in May of 2005, that led directly to the Grand Street rezoning (and will lead to a far, far larger rezoning east of the BQE, still in the works at DCP).

In the 2005 waterfront rezoning, a number of blocks at the edges of the zoning area – such as along Metropolitan Avenue and Meeker Avenue – were left R6 in the original zoning. In a January, 2006 follow up action, contextual zoning was imposed on these blocks as well. (For whatever reason, two blocks of Metropolitan east of Havemeyer were left as R6.) This follow up action also instituted contextual zoning on the two blocks of Grand Street from Kent to Berry, and though the Community Board asked for the same treatment for the rest of Grand to the BQE, it was deemed out of scope by DCP.

While DCP was beginning discussions with Community Board 1 over potential study areas for further contextual zoning (as required by the agreement with City Council), it was actively developing contextual zoning plans for other Brooklyn neighborhoods as well. In fact, DCP has been incredibly busy in this regard. In 2007, contextual zoning was implemented on 206 blocks in Bedford-Stuyvesant South, 99 blocks of Fort Greene / Clinton Hill and 160 blocks in Dyker Heights / Ft. Hamilton. In 2006, the City rezoned almost 160 blocks in the Midwood, Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods; in 2005, almost 420 blocks were rezoned in South Park Slope, Bensonhurst and the Special Bay Ridge District; in 2003, 110 blocks were rezoned in Park Slope.

So lest anyone in the 13-block Grand Street rezoning area feel singled out by this latest action, bear in mind that over the course of five years, the City has imposed contextual zoning on over 1,300 blocks in 11 neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. Some of these rezonings represented dramatic downzonings, with FAR cuts far beyond the 9% imposed on most of the owners in the Grand Street area. Many were carried out at the request of the local communities and with the support of local politicians. In each of these rezoning actions, there was a recognition that the existing zoning – R4, R5, R6 and R7 for the most part – was no longer appropriate for the character of the community.

In general terms, these rezonings follow a pretty standard (and desirable) model. Speaking of the Bed-Stuy South rezoning, DCP had this to say: “The proposed rezoning aims to preserve neighborhood scale and character, maintain opportunities for mid-rise apartment building construction along appropriate corridors, and allow for residential growth with incentives for affordable housing along the Fulton Street transit and retail corridor”. That is exactly what the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill rezoning did, it is exactly what the Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning did, and it is exactly what the Grand Rezoning did. In the case of Grand Street, the higher density zoning (“opportunities for mid-rise apartments”) were located on Metropolitan, a wide street that is also a major thoroughfare. Neighborhood scale and character were maintained along Grand, South 1st, North 1st, Fillmore and the avenues with R6B zoning. In the case of Grand Street, this is appropriate because Grand has a context that is generally three and four story buildings, with an average height somewhere around 40′ (there is only one six story building on this entire stretch of Grand Street, and only a handful of other buildings that break 50′). Grand Street is also not a wide street (in the zoning sense), and, with the construction of the BQE, no longer a through street.

In the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning, the community (through both the ad hoc rezoning committee and the Community Board) supported contextual zoning in the Northside and in the western portions of Greenpoint. By and large, the community felt at the time that the extent of R6A zoning proposed by DCP was too much, that it would result in out-of-character buildings, and that the neighborhood’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the number of people this would bring. The City’s contention (which won the day) was that R6A was needed in order to encourage the redevelopment of the formerly manufacturing areas to the east and west of the core Northside neighborhood (which was rezoned R6B).

From the point of view of the community at large, contextual zoning clearly makes sense. It limits out of scale development (both finger buildings and bonused behemoths under quality housing). It concentrates higher density development along avenues and near transportation nodes, allowing a finer application of zoning than a blanket R6. It introduces bonuses for inclusionary (affordable) housing. In the long run, it will help maintain property values by controlling (but not overly limiting) growth and maintaining the low-scale residential and mixed-use character that drew so many people to the neighborhood in the first place. Contextual zoning also discourages the massive lot (or air rights) assemblages that result in demolition of character-defining buildings and the construction of finger buildings or quality housing behemoths.

The fact that the contextual zoning categories do not match up one to one with the non-contextual categories has resulted in the loss of about 9% of allowable floor area (2.2 FAR to 2.0 FAR) in much of the Grand Street district. While some wild numbers ($100 million, $400 million) have been thrown around, the truth is that the full impact of this is only felt by the development sites. For those unimproved properties, the value of the land is the value of the property, and the two correlate almost directly with the allowable floor area. So if you reduce FAR by 9%, you probably reduce the value of the property by 9%. The same is not true of improved properties – there, the value of the land is only a part of the value of the overall property. And since each property is different – some are overbuilt, some underbuilt, some have grandfathered uses, etc. – the cumulative economic impact is nearly impossible to measure. And that’s without factoring in the positive (yet intangible) economic effects of this rezoning mentioned above. Those effects are more long term, but if you weigh all of the different factors, for the vast majority of property owners the overall economic impact of this rezoning is probably a wash, or pretty darn close.

For some owners (perhaps 10% of the total), the rezoning could actually be seen as a boon. That would be the owners of wide street properties who were rezoned from R6 to R6A. For them, the floor area remains the same, albeit with height caps, so the intangible community-wide benefits could actually result in an increase in property values, at least in the long term. On the other hand, for wide street property owners that have been rezoned to R6B, the economic impact is clearly negative. This is also a minority (between 10% and 15%), and again, the effects are not evenly distributed. All of these owners see their FAR drop by a third, but since most of these properties are not development sites, the actual value of each property does not drop by a third. The value of the underlying land does theoretically drop by a third, but with the exception of developers and speculators, most people buy for the improvement (the building), not the land value.

Again, from an macro, urbanist, neighborhood-wide point of view, contextual zoning is a good thing. It maintains neighborhood character and scale, discourages tear downs, allocates height and density more rationally, and allows for bonuses for something the community needs – affordable housing. It eliminates finger buildings and the much-abused community facility bonus. That is why so many neighborhoods have pushed for contextual zoning. That is why neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens are jumping up and down demanding contextual zoning (and getting pretty upset when told they have to wait for the “East Greenpoint” contextual zoning).

Unfortunately, with the Grand Street rezoning, a small number of owners in the midst of development projects have combined with a large number of owners with little or no information about why the zoning was done or how it actually impacts them to try to overturn the whole zoning. Clearly owners in the process of development are impacted, if only by the loss of time (which = money), but also by having to redo plans and reduce height and floor area. But for 95% of the property owners, the consequences are not that dire, and quite possibly not dire at all. All of this has split the neighborhood, most unneccesarily. Hopefully both sides (and there is plenty of bad blood on both sides) will take a step back, take time to understand the situation, and get back to life as normal. Because for most people, very little has changed with the Grand Street rezoning.

North 1st Street, 12:50.

While havoc was raining down in Turtle Bay, it was just a normal Saturday in Williamsburg. A walk through the Northside early yesterday afternoon showed over half a dozen active construction sites.

At 80 Metropolitan (above), North 1st Street was blocked as workers loaded material. No flagman was present. Urban Green was pumping concrete on North 5th Street (below). Again, no flagman (but at least traffic could pass). Workers were also banging away at 154 Berry Street, as well as at a host of other smaller projects.

Of course, I have no idea if any of these projects had a variance for weekend work. By wading through the payment history for 5 different permits at Urban Green, we can say conclusively that they probably had a variance (it appears as part of one of many Alt-2s). We decided not to wade through payment histories on the others. Nor do I know why DOB would issue so many variances (assuming they did) within a four-block radius.

Just another sunny Spring Saturday in Williamsburg.

Urban Green, 13:00.