State Constitution Evoked in Lawsuit Against Two Bridges Luxury Public Housing Mega-Development

 

StreetsblogNYC

A controversial development that has been tied up in court for more than six years ago is now facing yet another lawsuit from residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown — this time arguing that the Two Bridges mega-project will infringe upon the new constitutional right to clean air and water in a low-income community of color that already suffers from high rates of asthma.

The latest lawsuit was filed last month by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of 12 plaintiffs from the Lower East Side and Chinatown, and Council Member Christopher Marte, who represents the area.

Marte says his constituents face enough pollution and exhaust from the FDR Drive, and that construction of the planned towers along the East River would result in more fumes, while also unearthing toxic chemicals from old petroleum tanks that sit under one of the development lots. 

“This construction is gonna really hurt a lot of the people who historically have health issues. This area is an environmental justice neighborhood that’s already had to bear the brunt of development,” said Marte. “Their whole livelihood, where they go to school, where they go for a walk is going to be a construction site.”

But is a super-dense development atop an already toxic site what the so-called “green amendment” to the state constitution was meant to block … or to allow?

Just one year ago, environmental attorneys and activists pushed hard for Proposition 2 — also known as the Green Amendment — on the November ballot, arguing that it would give New Yorkers legal standing to stop the environmental harms caused by highway expansions or the placement of waste transfer stations. The referendum passed overwhelmingly, supported by 69 percent of state voters.

For many, the purpose was obvious: stop environmental degradation.

“Say there was a defined pollution hotspot with a heavy volume of diesel-truck traffic — the community could petition to the City Council to ask for relief,” Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates NY, told Streetsblog at the time. “The government would then have to weigh [the] individual right to breathe air that doesn’t cut lives short or make people sick. If they ignore the plea, people can say, ‘I’m taking you to court. I think you’re violating my right to clean air.’”

The lawsuit against the Two Bridges project is the first in the five boroughs to cite the green amendment, though others have already been filed upstate, including against the permitting of a waste transfer station in upstate Cayuta.

Similar green amendments exist now only in Pennsylvania and Montana, but there’s been no parallel suit against a development project in those states, according to Maya van Rossum, founder of the Pennsylvania-based Green Amendments For The Generations, which helped write and pass New York’s law.

As such, there’s no way to know if courts will rule against urban development — which by definition is far more polluting than, say, an open field of trees — or rule in favor of urban development on the grounds that dense housing with limited parking is far better for the environment than suburban sprawl, over which there is very little environmental oversight.

To lawyer Jack Lester, who is representing the plaintiffs, the green amendment is clear.

“It enshrines in law the right to every citizen of New York State to have environmental justice,” said Lester, who is also suing on behalf of plaintiffs hoping to stop the SoHo/NoHo rezoning. “The development at that location will destroy both air quality and statutory mandates for air and sunshine. It will set a precedent that developers must abide by constitutional rights.”

But others are pushing back, saying the lawsuit is part of a kitchen-sink effort to defeat an affordable housing project and, worse, could set a dangerous precedent for other much-needed projects. And as feared, that it’s a perversion of the amendment by NIMBYs who are not invoking it in good faith. 

Words from Tenantnet who sent this here:

Jack Lester? Is he even still alive?
Guess where DSA is on this? (I'm blocked so I can't see it-JQ) What about Lincoln Restler? What about Cea?
Of course, this BS is in TA's Streetsblog

Correction: Streetsblog is run by Open Plans. And it's hilarious and also very expected that this yellow journalism digital rag (since when did they do stories about real estate, oh wait, this is also about the parked car menace they bloviate about) and the Demorcat Fauxcialists of America would support something like this that's highly antithetical to what their alleged environmental platforms are about. Didn't know the Green New Deal included cloud piercing iron and glass luxury beanstalks.-JQ LLC

 

Hi Ho Silver

 

 

 NY Daily News

Corrupt ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver returned home to the Lower East Side on Tuesday, appearing frail and gray as he entered his apartment complex in a wheelchair after spending eight months and eight days in an upstate federal prison.

Silver, 77, was released by the federal Bureau of Prisons over the adamant objections of prosecutors amid claims that he is in poor health.

He arrived at his longtime home in the Hillman Housing Co-op on Grand St. at 5:10 p.m., clad in sweats and a gray baseball cap as he was pushed along a wheelchair ramp into one of the complex’s buildings.

“He needs privacy. He needs to recover health-wise,” said Rabbi Akiva Homnick, president of Pidyon Shvuyai Yisroel, a Jewish prisoner support group. Homnick spoke to Silver after his release.

Asked how Silver is doing, Homnick said: “How could one be doing when you endure solitary confinement for a good chunk of 6½ months? It was quarantine, quarantine, quarantine, imprisoned in solitary confinement.”

“He is stoked to return,” Homnick added.

Burning Two Bridges from de Blasio's "affordable" housing program

 NY Daily News

The L in LES doesn’t stand for luxury.

A state judge barred a developer from building four high-rise towers that had been set to offer hundreds of pricey apartments.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron upheld a previous ruling finding that the project violated local zoning rules.

Activists had sued the city, which approved the project on the East River between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges in 2016. The proposed project included 2,800 units, and one of the towers would have been more than 1,000 feet tall.

“It would drive up the rent and more people would be facing displacement,” said Zishun Ning, an organizer for the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, one of the groups that sued the city.

He singled out Mayor de Blasio, who expected the project to include affordable units and said in 2018, “The legalities made quite clear that this development could go forward."

“With this decision, we’re very excited to prove that the city is wrong, Mayor de Blasio is wrong,” Ning told the Daily News. “He’s with the luxury developers. He represents their interests.”

De Blasio declined to comment on the suit. A city Law Department spokesman said, “We are evaluating next steps including whether to appeal this decision.”

Ning hopes the developer will go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan more in keeping with the feel of the nabe, which is full of walkups that have long been home to immigrants.

A spokesman for builders including L + M Development and CIM Group said they’ll appeal.

Too bad Alicia Glen was not around to see this, maybe she lit a candle for her bestie who was behind this tower pestilence. Bet current HPD commissioner Vicki Been has a lot of explaining to Glen's old employer Goldman Sachs.

Manhattan...it's not Queens

From DNA Info:

Elected officials said they will bring a lawsuit against the city if it doesn't halt a trio of skyscrapers slated to rise on the Two Bridges waterfront.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilwoman Margaret Chin on Friday said they will urge the Department of City Planning to reject an application submitted by developers to build the residential towers within a three-block radius, urging the agency to instead put the developments through a more rigorous review process.

But if the city elects to approve the application, which is now making its way through a comparatively lax review, they will resort to legal action, said the politicians.

"To the members of the City Planning Commission, we have a simple message: if you rule against this community, we will use every tool at our disposal to make sure the voices of the people are heard," Chin said at a rally near the development sites.

JDS Development Group plans to build a 77-story tower at 247 Cherry St., while Two Bridges Associates plans two towers on a shared base at 260 South St. Starrett Development is planning a 62-story residence at 259 Clinton St.

Neighbors fear the collective developments will negatively impact their quality of life by blocking views and natural light, overcrowding an area with sparse transportation and open space options, and driving up property values by bringing hundreds of market-rate units to the largely low-income neighborhood.

Brewer and Chin last year urged DCP to put the towers through its rigorous, seven-month Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which would require a review from the local community board, borough board, city council and the mayor himself before going to a vote.

The agency shot down the request, stating the towers are considered "minor modifications" because they do not require new waivers or zoning actions.

Instead, the developments are subjected only to a city-mandated environmental review process aimed at identifying and mitigating potential impacts they may have on the surrounding area.

Could you imagine a Queens elected official even threatening something like this? Usually they just say, "Oh well, I tried" while they pocket scads of dough from the developer.

Being mobilized helps

From DNA Info:

The low-income communities of the Lower East Side and the Rockaways both suffered extensive damage from Superstorm Sandy four years ago.

But advocates on the Lower East Side were able to engage more effectively in post-storm resiliency efforts than their counterparts in Queens because they already had a robust network of community activism in place from years of fighting gentrification, according to a recently published study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice & the Graduate Center.

Researchers focused on the role of community organizations and being able to respond to the “climate change politics” of the city, which is increasingly important as the frequency of storms is expected to rise along with rising sea levels, noted Leigh Graham, John Jay environmental psychology professor and lead author of the study.

While both areas have high concentrations of public housing residents and low-income households, the Lower East Side’s pre-existing civic infrastructure of community based organizations and social services fighting against development pressures enabled residents to recover more quickly, according to researchers who spent six months interviewing community groups in the area and 18 months in the Rockaways.

The Rockaways, on the other hand, were at a disadvantage, not only because the area is more geographically isolated on the far edge of the city, but also because it’s more racially and economically segregated.

There’s a high concentration of poverty along the eastern part of the peninsula where the residents have suffered from decades of economic “malaise,” which in effect weakened and undermined their post-storm response, researchers found.

“The Lower East Side and the Rockaways had similar levels of exposure in terms of storm flooding,” Graham said, “but the Lower East Side groups were basically a partner in a lot of the resiliency efforts after the storm, in part because residents, who live there, have been fighting gentrification for 30 to 40 years and established a level of organization, trust and power, that they were able to get a seat at the table as important stakeholders.”

Community groups on the Rockaways did not have the same level of organization prior to the storm and remain more focused on meeting present economic needs than on pursing long-term resilience planning, she noted.

Smoking gun memo revealed

From Bowery Boogie:

The Department of Investigation, whose scathing report last week proved a mishandling by the de Blasio Administration in the Rivington House deed fiasco, released evidence late yesterday that the Mayor’s office deliberately covered up crucial information regarding the ongoing investigation.

Specifically, a deal memo from July 2014 that weighed the pros and cons of allowing the sale of the Rivington House nursing home and potential deed lifting that required use of the facility as a nonprofit. Take a look at “Option 2″ of the document (go to link),”transfer property to another nonprofit.” The advantage to keeping it so was listed as “maintaining property under city oversight and creates needed housing in a high value neighborhood.” But the drawback stated was “no revenue” presumably for the city.

The Allure Group purchased the Rivington House from VillageCare in 2015 for $28 million, paid the city $16.1 million to lift a restrictive deed, then sold the property to developers Slate Property Group, China Vanke Co., and Adam America Real Estate for $116 million earlier this year.

meanwhile, de Blasio was cracking jokes about it while attending the DNC.

Art gallery building unstable

From NBC:

A landmark building on the Lower East Side was evacuated Monday evening after firefighters responding to a smoke alarm noticed floors were shaking and beams were cracked inside, setting off concerns over possible instability, officials say.

Crews were called to The Angel Orensanz Center at 172 Norfolk St. at about 7:30 p.m. for a smoke alarm going off, according to FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Hodgens on the scene. Firefighters determined the alarm was set off by smoke from cooking.

While they were investigating, firefighters were notified that the floors above were shaking, Hodgens said. Firefighters discovered several beams were cracked, signaling a possibly unstable structure, and immediately began evacuating the building.

About 500 people had to leave the building.

The building is a former synagogue that was restored as an art gallery and performance space in the 1980s, according to the venue's website.

City seeks to develop huge Lower East Side space

From Crains:

The city officially launched its search Wednesday for a developer to transform more than six acres of underutilized land on the Lower East Side into a vibrant, mixed-use development. The massive Seward Park development is five decades in the making and is the largest redevelopment of fallow, city-owned land south of 96th Street in Manhattan.

A request for proposals to build on nine city-owned sites, located near the intersection of Delancey and Essex streets at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, was issued by the city Economic Development Corp. and city Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The city is looking for a developer to build a 1.65-million-square-foot development that will include 1,000 apartments—half of which will be permanently affordable—plus commercial space and public space. There is also space reserved for a possible new school. Proposals are due May 6.

"Today marks another historic milestone for the Lower East Side generally and Seward Park in particular," said Seth Pinsky, president of the city Economic Development Corp., in a statement. "The release of this RFP is the culmination of an unprecedented community planning process, and we look forward to receiving a robust set of proposals that will ultimately reintegrate these sites back into this vital community."

The redevelopment of the sites, now parking lots, has been controversial for years. The sites known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area were home to tenements that were demolished by the city in the late 1960s. There were several different plans to build on the site that were not well-received by the community and city officials prior to the latest plan, which was unanimously approved by the City Council in October. In the past, the community and city could not agree on how much affordable housing should be included in the project.

Giant development project planned for LES

From Crains:

Lower East Side residents and city officials have spent more than four decades sparring over what should go on five fallow city-owned lots, totaling seven acres, just south of Delancey Street near the Williamsburg Bridge. But courtesy of a 2008 rezoning, a few determined community leaders and many compromises, it looks as though the area will finally be transformed into a huge complex with housing, as well as retail and office space. It would be the largest redevelopment project on underutilized city-owned land south of 96th Street.

The proposal for what is known as the Seward Park Mixed-Use Development Project is likely to pass its first hurdle May 22, when Community Board 3 is expected to give the plan its overwhelming approval.

If all goes well, the five surface parking lots will be turned into a 1.65 million-square-foot mixed-use development comprised of 40% commercial and 60% residential units, with roughly 900 apartments, half of which will be affordable. It is expected to be approved by the necessary city officials and the City Council by this fall. The city would then likely seek a developer early next year. Only then can the site begin to catch up with the area north of Delancey Street, which in recent years has blossomed with the arrival of trendy shops and restaurants, hip bars and even a luxury condo tower called Blue.