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….

PlaNYC includes a number of transportation intiatives: expanding transportation to more neighborhoods, more bus systems, increasing access to subways and buses, among others.  But due to a budget deficit of about $750 million, the MTA is instead making the following cuts in service, effective June 27, 2010:

- removal of the W line, which goes from Broadway at Whitehall Street in Manhattan, to Astoria, Queens. The Q will extend to Astoria.

- no more V service, which extends from Second Avenue, Manhattan, to Forest Hills in Queens. The M will replace it between Broadway-Lafayette and Forest Hills.

- the G train, which runs from Church Avenue in Brooklyn through 71st Ave in Forest Hills, Queens, will stop at at Court Square in Queens

Express bus routes will be discontinued between Manhattan and Queens, Grand Central and Lower Manhattan, Staten Island and Manhattan, and more.  Hundreds of local bus routes are being cut or restructured as well.  Waiting times on numerous subway lines will increase midday and on weekends.

For a full listing of changes, click here.

In the 2010 PlaNYC Progress Report, the Bloomberg administration blamed the recession, saying “maintaining and improving the current transit network as well as expanding the system to accommodate future demand – have been subject to dynamics largely out of City control.”

On Earth Day, April 22, 2010, PlaNYC turned three. Mayor Michael Bloomberg celebrated the birthday of his wide-sweeping plan to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 with festivities in Times Square. Pepsi was there to show off its new recycling machines. Office Depot made an appearance to display its double-flush toilets and hand out gift bags. We stopped in at two of the more PlaNYC-related booths: the Parks’ Department table to talk about the MillionTrees NYC initiative, and the booth for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that promotes low-impact modes of getting around town.

We brought back the following reports for you, which touch on some of the more successful elements of PlaNYC, and some that might need improvement. Continue Reading

The MillionTreesNYC tree counter--300,000+ planted to date.

*Last week marked a serious live-blog-athon here on Explain the Plan. We covered green homes, Brooklyn’s Greenway, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate & Development (RED) Committee’s “Meet The Experts on Energy” event and a video on hydroponics (now now people, we don’t mean that kind of green. This isn’t California).

*Rohit Aggarwala, the lead author of PlaNYC 2030 and director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability is leaving city hall for greener pastures—California’s, that is, Streetsblog reported.

*Aggarwala made the announcement just two days after Deputy Mayor Edward Skylar, a key supporter of PlaNYC and Bloomberg’s point man agencies like the NYPD and the FDNY, announced he was taking a job at CitiGroup. Skylar was, media reports say, one of the most influential deputy mayors in addition to the youngest. Looks like City Hall has some shoes to fill… What does these migrations mean for PlaNYC? We’ll keep you posted.

*Well, here’s what the folks at Streetsblog would have it mean, if their April Fools Post came true—cheaper housing, more walkable streets, and a day when “bean counters designing this city are over.” A little April 1 snark for those who are so inclined.

*Electric cars are back in the news—will they help pave the road to lower carbon emissions for New York City?

*European bank BNP Paribas announced has become the lead sponsor for MillionTressNYC initiative, the public-private partnership with New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and non-profit New York Restoration Project to bring a million new trees to New York by 2030. The PlaNYC initiative has thus far planted over 300,000 trees, according to the mini-slot machine counter on the initiative’s website.

Cyclist making his way through west Brooklyn via Sunset Park's busy Third Avenue.

I’ll be covering the tonight’s forum on the new Brooklyn Greenway planned to run from Greenpoint to Sunset Park. It takes place at UPROSE tonight, Wednesday, March 31 at 6:30pm at 166A 22nd Street in Brooklyn. Come out to participate in the forum, or tweet a question to @explaintheplan or marked with the hashtag #spgreenway and I’ll try to pass it along.

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 campaign began, like so many do these days, on Facebook.

It started with the modest goal of reaching 1,000 members, and quickly ballooned to 4,600.  But it wasn’t a campaign to get a Betty White on Saturday Night Live, or pit the rock band Nickleback against a dill pickle. It was an urban transportation idea.

The “R Train to Staten Island” is an effort by local activists to get a subway tunnel constructed across the Verrazano-Narrows over to Brooklyn, where it can link up with the rest of New York City’s transit system.

“The traffic in Staten Island is crazy,” said Richie Sorrentino, one of the group’s founders. “The R Train coming to Staten Island would help thousands of people. It would create more jobs and help the economy grow.”

And while PlaNYC is heavily involved in improving subway service in Manhattan, Staten Island has once again been left out in the cold when it comes to transportation. Currently, Staten Island’s nearly half million residents have no direct subway access to the city, and instead rely entirely on ferries to Manhattan and the roads over Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Brooklyn.

Continue Reading

Whew, it’s been a busy few weeks in environmental news in New York City — and most of it looks ahead.

Instead of following the mayor’s plan for cleaning up the site, the EPA has designated the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site (ExplainThePlan will be live-blogging an EPA meeting tomorrow night). Affordable housing will mostly be preserved, not built, and will be a continuing effort of private and public partnerships. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is pushing for including food production in PlaNYC 2030.

In the spirit of updating the City’s environmental landscape, we caught up with Dan Hendricks from the New York League of Conservation Voters about the next phase of PlaNYC 2030 (check back on Monday for more). An updated set of priorities is scheduled for 2011: “The PlaNYC is required to be updated every four years, so this really creates a great opportunity for us to think about what needs to be added and what needs to be changed,” he said.

Continue Reading

* 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.