Three more perished in basement apartments in Queens

 

NY Daily News 

Thirteen doomed New Yorkers, all but two trapped inside flash-flooded basement apartments, were killed when the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida unleashed a lethal summer storm across a rain-soaked city, authorities said Thursday.

The dead, including an autistic 14-month-old boy and an 86-year-old woman, became victims of catastrophic flooding after the devastating weather system dumped record-breaking rain on the boroughs.

Eleven of the fatalities occurred in six incidents in Queens. The other two fatalities died in separate incidents in Brooklyn.

Neighbors of those who died recounted horrifying tales of basements flooded from floor to ceiling in the blink of an eye, with the victims helpless to escape the surging waters.

The tiniest victim, little Lobsang Lama, perished with his immigrant parents inside their Queens basement home after they were trapped by fast-rising floodwaters. His father Ang Lama, 50, and mother Mingma Sherpa, 48, were also killed as the deadly flooding filled their Woodside home — and even the first-floor apartment above.

“The baby was so cute,” said the little boy’s grief-stricken teacher Martha Suarez after arriving Thursday morning for her daily session with the child at the family’s home on 64th st. and Laurel Hill Blvd.

“Just a happy boy, very nice family ... They didn’t call me, they didn’t cancel me, so I was coming as usual.”

The 53-year-old Suarez burst into tears, taking deep breaths, after arriving to find the family apartment where she started work this week blocked off by police tape and surrounded by the media.

“This is too hard for me,” she said, adding the family was originally from Nepal.

Yankee Stadium parking garage debacle worsens

Photo from Daily News

From Crains:

The last-place New York Yankees aren’t the only struggling enterprise in the Bronx. Documents show the net loss on the municipal-bond financed parking garages outside Yankee Stadium widened last year to $31.2 million.

Bronx Parking Development Co. issued $237.6 million of municipal bonds in 2007 through New York City’s Industrial Development Agency to build three garages and renovate two others.

The garages and five parking lots, which have about 8,700 public spaces, have suffered as more fans take public transportation to the Major League Baseball games and drivers balk at paying $25 to $35 to park. In June 2015 fewer than 10% of fans attending Yankees games parked in the garages, according to bond filings.

How much will Fresh Direct pay back?

From the Queens Courier:

As online grocer FreshDirect is getting ready to pack up and exit Long Island City, the company is listing its massive Queens waterfront facility for sale.

FreshDirect has hired Cushman & Wakefield to sell its facility at 23-30 Borden Ave. ahead of its move to the South Bronx, which was approved last year.

Based on this article, it seems that Fresh Direct is trying to sell before they even have the rest of their subsidies in hand and opposition growing.

They agreed to stay till 2025, and the NYCIDA is supposed to have been monitoring them every year.

Funny how in 1999 in their application to IDA, they claimed more full time jobs than what's currently listed in their NYS ESD application for the $10 million.

So, will FD have to pay back the subsidies they got to fix up that space?

Fresh Direct Inc. f/k/a Gourmet Holdings, LLC
ID: 92407
Awarding Agency: IDA
Address: 23-30 Borden Avenue
Borough: Queens
Block: 68
Lot: 38
Subsidy Program: Industrial Incentive
Start Date: 12/08/1999
End Date: 06/30/2025
Jobs at the start of the deal: -
Jobs projected: 160
Current jobs FTE: 2650
Part-time permanent jobs: 76
Part-time temp. jobs: 0
Full-time permanent jobs: 2612
Full-time temp. jobs: 0
Contract employees: 0
Construction jobs: 0
Health Benefit full-time?: Y
Health Benefit part-time?: N
Percent of employees living in NYC: 78
Total value of subsidy: $5,214,191
Amount used to date: $3,149,480
Recapture amount: $0
Penalty: 0.00
Data source fiscal year: 2013
Bond Issuance: $69473
Value of Energy Benefit FY 11: $0.00
REAP FY 11: $0.00
CEP FY 11: $0.00

Fresh Direct really got a sweetheart deal

Very interesting post over at Atlantic Yards Report:

ESD is about to give Fresh Direct a $9 million grant and a $1 million loan to move/expand from Long Island City to the South Bronx.

That's on top of $10.5 million from the New York City Industrial Development Authority and $1 million from the New York State Department of Transportation and $5 million in New Markets Tax Credit Equity.

Add $15 million from the investment fund Brightwood Capital, $40 million in the company itself, and a whopping $84,168,000 in an EB-5 loan.

Unmentioned are previous promises (which may have been adjusted) of $18.9 million in state Excelsior tax credits; $4 million in state energy grants and incentives; up to $1 million in vouchers for the purchase of electric vehicles; about $74 million in city sales tax exemptions, mortgage recording tax deferral, and real estate tax exemptions; $4.9 million in city energy benefits; $1 million capital grant from Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation; and a $3 million loan and $500,000 capital grant from the Borough President

Let's put aside the strangeness of the city and state subsidizing a cross-borough move based on a perceived threat from New Jersey, an unlikely base for a delivery service that needs quick access to Manhattan.

Or that Fresh Direct is moving after having gotten subsidies to stay in Queens through 2025.

Or that neighbors (see South Bronx Unite) pose some heavy concerns about the project's environmental impacts, and that if the promised job total is not reached, there's no "clawback provision" to recover subsidies. (See Good Jobs New York timeline.)

The really strange thing is the reliance, according to ESD Board Materials (p, 51ff.), on the EB-5 immigrant investor program, in which foreign millionaires, mostly from China, park $500,000 in a purportedly job-creating investment, get green cards for themselves and their families, and later get their money back. (In this case, they're getting a relatively high--for EB-5--rate of 4.5%.)

The developer gets cheap capital. The public is supposed to get 10 jobs for each investor.

According to promotional material supplied almost surely by the New York City Regional Center, the private investment pool set up to market EB-5 investments (and reap fees), the project would not be $166 million in total, but $208 million.

That's not the only misleading part. EB-5 funding is said to make up just 40% of the project, rather than more than 50%.

And Fresh Direct is said to be providing the rest of the funds, which is clearly not true.

Developers get all the breaks

From the Village Voice:

Remember that $328 million subsidy for a shopping mall and skyscraper being developed by the Related Companies? Well, as expected, the city's Industrial Development Agency went ahead and approved the massive giveaway despite questions about its propriety.

The 25-year tax exemption comes on top of a $106 million tax break for another skyscraper on the site. The project is also getting $3 billion in city bonds to extend the No. 7 subway line. The snail's pace of building the platform which will undergird the 13.3 million-square-foot project has already cost the city more than $100 million in taxes it expected to have collected by now.

This latest subsidy will force the city to pump yet more money to meet the debt obligations of the subway bonds. As as we previously wrote, it's a break from a previous Bloomberg era policy of denying subsidies for shopping malls.

City officials insist the subsidy is "consistent" with the original 2006 Hudson Yards plan and necessary because of the size of the project. In remarks before the IDA board, a Related official called the tax breaks "indispensable" to the project and insisted the area was "underutilized."

However, property values are rising in the area, once again raising the question of why yet another tax break is needed for an area likely to blossom just from market forces.

More city-sponsored corporate welfare

From the Daily News:

Manhattan Beer Distributors will receive tax breaks worth nearly $24 million from the Industrial Development Agency to buy and renovate four parcels of land in Hunts Point. The company expects to add at least 25 jobs at the site within three years of opening its new headquarters, in 2013.

Overshadowed by a food fight over $83.5 million in tax breaks and grants for Fresh Direct at the Harlem River Rail Yards, the smaller package calls for Manhattan Beer to spend $60 million on land, renovations and equipment.

CEO Simon Bergson said the project will allow the firm to grow without leaving the Bronx, where it set up shop in 1979. Manhattan Beer is currently based on Walnut Ave. in Port Morris.

Manhattan Beer currently operates distribution sites in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Wyandanch on Long Island and Suffern in Rockland County. It plans to shift routes from Brooklyn to Queens and the Bronx.

Its new headquarters will boast 620 jobs after three years, with 528 relocated from Walnut Ave., 67 relocated from Brooklyn and 25 new, according to the New York City Economic Development Corp. EDC President Seth Pinsky heads the IDA.

Manhattan Beer will pay its new full-time workers $29,400 a year on average, plus benefits, according to IDA documents. The firm threatened to look for property outside the city when it requested public benefits.

A lot of property is off the tax roll

From the NY Post:

A new analysis of the city's property-tax rolls found that religious institutions, wealthy private colleges, hospitals and other nonprofits -- and even Madison Square Garden -- are exempt from an astonishing $13.5 billion in property taxes.

The Independent Budget Office, which released the review yesterday, reported that, just in the last two years, an extra $1 billion in potential property taxes were placed off limits to city tax collectors.

"Some of the breaks are permanent, and may actually be more than estimated," the IBO said, noting that the city's tax assessors don't have much reason to boost values on buildings they know to exempt.

The lengthy list of those living the zero-tax life ranged from nonprofit institutions ($2 billion in exemptions) to the MTA ($751 million) to Madison Square Garden, still enjoying the fruits of a sweet deal reached during the Koch administration that's now worth $15 million a year.

Incentives for economic development offered through the Industrial Development Agency consumed $368 million in property taxes that might otherwise have been added to the city treasury.

Hospitals and other medical facilities were spared more than $515 million in taxes.

Private schools, colleges and universities saved $430 million in tax levies.

The city itself made the list since it owns more than 7,500 properties that could generate $5 billion in taxes in private hands.

Money for nothing

From the NY Post:

These jobs are worth millions.

Nearly 600 city businesses got $262 million in tax breaks in exchange for creating or providing jobs -- but some are not making good on their pledges.

The companies -- many of them Fortune 500 firms headquartered in the Big Apple -- had created about 20,000 jobs as of 2008, according to self-reported figures.

But that's a fraction of the nearly 100,000 they had promised to deliver as part of long-term deals with the Industrial Development Agency, which offers tax incentives and exemptions to keep companies here.

Good-government groups are critical of the IDA deals, citing a lack of transparency and inadequate oversight.

2008 was the first year that the IDA-aided companies logged their annual results directly to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is pushing legislation that would increase oversight of IDA's self-generated reports.

The city's Economic Development Corp., which oversees the IDA, said it requires companies to annually detail their hiring. But the agency doesn't audit what the companies report.

Score another one for the Bloomberg Administration!

From the Daily News:

The developer of the Yankee stadium parking system is on the verge of defaulting on $237 million in tax-exempt bonds issued by the city's Industrial Development Agency.

So many fans are shunning the network of 9,000 stadium parking spaces that revenue for the first half of 2010 was only $4.8 million - half of what was projected - according to a stunning financial disclosure by Bronx Parking Development.

The firm, which is independent of the Yankees and has existed for only three years, warned bondholders in an Aug. 18 letter that it currently has "insufficient funds" from operations to pay a $6.8 million interest bill due Oct. 1, and another $6.8 million due next April. And despite an additional $100 million in city and state grants it received on top of IDA bonds, Bronx Parking has failed for three years to pay its annual rent tab of $3.2 million to the city. It also has yet to pay any property taxes for the 21 acres of publicly owned land it is leasing to operate the parking system.

According to Bronx Parking, the garages have suffered from several unforseen problems:

* More than 800 fans are heading on game days to the Gateway Shopping Mall five blocks from the stadium, where they pay only $10 to park instead of the stiff $23 self-parking fee ($35 for valet service) at the stadium garages.

* A new Metro North station has lured many fans (about 5,000 per game) to ride the train.

* The Yankees prepaid for only 190 parking spaces this year for their season ticket holders instead of the 900 spaces they prepaid last year.

The firm's announcement sparked an immediate drop in the trading value of its bonds. It also sent city officials scurrying to come up with a solution to what could be the biggest default of an IDA bond that anyone can remember.

The Bloomberg administration selected Bronx Parking in 2007 to build and run the garages after the Yankees demanded a minimum of 9,000 spaces to stay in the Bronx.

Johnny plans to reform EDC, IDA & DOE

From the Queens Campaigner:

As comptroller, Liu said he would quickly begin pushing his agenda for the office and making any necessary changes.

He listed several city agencies he would move quickly to reform, including the Economic Development Corp., Department of Education and Industrial Development Agency.

“Between the EDC and the IDA, a lot of substantial giveaways go to corporations and developers and there is not always a clear benefit to the taxpayers,” he said.