Rendering for Flushing Commons, from inhabitat.com

The beauty of development in New York is that there is always another layer. Today, it’s the argument about plans for Flushing Commons, the 5.5-acre mixed-use development slated for Flushing, Queens.

As we reported a few weeks ago, Streetsblog.com has voiced its opposition to the plan, citing it as an example of the Bloomberg administration not following through on its PlaNYC commitment to transit-oriented development. The plan will add 500,000 square feet of vehicle storage, which the transportation-advocacy blog says will encourage more driving rather than green transit. But yesterday an article on the Queens Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog added several more shades of nuance to the argument.

About 80 small businesses showed up to the City Planning Commission meeting last week to protest the project. They argued the project could seriously harm their businesses, the increased housing and retail could choke traffic and that the city had not offered the proper contingency plans should the plan stall or fail.

“Something doesn’t add up,” said Flushing BID Chairman James Gerson, “and I guess the biggest issue that concerns us is that these negotiations and this change to the plan took place without any community input whatsoever.”

Here are a few of the issues of concern to those following the project:

*Streetsblog says adding parking will worsen congestion, and ignores the PlaNYC goal to reduce transportation emissions by 44 percent by 2030.

*The Neighborhood Retail Alliance reports that in fact, locals are calling for more parking in the crowded neighborhood.

*According to the Alliance, nearly everyone agrees that parking or no, the development will exacerbate congestion.

*BID Chairman James Gerson also wonders about the plans to distribute $2 million in assistance to local businesses, saying there is no real plan for allocation and that the money may fall short.

*Then there is the contingency plan, or lack thereof, in the case that the project should fail. It’s not unreasonable to expect that the city provide some contingency plan so that we don’t get stuck with a hole in the ground,” said Gerson, “and so far the issue has not been addressed at all.”

*Ever suggestive, Curbed has noted that someone must “really” want the plan to go through given that opposition from all sides has not stymied the project, which almost died in 2007 but was reborn last January. Know who is pulling strings? We’d love to hear.

And so, other thoughts on Flushing Commons? More questions to add about the plan? Do you think that it will bring something needed to the neighborhood? Let us know….

Photo by paalia, courtesy of Flickr

Crowds have long populated New York City lore. Jacob Riis photographed families crammed into tenement houses. Every year when the ball drops on January 1, TV broadcasts project carpet of bodies Times Square to homes throughout the country.

But all those people have to go home at night, and some planners feel New York is not making enough room for low-income and new New Yorkers looking for an inexpensive place to lay their heads, even with the provisions for the preservation and development of affordable housing worked into PlaNYC.

A report put out in March by the Pratt Center for Community Development asserted the City Planning Commission “has ceased to plan.” The report’s gist is that the city has come to lean heavily on rezonings to drive development, rather than “proactively setting a framework for the shape of growth in New York City.”

Rezonings tend to change the rules for building in a neighborhood—often allowing for greater height and density (upzoning) or less (downzoning) or room for new and different commercial development.

The rezonings have worked as leverage between the city and communities represented by members in the city council, the report says, where members use an agreement to pass a rezoning as leverage to get other things for their communities, like jobs or affordable housing.

The report makes a rather controversial argument:

“The agreements have become necessary precisely because planning does not take a look at citywide needs, forcing the City Council to address local needs or mitigate impacts project by project. Side deals are also no substitute for strong citywide standards promoting affordable housing and good jobs. A citywide planning framework, in the context of such standards and with a mandate to take into account neighborhood needs, would go a long way toward rendering side agreements unnecessary.”

Basically, the report claims rezoning has become a pawn in the political game because planning, or the lack thereof, has left a void.

The Department of City Planning has not yet responded to a request for comment, but I’m going to guess it might not quite agree. But this I think we can all agree on: New York City needs more affordable housing.

The average number of people staying in city housing each night increased 7 percent from 2009. The average number of families rose 9.7 percent, to 9,719 per night, according to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board.

Then there are those who live in illegal housing throughout the city—unauthorized “mother-in-law” apartments, subdivided flats and illegally converted industrial buildings. Half a million people may live in such housing throughout the city, according to a joint study by Pratt and the Chhaya Community Development Corporation. Surprisingly, some say finding ways to legalize such units could help begin to address the need for low-cost housing. Interested? Tune in next week.

Photo from Klaus Debrito's Flickr photostream.

The state budget (now a week late) isn’t the only fiscal mire around here. The city budget is also a bog of cuts, trims and lay-offs. What does that mean for PlaNYC? Probably more of same, according to the January 2010 Financial Plan.

Last week, the Mayor’s right-hand man and the architect of PlaNYC 2030 announced he’d be stepping down for a job in California. Rohit Aggarwala, who also heads the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, isn’t the only cut (nor are the Section 8 affordable housing vouchers that are said to be canned, more on that later). Here are a few mentions of budget shuffling and hiring freezes (otherwise known as PEGs, Program to Eliminate the Gap):

and…

So what’s out? Along with a “revised” timetable for PlaNYC Regional Parks and Greenstreets, there will be a delay in hiring 88 full-time and 11 seasonal staff. 16 other PlaNYC positions will be switched to the ARRA, otherwise known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (federal funding). And finally, the Brownfields Fund will be cut by 4 percent in 2010 and then 8 percent after that.

The Regional Parks and Greenstreets includes plans to establish eight regional parks in NYC: Calvert Vaux Park (Brooklyn), McCarren Park (Brooklyn), Fort Washington Park (Manhattan), The High Bridge (Bronx and Manhattan), Soundview Park (Bronx), Highland Park (Queens), Rockaway Park (Queens), and Ocean Breeze Park (Staten Island).

Affordable housing also took a blow this week, with reports that up to 10,000 vouchers for Section 8 affordable housing for low-income families could be revoked. The announcement, from the NYC Housing Authority, is another step back for the mayor’s overall vision of creating more affordable housing to accomodate around 700,000 more residents by 2030.

In these tough times, what’s the solution to pushing PlaNYC ahead while dealing with smaller budgets? Readers, what do you think?

Steven Shooman (right), a homeowner in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn got some information about energy efficiency from a ConEd representative. Photo by Alana Casanova-Burgess

Whew, I’ve got quite a huge backup here at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate & Development (RED) Committee’s “Meet The Experts on Energy” event at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. There’s a lot of info forthcoming about how to get energy efficiency grants for your businesses and homes… as well as video clips from event organizers and on the presentation from Brooklyn Bowl, a LEED-certified business in Williamsburg.

Now Up: (1:59 p.m.) : Andrew Giancola and Dan Orr talking about The Silhouette, a residential building in Brooklyn. Andrew is talking about his family’s history of residential buildings in Brooklyn. (It feels great to have connectivity in here, I’ll try to get the rest of the material from the last few hours up here as soon as possible).

2:02 p.m.: “The condensation is going to form on the outside of the building, instead of on the inside of the wall.” Andrew details how the insulation system at The Silhouette doesn’t allow mold to grow inside the wall. Architects on the project: Caleb Frawford – Annie Coggan. The condo is the first LEED Platinum and Energy Star certified  low-rise building in New York, and is located in South Park Slope.

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A group of greenthumbs have put out a call to Mayor Michael Bloomberg–they want a garden outside New York’s city hall. If they get the green light, they hope to create a garden tended by public school students that “will represent the vision of a more sustainable, livable City for all New Yorkers, and will contribute to achieving the intents of PlaNYC by 2030.” Check out their blog.

Explain the Plan went to the Go Green Expo this weekend. Take a look at some of our coverage, like this video with Riverkeeper‘s Craig Michaels. You can find more on the Expo here and here.

Streetsblog this week had a rather scandalous piece on, of all things, transit budgets. It looks at how funds from the city have been reallocated for upstate transit rather than to addressing the MTA’s myriad budget woes. Would the $100 million Streetsblog says should have gone to the MTA have helped stave off the end of student Metrocards or rolling out this new sign that got shelved? Would it have saved the V train? It’s hard to know…

Despite the at least 100 rezonings passed in the city since Mayor Bloomberg took office, a new report from NYU’s Furman Center says the city has created room for only 200,000 new people–the city anticipates 1 million more residents by 2030. Check out the article, and graphic, at the NYTimes.

Streetsblog this week released a two-part story on Flushing Commons, a large mixed-use development going up in Queens that will include 1,600 parking spaces, despite the area’s easy access to transit. Progressive urban planners suggest the car-friendly plan will only exacerbate Flushing’s already busy roads–Main Street, the artery of “Queen’s Chinatown”–sees 96,000 and 98,000 people pass through it each day, nearly as many as Manhattan’s 34th Street.

It is not the first time Streetsblog has criticized development under the Bloomberg administration and the quasi-governmental Economic Development Corporation. In fact, the blog early this year released a three-part series on conflicts between the city’s many re-zoning and its goals for sustainable development.

Streetblog agrees with the ideas behind the transportation initiatives in PlaNYC–build close to transportation, increase sustainability, make opportunity for alternative, greener ways of getting around–the web site’s gripes come in the implementation. They say that even in places like Flushing, Queens, where transportation is plentiful, development has mandated “suburban” levels of parking. The implication is that with easy places to put their cars, more are likely to use them.

The Flushing Commons development is just the latest in what some consider an overlooked place for reform–curbside parking. Donald Shoup, UCLA professor of urban planning and author of “The High Cost of Free Parking,” is unlikely to win any popularity contrasts with the Hummer-loving crowd. He advocates for higher prices on street parking and less of it, believing that doing so would reduce congestion, noise and air pollution to make streets and neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly. This could potentially contribute to PlaNYC goals to address congested areas.

The Environmental Protection Agency on March 2 designated Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal a Superfund site, including it in the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s most polluted areas. But what does it mean? Explain the Plan decided to take a look at Gowanus Superfund designation from the ground up to see how it fits into the city’s wide-sweeping plans for environmental change.

Where does the Gowanus fit in PlaNYC?

One of the Mayor’s biggest PlaNYC initiatives is to reclaim underused waterfronts like the land along the Gowanus canal and the industrial property along the river in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Many major rezoning plans have already gone forward. The city unveiled a rezoning plan for Gowanus in 2007 that included development of retail space and affordable housing.

Residents of the area were concerned because the plan did not directly address the environmental issues of the canal, which is where the clean up process comes in. The city and organizations like Clean Gowanus Now, which includes the developer Toll Brothers, opposed the Superfund designation. They worried it would bring an anti-development stigma, and instead advocated for a local cleanup plan (including using “E” designations) that both said would prove quicker and more effective.

Toll Brothers is now pulling out of its project to build 470 condos in the area, according to the Wall Street Journal, confirming the fears of some that the designation will hinder growth. But others believe though the development projects might change, a cleaner canal will help Gowanus grow.

Our multi-media coverage looks at the Superfund history in New York, the nitty-gritty (and we mean gritty) of the cleanup, videos from people on the street and the artists’ vision of the area defined by its notorious waterway. We’ve done a series of linked posts looking at several facets of the issue. Take a look, and leave a comment:

Gowanus Superfund–The Dirty Details

A Brief and Selective History of the Superfund Program

On the Street: What the neighborhood has to say about the Superfund designation

Gowanus Art(iculates): Proteus Gowanus and the Canal

Currently, the EPA is in the “remedial investigation” stage of its clean up progress. This involves extensive research to determine who the responsible parties are, the extent of contamination at the site and the potential risks involved with a clean up. Walter Mugdan, the Region 2 Director of Emergency and Remedial Response Division for the Environmental Protection Agency, explained that in the Gowanus, this includes taking core samples of the mud from the bottom of the canal. Mugdan says the mud is “pretty unpleasant stuff.”

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To retrieve the core samples, contractors take special tubes made from industrial plastic (the type of plastic used in space helmets and bullet resistant windows) that they use to pull out cylinders of mud from the contaminated ground. Then they can open the cores to examine the mud at different depths. Listen to Mugdan describe a core sample from the Gowanus:

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The remedial investigation should be complete by the end of the year. In the next step, the “feasibility study,” the EPA takes all of the information gathered during the remedial investigation and develops several possible clean up plans. Then the EPA will select the plan that they believe is the best option (known as the “proposed plan”) and present it to the public. The public has 60 to 90 days to comment. After the comment period, the EPA will thoroughly review all the feedback they received and develop a “responsiveness summary,” detailing how the public opinion is being incorporated into the plan. Then a final decision is made and documented in a “record of decision.”

Mugdan expects the record of decision to be unveiled by the middle of 2012. After that happens, the EPA can begin the design process, which Mugdan says is going to be difficult:

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Once a sufficient plan is developed, physical clean up will begin around the end of 2014. Without yet having a set plan, the EPA can not say for sure how long the actual clean up will take, but Mugdan estimates that it will take about five years.

Return to the Gowanus Superfund Project main page

The Superfund program has been highly successful, according to Walter Mugdan, Director of the Emergency and Remedial Response Division of the Environmental Protection Agency. There are over 1600 sites on the National Priorities List, and 2/3 of those sites have been completely cleaned. The remaining are sites like the Gowanus—large, complicated and expensive. Much of the work on those sites have already been completed.

Region 2 of the EPA, which includes New York and New Jersey, has more Superfund sites than any other in the nation. Yet New York’s only other Superfund site on the National Priorities List (NPL) was a radioactive building in Queens that was designated in 1989. The site took six years to clean up and has since been removed from the NPL.

However, no government program goes off without a hitch. When the Superfund law was enacted in 1980, the government placed a former industrial dumpsite of Ford Motor Co.’s on the list. In the early ‘90s, the EPA failed to make Ford clean up large patches of toxic waste, and instead, accepted Ford’s assertions that an adequate clean up would take place. The EPA removed the site from the Superfund list. Only after complaints of mysterious illnesses, federal pressure, newspaper investigations, and environmental activism did the EPA reexamine the site. Last year the Ford site was put back on the Superfund list. A $130 million clean up is currently underway.

Return to the Gowanus Superfund Project main page

* New York City is on track to build and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by the year 2014–that’s what Mayor Bloomberg announced in a speech Monday at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.  The Mayor said the city will infuse add $1 billion to the New Housing Marketplace Plan, bringing funds to $8.5 billion to preserve and rehabilitate affordable housing. The plan, said the mayor, will preserve housing in a precarious economic climate by offering bailouts to large developments at risk of foreclosure, leverage private investment and public-private partnerships for 18,000 units controlled by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), among other tactics. Read the full speech here.

*Life is full of surprises: New York City was this week ranked second most bike-friendly city in the United States by National Geographic Traveler, after (shocker here) Portland, Oregon. New York has added 6,100 bike racks and 200 miles of bike lanes in the last several years, the New York Times reports.

*As we mentioned this weekend, New York City has unveiled a new taxi rideshare program, offering cheaper trips to those willing to share a cab. CUNY J School’s own Professor John Schiumo also happens to moonlight as the host of NY 1′s The Call, which this week featured a discussion about the New York taxi’s new take on transportation. Check out what the people thought on The Call’s blog.