Russell Taylor, a FUREE member, heralds the Approaching Storm with shouts of "Save Our Neighborhood, Yo!"

A massive throng — well, let's say a spirited assemblage — of about 100 residents of Fort Greene and surrounding neighborhoods marched through downtown Brooklyn on Saturday, protesting what they say is the demolition of a traditional African-American shopping district to make way for high-priced condos. The marchers, organized by the Brooklyn-based Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), chanted "Hell no, we won't go!" as they followed behind East New York's Approaching Storm marching band, which set off innumerable car alarms along Myrtle Avenue and Willoughby Street with its raucous beats.

The downtown that the marchers traversed has already seen significant changes since the Voice profiled the area in May. Many of the stores on the block of Willoughby between Duffield and Bridge Streets that was targeted by developer Al Laboz for his "Willoughby West" condo tower are now closed; Jack Fuzailov, who was pictured here fending off the forces of gentrification with an electric razor, has found a new space for his barber shop two blocks west.

The Albee Square Mall, meanwhile — the space made famous by Biz Markie and flipped by would-be Coney Island redeveloper Joe Sitt this spring for a 400% profit — is entirely depopulated, its stores empty, the doors of anchor tenant Forever 21 covered in plywood. In the now-desolate plaza outside, the Approaching Storm took a breather while Joy Chatel addressed the crowd through a bullhorn. Chatel, whose row house at 227 Duffield Street has been targeted by the city for demolition despite indications that it was a stop on the underground railroad, complained that the Bloomberg administration wants to have it both ways: "They renamed my block Abolitionist Place, but they're taking the descendents of Frederick Douglass out of their homes. How much evidence do they want, black people in the basement?"

Chatel and her supporters at least had one victory to cheer: Last week, the city abruptly withdrew its eminent-domain claim against Chatel and several other building owners, saying it had neglected to include the results of a blight study in its official filing. (By law, eminent domain can only be used to seize "blighted" properties — though in the famous words of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "We don't mean 'blight' in the real sense of the word 'blight.'")

While happy enough for the breather, Candace Carponter, the attorney who had filed a lawsuit against the eminent-domain takings in part because of an inadequate blight study, notes that the city will be starting the process anew with a public hearing on October 29. "They've set themselves back probably 120 days," she tells the Voice.

Trombones or no, the mood on Saturday was very much one of folks shouting into a hurricane; behind speakers' heads rose the skeletons of apartment towers already going up on nearby Livingston Street. If downtown Brooklyn as we know it disappears, though, it won't be for lack of, um, fury.

"We're just going to let people take something from us," thundered Chatel outside the shuttered mall. "Harriet Tubman would shoot you in the back for that."

FUREE marchers pass by shuttered stores at Al Laboz's planned Willoughby Street redevelopment site.

Photo by hotdogger13 via flickr

Five developers submitted proposals on Thursday for the right to build on the 26-acre Hudson Yards, an MTA-owned property on the West Side that once slated to be the home of New York Jets stadium. The site is one of the biggest swaths of land in Manhattan that has not yet been developed. Among the proposals are new headquarters for Conde Naste and Morgan Stanley amid mixed-use developments that would include housing, parks, green areas and arts institutions.

The five bidders are:

1. Extell Development Company
2. Brookfield Properties Developer LLC
3. The Related Companies
4. TS West Side Holding, LLC (A Joint Venture of Tishman Speyer and Morgan Stanley)
5. Hudson Center East LLC and Hudson Center West LLC (A Joint Venture of Vornado Realty Trust and The Durst Organization, Inc.)

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin released the following statement:

All five bidders submitted proposals for both the Eastern and Western Yards. The proposals will now be evaluated by MTA staff in conjunction with the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, and then reviewed by a selection committee with a majority of its members appointed by MTA and with two representatives from Hudson Yards Development Corporation. The recommended proposal(s) for each yard will then go to the MTA Board for consideration in the first quarter of 2008. Information on the design proposals will be made available for public review and comment prior to the submission of the Selection Committee’s recommendations to the Board. The MTA is committed to engaging the public in the design review process in a meaningful way.

"I love your neighborhood. Now, get out."
Photo by Randa Dean

Tenants activists, Prospect Heights residents, and members of four households facing eviction held a block party on Bergen Street in Brooklyn on Sunday to ask the question whether "artists can be good neighbors?"

The answer for four families who live in rent-stabilized apartment at 533 Bergen Street would appear to be no as they are fighting eviction proceedings brought by the new owners of their building. The new owners of the four-story building—who purchased it for $866,000 in March of 2006—are seeking to evict the tenants under the owner-use clause of the state rent stabilization law, which says building owners can remove rent-stabilized tenants when they want a unit for themselves or a family member.

In this case, four thirty-something hipsters—Andre Wiesmayr; Deanne Cheuk, a well-known illustrator and designer; Dan Bailey; and Felicity Loughrey, a Vogue Australia scribe—are seeking to boot long-time residents of a building, which is just a block away from the Atlantic Yards site.

Such owner-use evictions have been more common in Manhattan— the most infamous case being 47 E. 3rd Street where the building's owners are seeking to convert a 15-unit rent stabilized building en masse—but are happening more often in rapidly gentrifying parts of Brooklyn, said Brent Meltzer, a lawyer for Evelyn Suarez, a cancer survivor who lives at 533 Bergen.

"You'd think as artists these people would basically have better politics but they're basically building their dream house on the backs of long-term rent-stabilized tenants," Meltzer said. "When they bought the building, they got it for that price because it came with five-rent stabilized tenants."

All four cases at 533 Dean Street will be heard in housing court in Brooklyn.

Councilwoman Letitia James, far left with hat on, stands with Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's Patti Hagan and residents of 533 Bergen Street yesterday
Photo by Lety Velasquez.

It's back to the drawing board for Columbia University's Manhattanville expansion plan. The Columbia spectator reports that Community Board 9's Land Use Committee voted to oppose the plan unless the university meets new conditions.

The resolution, passed five hours after the meeting began, laid the groundwork for further negotiations between the University and CB9 and cited specific conditions under which the community board could come to accept the plan. The conditions-ten in total-range from insisting that Columbia take eminent domain off the table and withdraw the proposal for a 7-story bellow grade structure, to provisions for affordable housing, and promises that what is built will be done so as to minimize pollution and maximize sustainability.

By Maria Luisa Tucker

A long-running dispute between one of New York's biggest landlords and its tenants has reached a boiling point. The much-despised Pinnacle Group, which owns 420 apartment buildings throughout the city, has elicited a rising number of complaints over the past couple years. In May of 2006, the Voice told the story, "Pushed off the Pinnacle," of longtime Washington Heights residents battling the landlord's eviction maneuvers so that they could remain in their homes. This morning, disgruntled tenants filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court accusing the company of racketeering.

Several West Harlem residents and the community group Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem (BRUSH) filed a 42-page complaint asserting that Pinnacle has launched a campaign of harassment and eviction that flaunts rent regulation laws. The suit specifically charges Pinnacle with overcharging rent, harassing tenants, refusing to make repairs and the like. The major complaint, however, is company's alleged campaign to kick out low- and middle-income renters so their units can be flipped and rented at market rate.

“The name Pinnacle is just simply a code word for mass eviction,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in a conference call earlier today. In fact, the company, which owns about 21,000 units, sent out a whopping 5,000 eviction notices in the last few years. Stringer said he thought Pinnacle's strategy was to wear residents down by taking them to housing court repeatedly until they eventually gave up and moved out. “Housing court is the equivalent of going to the emergency room on Saturday night,” he said. “It takes ten hours.”

While Pinnacle has had legal troubles before—specifically with the New York Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney—this case is unique in its enormity, said Richard Levy, the plaintiffs' lawyer. Rather than dealing with one or two specific disputes, the suit alleges that Pinnacle has made a coordinated, large scale attack on residents of its rent-regulated units. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum told reporters today that this “coordinated harassment” was “something new.”

There's no word yet from Pinnacle, but, residents say, it's safe to assume that the company will fight hard for its right to flip both the apartments and their occupants. According to residents, two of Pinnacle's formerly rent-regulated Washington Heights properties have already been converted to condominiums and ten more are on the way.

Except for its facade, St. Ann’s Church has already been torn down. photo: Holly Northrop/hnorthrop.com

We will fight for our neighborhood—and the City of New York should, too!

That pretty much sums up the consensus among the two dozen or so East Village residents and preservationists who have turned out, once again, to voice their opposition to the 26-story New York University dormitory on East 12th Street. Construction crews have been working all day, nearly every day, at the site of the former St. Ann's Church for the past eight months, laying a foundation, erecting the first of many floors. But neighbors and other critics haven't given up their fight to stop what they have dubbed the NYU “mega-dorm” just yet.

This time, their venue was a hearing before the city's Board of Standards and Appeals, which is currently considering an appeal in order to rescind the dorm building permits. And this time, they were calling into question the way this hulking, 260-foot-tall structure wound up being so damn tall in the first place—i.e., the transfer of air rights.

The university's Brooklyn developer, Hudson Companies, has bought additional air rights for development over the Peter Cooper Station Post Office, on East 11th Street, from the United States Postal Service. The transfer of those air rights allows Hudson to erect a far larger building—with another 61,000 square feet, by neighbors' calculation an extra 65 percent of room—than the developer otherwise could. But that transfer has also come under fire from critics, who claim the sale was improper and possibly illegal because it represents a murky merger between a private developer and a public agency, one that doesn’t fall under any New York City zoning regulations.

At the BSA hearing earlier today, there was plenty of arcane testimony about that merger from both sides of the NYU dorm battle. There were comments from the attorneys representing Hudson and the Post Office, who basically noted that air-rights transfers from neighboring properties are legal under the city's zoning regulations. In short, in the words of one of the lawyers, “There is no merit whatsoever to the claims." There were comments from the city's Buildings Department, too, which issued the building permits, and which is pretty much standing by that action.

Neighbors, meanwhile, had their own lawyer to argue before the board. “This is about your jurisdiction,” Kevin Finnegan, the neighbors' attorney, told the BSA members. He pointed out that the Post Office is a federal agency, not subject to the city’s zoning laws. “You do not have jurisdiction over the Post Office,” he said. “But if the city is going to have zoning regulations, it needs to enforce them. Why give permission to a merger over which you will have no control?”

Whatever the merit of these legal arguments, the neighbors in the audience—all donning black stickers with the words “Air Rights Are Wrong”—weren't about to let the board members forget their civic duty. If the BSA doesn't reject the transfer of the air rights and thus halt the dorm project, they reminded the members, then the Post Office, NYU, and Hudson would all profit, while they would end up with no recourse and no ability to stop yet another mega-dorm from emerging on the East Village horizon.

“Where do we go when we see an injustice being done?” asked one elderly resident decorated with “Impeach Bush” stickers. “We go to our city agencies. And every one of them bends the law in favor of developers. . . . I hope you'll do what you can to stop the transfer of these air rights and to save this community.”

Another East Villager put the sentiment more succinctly: “The closest entity for people on the ground is the city. Please don’t turn over the city's power to a private entity.”

Board members, silent with blank expressions, set a date for a final decision—June 12. In other words, stay tuned.

(From Wyndham)

It's that time of year again when seemingly every slow-paced hamlet from here to the equator begins bombarding New Yorkers with ads trying to lure us out of our frigid city and into the warm embrace of, say, Barbados or the U.S. Virgin Islands. On Thursday morning, yet another sleepy Southern destination added its voice to the siren song. So who was our latest geographical temptress?

In a word: Philadelphia.

In three words: yes, that Philadelphia.

To wit: Yesterday, the metro section of the New York Times included a five-page advertising section, entitled "Great Places to Live: Philadelphia." Therein, advertisers in the paper, which previously tried to convince us that Philadelphia is New York's sixth borough, made the case to actually move there. And not just for a week in February, mind you. But for the rest of our God-given lives.

Why would anyone want to do that? According to the advertising section, the fruits of Philadelphia are plentiful, the advantages over New York myriad. No longer simply a municipal fountain of cheesesteak, these days Philadelphia boasts a wide range of cosmopolitan attractions, we are told, from fine dining, to its "first-class infrastructure," to its "high-energy city trappings." Not to mention, lots and lots of enviable real estate.

To emphasize the point, the section included the real-life story of an erstwhile New Yorker, an entertainment lawyer named Rob Auritt, who recently made the leap from New York to Philadelphia. Along the way, Auritt and his family traded in their cramped two-bedroom co-op in south Brooklyn and bought a spacious townhouse in Center City.

"In New York, their last address was a two-bedroom co-op in Ditmas Park, so far removed from happening spots in Manhattan, or even his own borough, that they rarely went out," read the advertorial. "Now, their roomy three-bedroom town house is a stone's throw from the action, yet really quiet."

So how much did Auritt pay for the new digs? The advertisement omitted such details—which left us curious. After all, Philadelphia, like New York, has had a whopping run-up in real-estate prices over the past decade. Does a two-bedroom co-op in the far reaches of Brooklyn really equate to a three-story townhouse in central Philly?

As it turns out, not exactly.

According to municipal property records, this past October, Auritt sold his co-op in Brooklyn for $429,000. At around the same time, he purchased his new home in Philadelphia for…$505,000. That’s roughly a 17 percent bump.

In other words, by moving to Philadelphia, Auritt has managed to do what so many New York refugees have failed to do in times past. He actually increased his cost of living on the way out.

Our sincere congratulations! May you never grow tired of cheesesteak.

Tuesday morning, in a major victory for the city's historic preservationists, the members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission more or less shot down developer Aby Rosen's plans for the redevelopment of the Parke-Bernet building at 980 Madison Avenue. Although the commission did not officially kill the project today, it became clear throughout the course of the hearing that without huge modifications, the proposal as it currently stands has little hope of ever getting built.

Along the way, various commissioners praised Rosen's plans, which would restore the five-story building to its original 1949 design and add on top of the exiting structure a nuzzling pair of glass towers, reaching some thirty stories into the sky. That said, all but one commissioner noted that they could not support the current proposal due to problems with its scale, massing, materials, and location.

Commissioner Joan Gerner called the proposed structure "an architectural masterpiece." Albeit, one that had failed to win her support. "My issue is with the location," said Gerner. "This building belongs on a vacant site."

In other words, not on top of an existing building. And not in the midst of the Upper East Side Historic District.

Other commission members said that despite his best effort, renowned British architect Norman Foster had failed thus far to come up with an architectural scheme that would properly harmonize the proposed glass towers with the existing limestone-clad base.

"I'm an authority on marriages," said Commissioner (and practicing minister) Thomas Pike. "And this marriage makes me nervous."

A few minutes later, Commissioner Margery Perlmutter suggested that the project might be appropriate in some Blade-Runner-like version of the future, when every vacant inch of the city has been filled. But for the time being, she too gave the proposal a thumbs-down.

Not surprisingly, the proceedings were well attended. Ever since news of the proposal first became public this past fall, the project has been dividing neighbors throughout the Upper East Side. Today, a large crowd of supports and detractors packed into the hearing.

A few minutes before the start of the meeting, the author Tom Wolfe—who lives around the corner from the would-be development and who vehemently opposes it—sauntered into the room, wearing a dapper black-and-white checkered suit and a lime green tie.

In November, Wolfe wrote a scathing editorial in the New York Times, characterizing the Landmarks Preservation Commission as a "bureau of the walking dead," and suggesting that the 980 Madison Avenue project would sail past the weak-kneed commission with little resistance.

In a subsequent interview with the Voice, we asked Wolfe if he thought the commissioners might actually bat down Rosen's proposal. "I think there are possibilities," said Wolfe at the time. "But I wouldn't bet on it."

Today, Wolfe sat on a windowsill toward the front of the room and watched as the members of the commission essentially tore his critique to pieces along with Rosen' plans.

So much for being the "bureau of the walking dead."

Like a juggler who's finally put all his balls in the air, New York City's development rage hit full-speed this week with the approval of the Atlantic Yards project. The massive arena and residential complex joins Yankee Stadium, the new Mets stadium, all the towers at Ground Zero, and the hundreds of lesser-known construction projects that have tower cranes working in midtown, the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront, and elsewhere. Last night, in a quiet corner of the city, there were hints of a problem that could affect all these projects: a severe increase in cost in the materials to build them.

The battle over whether to build a filtration plant in the southeast section of Van Cortlandt Park in the north Bronx roared for more than a decade before the city decided to forego an alternative site in Westchester and plop the plant under a golf course near the elevated 4 train. (Full disclosure: I live about half a mile from the site. But I hate golf.) Work on the plant—which the city needs in order to comply with federal standards&3151; has been under way for about two years. For several months, community members have been unhappy about the small number of on-site jobs that local residents have received and delays in measures to reduce truck pollution. The amount of park rehabilitation around the borough—the payoff the borough got for taking the plant—has been scaled back. Recently, another worry cropped up: The project's price-tag has soared from the $992 million estimated in 2003 to $1.896 billion now. And most of the contracts still need to be awarded.

The community is pissed about the cost overruns because the city's rationale for picking the Bronx site was that it'd be cheaper than the site in Westchester. The DEP said last night that it had used a generic design when projecting the costs, rather than a specific one that accounted for little difficulties at the site like, say, blasting through 90 feet of bedrock. But the biggest reason for the doubling in price is what's ultimately going to go into that hole.

If you think your Christmas shopping is making too big a dent in your wallet, imagine trying to buy copper (prices up 133 percent over three years), steel rebar (up 48 percent) or concrete, iron pipe, and stainless steel, all up by more than a third. Overall, the DEP says it's been hit with inflation of 35 percent over the past three years. And it's predicting price hikes of 8 percent a year over the next three. If inflation is much worse than that, both the city and the contractors will have to absorb the blow. The initial DEP estimate assumed inflation of 2.75 percent a year. That was, um, wrong.

Local critics of the plan take issue with how the DEP is crunching its numbers. But the rise in costs is undeniable, and that has potential impact on all those other projects around the city. The fact that all those projects (the stadiums, Ratnerland, and Ground Zero) will be going on at basically the same time means that each will increase the costs for every other one, because there are only so many laborers around, and because already scarce construction material will be even harder to come by. Whether those costs hurt the developers or the city depends on how each deal is structured. But if any community goodies are contingent on developers' profits, and inflation was under-estimated when everything got costed out, that pricy copper pipe and rebar might take a bite.

So, please, conserve steel and concrete this holiday season: No unnecessary building!

Wait, is there such a thing?

The lawsuit is part of a larger effort by the organization, the West Harlem Business Group, to fend off an expected bid by the university to use eminent domain to clear the area.

Columbia's Manhattanville plan is to construct biotechnology research and teaching facilities on several blocks now occupied by auto repair shops, small factories, storage facilities, and several residential buildings.

The university says it needs to expand in order to compete with other top-tier institutions for research talent and dollars. Local residents and business owners say theirs' is a viable— if underserved—area that they do not wish to be forced to leave. Opponents of the plan say they might welcome a scaled-back expansion, but complain that Columbia has been secretive about exactly what it wants to do and when. "The point is, Columbia hasn't been open with us, the government hasn't been open with us," Nick Sprayregen, owner of Tuckitaway storage, located in a bustling, brightly painted building sitting within the footprint of Columbia's plan, said at a press conference there today.

Last November, the business group's attorney, Norman Siegel, requested information on the plan from the ESDC and received 50 pages of documents addressing the possibility of condemnation, zoning changes, and financial arrangements. This past June, the group asked for any new information acquired since November. It was turned down, with the ESDC stating (according to the lawsuit) that the documents were exempt from the freedom of information law (FOIL) because they "would impair present or imminent contract awards or collective bargaining negotiations."

Siegel says that the exemption does not apply to the documents he suspects the agency has. "The ESDC did not comply with the law," Siegel claimed at a press conference Friday. "This lawsuit sends a clear message that members of the West Harlem community—businesses and residents—will vigorously fight any violation of the lawsuit, including, if necessary, going to the court to uphold the rule of law. West Harlem will not allow this project to be done in secret."

Siegel says the documents the ESDC is hoarding might reveal which politicians, if any, are sitting in on meetings about the plan. The papers might also indicate when Columbia intends to seek approval through the city's ULURP process, and whether and when it plans to move to seize properties under eminent domain. Getting the state to employ eminent domain requires a finding that the area is "blighted." So if Columbia does seek condemnation, the community group needs time to develop a response—which would essentially say, "Hey, we're not blighted!"

In a statement, the ESDC said, "Our lawyers are reviewing the court papers and ESDC intends to vigorously defend this lawsuit."

Columbia, which declined to comment on the lawsuit, says the planned research campus will seek cures to dread diseases, provide jobs to local residents, and displace relatively few businesses and tenants. The university says it is committed to working with the neighborhood.

But the threat of condemnation makes negotiations meaningless, say opponents. "If eminent domain is not taken off the table, then what is there to discuss?" says Nellie Bailey, a local organizer. Even the threat of eminent domain is having an impact, the opponents say, with people and businesses getting displaced. The university has owned property in the footprint for years and has been buying more. That raises an interesting question, says Siegel: "If there is blight, who caused it?"