Upstate senators support a denser New York City

From Crains:

Support for a state Senate bill allowing the city to zone for denser apartment buildings is breaking down along geographic lines.

Representatives from within the five boroughs—aside from the Bronx's state Sen. Jeff Klein—voted against the proposal earlier this month, while lawmakers from outside the city were in favor.

The bill would roll back a state law capping residential development at 12 times a city property's lot area. The legislation's stated aim is to give the city greater leeway to address the housing crisis by zoning for denser development wherever the City Planning Commission deems appropriate. Doing so would bring residential planning in line with commercial properties, which are not subject to a state-imposed cap. That idea is supported by the de Blasio administration, the Regional Plan Association and the Real Estate Board of New York. But new housing is often opposed by preservation and community groups, a dynamic that makes the geographic split in the Senate Committee on Rules, which voted May 7, unsurprising.

Should pieds-à-terre be taxed more?

From Brick Underground:

The number of apartments being used as pieds-à-terre and short-term vacation rentals in New York City has spiked by over 20,000 in the last three years, and such apartments now make up 2.1 percent of all housing in New York City, according to census data recently released by the city.

The number of apartments listed on the most recent Housing and Vacancy Survey as vacant because of "seasonal, recreational, or occasional use" is now 74,945. This is the highest since the Regional Plan Association started keeping track in 1991 and, as the group's director of community planning Moses Gates notes, more than enough to house the city's entire homeless population. A Department of Housing Preservation and Development spokesman says that the agency can't parse from the data how many of these 75,000 apartments are being rented out on sites like Airbnb versus how many are being used as pieds-à-terre, and indeed there may be some overlap. Still, it's clear that the gain of 69,000 newly built apartments since 2014 is dampened by the simultaneous removal from of nearly a third of that number of apartments the sales and traditional rental markets.

Gates argues that the numbers show the urgent need for the city to create a pied-à-terre tax, so that wealthy people have incentives to sell their apartments or rent them to full-time tenants rather than keeping them empty or occasionally renting them to tourists.

"You're taking housing off the market during a housing emergency," he says. "That should be good enough" for the city to take action. Pied-à-terre owners, he adds, are "not paying city income taxes, but you're using city services to protect your tax investment."

Queensway compromise?

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Regional Plan Association isn’t choosing the QueensWay over the Queens Rail, or vice versa.

Instead, the transportation think tank has partially endorsed both ideas for the abandoned 3.5-mile Rockaway Beach Rail Line.

In its Fourth Regional Plan, issued late last month, the RPA called for the creation of the QueensWay — a proposed park along the elevated right-of-way — between Rego Park and Woodhaven.

From Atlantic Avenue south into Ozone Park, the RPA has endorsed the reactivation of train service along the defunct line.

Under the Fourth Regional Plan, the Queens Rail would run between Atlantic Avenue and Kennedy Airport with a stop near Aqueduct Race Track in between.

At Atlantic Avenue, the service would connect to the Long Island Rail Road’s Atlantic Branch — which itself would be extended west from Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn into Manhattan.

That would give train proponents that 30-minute one-seat ride from Manhattan to JFK many have advocated for.

REBNY wants to eliminate building height limits

From Crains:

This year the Real Estate Board of New York plans on pushing Albany to lift a cap that has long limited the size of new apartment buildings in New York City, the trade group’s president said Thursday.

Current state rules restrict the square footage of a residential building to 12 times its lot size. While this has resulted in plenty of tall Manhattan apartment towers, developers have the capability to go much higher. Commercial office buildings are routinely built to twice this density, and some of them have later been converted to apartments.

Unlocking greater density in transit-rich areas could help chip away at the city’s housing crunch and provide affordable housing, said REBNY President John Banks, who represents many of the landlords and developers who would construct the buildings.

Banks envisions allowing buildings to exceed the cap if they are rezoned, which would require going through the public-review process and including affordable housing. It is a concept that both REBNY and others have embraced in the past. Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested nixing the density cap in his 2014 housing plan. And the Regional Plan Association included the idea in its Fourth Regional Plan. In the coming months, RPA is separately planning to release a study and start a push of its own to get rid of the limit.

Advocates come up with development & transit plan to make NYC less affordable

From the Daily News:

Imagine New York without its 24/7 subway system?

The experts at the Regional Plan Association did, and they believe it's key to building a reliable transit system for a growing metropolitan area.

The radical idea to snuff the pride of New York is one of dozens of recommendations in the research group's latest regional plan — the association's fourth region-wide blueprint since 1929 — being released Thursday.

“We think that the days of the 24/7 subway system in New York are coming to an end,” RPA president Tom Wright told reporters of the “controversial” idea.

Raise money through new taxes, like charging drivers to enter Manhattan’s business center, tolling major roads and highways, adopting a cap-and-trade program for emissions, and a tax based on vehicle-miles traveled. Build dense housing near transit stops throughout the region.

Extend subway lines around the city and build out overcrowded stations.

Create a regional rail network that allows trains to flow unimpeded through the tristate area, such as building a new facility south of Penn Station that could allow rail to bring travelers between Long Island and New Jersey without switching trains.

RPA is unveiling its full plan Thursday at The New School, with elected and government officials from around the region.

Streetcar a developer's fantasy

From Patch:

City officials held a public “visioning session” on the proposed Brooklyn Queens Connector (BQX) streetcar in Astoria Monday night — the first of what they promised would be many outreach efforts to gather feedback on the $2.5 billion proposal.

Bus lanes might be cheaper to implement, the head of the EDC said, but a streetcar could carry twice as many passengers — a critical perk for a system that would transport an estimated 50,000 riders on weekdays.

Torres-Spring also argued a rail system would increase property values along its route. This, she said, would allow the city to fund the BQX using a cut of rising property values along the rail line.

[AHA! I think we're on to something here.]

Also present at the meeting was Ya-Ting Liu, recently named executive director of Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector. Liu's organization was behind the project’s first feasibility study, and is currently advocating for its construction.

While developers like Two Trees are well-represented in the Friends group, Liu noted that many non-developers are also members — including Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, and Thomas Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association think tank.

[Oh, you mean reps of groups funded by developers?]

Parking requirements to be removed for affordable housing

From Capital New York:

...even as views on parking have changed dramatically, zoning mandates have remained steady in much of New York. The city still requires most outer borough and upper-Manhattan builders to provide approximately one off-street parking space for every two units of housing.

Some planners say it is high time these dusty, worn-out regulations are replaced.

“These rules are from a time when people thought it was the government’s role to encourage driving,” said Juliette Michaelson, vice president for strategy at the Regional Plan Association. “In a time when we have a huge demand for housing, but are trying to reduce driving and therefore parking, eliminating a minimum parking requirement could be a big deal.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has taken a first, big step toward changing those zoning requirements. As part of a new set of zoning overhauls introduced last month, the city proposed doing away with parking requirements for new low-income, inclusionary and affordable senior housing units that are within a half-mile of mass transit. It would also reduce those parking requirements on mixed-income housing where it would benefit the construction of affordable units.

The latter provision, which would happen on a case-by-case basis, might prove the most promising to developers. It’s not as broad a change as many have sought, but could be more valuable than it sounds.

De Blasio’s affordable housing plan, which calls for the creation of 80,000 affordable units and 160,000 market-rate units, will include rezonings in 15 different neighborhoods where all new development will be required to include affordable apartments.

It’s possible the parking requirements could be lifted for hundreds of projects. And where affordable won’t be required, the possibility of reducing parking could serve as an incentive to build inclusionary housing—much the way the city’s voluntarily inclusionary program gives bonus floor area for affordable units.

Transit advocates don't want more ferries

From Capital New York:

By de Blasio's estimation, New York City is a water-bound metropolis whose rivers and harbors are underutilized resources. It's a view shared by politicians representing water-proximate neighborhoods from the Rockaways to Red Hook to Brooklyn Heights.

Transit advocates, however, greeted his pronouncements tepidly.

"In the transit community that I am a member of, ferries are looked on as being as helpful as rowboats," said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney at the Straphangers Campaign.

Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association who's a bit more ferry-positive than Russianoff, said that while it was a good thing to explore how best to further deploy ferries, caution is also in order.

"The idea of running ferry service has always been attractive ever since ferries stopped running, when we built all those bridges and tunnels," Zupan said.

But by his count, since 1986, ferry operators have tried roughly 70 different ferry routes to Manhattan, and only about 20 are still in place.

That's because most ferries move relatively few people and generally require more per-rider government subsidy than subway and bus operations.

In fact, the de Blasio administration made that very argument last year, when it decided to cancel ferry service to the Rockaways because it cost too much per rider.

Astoria Cove battle is gonna get interesting

From Crains:

Later this month, the City Planning Commission will give its imprimatur to the Astoria Cove project in Queens and send it on to the City Council, where its final shape will be hammered out, setting the benchmarks for the mayor's affordable-housing plan. The key issues to watch are the percentage of affordable housing required, whether there will be a city subsidy (and, if so, what kind), and if union labor will be mandated.

Under the Bloomberg administration, developers received density or height bonuses in agreeing to build low-cost housing. If conditions changed, they could forgo the bonuses and not include affordable housing. Astoria Cove has agreed with the de Blasio administration to set aside 20% of the expected 1,700 units for lower-income residents no matter what. That's why it's called "mandatory inclusionary zoning'': The developer agrees to do it because the projected rents allow for a reasonable-enough profit.

However, 20% will not be the final figure. The City Council is certain to insist on a higher number, something like 30%, although no one is sure yet what it will be. The real question is whether the developer will accept a smaller profit or insist on a subsidy in return. If so, will the city offer low-cost financing, tax breaks or cash? Remember: The de Blasio housing plan allocated $8 billion over 10 years, and this will be the minimum for every subsequent proposal.

Also at issue is who builds Astoria Cove. In pre-de Blasio New York, almost all affordable housing was built with nonunion workers because the difference between the cost of union and nonunion construction work was as much as 30%, according to the definitive study of the issue from the Regional Plan Association.

The mayor says he is committed to requiring union workers in his housing plan, and his aides and the building trades are working on what's called a project labor agreement, or PLA, that's reported to cut costs by 40%.

Unfortunately, the RPA study shows that previous PLAs have actually produced a tiny fraction of the savings promised.

Report says that Port Authority needs to expand airports

From Crains:

The two international airports in Queens rev up that borough's economy to almost rival Manhattan's, but further growth will require new infrastructure investments that remain uncertain at best.

LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International airports generated $42.4 billion in economic activity in 2012, according to a recent report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, and directly employed 46,000 people, more than half of whom live in Queens. That translates to 9.5% of the borough's private-sector employment. Indirectly, the airports are responsible for about 300,000 jobs.

With passenger traffic growing, the air transportation sector is a key component of the borough's recovery from the recession, the comptroller notes. Unemployment fell to 8% in October, higher than Manhattan and Staten Island, but beating out Brooklyn and the Bronx, while private-sector jobs climbed to 486,000. The borough's average salary of $44,350 is second only to Manhattan's.

"There is a capacity problem at JFK — you have more airplanes trying to land at the peak time than you have ability to handle them," said Joshua Schank, president and chief executive at the Eno Center for Transportation, a think tank. "That is the biggest constraint on growth, and new terminals don't really help it."

A recent Eno Center report projected that by 2030, JFK will be operating above its capacity the majority of each day. A separate report from the Regional Plan Association estimated that the region will lose out on $26 billion in annual economic activity by 2030 unless major changes are undertaken at all three Port Authority facilities.

The Regional Plan Association argues that a new JFK runway would be the best way to address the issue — no small task. The updated navigation systems being slowly implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration would also help, according to Mr. Schank, but all of these ideas would need to be implemented by the public sector and, for now, are nowhere near takeoff.

New tri-borough rail line proposed

From CBS New York:

Transportation advocates hope New York City’s next mayor will take a fresh look at a bold idea — creating an inter-borough train that would link Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

The proposal calls for the train to come out of the Bronx over the Hell’s Gate Bridge, tower over parts of Queens and run below street level through the heart of Brooklyn – a little-used freight line that could have a very busy future, CBS 2’s Tony Aiello reported Thursday.

The Regional Plan Association calls it “Tri-Boro RX.”

“Makes it easier for people to interconnect among all these neighborhoods in the city,” said the association’s Jeff Zupan.

The existing freight line that runs from Hunts Point to Bay Ridge would be used for new commuter rail service. One estimate has it carrying 80,000 passengers a day.

“What this does is create a rail line, a transit service that has transfer points with bus lines and with subway lines throughout the three boroughs,” Zupan said.

Zupan said the line could easily connect major transit hubs, including Astoria-Ditmars, Broadway Junction and Kings Highway.