Sign up now to subscribe!
A Governor from the City? Help from Unlikely Quarters The Bloomberg Factor “Outer Borough” Presidents Bristle at Stringer’s Reforms Agendas For AG Contest for State Committee Dems to Decide Contest for State Committee Getting Its Foot in the Political Door Grassroots in the Concrete City
Living Wage Advocates Think Big Box Civil Court Action
Pundit Poll: Hail to the Chief Executive Officer?
The Money Trail: AG Candidates Firm Up Law Support In the Chair: Peter Vallone, Jr. In the Trenches: Josh Bocian Review: Ripe for an Analysis Brooke Masters sketches out the likely Democratic nominee French Fare with Carolyn Maloney Photo Page Defining the Line Between Staffers and Campaign Workers Letters to the Editor The View from Albany: The Winds of Change in Spitzer’s and Silver’s Sails by Alan Chartock Government Must Take a Role in Community Planning by City Council Member Dan Garodnick
With new developments popping up all over the city, it is increasingly important for local communities to take a more active role in creating a vision for their neighborhoods.
Too often, community input is reduced to creating a “wish list” of amenities or conditions that developers can choose to provide in order to make a new building project more palatable to the people who live nearby. These wish lists, formally called “community benefits agreements,” are no substitute for full-scale planning for a neighborhood’s future.
Major development projects generally require substantial approvals from the city — which allows city officials to have significant say in what ends up being built. As a result, local elected officials and community boards can establish the essential elements of a comprehensive, long-term plan for their area.
Community Board 6, which covers much of the East Side, is setting an excellent example. When this community board learned of Con Edison’s intent to sell the Waterside power plant and associated properties (along First Avenue, from 35th to 41st Streets), it viewed the project as an opportunity to think hard and creatively about how wise use of this land could improve East Midtown.
Major development projects generally require substantial approvals from the city — which allows city officials to have significant say in what ends up being built. As a result, local elected officials and community boards can establish the essential elements of a
comprehensive, long-term plan for their area.
It drew up, and submitted to the Department of City Planning, a formal proposal to rezone the property from a manufacturing district to a residential district. Far from being anti-growth, this proposal would enable significant new development, but would also create the infrastructure to support it, including new parks along the waterfront, affordable housing and a new school.
In contrast, the owner of the site has proposed a plan that contains not a single unit of affordable housing, no school to accommodate the new residents, and buildings so tall that they put existing park space in permanent shadow. His plan would essentially drop a small city of 10,000 people onto a six-block strip of First Avenue — without considering the broader effect that their presence would have. These are basic defects that cannot be remedied by a simple laundry list of one-time benefits.
A strong alliance of elected officials is working with Community Board 6 and other organizations, particularly the East Midtown Coalition for Sensible Development, to see that the Con Ed site is ultimately developed in a way that fits with the neighborhood’s needs. This alliance has come out in strong support of the responsible plan put forth by Community Board 6.
With our schools and public transportation already critically over-taxed, the city will require additional community-based planning to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to support new development. As the chair of the City Council’s Subcommittee on Planning, I was proud last week to support a plan from Community Board 8 for the Queensboro Bridge area. This is another excellent example of planning on the East Side that seeks to link future development proposals to the specific needs of the community. In fact, the plan passed overwhelmingly.
Working together, community groups and elected officials, with support from the public, must be the ones to set the agenda for our neighborhoods. It is not simple work, but it is extremely important for the future of our city.