Crains: Zoning shouldn't be for sale

Subject: On CBA, he has some points, but his mag is hypocritical
Date: 11/21/2004 5:10:57 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)


Zoning shouldn't be for sale
Crains
By Alair Townsend
Published on November 22, 2004

Six months ago, a Harlem community leader told Columbia President Lee
Bollinger the things he should provide in order to win support for the
expansion of his campus into West Harlem. The same leader recently told me
he was disgusted that a community foundation, job training programs, job
set-asides and the like were not yet offered by the university.

From his perspective, the university has awesome might.

It charges undergraduates $40,000 a year. It has a hefty endowment and
thousands of rich alumni.

Now it wants to dramatically enlarge its campus in West Harlem to create
state-of-the-art facilities, enhance its academic standing and accommodate
growth. The first 10-year phase alone will cost $750 million. Why shouldn't
it spare some crumbs for the poor in a legally binding community benefits
agreement?

For me, the issue lies on a slippery slope between encouraging a powerful
institution to be a good neighbor on the one hand and putting zoning up for
sale on the other. I don't want to undermine the city's Uniform Land Use
Review Procedure, or Ulurp.

The current Ulurp provisions were implemented in 1976 to provide a
standardized and public process, and to end what good-government advocates
saw as the buying of favors by developers. Under the Ulurp process, the
City Planning Commission, City Council and mayor must approve projects such
as Columbia's. The local community board and the borough president also
review them. Developer-funded mitigation measures are to be related to
direct adverse impacts, such as damage to the environment. The dealmaking
is public.

Ulurp was a giant step forward. Someone who was in government and remembers
without affection the pre-Ulurp days sums up the change this way: "Having
rules of the road for developers and communities means that we don't become
Newark or other cities that are up for sale. Ulurp is a touchstone of
honest and open government."

Today, the discipline of the process is being subverted. Government and
community leaders are pushing developers to sign community benefits
agreements promising discretionary benefits that have little or nothing to
do with adverse impacts of projects. Columbia is a ripe target for demands
that it garner community--and politicians'--support by offering such benefits.

Columbia already has an ambitious set of programs for the community, many
listed on its Web site under "Neighbors." The university is also having
extensive discussions with neighborhood groups and leaders about the
project, its impact on the area and additional benefits it can provide.
Columbia is under enormous pressure.

The mayor isn't helping. His office says that the university's discussions
with its neighbors are a private, not a public concern. Of course, what
developers do to make projects less controversial deflects criticism from
him and other elected officials, if they approve the projects. I wish the
mayor understood better the slippery slope we're starting down.