Because the DeBlasio administration is all about the little people

From DNA Info:

Since he started his $205,180-a-year job, Silver has had sitdowns with Bette Midler, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Donald Trump, billionaire real estate investor Douglas Durst and the wife of a Russian oligarch to discuss their pet park projects, according to his daily schedules.

But Silver's schedules show that he held scores of meetings with heads of powerful nonprofits, wealthy donors, lobbyists and celebrities while he only had five meetings with local community groups.

It's amazing what a little money can buy

From The Brooklyn Paper:

The developer behind a plan to build apartments at the former Domino Sugar factory spent at least $100,000 courting Williamsburg community groups that later supported controversial plans to allow residential construction at the industrial site, The Brooklyn Paper has learned.

Community Preservation Corporation Resources — which is fighting to avoid foreclosing on the massive waterfront plot where it hopes to build 2,200 apartments and retail space — doled out donations of between $9,000 and $30,000 to organizations that subsequently backed the Domino project from February 2008 to December 2009, months before its campaign to rezone the site, court filings reveal.

The currently cash-strapped developer says the donations, which it calls “public reputation” money, simply prove that it is invested in the neighborhood. But attorney and civic watchdog Norman Siegel said the donations suggest an instance of quid pro quo.

“If the developer was giving community groups money five or 10 years before their mission, that would be one thing, but if the developer is giving money for the first and perhaps the last time, it raises the question whether the donor is buying recipients support and it raises questions about the community groups themselves,” said Siegel.

Our Lady of Loreto will be spared

From the Daily News:

David has beaten Goliath in Brownsville.

A coalition of community activists, politicians and an Italian-American group is celebrating after the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn this week changed its mind about demolishing Our Lady of Loreto Church, sources said.

"It means we're going to finally serve the needs of the community," said Patricia Deans, 69, director of the Brownsville Heritage Center, which helped lead the fight against tearing down the church, located on Sackman and Pacific Sts.

Deans and others have recommended the church be renovated and converted into a community center - an approach the diocese has decided to take, according to sources briefed on the decision.

"The neighborhood needs this. ... There's no community center here; this would be the first," said Deans.

The 102-year-old church, once a pillar in the former Italian-American neighborhood, has been closed for two years. The diocese wanted to tear it down and let a nonprofit developer build 88 units of affordable housing on the site.

But a group of activists proposed an alternative $21 million plan that called for converting the church into a community center and building 102 units of affordable housing.

And the Landmarks Preservation Commission should be taking action any day now...

Bar association comes out against community bribery

From the NY Observer:

The Association of the Bar of New York City doesn't seem to think all that highly of the process of landlords cutting formal, non-standardized deals with community groups—known as Community Benefits Agreements—to win approvals for planned developments.

CBAs proliferated in recent years, particularly in the late real estate boom, as community groups and elected officials rushed to try to wrest concessions and mitigations from developers who may or may not be financially prepared to shower a bounty on the community. The use of CBAs has been criticized, in part because of the somewhat arbitrary manner in which they are formed (there is no standard for which groups end up being signatories in a CBA or participate in the negotiations with a developer, for instance), and the offerings from developers may not necessarily benefit the larger public interest, but rather just assuage a certain small constituency that happens to be negotiating the CBA.

CBAs have popped up at Atlantic Yards, Columbia University's planned West Harlem expansion, and recently at the Kingsbridge Armory development in the Bronx, which was voted down by the City Council after the requirement of a "living" wage became a make-or-break for the elected officials involved.

The well-researched Bar Association's report piles on more criticism and suggests that the tit-for-tat linking of a council land-use approval with a CBA is improper, if not illegal, given that developers are effectively buying zoning changes by paying certain community groups.