A few weeks ago, on one of the few truly cold days this fall or winter, members of New York City’s real estate industry gathered at the Brooklyn Library for the sixth annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit. The networking breakfast was hosted by a company called “Aggressive Energy.” At the morning keynote, Richard Mack, the founder and chief executive officer of Mack Real Estate Group, was interviewed by Stephen Kliegerman, the president of Halstead Property Development Marketing. “Brooklyn is a great place to live,” Mack observed.
Then he began to make a larger point, about bicycles. “Don’t underestimate the change in commutational patterns as cycling becomes more important.” When looking to identify neighborhoods for residential investment and development, Mack said, “we’re looking for places where there are bike lanes, but more importantly where people are riding fixed gear bikes. I know that sounds funny.” The crowd laughed. “But go to Portland, Oregon. Go to downtown Seattle, downtown Los Angeles. Go to the greater neighborhoods of San Francisco. You’re gonna see a disproportionate amount of fixed gear bikes. You may laugh, but commutation patterns by bicycle are changing the way that cities are developed.”
Mack answered further questions about the role of fixed-gear bicycles in Mack Real Estate Group’s development choices over email. “We think it’s clear that there’s an impulse, among ‘Millennials’ particularly, to reduce the city’s reliance on cars,” he told me through a spokesperson. “That is something we support and respond to. Brooklyn’s cycling culture is expanding, and many of the people who live in our buildings are part of that, they’re riders. When we build we want to be responsive to the culture, in terms of where people want to live and how they want to live.”
“Developing in Brooklyn, bicycle friendliness and appreciation—including for those very cool fixed gears that many people are passionate about—have clearly become an ingredient in a neighborhood’s appeal. Sometimes the fixed gear is a bellwether of sorts for us, but it’s part of a bigger picture.”
So there you have it folks. What we've been saying for years has been verified: Bike lanes are not created to save the planet and to make the city safer. They are built to spur development. Nothing that is done in this city is done because of why the government says it is done. It is done to line some asshole's pocket.
49 comments:
You mean to tell me they don't ride bikes to work in the ghetto?
Go figure!
You mean to tell me they don't ride bikes to work in the ghetto?
not their own;-)
Say it is not so!
I am surprised,shocked, astounded,and overwhelmed beyond belief...
Bike lanes are the bane of the city.
among ‘Millennials’ particularly, to reduce the city’s reliance on cars,”
so the brainwashing worked
The point? So we should support no upgrades (like bike lanes and other amenities), in order to keep neighborhoods static? The galaxy doesn't work that way. Life moves on. If you want the same, go visit south Jamaica/southeast Queens. Broken down and pretty much the same as it looked in the 70's, and destined to stay that way, unless new stuff comes in that makes new people want to live there.
Please note the line in The Awl “There were also a lot of very aggressive zoning moves.” The zoning changes are what the City is up to now. All the hard fought community driven zoning changes of the past 30 years are being thrown out the window. Building height limits, parking requirements, etc. are being changed to allow for more overcrowding, all in the name of "progress". The way to move all these people around is another story. Walking and bicycle lanes are fine when you are young or there is nice weather but the mass transit is woefully inadequate and our streets are impossible to maneuver now. The City needs to solve the logistics problems we currently experience before they can squeeze more rats onto the treadmill.
Fixed-gear bikes? You're toodling along swimmingly and then you hit a hill. Now what?
Bike lanes are an upgrade? Here I thought they were the alternative to fixing mass transit. You know, actual upgrades. Note that bike accidents skyrocketed after bike lanes were installed in western Queens neighborhoods.
I know that the bike lanes put in Jewel Avenue in Flushing slow down the buses going through Flushing Meadow Park considerably and take away a traffic lane. And for what? I have hardly ever seen a single biker using that lane. It causes a dangerous situation in that when you enter Flushing Meadow Park to get to Forest Hills, you suddenly have to swerve to match up with the angled lane. If you are not familiar with the zig-zag required of you, you could cause an accident. It certainly causes a bottleneck with already abundant traffic. All for virtually non-existent bikers.
Beware the causality fallacy, Crappie. Increased bicycle usage will naturally result in a higher absolute numbers of accidents.
We all want safe roads. Are you implying you want fewer bicycles out on them?
If not the ghetto, the barrio could use more bike lanes. I work Corona/Jackson Heights early mornings (so you know they're not deliverymen) sometimes, and you'd be surprised how many Latinos bike to work.
I believe bike lanes give bike riders a false sense of safety.
As a fixed gear bike rider for the past 10 years, and who is not cool and lives check to check so that predator developer rep can throw his demo theory out the door with his lame ass, I can attest to the fact that these bike lanes recently painted and imposed on the public are still under-utilized and pretty goddamn unnecessary. And with the way all this affordable luxury, straight up luxury and investment/money laundering luxury housing and development as engulfed major areas and arteries like the pandemic pestilence it is, that pile of shit and his acquaintances declarations for the betterment of their undeserved wealth and not the convenience, safety and frugality of the true citizens of the towns they are devouring is not much of a revelation.
This is akin to recent stories involving the gun and defense trade shows where certain ghouls like that pile of shit Mack make warped presentations that all the tragedies that involve their products will enhance evermore profitability. It's shock doctrine marketing. Even something as innocuous as providing bike lanes for spazzy skinny pubic bearded tech twerps is just damaging enough to inflate these asinine and fraudulent area I mean aggregate median incomes and rents to justify these acquisitions.
I have been riding for way too long and as I mentioned here and even to this day I have yet to see people using these bike lanes . The only consistent activity is by the bridges where their idiot target demo just happens to already spend lavishly to live. So much for citibike making an impact with an alternative to mass transit if they need to pander and market this bullshit to attract more developers to place some shoddy housing in these hot burgs.
There is just no slowing down of the scourge of Generation Gentrification and it's producers, enablers,members and benefactors-the developers, the electeds, the hipsters(hipshits)and the hedge funders.
Oh and Dick Mack
Allez vous faire foutre !
"Beware the causality fallacy, Crappie. Increased bicycle usage will naturally result in a higher absolute numbers of accidents."
Yeah, but +73% in CB5? And this stat was put out by "Make Queens Safer".
We all knew that! Hipsters love to bike around. It is their form of macho method acting Marlon Brando's classic performance on his motor cycle.
Statistics have already proved that admittance to hospital ERs have increased dramatically since bike lanes and City Bike went in.
Transportation Alternatives is funded by Bloomberg.
The bike people are like the dog run people - playthings of pols and developers that live in their little debt ridden no future foodie world.
And with the way all this affordable luxury, straight up luxury and investment/money laundering luxury housing and development as engulfed major areas and arteries like the pandemic pestilence it is, that pile of shit and his acquaintances declarations for the betterment of their undeserved wealth and not the convenience, safety and frugality of the true citizens of the towns they are devouring is not much of a revelation.
Can anybody diagram that sentence?
this is why no matter how much i hate bikes, i welcome bike lanes. people too dumb with money who are willing to pay too much for housing will raise the value of my property to cash out and buy a nice house
I don't think that bike lanes are entirely related to gentrification. I live in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, which has bike lanes on Jewel Avenue, 164th Street, and 73rd Avenue. I have yet to see thickly bearded heavily tattooed white youths with manly hair buns riding fixed gears in my neighborhood. Most of the bikers I've seen seem as middle-class as the rest of my neighbors, and delivery people too.
"Are you implying you want fewer bicycles out on them?"
It would be difficult to get "Fewer bicycles out on them"
I believe the bicycle lane push was largely muscle flexing by the left to push the envelope as to see what they can get away with
I think bike lanes are the most dangerous things that the city has ever done. These bikers don't stop for nothing when pedestrians are walking and its hard to make a turn when you have to watch out for not only pedestrians but for bikers who don't want to stop when you turned your car before they were even at the corner. They try to swerve out of the way of your car turning as opposed to stopping and waiting for you to complete your turn. They were better off riding in the streets in the middle of all the cars if you ask me.
Before anyone attacks Sergey for relaying what he sees, he's no developers tool: he's a smart, sincere guy who knows a lot more about queens than many natives. You should buy his book. Congrats, Sergey.
Ps: bike lanes suck.
The bike lane nonsense is an other Bloomberg gift that keeps on giving.
Lots of monies that is to a select few.
The same mayor created the sitting area around Times Square, clogging the avenues with traffic.
In response to normal people not getting on board with his congestion price scheme.
We should also mention is spite of term limits he was able to get around the peoples' will and serve a 3rd term.
The same jerks that build these bike lanes or vote for them are also building parking garages for 220 cars in super congested area that will also be "developed" with malls.
Follow the money people.
Anonymous Sergey Kadinsky said...
I don't think that bike lanes are entirely related to gentrification. I live in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, which has bike lanes on Jewel Avenue, 164th Street, and 73rd Avenue. I have yet to see thickly bearded heavily tattooed white youths with manly hair buns riding fixed gears in my neighborhood. Most of the bikers I've seen seem as middle-class as the rest of my neighbors, and delivery people too.
Those bike lanes in Kew Gardens Hills / Fresh Meadows were put in 30 years ago...I think the issue is that the new bike lanes from the last decade or so are always being put in areas that are gentrifying at a frenetic pace.
I'm a pretty serious biker (it's not unusual for me to bike 100 miles a week during warm-ish weather) but I am seriously pissed off by these bike lanes for two reasons: they are being placed on streets that are not appropriate and encourage bad behavior from bikers in general. All the common sense rules that I was taught as a kid have been thrown out the window, such as: stopping at lights and stop signs; never passing a car on the right; signaling your intentions; and not putting yourself or other people in danger by being an idiot on your bike.
Paul Graziano
I don't get the fixed gear.....give me 15 speeds......
I like bike lanes and so does my Harley! Instead of getting stuck in traffic and overheating,i can now ride in hot weather! Time to sell my car.
Lots of bike haters here on Queens Crap.
Everyone knows that riding on the sidewalk is illegal but bikes ridding in the street
have the same status as motor vehicles. Try to remember this the next time you honk, or tell a bike rider to get off the road.
I seen the bike lanes by Jewel going into Flushing Meadows, it's like dead man's curve, well dead man's merge. And the city painted bike lanes in Old Howard Beach that were totally unnecessary because there is ample room to ride, and they are already faded out
@ GtheA
I wrote the previous tirade in a hurry with fury, I will be more careful next time. I knew I should have left that paragraph out.
Blaming bike lanes for pedestrian/cyclist deaths is like blaming guns for mass shootings.
Bike lanes don't kill people after all.
Bike lanes as tools of gentrification? That's almost like Republican legislators saying that the northeast elite liberals ride mass transit.
Bike lanes are great for using up excess paint. I love tooling along in my little narrow car lane looking at all the funny pictures on the side of the road. It's like playing Super Mario, in fact I start hearing funny little noodly music every time one of these bike advocates opens their mouths!
*Lots of bike haters here on Queens Crap.*
I don't know about that.
Biking and bike lanes are not a bad idea. How they came about is a bad idea.
It was revenge from a pompous politician that his congestion pricing scheme was chucked by the voters.
Heck I own 3 bikes, one is folding bike that I love and goes in the trunk of my car.
Absurd as it may seem, and the way these marketing types think, it's clearly directing policies in this city. It's a certainty that types like Dick Mack have access to city hall via those independent advisers that were previously covered on this site.
It's not about safety or even conservative or liberal pandering. This is about the bottom line for these developers and the profiteers of the gentrification pandemic.
If there is more money to be made, even at the expense,disenfranchisement and displacement of the middle class and working poor, touting bike lanes and bobo poser fixed gear bikers to artificially inflate rents and property values is not silly at all.
We grew up riding on the street following all of the traffic regulations.
Follow the rules of the road!
WTF do you need special bike lanes/lines for???
Just a bunch of statist bureaucrats trying to justify their existence and wasting more of your hard earned tax dollars in the process...
Hey Crapper
can someone post the Transportation Alternatives financials?
I imagine that they are a non for profit, and their records SOULD be public
we need to shed some light on this
It is just a matter of time...be patient....these pesky bike lanes will ultimately, be removed at the same tax payers' expense that put them in there. City Bike almost went bankrupt. They will in the future. This is just a fad. NYC is not Amsterdam , Holland, where people are used to biking and act more mature and civilized. Roller derby mentality bikers here have caused more injuries than can be imagined. Ask any nurse who does triage in a hospital ER.
If you are going to allow bikes , as a substitute for adequate mass transit, then bikers should be required to pay insurance and have small metal license plates affixed to their bike vehicles. I'd like to know who rode me down, and have their insurance pay my medical fees.
Then, I am for continued biking! A bike is not a kid's toy. These bikers insist that bikes are a serious means of transportation. I agree. But , until now, they are the only vehicles that aren't required to be licensed.
NYC has always pandered to yuppie gentrifyers. They can accomplish what NYC wants, to legally remove the troublesome minorities who have held valuable real estate for too long in their view. There used to be a phrase in the sixties..."Urban renewal. Black removal".
That is still in play thanks to dumb hipsters willing to pay astronomical rents. Money talks. Minorities and poorer folk walk.
There are bike lanes in Astoria that add to the street congestion. Half of the car extends into the bike lane because the car lane wasn't large enough to include a bike lane in the first place, but oh, it's so much safer!
A few months back I was in an ER and there was a gentleman who was so banged up, he was almost unrecognizable. Listening to his fiancée tell the story, he was hit by someone on a bike. Lots of asshole bikers out there. Do we forget the story of the asshole who ran over and killed a woman in Central Park then blamed his lack of brakes on his $10k bike? A lot of these people should be regulated as a driver would.
A legal question: Is a biker "required" to use a bike lane if there is one?
Who Wanted "Transportation Alternatives" Financials?
http://www.transalt.org/about/financial
Yeah...so why are all the donor's names blank?
Paul knows his stuff, but he's incorrect on the bike lanes on Jewel over the park. Those are maybe two years old.
Paul's usually right, but the jewel-69th bike lanes over the park are two years old max.
As I said in an earlier post that was rejected. Are we really that thin-skinned? Oh please.
Are we really that impatient that we can't wait a few hours to see our comment get posted? Get a grip, pal.
"Do we forget the story of the asshole who ran over and killed a woman in Central Park then blamed his lack of brakes on his $10k bike? A lot of these people should be regulated as a driver would."
I didn't, and this is what this reckless prick did weeks later, and I can attest he does this habitually since all bikers do it (I'm going to get reamed for this, but I always stop and look before I run it way before it was called the Idaho stop). It's a shame a woman had to die because of some social network competition.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3100853/Cyclist-killed-CBS-executive-s-wife-Central-Park-year-spotted-blowing-red-lights-son-handlebars.html
As for it being required to use the lanes, I actually got a ticket for not riding in the 6th avenue lane on the right side of the street in the 90's, which the city has yet to repaint! (Fun Fact, that was one of the first painted bike lanes along with the one on Broadway in midtown, they weren't green and were very practical, and it did not steal parking spaces).
Eventually, these will be lanes will be exploited for ticket quotas, although as with the app food delivery bikers, I really don't see any enforcement that will cause any inconvenience and hardship for people aka fixed bikers with disposable income that are willing to piss away their money on enormous rents and overpriced artisan fast food and starbucks.
And I never liked those pods at T.A, Do we need Wikileaks to find out their donors? And did they blank out that info recently in light of these negative reports? Something stinks here.
Anonymous JQ LLC said...
I wrote the previous tirade in a hurry with fury, I will be more careful next time. I knew I should have left that paragraph out.
LOL. How else do you write? We get it. You're mad. But if you want a bit more credibility for your rants you should make a habit to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
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