NY1 tackles Jamaica garbage problem

From NY1:

It's unsightly, but not uncommon to see garbage piled high in and around 107th Avenue near Sutphin Boulevard.

"Every time I see this it makes me more and more frustrated," one resident said.

The area is littered with tires, mattresses and all other types of trash.

Councilman Ruben Wills (D-Jamaica) said the residents are ultimately to blame.

"These are people from our community dumping," Wills said.

The dumping started more than a decade ago in abandoned lots, but it got significantly worse during the recent economic downturn, when Jamaica became the epicenter of the city's growing number of housing foreclosures.

People now litter and drop garbage on the streets and sidewalks as well as the numerous vacant lots. Some residents say the problem is spreading to other areas with very little crackdown from the Department of Sanitation.

The department has said that it is doing its part to maintain the area.

But longtime residents who have been meeting informally to try to find solutions to the problem said not enough is being done.

NYC in worse financial trouble?

From the NY Post:

New Yorkers are hurtling toward a very steep fall off the fiscal cliff. Depression-level job losses and record taxes on personal income are on the horizon, according to a bruising new economic report.

With the city’s huge concentration of high earners and major government spending, the drop could devastate the local economy, according to the nonprofit American Action Forum, a DC-based conservative policy institute.

New York region could lead the nation with:
* Up to 1 million-plus direct job losses in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — 614,000 alone in New York state.
* Marginal tax rates crossing 50 percent in New York and New Jersey.
* Sharply higher taxes on small business.

Other experts also warn of imminent danger. “If we can’t resolve this, it pushes us into a recession,” said Jim Diffley, chief regional economist at IHS Global Insight. “It’s a massive contraction all at once. And it negatively affects New York and the northeastern states more than others.”

Making lemonade out of lemons?

From Huffington Post:

A remnant of the Great Recession is hiding behind a paint-splattered wall in Chinatown, in an empty lot where a building was supposed to rise into the sky.

The plywood barely conceals the mess behind it: a pile of cement blocks and tangled metal and empty bottles of beer. It is, in short, exactly the sort of place that draws the ire of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

"There's a lot of bad things that happen in stalled construction sites," says Stringer, whose office issued a report earlier this year cataloguing the more than 600 stalled sites that are scattered throughout New York City. "Especially if everybody sort of ignores the site and lets it grow in a very unpleasing way."

Instead of allowing these lots to become eyesores, some developers are coming up with creative ways to use them temporarily until construction can begin. Grow vegetables in milk crates? Sure. Sell doughnuts out of a shipping container? In New York City, where open space is a precious commodity, just about anything goes.

Work resumes on more stalled sites

From Crains:

As more projects were quietly restarted across the city last month, the number of stalled construction sites fell 8% from year-earlier levels to an average of 638, according to a recent New York Building Congress analysis released Wednesday. The group noted that the number of dormant sites in the five boroughs have now either decreased or remained steady for 11 consecutive months, a sign that the market is stabilizing.

The bad news is that the number of such sites is still 40% above the level recorded two years ago.

The total stalled sites, which include vacant lots where buildings were supposed to rise but no work was started, have an aggregate value of $1.3 billion, according to estimates from the city's Department of Finance. Nearly two-thirds of the stalled sites, 62% of them, are residential projects, according to the Building Congress.

The situation is at its worst in Brooklyn, which alone has 299 stalled sites, nearly half the citywide total. There, the number has fallen only a slightly below-average 6% from year-earlier levels. Queens appears to be faring best. There, the number of stalled sites dropped 14% to 131, in a performance nearly equaled by Staten Island, where the total fell 13% to 52. Bringing up the rear were Manhattan, where the number of stalled sites slipped 3% to 126, and the Bronx, where the number was unchanged at 30.

Poppenhusen in dire straits

From the Times Ledger:

The Poppenhusen Institute in College Point has been a fixture in the community for 143 years.

But even the oldest, most historic structures are often no match for an economic maelstrom, and the institute has fallen on hard times along with much of the rest of the nation.

The situation is becoming critical as the institute’s exhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifecutive director, Susan Brustmann, estimates that it needs to raise about $40,000 to $50,000 by next June in order to stay open.

So Brustmann is being proactive in order to ensure the best chances for the beloved site’s continuing to serve future generations as a museum and living piece of the area’s history. The institute, which is on the National Register and is landmarked by the city, raised $8,000 in July and August, and it has been awarded capital improvement for exterior renovations as well as the installation of elevators and handicapped-accessible bathrooms.

But the issue is bringing in money to pay for programs and operations and to foot the gas, electric and insurance bills.

They are toying with the idea of selling their roof as ad space.

Return of the squeegee men

From the Daily News:

Squeegee men, the aggressive panhandlers who wash your car windows whether you want them to or not, are back.

Armed with buckets and $5 squeegees, a squad of men waded into stalled Times Square traffic Sunday to lather up windshields, swipe them clean and beckon for tips from drivers - some annoyed by the intrusion.

A rare sight when the country's unemployment rate was a mere 5.7%, the reappearance of the crews is an in-your-windshield reminder of 9%-plus unemployment and the highest rate of poverty in 27 years.

For some, they're a powerful symbol that the busted economy is bringing back the bad old days.

Bloomberg had this to say in response:

"The Police Department has a lot to do, but we're not walking away from squeegee guys when they rear their heads ... with their buckets and sponge," he said.

Willets Point project a bust?

From the Times Ledger:

...today a survey of the Flushing area reveals that a series of large-scale development projects totaling several billion dollars has been approved to be built over the next several years.

But even the best-laid plans often end in the dustbin of history. Those high-profile projects are facing significant obstacles and may be scaled back significantly or never even break ground.

That prospect does not portend well for the future of New York City’s real estate and construction industries, the magnates of which are waiting to see if the Flushing boom turns out to be a bust before throwing big money at development proposals across the five boroughs. That increased focus on the neighborhood has cast Flushing as something of a bellwether for the city’s residential housing industry.

With the economy still depressed, several other major projects, including the city’s $3 billion proposal to overhaul Willets Point, have yet to emerge from the planning stages.

Several sources close to the Willets plan, which Bloomberg announced in May 2007, say the project faces massive uncertainty.

At least one builder plans to ask the Bloomberg administration to push the deadline for development proposals back several months. And three sources said few companies plan to submit proposals because the project is too unwieldy, inflexible and expensive to justify the risk during this time of financial uncertainty.

Is this guy for real?

From Crains:

The topic of whether New York City has been shortchanged by the 2010 census is certainly a hot button issue. The mayor continues to insist the census takers missed as many as 200,000 residents because they could neither count people in apartment buildings nor find immigrants who had no interest in being enumerated.

Now comes a very provocative piece by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, an expert on cities, which suggests the Bureau of the Census might be right.

Mr. Glaeser, in a piece on The New York Times' Economix blog, looked at the number of new housing units created in the city in the last decade. He notes that despite the supposed building boom, New York added only 170,000 new housing units in the 2000 decade, an increase of 5.3%.

Typically, he adds, population growth lags the number of new housing units by a couple of percentage points because household size is shrinking. He finds lots of evidence to support the idea that growth is in line with housing creation, which means the less-than-expected 2.1% increase is on the mark.

If true, the Bloomberg administration should start doing some hard thinking. In part, the housing shortfall is the result of the financial crisis that delayed major development initiatives at Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and Willets Point, to name only a few. The administration is not responsible for that.

Other administrations, however, would be considering measures to spur more construction, as Ed Koch did in the early 1980s. So far, the administration isn't interested in that approach; maybe it is time for a change in plan.

Why would we need more construction if many of the already built units are sitting empty? Why are taxpayers expected to foot any of the bills for Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and Willets Point - all private developments? How about tax incentives to get people to stay here instead of for developers who help drive them out?

An empty feeling

From New York Magazine:

An empty storefront is a bummer, especially when it sits for months, depleting the block of its vibrancy. “It doesn’t continue to provide the kind of animated street life that most people like about cities,” says urban planner Ethel Sheffer. Vacancies in older buildings have that effect, but when they’re found in new developments, the feeling is perhaps even more pronounced...

In Manhattan alone, at least 46 condo buildings built or converted in the past five years have 69 empty retail spaces, according to PropertyShark.com, and that’s not counting new rental towers. Brooklyn’s condo-fied neighborhoods have them, too.

The reasons for the lingering vacancies are manifold. Hobbled by the recession, the ground-floor retail market is still righting itself. The banks and Duane Reades of the world that once reliably colonized such spaces are today less acquisitive, say brokers, and discount-apparel retailers like Filene’s Basement and Daffy’s, which have stepped in to fill the vacuum, want pedestrian-heavy addresses—which wasn’t a prerequisite for the condo parts of these towers. Meanwhile, some merchants have taken the opportunity to trade up to previously unaffordable addresses, further hampering developments in less-proven locations.

Then there are the developers with suitors for their storefronts who choose to demur, lest retail tenants interfere with sales momentum. (In this market, condo buyers balk for reasons big and small.) For those going uncourted, slashing rents is a fix with risks. Condos are expensive to build, and that was especially so during the boom years, when all these buildings went up; since retail leases typically last a decade or more, it can make sense to wait for prices to turn...

That’s the business end; on a psychic level, these empty spaces follow a whole different math. Whereas an old boarded-up building, abandoned after its better days, speaks of a slow-motion subtraction, these luxury-wrapped shells are a reminder of an era of exponential promise suddenly cut short. The longer they sit unused the further away the fizzy times feel.

Ownership gains erased

From the Wall Street Journal:

The meltdown of the U.S. mortgage market and rising foreclosures have wiped out more homeowners than were created in the 2000-07 housing boom, some industry watchers say, the latest indication of the severity of the housing bust.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, 66.5% of Americans owned homes, down from 67.2% a year earlier and the lowest rate since the end of 1998, according the Census Bureau. During the boom, when easy credit made mortgages available with less regard for income or ability to pay, the ownership rate surged to a record 69.2% in 2004's second and fourth quarters and stayed near that level until the recession deepened.

Some industry watchers expect the rate to slip below 65% as the housing market meltdown forces millions more Americans to give up their homes.

That "shows how big the bubble was and how catastrophic the bursting has been," said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist with Capital Economics. "We have pretty much reversed all of the increases in the home-owner rate generated by the housing boom."

It will get worse before it gets better

From the NY Post/AP:

ALBANY — New York’s hard times just got harder.

The Paterson administration says closing the latest deficit may require cuts of perhaps 1 percent in every area including a midyear cut in school aid.

Budget Director Robert Megna says the $315 million shortfall in the current budget must be addressed by Dec. 31. That’s when Paterson’s term ends and Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, takes office.

In January, the state Senate may also be in Republican hands pending a recount of votes from Tuesday.

The state fiscal year ends March 31. The 2011-12 fiscal year is now projected to have a $9 billion deficit.

Megna says one reason for the latest deficit is that the poor economy has driven 4.9 million New Yorkers into the Medicaid health care system, compared to 4.2 million in 2007.

Newsflash: The economy still sucks

From Yahoo:

The recession put a 3.1 percent dent in the personal incomes of New York state residents, who endured their first full-year decline in more than 70 years, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Paychecks or net earnings tumbled 5.4 percent, while dividends, interest and rent slid 8.4 percent, to a grand total of nearly $908 billion, the state comptroller's report said.

Not only did New Yorkers' personal incomes fall "almost twice" as much as they did in the nation as a whole, but they have yet to recover to pre-recession levels, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

The drop occurred even though the job-destroying recession was milder in New York than in the rest of the country. One reason for the hit to New Yorker's pocketbooks is Wall Street's dominance among the state's employers; pay and job security are often highly volatile in the securities industry.

After the securities industry lost a record $54 billion in the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, federal bailouts and low interest rates helped it achieve record profits in 2009 of $61.4 billion, DiNapoli said.

This year, the companies' first-quarter profits of $10.1 billion were more than twice the $3.9 billion total in the second quarter -- but the more recent earnings were "in line with historic levels," DiNapoli said.

Though Wall Street went on a bit of a hiring spree in early 2010, these employers, whose earnings drive the city and state economies, have gone back to handing out pink slips, he said.

Hotel developer goes bust

From The Real Deal:

A developer that sought to build a Starwood Aloft Hotel in Long Island City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just over a month after its lender U.S. Bank won a $19.6 million judgment against it in state court.

The single-purpose entity Queens Plaza Development, based in Brooklyn, planned to build a 16-story hotel at 29-37 41st Avenue just north of Queens Plaza. However the weak economy made it impossible to get construction financing and the project stalled, papers filed last Wednesday in federal bankruptcy court in Brooklyn say.

"The debtor seeks the breathing spell of the bankruptcy process in order to… avoid any further state court litigation with respect to the property and to facilitate a sale of the property," in order to repay creditors, the papers say.

A real estate insider said the bankruptcy move could be a way to try and speed up the sale of the property [to anyone] through what can be a faster federal process compared to the drawn out foreclosure system in state court.

The bankruptcy papers provide an estimated value of Queens Plaza Development's assets at $11 million, made up almost entirely of the parcel of land. The company's liabilities were $16 million, which included secured claims of $15.6 million, the court papers said.

In April 2007, Queens Plaza Development borrowed $17.24 million for the purchase of the property, but was not able to repay the loan, the court documents indicate.

McMansions not wanted by most people

From MSNBC:

They've been called McMansions, Starter Castles, Garage Mahals and Faux Chateaus but here's the latest thing you can call them - History.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of references made to the "McMansion glut" and the "McMansion backlash," as more towns pass ordinances against garishly large homes, which are generally over 3,000 square feet and built very close together.

What sets a McMansion apart from a regular mansion, according to Wikipedia, are a few characteristics: They're tacky, they lack a definitive style and they have a "displeasingly jumbled appearance."

Well, count 2010 as the year the last nail was hammered into the McCoffin: In its latest report on home-buying trends, real-estate site Trulia declares: "The McMansion Era Is Over."

Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by Trulia said their ideal home size was over 3,200 square feet. Meanwhile, more than one-third said their ideal size was under 2,000 feet.

"That's something that would've been unbelievable just a few years back," said Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia. "Americans are moving away from McMansions."

Bloomberg should make up his mind already

From Courier-Life:

It has always amazed me how Mayor Mike couches every mandate with the “It’s better for you in the long run” rational. Like a benevolent father, he is always emptying out our pockets for our own good.

Bull-cocky. I don’t see the city in any less of a financial crisis as a result of his third term. In fact, a quick look shows that the “evil financial crisis” is still looming, unemployment rates are up; we’re still struggling to make ends meet; Con Edison’s rates are higher; water charges are higher; parking violations are higher; taxes on cigarettes are higher; real estate taxes are higher (even though real-estate prices are down); and sales tax on clothing will be reenacted.

To quote Elton John, “Livin’ in the city ain’t where it’s at.”

But Mayor Mike doesn’t want another term, so now term limits are OK.

To be fair, and on the flip side, thanks to Emperor Mike, our fat intake at restaurants has been curbed, our sidewalks are safer than ever before from second hand smoke, and we can sleep easy knowing that the mayor is on sodium patrol.

Not for nuthin’™ but I shudder to think what life would had been like had he not rescinded term limits from the get-go.

Renegade bus shelter project!

From the Queens Chronicle:

Residents gained useful skills and a chance to know their neighbors as many teamed up for a small-scale public project to install benches at Jamaica bus stops.

“In this recession, we were upset that the stimulus didn’t go directly to people who needed it most. So, since the government hasn’t brought the WPA back, we will,” said Christopher Robbins, outreach officer with the Work Projects Administration-2010.

On July 1, WPA opened an office at 90-26 161st St. in Jamaica where the group held a series of workshops to find out what kinds of projects were desired and needed. One idea that consistently came up was the installation of benches at area bus stops.

WPA gave seven residents, who would have otherwise been unemployed, $12 an hour to build two benches. One was installed on Parsons Boulevard near 88th Avenue and the other will serve as a back-up for the first. If it is determined that the second bench is not needed it will be placed at another location.

“After an hour of watching and filming it, people came over and sat down and said ‘This is great,’” recalled Robbins. “But they felt we needed a way to permanently affix it or else it would get stolen. We wanted to play the trust game, but people kept saying it would disappear.”

The WPA workers have taken the bench away while the group figures out a plan to make it more secure. It is considering bolting the bench to the concrete, but will consult the city’s Department of Transportation, to find out if that is the best method before moving forward.

However, involving the DOT may turn out to work against the WPA, since the group does not have permission to put the benches on city property.

“It is a renegade project in the sense that we are doing what we wish the government would do,” said Robbins “It gives average citizens a way to improve their neighborhood.”

Even if the city takes the bench away or it gets stolen, the project is not a total bust because it is what the bench symbolizes at least as much as its physical presence that is important.

It was an opportunity for community members to come together and make some money while learning skills that they would not have otherwise had, all while producing a product that benefits their neighborhood.

Revitalized housing suffering once more

From the NY Times:

Hundreds of buildings, from the South Bronx to central Brooklyn, whose renovation and rescue from ruinous debt were critical to the rebirth of blighted neighborhoods, are again in severe financial trouble. That poses a dilemma for the city, which began unloading the properties in the mid-1990s as part of an arduous effort to divest itself of thousands of decrepit buildings seized because of tax delinquencies.

Filled with unemployed tenants unable to make rent or mortgage payments and squeezed by soaring city fees, about 442 buildings are in serious default on property taxes and far behind on municipal bills.

As the number of imperiled buildings grows, the city, struggling with its own cash shortage, faces unappealing choices. Seizing the buildings is not an option. The city’s previous role as a master landlord was widely deemed a disaster, with many buildings locked in chronic states of disrepair.

Instead, housing officials must either force deadbeat owners to pay their debts, or else foreclose on the buildings and find new owners in a harsh real estate climate. A total of $140 million is owed on the buildings, and nearly half of them have arrears of at least $3,000 of debt per unit, according to the city’s housing department.

Many of the buildings are now slipping into the kind of shoddy conditions from which they had been saved.

While the debt-ridden buildings are found across the city, the most are clustered in Bedford-Stuyvesant and other parts of central Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Harlem. All are owned by private or nonprofit groups overseeing buildings that were already deeply distressed and populated by the poorest of residents, giving owners razor-thin margins to operate on. People bought co-op apartments for as little as $250, according to the city, while renters pay as little as $90 a month.

DOB lays off building inspectors

From The Real Deal:

After eight years of increased inspector presence, the Department of Buildings has eliminated 20 of its employee positions, as a result of a roughly 8 percent budget cut to the department. Of the eliminated employees, eight were inspectors, five were plan examiners and seven were administrative staff.

The DOB's 2011 forecasted budget is approximately $98.42 million. Down from 2010's forecasted $102.75 million fiscal year budget.

Yet industry leaders say they're unfazed by the smaller number of inspectors, citing a recession-driven downturn in the amount of construction activity in the city.

The DOB currently has 359 inspectors.

"We're close to a depression in this industry… construction activity is down 60 percent," Louis Coletti, head of the Building Trades Employers' Association, said, noting that there are far fewer construction sites that need monitoring. Referring to city funds, Coletti said that if the city doesn't need as many construction inspectors, money should not be allocated for them. "You target the resources where you need them," he noted.

DOB says there's nothing wrong here

From SI Live:

There’s no foul play going on at a construction site at 1434 Forest Hill Rd. This is simply what happens when a contractor runs out of money in the middle of a project.

Near Travis Avenue sits a site that was clearly under construction. The only thing it’s missing, and has been since the end of 2008, is progress.

The two-story brick building in New Springville is surrounded by a chain-link fence and thin wooden boards with graffiti. One strong gust of wind could send those sheathings soaring through one of the partially-finished structure’s broken windows.

No sidewalk exists outside of the 11,475-square-foot property; just overgrown weeds and shrubs, which are also growing freely in the area behind the fence and around the foundation.

Piles of cement blocks and bricks are stacked to the right of the building, trash bags in front of them. Other wooden boards are laid across the floor.

But nothing is officially wrong with the site, according to the city Department of Buildings (DOB). The only currently active complaint is that it’s stalled. That was put into effect on May 24.

Projects around Jamaica Station not dead yet

From the Times Ledger:

A weak economy may have delayed two projects aimed at improving downtown Jamaica, but developers said they are still moving forward with their plans.

The Greater Jamaica Development Corp. updated Community Board 12 May 19 about three developments that are in various stages.

Although two of the undertakings — a complete redesign of the transit hub at Archer Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard and an extension of Atlantic Avenue — are still months away from construction, Peter Engelbrecht, Greater Jamaica’s director of planning, design and capital projects, said he was confident they would be a reality.

Engelbrecht said construction on the Sutphin Underpass project has been moving along well and when it was ready would offer commuters and residents a new, mini shopping center that would enhance the area right near the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road and Air Train stations.

But progress was not the same for the remaining enhancement projects, according to Engelbrecht, because of funding issues. The Station Plaza transit project and the Atlantic Avenue construction were supposed to be funded by federal, state and city budgets, according to Jessica Pavone of the city Economic Development Corp., but the recession put those projects on hold.

P.S. Here's what Jamaica Station looked like 100 years ago: