Subject: Problems with Landmarks Preservation Commission
Date: 12/15/2004 7:37:49 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
To:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
We have been asked by Landmarks West (Upper West Side group) to pass-along
the following report. I haven't read the entire thing yet, so I'm just
passing it along.
If any of your groups would be interested in this, please contact Kate Wood
at Landmarks West at katewood@landmarkwest.org
John
====================================================================
REPORT:
Problems experienced by community groups working with the LANDMARKS
PRESERVATION COMMISSION
The Arts and Landmarks Committee
of the Women's City Club of New York, Coordinator
33 West 60 Street, New York NY 10023
Phone: 212-353-8070 E-mail: info@wccny.org
First Issued: 17 November 2004
Compiled by the Following Groups:
Women’s City Club of New York (Coordinator)
Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side
Hamilton Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization
Historic Districts Council
Landmark West!
Morningside Heights Historic District Committee
Society for the Architecture of the City
Endorsed by the Following Groups
as of 1 December 2004:
Association of Neighbors on the Upper East Side
Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association
Brownstone Revival Coalition
Carnegie Hill Neighbors
Coalition for a Livable West Side
Coalition to Save the East Village
Drive to Protect the Ladies’ Mile District
East 78th Street Block Association Park/Lex.
East Harlem Historical Organization
East Village Community Coalition
Historic Neighborhood Enhancement Alliance
Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America
Modern Architecture Working Group
Murray Hill Neighborhood Association
Prospect Park South Association
Queens Historical Society
Queensborough Preservation League
Richmond Hill Historical Society
The St. George Civic Association
Union Square Community Coalition
List in formation
REPORT:
PROBLEMS EXPERIENCED
BY COMMUNITY GROUPS WORKING WITH THE LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION
CONTENTS
How the Report was Compiled 1
Summary 2
NINE PROBLEMS
Problems in the Designation Process:
I. Lack of Transparency and Responsiveness 4
Problems in the Regulatory Process:
II. Pre-Hearing Disposition of Certificate Of Appropriateness Applications 6
III. Lack of Public Hearings for Substantially Altered Certificate of
Appropriateness Applications 7
IV. Absence of Leadership in Protecting Landmarks Administered by Other
Agencies of Government 8
V. Need to Provide Enough Information for Informed Public Hearing Comment 9
VI. Need for Public Access to Staff-Level Permit Records 11
VII. Need to Ensure Community Board Participation 12
VIII. Need for an Improved Sound System in the LPC Hearing Room 12
IX. Lack of Consistent Standards in Regulation 13
Recommendations: 14
I. Public Participation in the Appointment of Commissioners
II. Adequate Funding for the Necessary Staff
III. Regular Public Hearings to Address Designation and Regulatory Issues
How the Report was Compiled:
During the September and October 2003 City Council hearings on the proposed
designation of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine various questions were
raised about the propriety of the procedures being followed by the
Landmarks Preservation Commission ("LPC"), crystallizing doubts that many
organizations had had for numerous years about LPC procedures. Afterwards,
members of preservation groups who had testified at the hearings were
looking for a positive, constructive way to express their mutual concern
that the integrity of the LPC was in jeopardy.
The Women's City Club of New York is a multi-issue, non-partisan advocacy
organization, celebrating its 90th year working to influence and shape
public policy decisions affecting the city. An important part of our work
is to partner with other organizations on specific issues.
The WCC's Arts and Landmarks Committee therefore gathered representatives
of several preservation groups to identify recurrent problems experienced
in dealing with the LPC, and to suggest possible solutions.
Recognizing the excellence of New York's Landmark Preservation Law, we had
two over-riding concerns. First, securing an adequate budget and increased
staffing for the Landmarks Preservation Commission to fulfill its mission
of identifying and protecting the City's cultural and architectural
heritage. Second, improving the relationship of the LPC with the
preservation community.
Represented at meetings held throughout the year were the Historic
Districts Council, Landmark West!, The Society for the Architecture of the
City, Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side, Morningside Heights
Historic District Committee and the Hamilton Heights-West Harlem Community
Preservation Organization. All of these individuals and groups have
extensive experience, over numerous years, in monitoring the work of the
LPC in various parts of New York.
Together we drafted a list of issues needing to be addressed entitled,
Memo: Outline of Problems Experienced by Community Groups Working with the
LPC, which was presented to members and staff of the City Council. The City
Council Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses
subsequently held an oversight hearing on the administrative practices of
the Landmarks Preservation Commission on October 20, 2004. The outpouring
of people wishing to testify at that hearing could not be accommodated and
the Subcommittee had to adjourn the hearing with a promise to reconvene it
at a later date in a larger room.
This document, REPORT: PROBLEMS EXPERIENCED BY COMMUNITY GROUPS WORKING
WITH THE LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION, reproduces the full text of the
original Memo, which is carried over and appears in italics. The REPORT
expands the description of the problems identified, presenting them in a
new and clearer format.
Summary:
Since its establishment by the City Council in 1965, the New York City
Landmarks Preservation Commission has saved many elements of the City's
history and beauty. Through its open and participatory procedures, it has
given innumerable New Yorkers a voice in shaping the environment that has
such impact upon their daily lives. Indeed, as Robert A. M. Stern observed
in New York 1960, the application of the Landmarks Law has become "New
York's most proactive form of planning."
Nearly forty years later, the LPC has had an excellent overall record,
encompassing the designation of 1,101 individual landmarks, and more than
22,000 properties in 81 historic districts, according to the Mayor's
Management Report: in total about, 2.3 percent of the entire city. But, it
still has important work to do.
The conservation of these 23,000 properties requires countless acts of
stewardship, both large and small; it is an ongoing task that would be
impossible to achieve without the help of citizen-preservationists across
the five boroughs. The LPC administers the statute, but it is the
involvement of the city's inhabitants that makes its application a
political reality.
Landmarks and historic districts simply cannot be designated without broad
community support, nor can the LPC supervise 23,000 properties without the
aid of well-informed individuals who live in the neighborhoods involved and
know the principles of sensible conservation practice.
It is out of this necessity that, in step with the LPC's work of
designation and regulation, groups of local activists have formed with
every new historic district. By now there are more than 100 such societies
in the city, learning the Landmarks Law, monitoring the LPC's practices,
testifying in regard to new construction, alerting the LPC to violations,
warning the city when unprotected parts of our patrimony are endangered,
and so spreading the ethic of preservation among their neighbors.
Yet New York's success in preservation over the past decade has brought
with it a serious challenge. Over the course of several Mayoral
administrations, an increasingly understaffed and underfunded LPC has
confronted the prospect of an enlarged regulatory workload along with each
new designation.
Bit by bit, during this period, public access to the LPC's decisions has
been hindered, making it hard to discern how, when, and on what basis the
LPC is exercising its authority. A participatory decision-making process
has become an administrative maze.
The early years of the LPC's existence were marked by lawsuits brought by
litigants who sought to overturn the Landmarks Law. But more recently, we
have seen lawsuits brought by those who believe the LPC should have taken
stronger measures and applied higher standards to protect the historic
city. For instance:
" 67 Vestry Tenants Association v. Raab
" Maxtone-Graham v. Landmarks Preservation Commission
" CitiNeighbors Coalition of Historic Carnegie Hill v. NY City Landmarks
Preservation Commission
" Save the Cottages and Gardens v. The City of New York et al.
" Historic Districts Council, Inc. et al. v. Eliot Spitzer (re Poe House)
" Landmark West v. Burden (re 2 Columbus Circle)
" Beresford Apartments v. City of New York, et al. (re Planetarium).
Meanwhile, the current administration has received at least one extensive
document complaining of procedural problems at the LPC-not from the real
estate industry, but from the Historic Districts Council, a citywide
organization representing dozens of neighborhood groups concerned with
historic preservation.
The resulting climate of conflict seriously endangers the cause of historic
preservation.
Thus, late in 2003 the Arts and Landmarks Committee of the Women's City
Club invited neighborhood preservationists from across New York to meet and
attempt to resolve this dilemma. After almost a year, nine distinct
problems were identified-which are elucidated in the following pages.
The City Council has the power to affect reform in several important
ways. In addition, many of the problems described in this report can be
ameliorated via the administrative authority of the LPC.
The following three recommendations were formed.
1) We hope that opportunities for public testimony will be reinstated at
the confirmation hearings of LPC commissioners. This will help revive the
dialogue and bridge the current gap between the public and the municipal
guardians of preservation policy.
2) Most importantly, the LPC requires increased funding to sustain its
programs and achieve the full range of necessary reforms the public is
seeking. Under-funding gravely impairs the LPC's ability to fulfill its
mandate.
3) Public hearings should be held on a continuing basis to gather comment
in regard to the designation and regulatory functions of the Landmarks
Preservation Commission. These hearings would serve the particularly
important purpose of providing a forum for the concerns of owners of
historic properties, neighbors affected by LPC decisions, and
community-based preservation groups. This would enable the LPC to better
evaluate the impact of its actions on the city.
The landmarks of our city can never be irrevocably secured, only passed on
from one generation of stewards to the next, with each generation required
to meet its own particular challenges. Our purpose in producing this
report is to make positive and constructive suggestions as we seek to
improve the procedures followed by the Landmarks Preservation
Commission. It is our goal to support the LPC and to improve its
interaction with the individuals and communities affected by its
decision-making process.
NINE PROBLEMS:
The working group identified nine problems in their engagement with the
Landmarks Preservation Commission.
I. Designations: Lack of Transparency and Responsiveness
The process by which the LPC determines whether or not to hold a
designation hearing is a mystery. We would like the designation process of
the LPC to become more transparent, as transparency is the cornerstone of
good government.
According to the LPC's official website, the procedure for considering
whether to hold a designation hearing is as follows: 1) Once the LPC
receives a request for evaluation (RFE) of a potential landmark, an RFE
Committee, consisting of the Chairman, the Executive Director, the Chief of
Staff, the Director of Research, and other agency staff members, review the
materials submitted and discuss whether the property meets the criteria for
designation. 2) The Director of Research then sends a letter to the person
who submitted the request, informing him or her of the committee's
determination. 3) If the RFE Committee determines that a proposed historic
property merits further consideration, the property is reviewed by the
Designation Committee, which consists of five Commissioners (less than a
quorum of the full commission). The Designation Committee then votes on
whether to send the property to the full Commission for review.
This pre-hearing process is conducted behind closed doors. There is no
public record or disclosure of the committees' deliberations or the basis
of their decisions.
All LPC designations must be supported by Designation Reports, which cite
scholarly opinions and/or broad public support confirming that landmarks
and historic districts meet widely accepted standards for judging
architectural, historical and/or cultural significance, as stated in the
Landmarks Law.
If it has been demonstrated that potential landmarks meet these criteria:
" by assembling statements of confirmation from numerous widely-recognized
authorities
" and especially when the weight of support by outside experts equals or
surpasses the weight of support for comparable designated structures
when the LPC refuses to calendar such properties for public hearing, it has
failed to uphold its "Purposes" as established in the Administrative Code §
25-301 Purpose and declaration of public policy;
a. "The council finds that many improvements, as herein defined, and
landscape features, as herein defined, having a special character or a
special historic or aesthetic interest or value and many improvements
representing the finest architectural products of distinct periods in the
history of the city, have been uprooted, notwithstanding the feasibility of
preserving and continuing the use of such improvements and landscape
features, and without adequate consideration of the irreplaceable loss to
the people of the city of the aesthetic, cultural and historical values
represented by such improvements and landscape features." [emphasis added]
When the LPC declines to hold designation hearings despite authoritative
evidence of eligibility it fails to provide the "adequate consideration"
that the law requires.
Public participation in the identification and designation process is
critical. By its own account the LPC has no other system for identifying
potential landmarks for designation than acting on Requests for Evaluation
submitted by the public. From the late 1970s to 1990 the LPC had a Survey
Department, which investigated potential landmarks in the city. That
department no longer exists, and the interested public has had to assume
this responsibility of the agency.
II. Regulation: Pre-Hearing Disposition of Certificate of Appropriateness
Applications
When reviewing Certificate of Appropriateness applications, the LPC sees
the applicant as a partner or client and therefore gives less consideration
to the views of owners of neighboring properties and the views of community
groups. In some cases, negotiations with applicants seem to have reached a
very advanced stage before the public hearing, without input from the
public. The LPC does not seem to consider itself accountable to communities.
In the regulatory process it is important for the LPC to help applicants,
especially if they are inexperienced, to understand the proper practice in
maintaining and altering historic structures, as well as to observe the
general parameters for designing harmonious new buildings in historic
districts.
Such negotiations frequently occur prior to public hearings and behind
closed doors. It is essential to recognize that there is a distinction to
be made between discussion that educates in terms of general practice and
extensive pre-hearing private consultation in which the LPC becomes a
de-facto co-designer of the submission.
In cases of highly experienced applicants or major institutions who come
equipped with the best legal advice and well-known architects and historic
preservation consultants, such wide-ranging confidential pre-hearing design
settlements with LPC commissioners and staff compromise the LPC's statutory
obligation to be a neutral arbiter of the public welfare.
Further, the LPC's general practice of using pre-written staff
recommendations as the text of motions to approve suggests that a decision
has been made prior to the hearing. This practice creates another
impediment to meaningful citizen participation in public hearings.
The Landmarks Law states as one of its purposes to "promote the use of
historic districts, landmarks, interior landmarks and scenic landmarks for
the education, pleasure and welfare of the people of the city." Another
stated purpose is to "stabilize and improve property values in such
[historic] districts." Therefore, it is vital that the concerns of the
general public and, in particular, owners of neighboring properties whose
properties may be severely impacted by proposed changes, be part of the
decision-making process.
III. Regulation: Lack of Public Hearings for Substantially Altered
Certificate of Appropriateness Applications
Certificate of Appropriateness items that received a public hearing, but
were not approved, are often brought back in radically altered form, to be
reviewed not at a public hearing, but at a public meeting, where public
testimony is not taken and little public notice is provided. The LPC's
criteria for scheduling items for a public meeting versus a public hearing
are obscure, especially in cases where the application has changed
substantially (e.g., a new design, a different architect. Examples: 322
Hicks Street, Allen Stevenson School.)
The Landmarks Law requires ten days statutory notice of the LPC agenda for
public hearing items, which consist of Certificate of Appropriateness
applications and some Reports. This provision allows interested citizens to
prepare testimony in regard to projects that might have dramatic impact on
individual landmarks and the character of historic districts.
At public hearings, after public testimony has been taken, the LPC may then
determine how to dispose of various items. In such deliberations, in order
to avoid unnecessary delay for the applicant, the LPC often allows the
proposal to be modified after the hearing. The application is then brought
back to a public meeting for final approval. At a public meeting there is
no requirement for public testimony and no statutory requirement for
notice. This is a sensible approach in most cases where needed
modifications are minor or non-controversial. However, when a proposal is
altered radically, a new public hearing should be required.
Failure to recalendar proposals for a new public hearing evades the
Landmarks Law's intent that there be "adequate consideration of the
irreplaceable loss to the people of the city of the aesthetic, cultural and
historical values represented by such improvements."
For example: on one such recent occasion, a design for a new building in an
historic district was "brought back" and approved at a public meeting four
months after the original presentation, with a new architect and a
completely different design.
Furthermore, the calendar for the public meeting is published on the LPC
website only a few days before the meeting, and the agenda is often revised
up until the day before. Additionally, the descriptions of agenda items
that are used are the same as for the original hearing. All these factors
combine to create a situation where the general public does not know when a
completely new design is to be reviewed, and there is no opportunity to
submit new testimony that is relevant.
In response to recent complaints, the LPC has made a gesture toward
outreach through private, selective notification. There is, however, no
legal basis or guideline for determining which members of the public are
entitled to this outreach and the general public remains disenfranchised
through the public review process.
IV. Regulation: Absence of Leadership in Protecting Landmarks Administered
by Other Agencies of Government
We would like to see more openness in the review of alterations to
landmarks owned by the City, the State, and public authorities.
Applications for reports on such properties should be available to the
public before the Commission takes action. In all cases, alterations to
City, State, and Authority owned properties which would require a
Certificate of Appropriateness if privately owned should come to public
hearing. There must be prior public notice, and notice to affected
Community Boards. We believe the Charter requires notice to Community
Boards under Section 2800(e).
While the Landmarks Law specifically states that public notice must be
given for items calendared for designation, or for Certificate of
Appropriateness review, it does not stipulate public hearings for items
which require advisory Reports on alterations to government properties.
However, in the decades prior to the Giuliani Administration, the LPC
consistently calendared for public hearing items requiring reports to other
governmental agencies (if a comparable project on private property would
have warranted Certificate of Appropriateness review). Here, the LPC acted
in the belief that all divisions of government should respect each other's
mandates and procedures, for instance, by appearing at public hearings when
seeking a Report from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Under this policy citizens were able to monitor and contribute to the
successful restoration practices that reclaimed Central and Prospect Parks,
as well as numerous other projects affecting some of New York's most
prominent landmarks.
Arguably, no other self-generated LPC policy has had such profoundly
positive environmental benefits for the people of the city.
Nevertheless, starting under the Giuliani administration, the LPC began to
experiment with new procedures for reviewing alterations to landmarks in
government ownership, sometimes avoiding full public review in important
cases which would formerly have received it.
These changes have reduced public participation and institutional
accountability and led to the loss of an excellent administrative practice.
Indeed if interagency preservation initiatives with other branches of
government were cultivated, the City as a whole would benefit.
There is a need for improved coordination between the LPC and other
agencies such as the City Planning Commission, the Department of
Transportation, the Board of Standards and Appeals and the Department of
Buildings. Agency rules should be reviewed to identify and attempt to
resolve interagency conflicts. We are also concerned that there is a
failure to note deteriorating conditions in City and State owned historic
properties, and in properties controlled by authorities such as the MTA and
the School Construction Authority. The LPC could play an advisory role here.
V. Regulation: Need to Provide Enough Information for Informed Public
Hearing Comment
Plans and materials pertaining to applications scheduled for public
hearings are made available for review by interested members of the public
on the Friday prior to the Tuesday public hearings, and this is very
helpful; however, the materials are often incomplete. The public is not
allowed to speak to staff members who are directly knowledgeable about the
applications and can answer questions.
The Landmarks Law, Section 25-313 Public Hearings (b) establishes the right
of New Yorkers to testify in regard to C of A applications: "the commission
shall afford a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of facts and the
expression of views by those desiring to be heard . . ." [emphasis added]
This process cannot function effectively if the public is not given
sufficient access to information about the applications in advance of the
public hearings.
" Materials presented for public review prior to hearings often lack
clarity and crucial pieces of information; such as plans showing existing
conditions versus proposed alterations, tax photographs from the Municipal
Archives and other types of historic photographs, and photographs in the
LPC's file documenting condition at the time of designation.
" Queries about applications are channeled through the Director of
Community and Government Affairs, who must relay questions to staff,
creating delays in the retrieval of information, some of which is lost in
the process.
" In some cases applications change between Friday afternoon and the
Tuesday hearing so that the public comments on obsolete presentation boards.
Obviously, under these conditions, it is difficult for citizens to deliver
informed testimony and contribute positively to the landmarks process.
Members of the public offering testimony should be allowed to use
illustration boards and audio-visual presentations to make their points.
The LPC has no clear guidelines for public participation. For instance, at
various times Chairs have forbidden the use of illustration boards, the
circulation of documents to commissioners, private communications with
commissioners, and the use of audio-visual presentations such as
PowerPoint. It is unclear whether these prohibitions are still in effect.
Furthermore, members of the general public who seek to participate in LPC
hearings are habitually denied rights extended to applicants. For instance,
the general public is not permitted to "pass the bar," or the invisible
line separating the panel of commissioners from the public seating area. By
contrast, the applicants and their lawyers, consultants, etc., are allowed
to go to the front of the hearing room, where the commissioners are seated
and where it is possible to directly refer to the visual materials of an
application-a location with far better visual and auditory access. On
occasion, applicants have been allowed to use PowerPoint presentations and
other sophisticated means in making their case.
By contrast, recently, the LPC denied a community group the use of
PowerPoint as part of its testimony. Members of the public have sometimes
been refused permission to distribute illustrative handouts to
commissioners during hearings and use illustrated boards as part of their
testimony.
A basic principle of equity is involved: those who desire to be heard-often
inhabitants of the neighborhoods where new work is proposed to be
constructed-should be allowed equal access to the hearing room, not by
virtue of sufferance but by fundamental right and established rule.
VI. Regulation: Need for Public Access to Staff-Level Permit Records
A vast and growing majority of applications to alter landmarks are approved
at staff level under the rules. We believe that concerned neighbors and
the public should have access to information about existing and pending
staff-level permits. Certificate of Appropriateness decisions are already
being made available on line through the Center for New York City Law. The
technology is there and the available materials should be expanded.
The LPC website has made it much easier to retrieve information about
designations, public hearings and meetings, and agency rules. In addition,
recently, the New York City Center for Law has started making Certificate
of Appropriateness decisions available on line, which is a giant step
forward, although it still does not fulfill the government's responsibility
to provide public information on its actions.
There is one area where information about the LPC is difficult to obtain.
The majority of the permits issued by the LPC, that is, staff-level
permits, are issued without public notice or review and not systematically
made available to the public.
Staff-level permits are no longer just for minor work. The LPC has
instituted a policy of moving as many permits as possible out of the public
hearing process-by authorizing Rules, and Master Plans under the Rules.
These empower staff approvals for substantial projects, some of which
entail Buildings Department permits. Included are restoration, certain
rear yard and rooftop additions, HVAC work, sign, window and awning
changes, and new window openings. In some historic districts, new
storefronts, visible additions to buildings, and other major construction,
such as the demolition of certain categories of building, are approved at
staff level. Consequently, work in historic districts that in the past
might have been calendared (and in many cases reviewed by the local
community board) now comes as a complete surprise to the people who live in
such areas.
The public deserves to know what is pending and what has been approved.
Sharing of information about pending permits can also help prevent the
issuance of invalid permits, which has happened on occasion when staff has
approved applications that do not comply with zoning or other city
regulations. The Department of Buildings Building Information Service (BIS)
and the Department of Finance Automated City Register Information System
(ACRIS) provide a comparable service. The technology exists and other
agencies have shown it can be done. The public interest would be better
maintained if all LPC permits and permit applications were available on
line on the agency's website.
VII. Regulation: Need to Ensure Community Board Participation
The LPC must honor the meeting schedules and procedures of Community Boards
so that their reports on Certificates of Appropriateness applications can
be received and considered by the commissioners at public hearing prior to
a vote.
This is particularly important as Community Boards serve a vital advisory
role in all municipal land-use decisions and, as an appointed arm of
government, should have the sufficient opportunity to fulfill that role.
VIII. Regulation: Need for an Improved Sound System in the LPC Hearing Room
A better sound system needs to be installed in the hearing room to enable
the public to hear the applicants' presentations and the commissioners'
discussion. The existing sound system is defective and is not always fully
activated.
Section 25-313 of the Landmarks Law; Public hearings; requires that the LPC
hold "public hearings." [emphasis added]
After innumerable complaints, over many years, the discussion of
commissioners remains frequently inaudible.
IX. Regulation: Lack of Consistent Standards in Regulation
The LPC no longer seems to be adhering to widely recognized standards of
preservation practice such as the preservation of the original fabric and
structure of buildings under restoration. It can be unclear what criteria
are being used when the LPC makes its determinations. In some cases, there
appears to be a lack of consistent and rational policy from neighborhood to
neighborhood.
Looking at the roster of landmarks, we see a wonderful variety of places, a
panorama of our culture and history. Flexibility in dealing with this
variety is an important feature of the Landmarks Law, which gives decision
makers discretionary powers when they rule on the appropriateness of
alterations. Many times, landmarks present unique problems that require
unique solutions.
Nevertheless, there are some general principles of historic preservation
which are recognized nationally and internationally in regard to
maintaining the integrity of landmarks:
" It is better to preserve the original building, the original materials,
the original structure and the original setting-rather than making a copy,
an imitation or a memento.
" If parts of the original are highly deteriorated, it is better to repair
them rather than replace them.
" When original materials cannot be retained, it is better to replace them
in kind.
The New York City Landmarks Law includes a section which permits the LPC to
make a finding of hardship, allowing relief from more rigorous preservation
standards because of extenuating financial circumstances. A real test for
hardship was carefully prescribed by the City Council, as well as by the
courts in various relevant findings.
Yet in recent years the LPC has given undue consideration to factors of
economics in cases where the hardship test has not been formally applied.
The LPC routinely approves discarding of original historic building
components and replacing them with substitute materials of poor quality and
appearance. Sometimes much or all of a structure behind the street wall is
allowed to be destroyed.
Furthermore, the LPC has applied uneven standards to different
neighborhoods. An equally high standard of preservation should be applied
in every historic neighborhood across the city, while recognizing that each
neighborhood possesses its own unique characteristics and qualities.
Finally, the LPC must uphold preservation standards that fulfill the intent
of the Landmarks Law when it comes to responding to work performed without
LPC permits. Property owners and other members of the general public
perceive the LPC's enforcement of the Landmarks Law as inconsistent and
erratic. Work done without permits is often undetected and uncorrected, in
part due to shortage of enforcement staff. Furthermore, work done without
permits is sometimes retroactively approved at a lower preservation
standard than would have been maintained had the work been reviewed by the
LPC prior to completion, even though the LPC 's stated policy is to
maintain a uniform standard.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
The signatories of this report recommend that:
I. Public Participation in the Appointment of Commissioners Be Reinstated.
As Commissioners must be confirmed through action of the City Council, we
hope that the Council will confirm only those who are conversant and in
sympathy with preservation goals.
We believe there should be an opportunity for public input on appointments
and would like to work in partnership with the Rules, Privileges and
Elections Committee of the Council so as to ensure a comprehensive,
detailed interview for each Commissioner being considered.
II. Adequate Funding for the Necessary Staff Be Provided.
While the work load of the LPC has increased, the staff and funding have
been cut. The LPC is short of staff in all departments. The Preservation
Department needs more staff to conduct thorough investigations of the
growing number of applications it receives, and make more site visits.
The Research Department needs more staff to conduct surveys to identify
buildings worthy of designation and to produce designation reports in a
timely manner, and to perform community outreach, as it once did. More
violation officers are needed to enforce the landmarks law. As the number
of landmarked properties continues to grow, and the amount of investment in
restoration and renovation of those properties continues to increase, the
agency's resources must be expanded to meet the increased workload.
III. Regular Public Hearings Be Held to Address Designation and Regulatory
Issues.
Many of the problems described in this report can be ameliorated via the
administrative authority of the LPC. In order for this to occur, continuing
public dialogue is needed.
Public hearings should be held on a continuing basis to gather public
comment in regard to the designation and regulatory functions of the LPC.
These hearings would serve the particularly important purpose of providing
a forum for hearing the concerns of owners of historic properties,
neighbors affected by LPC decisions, and community-based preservation groups.
This would enable the agency to better evaluate the impact of its actions
on the city.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece - December 14, 2004 - The New York Sun
Click here: Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece - December 14, 2004 - The New York Sun
http://www.nysun.com/article/6237
Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil. "Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring...
December 14, 2004 Edition > Section: New York
Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 14, 2004
The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil.
"Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara," the library's Web site says. A red star, trailed by the word "revolution," measures seconds.
The timepiece, along with watches featuring Einstein and Shakespeare, is available for $40 online and in library gift stores.
Maria Werlau, president of the Free Society Project - a nonprofit human rights organization documenting the victims of Cuba's communist revolution - denounced sales of the watch as "outrageous." After not having calls to the library returned, she wrote a letter of protest to the institution's president, Paul LeClerc.
Ms. Werlau, who was born in Cuba and moved to the United States as an infant, said she assumes the library "put this on their list of products because they were ignorant of who this man is." She said popular culture has "made Guevara an icon of freedom, but he's the opposite of that-the antithesis of freedom." Most people who wear Che paraphernalia "have no idea he was a mass murderer," Ms. Werlau said.
Ms. Werlau said the Free Society Project has a list of about 180 people for whose executions in Cuba Guevara was directly responsible, but the list doesn't include what they estimate to be several undocumented cases - or people who lost their lives because of Guevara's revolutionary activities throughout South America and Africa.
Ms. Werlau, comparing Ernesto Guevara's legacy to those of other dictators and mass murderers, said: "He was dedicated to his ideals. But so were Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin."
A spokeswoman for the New York Public Library, Tina Hoerenz, said that under no circumstances would the library sell Hitler merchandise. When informed that some Cubans felt that selling a pop-culture image of Guevara was the moral equivalent of glorifying Hitler, she replied, "I don't know what to say about that."
Ms. Hoerenz also provided a statement about the watch from the library, which declined further comment: "In its collections and shops, The New York Public Library has materials representing a diverse range of issues and views. Our essential interest is, in fact, to represent the widest range of humanity's ideas, historical changes, and personalities. It is not the Library's policy to censor or limit its offerings based on outside political current."
As for the Guevara merchandise, Ms. Hoerenz compared the watch to other "whimsical" trinkets offered at the gift shop - such as librarian action figures and dancing-cat pins.
To Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, however, there is simply no comparison. Mr. Montblanc is the president of the Westside Heights Citizens League, an organization he said has many Cuban-American members. Mr. Reyes-Montblanc has also written a letter of protest to the library in response to what he calls the "extremely vociferous objections" Cuban-Americans in his community have to the library's selling the watch.
Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, who was born in Cuba and came to America as a 10-year-old in 1959, dismissed the library's censorship defense, saying, "It's the same excuse that everyone else uses."
"It's not censorship," Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said. "We are not calling for them to take the Che Guevara books out of the library - those books are protected by the First Amendment." The watch, he said, was a business issue - and a poor business choice.
Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said that if the library did not pull the watch from its shelves, he anticipated protests from the Cuban-American community.
There were no protests yesterday outside the gift shop at the library's mid-Manhattan branch, on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street. There, the Guevara timepiece was not on display, and only one remained in stock. A clerk said the watches "definitely sell." She said she wasn't aware of any complaints from shoppers during the month the watch had been for sale.
Patrons yesterday didn't have complaints about the timepiece. Responses included, "It doesn't disturb me" to "I'm not concerned, per se." Kathy Brown, 36, said she thought it was just "a trendy pop-art piece, not a political statement." Ed Kirtz, 33, lamented the gap between the number of people who have read Guevara's work, and who understand and sympathize with his ideas, and the number of people sporting Guevara apparel. To address the disparity, he said, he'd prefer an increase in the number reading and understanding Guevara to a decrease in the number wearing Che T-shirts.
None of those patrons was Cuban-American.
Neither is Dita Sullivan, who Ms. Welau said has strong opinions about the library merchandise.
A photographer and writer whose work focuses on popular culture in the Caribbean, Ms. Sullivan, a Queens resident, is married to a Cuban refugee and lived in Cuba during the late 1980s and early 1990s."You don't have to be Cuban to not want the face of a butcher sold in our public library," Ms. Sullivan said.
She said, as did Ms. Welau and Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, that it was inappropriate for a library, of all places, to be glorifying Guevara. There are no free and independent libraries - and no freedom to read at all - in Cuba, Ms. Sullivan said, largely because of Guevara's work. She pointed to the example of Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind human rights activist who was imprisoned and beaten for trying to run a Braille library out of his home.
As a taxpayer, Ms. Sullivan said, she was also angered by the library's "idolizing destruction and murder."
In 2002, the library received $201,920,000 in city, state, and federal funds. According to Ms. Hoerenz, the library gift shop does not receive public funds.
Ms. Sullivan - who said her husband wakes up screaming, 10 years after fleeing Cuba, with nightmares about still being on the island - is infuriated by ignorance about Guevara.
"I wish more Americans would bother to learn something" about Guevara, she said. "And no one should buy this watch."
http://www.nysun.com/article/6237
Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil. "Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring...
December 14, 2004 Edition > Section: New York
Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 14, 2004
The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil.
"Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara," the library's Web site says. A red star, trailed by the word "revolution," measures seconds.
The timepiece, along with watches featuring Einstein and Shakespeare, is available for $40 online and in library gift stores.
Maria Werlau, president of the Free Society Project - a nonprofit human rights organization documenting the victims of Cuba's communist revolution - denounced sales of the watch as "outrageous." After not having calls to the library returned, she wrote a letter of protest to the institution's president, Paul LeClerc.
Ms. Werlau, who was born in Cuba and moved to the United States as an infant, said she assumes the library "put this on their list of products because they were ignorant of who this man is." She said popular culture has "made Guevara an icon of freedom, but he's the opposite of that-the antithesis of freedom." Most people who wear Che paraphernalia "have no idea he was a mass murderer," Ms. Werlau said.
Ms. Werlau said the Free Society Project has a list of about 180 people for whose executions in Cuba Guevara was directly responsible, but the list doesn't include what they estimate to be several undocumented cases - or people who lost their lives because of Guevara's revolutionary activities throughout South America and Africa.
Ms. Werlau, comparing Ernesto Guevara's legacy to those of other dictators and mass murderers, said: "He was dedicated to his ideals. But so were Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin."
A spokeswoman for the New York Public Library, Tina Hoerenz, said that under no circumstances would the library sell Hitler merchandise. When informed that some Cubans felt that selling a pop-culture image of Guevara was the moral equivalent of glorifying Hitler, she replied, "I don't know what to say about that."
Ms. Hoerenz also provided a statement about the watch from the library, which declined further comment: "In its collections and shops, The New York Public Library has materials representing a diverse range of issues and views. Our essential interest is, in fact, to represent the widest range of humanity's ideas, historical changes, and personalities. It is not the Library's policy to censor or limit its offerings based on outside political current."
As for the Guevara merchandise, Ms. Hoerenz compared the watch to other "whimsical" trinkets offered at the gift shop - such as librarian action figures and dancing-cat pins.
To Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, however, there is simply no comparison. Mr. Montblanc is the president of the Westside Heights Citizens League, an organization he said has many Cuban-American members. Mr. Reyes-Montblanc has also written a letter of protest to the library in response to what he calls the "extremely vociferous objections" Cuban-Americans in his community have to the library's selling the watch.
Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, who was born in Cuba and came to America as a 10-year-old in 1959, dismissed the library's censorship defense, saying, "It's the same excuse that everyone else uses."
"It's not censorship," Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said. "We are not calling for them to take the Che Guevara books out of the library - those books are protected by the First Amendment." The watch, he said, was a business issue - and a poor business choice.
Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said that if the library did not pull the watch from its shelves, he anticipated protests from the Cuban-American community.
There were no protests yesterday outside the gift shop at the library's mid-Manhattan branch, on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street. There, the Guevara timepiece was not on display, and only one remained in stock. A clerk said the watches "definitely sell." She said she wasn't aware of any complaints from shoppers during the month the watch had been for sale.
Patrons yesterday didn't have complaints about the timepiece. Responses included, "It doesn't disturb me" to "I'm not concerned, per se." Kathy Brown, 36, said she thought it was just "a trendy pop-art piece, not a political statement." Ed Kirtz, 33, lamented the gap between the number of people who have read Guevara's work, and who understand and sympathize with his ideas, and the number of people sporting Guevara apparel. To address the disparity, he said, he'd prefer an increase in the number reading and understanding Guevara to a decrease in the number wearing Che T-shirts.
None of those patrons was Cuban-American.
Neither is Dita Sullivan, who Ms. Welau said has strong opinions about the library merchandise.
A photographer and writer whose work focuses on popular culture in the Caribbean, Ms. Sullivan, a Queens resident, is married to a Cuban refugee and lived in Cuba during the late 1980s and early 1990s."You don't have to be Cuban to not want the face of a butcher sold in our public library," Ms. Sullivan said.
She said, as did Ms. Welau and Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, that it was inappropriate for a library, of all places, to be glorifying Guevara. There are no free and independent libraries - and no freedom to read at all - in Cuba, Ms. Sullivan said, largely because of Guevara's work. She pointed to the example of Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind human rights activist who was imprisoned and beaten for trying to run a Braille library out of his home.
As a taxpayer, Ms. Sullivan said, she was also angered by the library's "idolizing destruction and murder."
In 2002, the library received $201,920,000 in city, state, and federal funds. According to Ms. Hoerenz, the library gift shop does not receive public funds.
Ms. Sullivan - who said her husband wakes up screaming, 10 years after fleeing Cuba, with nightmares about still being on the island - is infuriated by ignorance about Guevara.
"I wish more Americans would bother to learn something" about Guevara, she said. "And no one should buy this watch."
Sunday, December 12, 2004
cell ph. / do not call #
In a few weeks, cell phone numbers will be released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. If you prefer not to, call this number from your cell phone... 888-382-1222.
It is the national Do Not Call list, and it will block your number for 5 years.
It is the national Do Not Call list, and it will block your number for 5 years.
Developers home in on far W. Side
Subject: Developers home in on far W. Side
Date: 12/12/2004 12:23:45 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Developers home in on far W. Side
Buy up sites before prices take off; plans for mixed uses fit expected rezoning
Crains NY Business
By Christine Haughney
Published on December 13, 2004
Developers large and small have begun jockeying for prime plots of land on
the far West Side, now that the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention
Center has been approved and rezoning of the area early next year seems
almost assured.
In recent weeks, residential developers have begun plucking up sites in
hopes of getting in before land prices take off. Major commercial
developers are also expressing interest in the area, and some already are
hammering out plans that fit current rezoning proposals. As a result, real
estate lawyers say they're getting calls from a slew of new clients on
zoning issues.
"We've seen interest in that neighborhood from small-timers to real estate
investment trusts," says Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty
Services Inc. "Every segment of the community is interested in buying in
that area."
Some landlords and developers, however, say it's too early in the game to
make a move and are waiting to see exactly what kind of rezoning takes place.
Risky venture
"There's always an element of risk until the zoning is enacted," says Eric
Anton, an Eastern Consolidated Properties Inc. managing director working on
the sales of many 50,000- to 150,000-square-foot properties in the
neighborhood. "Everyone is trying to figure out what the ... best use is
for their property."
Interest in the area that lies roughly between West 28th and West 41st
streets and Eighth to 11th avenues has been building since the City
Planning Commission voted to approve the West Side zoning plan last month.
Fuel was added last week when Gov. George Pataki signed legislation for a
$1.4 billion plan to expand the convention center. The City Council also is
scheduled to vote on the proposed zoning changes in January.
Eastern Consolidated sales brokers say that the number of West Side owners
interested in selling their properties has doubled from a year ago. "We're
seeing a lot of construction companies, storage companies and trucking
companies thinking about selling," says Mr. Anton.
Prices moving up
Developers already are paying top dollar for some prime sites. In a sale
recently closed by Massey Knakal, Mendel Mendlowitz bought the entire
eastern block on Ninth Avenue between W. 35th and West 36th streets for $22
million. The price had jumped 57% over the $14 million paid one year ago by
the seller, AAG Management.
Some developers are so confident in the area and the city's need for more
housing that they're not waiting for any more government approvals. Twining
Properties-in partnership with The Related Cos. and MacFarlane
Partners-recently closed on a site at 440 W. 42nd St., at 10th Avenue,
without the promise of any zoning changes. The developers plan to construct
a tower with retail stores, rental apartments and condominiums.
"The far West Side has got to happen," says President Alex Twining.
"There's only so much land left in Manhattan."
Grander plans
Some major developers that already own sites in the area are using the
recent proposed zoning changes to firm up their plans. Brookfield
Properties, which planned to construct a 2 million-square-foot office
building at 401 W. 31st St., between Ninth and 10th avenues, is expanding
the project to a 2.5 million-square-foot tower featuring both offices and
residences.
"There's more flexibility for the use, which brings us back to the drawing
board," says Dennis Friedrich, Brookfield's president and chief operating
officer.
Even the normally reticent chief executive of Vornado Realty Trust, one of
the neighboring area's largest landlords, says he's interested in expanding
west beyond his firm's core properties, which line Seventh Avenue. Vornado
already is bidding to develop the James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue.
Seal of approval
"We think (the far West Side blueprint) is a very, very, very enlightened
plan, and we support it," says Steven Roth.
That type of interest is creating a pickup in business for the city's real
estate lawyers. In the last several months, Fried Frank Harris Shriver &
Jacobson lawyers have been barraged with projects from developers of all sizes.
"We are very busy with zoning, land use and development projects on the
West Side," says Jonathan Mechanic, chairman of the law firm's real estate
department.
Still, other attorneys find that the kinds of queries they are receiving
show that most action is still far off.
"I've not had a single case where someone has come to me with a firm plan
for development," says Sandy Lindenbaum, head of Kramer Levin Naftalis &
Frankel's land use group. "We're going to have to be further along."
Date: 12/12/2004 12:23:45 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Developers home in on far W. Side
Buy up sites before prices take off; plans for mixed uses fit expected rezoning
Crains NY Business
By Christine Haughney
Published on December 13, 2004
Developers large and small have begun jockeying for prime plots of land on
the far West Side, now that the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention
Center has been approved and rezoning of the area early next year seems
almost assured.
In recent weeks, residential developers have begun plucking up sites in
hopes of getting in before land prices take off. Major commercial
developers are also expressing interest in the area, and some already are
hammering out plans that fit current rezoning proposals. As a result, real
estate lawyers say they're getting calls from a slew of new clients on
zoning issues.
"We've seen interest in that neighborhood from small-timers to real estate
investment trusts," says Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty
Services Inc. "Every segment of the community is interested in buying in
that area."
Some landlords and developers, however, say it's too early in the game to
make a move and are waiting to see exactly what kind of rezoning takes place.
Risky venture
"There's always an element of risk until the zoning is enacted," says Eric
Anton, an Eastern Consolidated Properties Inc. managing director working on
the sales of many 50,000- to 150,000-square-foot properties in the
neighborhood. "Everyone is trying to figure out what the ... best use is
for their property."
Interest in the area that lies roughly between West 28th and West 41st
streets and Eighth to 11th avenues has been building since the City
Planning Commission voted to approve the West Side zoning plan last month.
Fuel was added last week when Gov. George Pataki signed legislation for a
$1.4 billion plan to expand the convention center. The City Council also is
scheduled to vote on the proposed zoning changes in January.
Eastern Consolidated sales brokers say that the number of West Side owners
interested in selling their properties has doubled from a year ago. "We're
seeing a lot of construction companies, storage companies and trucking
companies thinking about selling," says Mr. Anton.
Prices moving up
Developers already are paying top dollar for some prime sites. In a sale
recently closed by Massey Knakal, Mendel Mendlowitz bought the entire
eastern block on Ninth Avenue between W. 35th and West 36th streets for $22
million. The price had jumped 57% over the $14 million paid one year ago by
the seller, AAG Management.
Some developers are so confident in the area and the city's need for more
housing that they're not waiting for any more government approvals. Twining
Properties-in partnership with The Related Cos. and MacFarlane
Partners-recently closed on a site at 440 W. 42nd St., at 10th Avenue,
without the promise of any zoning changes. The developers plan to construct
a tower with retail stores, rental apartments and condominiums.
"The far West Side has got to happen," says President Alex Twining.
"There's only so much land left in Manhattan."
Grander plans
Some major developers that already own sites in the area are using the
recent proposed zoning changes to firm up their plans. Brookfield
Properties, which planned to construct a 2 million-square-foot office
building at 401 W. 31st St., between Ninth and 10th avenues, is expanding
the project to a 2.5 million-square-foot tower featuring both offices and
residences.
"There's more flexibility for the use, which brings us back to the drawing
board," says Dennis Friedrich, Brookfield's president and chief operating
officer.
Even the normally reticent chief executive of Vornado Realty Trust, one of
the neighboring area's largest landlords, says he's interested in expanding
west beyond his firm's core properties, which line Seventh Avenue. Vornado
already is bidding to develop the James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue.
Seal of approval
"We think (the far West Side blueprint) is a very, very, very enlightened
plan, and we support it," says Steven Roth.
That type of interest is creating a pickup in business for the city's real
estate lawyers. In the last several months, Fried Frank Harris Shriver &
Jacobson lawyers have been barraged with projects from developers of all sizes.
"We are very busy with zoning, land use and development projects on the
West Side," says Jonathan Mechanic, chairman of the law firm's real estate
department.
Still, other attorneys find that the kinds of queries they are receiving
show that most action is still far off.
"I've not had a single case where someone has come to me with a firm plan
for development," says Sandy Lindenbaum, head of Kramer Levin Naftalis &
Frankel's land use group. "We're going to have to be further along."
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
Subject: Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
Date: 12/11/2004 10:16:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
By DEAN STARKMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 8, 2004; Page B1
Big-box retailers have a message for local landowners: Move.
And the command has the force of law, much to the dismay of Darrell M.
Trent, a part-time developer in Pittsburg, Kan. Mr. Trent thought he scored
a coup this year when he leased part of a seven-acre parcel his family had
owned since the 1960s to a local plumbing supplier.
But the city took the property this spring through its powers of eminent
domain and handed it to a developer with a different tenant: Home Depot Inc.
Says Mr. Trent: "After having carried it all this time, for them to step in
and take it away from me -- it really denies me my corporate livelihood,"
Mr. Trent says.
Desperate for tax revenue, cities and towns across the country now
routinely take property from unwilling sellers to make way for big-box
retailers. Condemnation cases aren't tracked nationally, but even retailers
themselves acknowledge that the explosive growth of the format in the 1990s
and torrid competition for land has increasingly pushed them into
increasingly problematic areas -- including sites owned by other people.
The village of Port Chester, N.Y., is clearing an entire business district
-- including a marina, a house wares importer, an antiques store and
several other businesses -- to make way for Costco Wholesale Corp., Bed
Bath & Beyond Inc. and others. Costco took over another site after the city
of Cypress, Calif., condemned a vacant lot as a "public nuisance" to stop a
Christian group from building a religious center there. After a public
uproar, the city found another site for the church , which says it is
satisfied with the ultimate outcome.
The township of North Bergen, N.J., moved to condemn a store in a shopping
center occupied by Kmart Holding Corp. in favor of a developer who plans
another Home Depot. When the city of Maplewood, Mo., invited retailers to
compete for a chunk of choice land, developers for Costco and Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. fought a nasty legal and political battle. Wal-Mart's developer
won -- and 150 homes and businesses were condemned.
Next spring, Costco will face its second shareholder resolution in two
years asking the company to "adopt a policy for land procurement and use
that incorporates social and environmental factors," particularly, the
wishes of local property owners and community groups. The resolution was
brought by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc., New York, which
says its concerns include "reputational risk" from eminent-domain use. "If
the company continues to operate in this manner, with the amount of
publicity and protests, this could end up impacting shareholder value,"
says Julie Tanner, a Christian Brothers spokeswoman.
Property-rights advocates say the use of condemnation for big boxes is an
abuse of government power that subsidizes big retailers at original
landowners' expense. "They're the new generation of robber barons, like the
railroads of the 19th century" says Gideon Kanner, a professor emeritus at
Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. "They look upon this as the
new way of doing business."
The U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions allow the government to
take private property, with compensation, for a "public use." But courts
over the years have allowed cities and towns to stretch the definition to
include economic-development projects, on the principle that one private
owner can better create jobs and increase tax revenue than another.
Retailers say they're doing nothing wrong. Costco, based in Issaquah,
Wash., is the most outspoken of the big retailers in defense of the
practice. In a candid letter to a concerned shareholder two years ago, the
company's senior vice president for legal and administrative affairs, Joel
Benoliel, acknowledged that "probably dozens" of its projects involved
eminent domain "or the threat of it." He wrote that if Costco didn't do the
deals, "our competitors for those sites, like Target, Home Depot, Kmart,
Wal-Mart, BJ's, Sam's Club and many others, would ... and our shareholders
would be the losers."
Mr. Benoliel says the practice doesn't violate laws or any rules of the
free-market economy and rejects as "simplistic" libertarian arguments that
condemnations should be confined, as some property-rights advocates argue,
to roads, bridges and purely public uses. He says communities, balancing
their fiscal needs against the rights of a few, often clamor for a Costco
store. "We are viewed as a solution to a problem," he says.
Whether condemnees get full value for their property is a matter of bitter
debate. Property owners invariably complain they are strong-armed into
accepting low-ball offers. In New York's Port Chester, a working-class city
on Long Island Sound, developer Bart Didden says that village redevelopment
officials this year offered him $250,000 for a lot that a separate local
taxing authority assessed last year at $560,000. He is challenging the
village's condemnation in federal court in White Plains, N.Y.
John Watkins, a special counsel for the village, says all offers were based
on "highest approved appraisals," as required by state law. He says he
understands Mr. Didden's reaction, but adds that tax assessments and
appraisals serve different functions -- "apples and oranges," as he puts it.
Also in Port Chester, property owners and tenants alleged in several suits
filed since 2000 in state court in White Plains, N.Y., that G&S LLC, the
town-appointed developers, tried to prod them into settling pending
condemnation suits by, among other things, removing sidewalks in front of a
restaurant and filling its parking lot with rubble; tearing out street
lights around an antiques store and shearing off the roof of a
still-operating coin laundry.
Doug Riley, a partner with closely held G&S, Port Chester, says the
allegations are both untrue and "100% frivolous." He says that under its
agreement with the town, the firm was required to proceed with the project,
while working around certain properties still the subject of litigation.
"We were proceeding in due course with the project as we were required to
do by the village," he says. Suits involving the restaurant, the antiques
store and laundry are pending.
Lately, cities' power to condemn property has come under increased legal
scrutiny. In August, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a landmark 1981
ruling, widely cited by other states, that effectively barred condemnations
for purely economic purposes in that state.
Then, in September, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit brought on
behalf of New London, Conn., property owners challenging the city's plan to
clear nonblighted homes and businesses to make way for an
office-and-research park. The case, brought by Institute for Justice, a
Washington, D.C., property-rights law firm, is the first the high court has
heard on economic-development condemnations since the 1950s.
Last year, a federal judge sharply criticized Target Corp. for its role in
a condemnation of a St. Louis site. The case began after Target, which was
already renting a store on the site, asked its landlord for permission to
knock down the store and build a larger one. When the landlord asked for
higher rent, Target never called back and turned to a local alderman, who
started condemnation proceedings, according to an opinion by Judge Charles
A. Shaw in U.S. District Court, St. Louis.
Judge Shaw also found that Target "falsely" threatened the city that it
would abandon the store if the condemnation didn't take place. He also
found that the Minneapolis retailer and the city commissioned a "blighting
study" that found the store's electrical and heating systems had indeed
deteriorated -- but failed to note that Target itself was responsible under
the lease for keeping the systems up. Finally, the judge found, when the
city scheduled a public hearing on the condemnation, in November 2002, it
sent notice to Target, but not to the landlord -- a trust representing the
Aaron family of New York and others -- which didn't learn of the hearing
until a month later.
Judge Shaw issued a temporary order halting the taking. Earlier this year,
the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the order, ruling the
case should have been heard in state court. Edward M. Goldenhersh, a St.
Louis lawyer for the landlord said the family was disappointed with the
appeals-court ruling because the court "ducked the issue." The two sides
settled afterward.
A Target spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for Mayor Francis
Slay didn't return telephone calls.
Mr. Trent, the Kansan, had a special hardship fighting his case: When it
was filed, he was serving as a U.S. ambassador with the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq. He says the case began after he rejected a
"low-ball" offer from Home Depot's developer, then flew to Baghdad. His
lawyer tried to fend off the taking, but a state court in Pittsburg let it
go forward this spring. Mr. Trent is challenging the compensation. That
case is pending.
Allen Gill, Pittsburgh's city manager, says Mr. Trent was well compensated,
receiving more than $1 million for his property -- a large sum for rural
Kansas. He also says Mr. Trent and another owner's opposition blocked a
badly needed project that has already sparked other development in town.
"Does the greater good outweigh the inconvenience to the two?" Mr. Gill asks.
In a statement, Atlanta-based Home Depot said the project would bring "good
paying jobs and economic development," adding that "the City of Pittsburg
identified this site as an area in need of redevelopment, and the Home
Depot was receptive to working with the developer who was negotiating with
the city."
Date: 12/11/2004 10:16:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
By DEAN STARKMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 8, 2004; Page B1
Big-box retailers have a message for local landowners: Move.
And the command has the force of law, much to the dismay of Darrell M.
Trent, a part-time developer in Pittsburg, Kan. Mr. Trent thought he scored
a coup this year when he leased part of a seven-acre parcel his family had
owned since the 1960s to a local plumbing supplier.
But the city took the property this spring through its powers of eminent
domain and handed it to a developer with a different tenant: Home Depot Inc.
Says Mr. Trent: "After having carried it all this time, for them to step in
and take it away from me -- it really denies me my corporate livelihood,"
Mr. Trent says.
Desperate for tax revenue, cities and towns across the country now
routinely take property from unwilling sellers to make way for big-box
retailers. Condemnation cases aren't tracked nationally, but even retailers
themselves acknowledge that the explosive growth of the format in the 1990s
and torrid competition for land has increasingly pushed them into
increasingly problematic areas -- including sites owned by other people.
The village of Port Chester, N.Y., is clearing an entire business district
-- including a marina, a house wares importer, an antiques store and
several other businesses -- to make way for Costco Wholesale Corp., Bed
Bath & Beyond Inc. and others. Costco took over another site after the city
of Cypress, Calif., condemned a vacant lot as a "public nuisance" to stop a
Christian group from building a religious center there. After a public
uproar, the city found another site for the church , which says it is
satisfied with the ultimate outcome.
The township of North Bergen, N.J., moved to condemn a store in a shopping
center occupied by Kmart Holding Corp. in favor of a developer who plans
another Home Depot. When the city of Maplewood, Mo., invited retailers to
compete for a chunk of choice land, developers for Costco and Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. fought a nasty legal and political battle. Wal-Mart's developer
won -- and 150 homes and businesses were condemned.
Next spring, Costco will face its second shareholder resolution in two
years asking the company to "adopt a policy for land procurement and use
that incorporates social and environmental factors," particularly, the
wishes of local property owners and community groups. The resolution was
brought by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc., New York, which
says its concerns include "reputational risk" from eminent-domain use. "If
the company continues to operate in this manner, with the amount of
publicity and protests, this could end up impacting shareholder value,"
says Julie Tanner, a Christian Brothers spokeswoman.
Property-rights advocates say the use of condemnation for big boxes is an
abuse of government power that subsidizes big retailers at original
landowners' expense. "They're the new generation of robber barons, like the
railroads of the 19th century" says Gideon Kanner, a professor emeritus at
Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. "They look upon this as the
new way of doing business."
The U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions allow the government to
take private property, with compensation, for a "public use." But courts
over the years have allowed cities and towns to stretch the definition to
include economic-development projects, on the principle that one private
owner can better create jobs and increase tax revenue than another.
Retailers say they're doing nothing wrong. Costco, based in Issaquah,
Wash., is the most outspoken of the big retailers in defense of the
practice. In a candid letter to a concerned shareholder two years ago, the
company's senior vice president for legal and administrative affairs, Joel
Benoliel, acknowledged that "probably dozens" of its projects involved
eminent domain "or the threat of it." He wrote that if Costco didn't do the
deals, "our competitors for those sites, like Target, Home Depot, Kmart,
Wal-Mart, BJ's, Sam's Club and many others, would ... and our shareholders
would be the losers."
Mr. Benoliel says the practice doesn't violate laws or any rules of the
free-market economy and rejects as "simplistic" libertarian arguments that
condemnations should be confined, as some property-rights advocates argue,
to roads, bridges and purely public uses. He says communities, balancing
their fiscal needs against the rights of a few, often clamor for a Costco
store. "We are viewed as a solution to a problem," he says.
Whether condemnees get full value for their property is a matter of bitter
debate. Property owners invariably complain they are strong-armed into
accepting low-ball offers. In New York's Port Chester, a working-class city
on Long Island Sound, developer Bart Didden says that village redevelopment
officials this year offered him $250,000 for a lot that a separate local
taxing authority assessed last year at $560,000. He is challenging the
village's condemnation in federal court in White Plains, N.Y.
John Watkins, a special counsel for the village, says all offers were based
on "highest approved appraisals," as required by state law. He says he
understands Mr. Didden's reaction, but adds that tax assessments and
appraisals serve different functions -- "apples and oranges," as he puts it.
Also in Port Chester, property owners and tenants alleged in several suits
filed since 2000 in state court in White Plains, N.Y., that G&S LLC, the
town-appointed developers, tried to prod them into settling pending
condemnation suits by, among other things, removing sidewalks in front of a
restaurant and filling its parking lot with rubble; tearing out street
lights around an antiques store and shearing off the roof of a
still-operating coin laundry.
Doug Riley, a partner with closely held G&S, Port Chester, says the
allegations are both untrue and "100% frivolous." He says that under its
agreement with the town, the firm was required to proceed with the project,
while working around certain properties still the subject of litigation.
"We were proceeding in due course with the project as we were required to
do by the village," he says. Suits involving the restaurant, the antiques
store and laundry are pending.
Lately, cities' power to condemn property has come under increased legal
scrutiny. In August, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a landmark 1981
ruling, widely cited by other states, that effectively barred condemnations
for purely economic purposes in that state.
Then, in September, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit brought on
behalf of New London, Conn., property owners challenging the city's plan to
clear nonblighted homes and businesses to make way for an
office-and-research park. The case, brought by Institute for Justice, a
Washington, D.C., property-rights law firm, is the first the high court has
heard on economic-development condemnations since the 1950s.
Last year, a federal judge sharply criticized Target Corp. for its role in
a condemnation of a St. Louis site. The case began after Target, which was
already renting a store on the site, asked its landlord for permission to
knock down the store and build a larger one. When the landlord asked for
higher rent, Target never called back and turned to a local alderman, who
started condemnation proceedings, according to an opinion by Judge Charles
A. Shaw in U.S. District Court, St. Louis.
Judge Shaw also found that Target "falsely" threatened the city that it
would abandon the store if the condemnation didn't take place. He also
found that the Minneapolis retailer and the city commissioned a "blighting
study" that found the store's electrical and heating systems had indeed
deteriorated -- but failed to note that Target itself was responsible under
the lease for keeping the systems up. Finally, the judge found, when the
city scheduled a public hearing on the condemnation, in November 2002, it
sent notice to Target, but not to the landlord -- a trust representing the
Aaron family of New York and others -- which didn't learn of the hearing
until a month later.
Judge Shaw issued a temporary order halting the taking. Earlier this year,
the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the order, ruling the
case should have been heard in state court. Edward M. Goldenhersh, a St.
Louis lawyer for the landlord said the family was disappointed with the
appeals-court ruling because the court "ducked the issue." The two sides
settled afterward.
A Target spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for Mayor Francis
Slay didn't return telephone calls.
Mr. Trent, the Kansan, had a special hardship fighting his case: When it
was filed, he was serving as a U.S. ambassador with the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq. He says the case began after he rejected a
"low-ball" offer from Home Depot's developer, then flew to Baghdad. His
lawyer tried to fend off the taking, but a state court in Pittsburg let it
go forward this spring. Mr. Trent is challenging the compensation. That
case is pending.
Allen Gill, Pittsburgh's city manager, says Mr. Trent was well compensated,
receiving more than $1 million for his property -- a large sum for rural
Kansas. He also says Mr. Trent and another owner's opposition blocked a
badly needed project that has already sparked other development in town.
"Does the greater good outweigh the inconvenience to the two?" Mr. Gill asks.
In a statement, Atlanta-based Home Depot said the project would bring "good
paying jobs and economic development," adding that "the City of Pittsburg
identified this site as an area in need of redevelopment, and the Home
Depot was receptive to working with the developer who was negotiating with
the city."
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
Subject: Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
Date: 12/11/2004 10:16:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
By DEAN STARKMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 8, 2004; Page B1
Big-box retailers have a message for local landowners: Move.
And the command has the force of law, much to the dismay of Darrell M.
Trent, a part-time developer in Pittsburg, Kan. Mr. Trent thought he scored
a coup this year when he leased part of a seven-acre parcel his family had
owned since the 1960s to a local plumbing supplier.
But the city took the property this spring through its powers of eminent
domain and handed it to a developer with a different tenant: Home Depot Inc.
Says Mr. Trent: "After having carried it all this time, for them to step in
and take it away from me -- it really denies me my corporate livelihood,"
Mr. Trent says.
Desperate for tax revenue, cities and towns across the country now
routinely take property from unwilling sellers to make way for big-box
retailers. Condemnation cases aren't tracked nationally, but even retailers
themselves acknowledge that the explosive growth of the format in the 1990s
and torrid competition for land has increasingly pushed them into
increasingly problematic areas -- including sites owned by other people.
The village of Port Chester, N.Y., is clearing an entire business district
-- including a marina, a house wares importer, an antiques store and
several other businesses -- to make way for Costco Wholesale Corp., Bed
Bath & Beyond Inc. and others. Costco took over another site after the city
of Cypress, Calif., condemned a vacant lot as a "public nuisance" to stop a
Christian group from building a religious center there. After a public
uproar, the city found another site for the church , which says it is
satisfied with the ultimate outcome.
The township of North Bergen, N.J., moved to condemn a store in a shopping
center occupied by Kmart Holding Corp. in favor of a developer who plans
another Home Depot. When the city of Maplewood, Mo., invited retailers to
compete for a chunk of choice land, developers for Costco and Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. fought a nasty legal and political battle. Wal-Mart's developer
won -- and 150 homes and businesses were condemned.
Next spring, Costco will face its second shareholder resolution in two
years asking the company to "adopt a policy for land procurement and use
that incorporates social and environmental factors," particularly, the
wishes of local property owners and community groups. The resolution was
brought by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc., New York, which
says its concerns include "reputational risk" from eminent-domain use. "If
the company continues to operate in this manner, with the amount of
publicity and protests, this could end up impacting shareholder value,"
says Julie Tanner, a Christian Brothers spokeswoman.
Property-rights advocates say the use of condemnation for big boxes is an
abuse of government power that subsidizes big retailers at original
landowners' expense. "They're the new generation of robber barons, like the
railroads of the 19th century" says Gideon Kanner, a professor emeritus at
Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. "They look upon this as the
new way of doing business."
The U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions allow the government to
take private property, with compensation, for a "public use." But courts
over the years have allowed cities and towns to stretch the definition to
include economic-development projects, on the principle that one private
owner can better create jobs and increase tax revenue than another.
Retailers say they're doing nothing wrong. Costco, based in Issaquah,
Wash., is the most outspoken of the big retailers in defense of the
practice. In a candid letter to a concerned shareholder two years ago, the
company's senior vice president for legal and administrative affairs, Joel
Benoliel, acknowledged that "probably dozens" of its projects involved
eminent domain "or the threat of it." He wrote that if Costco didn't do the
deals, "our competitors for those sites, like Target, Home Depot, Kmart,
Wal-Mart, BJ's, Sam's Club and many others, would ... and our shareholders
would be the losers."
Mr. Benoliel says the practice doesn't violate laws or any rules of the
free-market economy and rejects as "simplistic" libertarian arguments that
condemnations should be confined, as some property-rights advocates argue,
to roads, bridges and purely public uses. He says communities, balancing
their fiscal needs against the rights of a few, often clamor for a Costco
store. "We are viewed as a solution to a problem," he says.
Whether condemnees get full value for their property is a matter of bitter
debate. Property owners invariably complain they are strong-armed into
accepting low-ball offers. In New York's Port Chester, a working-class city
on Long Island Sound, developer Bart Didden says that village redevelopment
officials this year offered him $250,000 for a lot that a separate local
taxing authority assessed last year at $560,000. He is challenging the
village's condemnation in federal court in White Plains, N.Y.
John Watkins, a special counsel for the village, says all offers were based
on "highest approved appraisals," as required by state law. He says he
understands Mr. Didden's reaction, but adds that tax assessments and
appraisals serve different functions -- "apples and oranges," as he puts it.
Also in Port Chester, property owners and tenants alleged in several suits
filed since 2000 in state court in White Plains, N.Y., that G&S LLC, the
town-appointed developers, tried to prod them into settling pending
condemnation suits by, among other things, removing sidewalks in front of a
restaurant and filling its parking lot with rubble; tearing out street
lights around an antiques store and shearing off the roof of a
still-operating coin laundry.
Doug Riley, a partner with closely held G&S, Port Chester, says the
allegations are both untrue and "100% frivolous." He says that under its
agreement with the town, the firm was required to proceed with the project,
while working around certain properties still the subject of litigation.
"We were proceeding in due course with the project as we were required to
do by the village," he says. Suits involving the restaurant, the antiques
store and laundry are pending.
Lately, cities' power to condemn property has come under increased legal
scrutiny. In August, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a landmark 1981
ruling, widely cited by other states, that effectively barred condemnations
for purely economic purposes in that state.
Then, in September, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit brought on
behalf of New London, Conn., property owners challenging the city's plan to
clear nonblighted homes and businesses to make way for an
office-and-research park. The case, brought by Institute for Justice, a
Washington, D.C., property-rights law firm, is the first the high court has
heard on economic-development condemnations since the 1950s.
Last year, a federal judge sharply criticized Target Corp. for its role in
a condemnation of a St. Louis site. The case began after Target, which was
already renting a store on the site, asked its landlord for permission to
knock down the store and build a larger one. When the landlord asked for
higher rent, Target never called back and turned to a local alderman, who
started condemnation proceedings, according to an opinion by Judge Charles
A. Shaw in U.S. District Court, St. Louis.
Judge Shaw also found that Target "falsely" threatened the city that it
would abandon the store if the condemnation didn't take place. He also
found that the Minneapolis retailer and the city commissioned a "blighting
study" that found the store's electrical and heating systems had indeed
deteriorated -- but failed to note that Target itself was responsible under
the lease for keeping the systems up. Finally, the judge found, when the
city scheduled a public hearing on the condemnation, in November 2002, it
sent notice to Target, but not to the landlord -- a trust representing the
Aaron family of New York and others -- which didn't learn of the hearing
until a month later.
Judge Shaw issued a temporary order halting the taking. Earlier this year,
the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the order, ruling the
case should have been heard in state court. Edward M. Goldenhersh, a St.
Louis lawyer for the landlord said the family was disappointed with the
appeals-court ruling because the court "ducked the issue." The two sides
settled afterward.
A Target spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for Mayor Francis
Slay didn't return telephone calls.
Mr. Trent, the Kansan, had a special hardship fighting his case: When it
was filed, he was serving as a U.S. ambassador with the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq. He says the case began after he rejected a
"low-ball" offer from Home Depot's developer, then flew to Baghdad. His
lawyer tried to fend off the taking, but a state court in Pittsburg let it
go forward this spring. Mr. Trent is challenging the compensation. That
case is pending.
Allen Gill, Pittsburgh's city manager, says Mr. Trent was well compensated,
receiving more than $1 million for his property -- a large sum for rural
Kansas. He also says Mr. Trent and another owner's opposition blocked a
badly needed project that has already sparked other development in town.
"Does the greater good outweigh the inconvenience to the two?" Mr. Gill asks.
In a statement, Atlanta-based Home Depot said the project would bring "good
paying jobs and economic development," adding that "the City of Pittsburg
identified this site as an area in need of redevelopment, and the Home
Depot was receptive to working with the developer who was negotiating with
the city."
Date: 12/11/2004 10:16:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
BCC: Reysmont
Sent on:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Cities Use Eminent Domain To Clear Lots for Big-Box Stores
By DEAN STARKMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 8, 2004; Page B1
Big-box retailers have a message for local landowners: Move.
And the command has the force of law, much to the dismay of Darrell M.
Trent, a part-time developer in Pittsburg, Kan. Mr. Trent thought he scored
a coup this year when he leased part of a seven-acre parcel his family had
owned since the 1960s to a local plumbing supplier.
But the city took the property this spring through its powers of eminent
domain and handed it to a developer with a different tenant: Home Depot Inc.
Says Mr. Trent: "After having carried it all this time, for them to step in
and take it away from me -- it really denies me my corporate livelihood,"
Mr. Trent says.
Desperate for tax revenue, cities and towns across the country now
routinely take property from unwilling sellers to make way for big-box
retailers. Condemnation cases aren't tracked nationally, but even retailers
themselves acknowledge that the explosive growth of the format in the 1990s
and torrid competition for land has increasingly pushed them into
increasingly problematic areas -- including sites owned by other people.
The village of Port Chester, N.Y., is clearing an entire business district
-- including a marina, a house wares importer, an antiques store and
several other businesses -- to make way for Costco Wholesale Corp., Bed
Bath & Beyond Inc. and others. Costco took over another site after the city
of Cypress, Calif., condemned a vacant lot as a "public nuisance" to stop a
Christian group from building a religious center there. After a public
uproar, the city found another site for the church , which says it is
satisfied with the ultimate outcome.
The township of North Bergen, N.J., moved to condemn a store in a shopping
center occupied by Kmart Holding Corp. in favor of a developer who plans
another Home Depot. When the city of Maplewood, Mo., invited retailers to
compete for a chunk of choice land, developers for Costco and Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. fought a nasty legal and political battle. Wal-Mart's developer
won -- and 150 homes and businesses were condemned.
Next spring, Costco will face its second shareholder resolution in two
years asking the company to "adopt a policy for land procurement and use
that incorporates social and environmental factors," particularly, the
wishes of local property owners and community groups. The resolution was
brought by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc., New York, which
says its concerns include "reputational risk" from eminent-domain use. "If
the company continues to operate in this manner, with the amount of
publicity and protests, this could end up impacting shareholder value,"
says Julie Tanner, a Christian Brothers spokeswoman.
Property-rights advocates say the use of condemnation for big boxes is an
abuse of government power that subsidizes big retailers at original
landowners' expense. "They're the new generation of robber barons, like the
railroads of the 19th century" says Gideon Kanner, a professor emeritus at
Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. "They look upon this as the
new way of doing business."
The U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions allow the government to
take private property, with compensation, for a "public use." But courts
over the years have allowed cities and towns to stretch the definition to
include economic-development projects, on the principle that one private
owner can better create jobs and increase tax revenue than another.
Retailers say they're doing nothing wrong. Costco, based in Issaquah,
Wash., is the most outspoken of the big retailers in defense of the
practice. In a candid letter to a concerned shareholder two years ago, the
company's senior vice president for legal and administrative affairs, Joel
Benoliel, acknowledged that "probably dozens" of its projects involved
eminent domain "or the threat of it." He wrote that if Costco didn't do the
deals, "our competitors for those sites, like Target, Home Depot, Kmart,
Wal-Mart, BJ's, Sam's Club and many others, would ... and our shareholders
would be the losers."
Mr. Benoliel says the practice doesn't violate laws or any rules of the
free-market economy and rejects as "simplistic" libertarian arguments that
condemnations should be confined, as some property-rights advocates argue,
to roads, bridges and purely public uses. He says communities, balancing
their fiscal needs against the rights of a few, often clamor for a Costco
store. "We are viewed as a solution to a problem," he says.
Whether condemnees get full value for their property is a matter of bitter
debate. Property owners invariably complain they are strong-armed into
accepting low-ball offers. In New York's Port Chester, a working-class city
on Long Island Sound, developer Bart Didden says that village redevelopment
officials this year offered him $250,000 for a lot that a separate local
taxing authority assessed last year at $560,000. He is challenging the
village's condemnation in federal court in White Plains, N.Y.
John Watkins, a special counsel for the village, says all offers were based
on "highest approved appraisals," as required by state law. He says he
understands Mr. Didden's reaction, but adds that tax assessments and
appraisals serve different functions -- "apples and oranges," as he puts it.
Also in Port Chester, property owners and tenants alleged in several suits
filed since 2000 in state court in White Plains, N.Y., that G&S LLC, the
town-appointed developers, tried to prod them into settling pending
condemnation suits by, among other things, removing sidewalks in front of a
restaurant and filling its parking lot with rubble; tearing out street
lights around an antiques store and shearing off the roof of a
still-operating coin laundry.
Doug Riley, a partner with closely held G&S, Port Chester, says the
allegations are both untrue and "100% frivolous." He says that under its
agreement with the town, the firm was required to proceed with the project,
while working around certain properties still the subject of litigation.
"We were proceeding in due course with the project as we were required to
do by the village," he says. Suits involving the restaurant, the antiques
store and laundry are pending.
Lately, cities' power to condemn property has come under increased legal
scrutiny. In August, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a landmark 1981
ruling, widely cited by other states, that effectively barred condemnations
for purely economic purposes in that state.
Then, in September, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a suit brought on
behalf of New London, Conn., property owners challenging the city's plan to
clear nonblighted homes and businesses to make way for an
office-and-research park. The case, brought by Institute for Justice, a
Washington, D.C., property-rights law firm, is the first the high court has
heard on economic-development condemnations since the 1950s.
Last year, a federal judge sharply criticized Target Corp. for its role in
a condemnation of a St. Louis site. The case began after Target, which was
already renting a store on the site, asked its landlord for permission to
knock down the store and build a larger one. When the landlord asked for
higher rent, Target never called back and turned to a local alderman, who
started condemnation proceedings, according to an opinion by Judge Charles
A. Shaw in U.S. District Court, St. Louis.
Judge Shaw also found that Target "falsely" threatened the city that it
would abandon the store if the condemnation didn't take place. He also
found that the Minneapolis retailer and the city commissioned a "blighting
study" that found the store's electrical and heating systems had indeed
deteriorated -- but failed to note that Target itself was responsible under
the lease for keeping the systems up. Finally, the judge found, when the
city scheduled a public hearing on the condemnation, in November 2002, it
sent notice to Target, but not to the landlord -- a trust representing the
Aaron family of New York and others -- which didn't learn of the hearing
until a month later.
Judge Shaw issued a temporary order halting the taking. Earlier this year,
the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the order, ruling the
case should have been heard in state court. Edward M. Goldenhersh, a St.
Louis lawyer for the landlord said the family was disappointed with the
appeals-court ruling because the court "ducked the issue." The two sides
settled afterward.
A Target spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for Mayor Francis
Slay didn't return telephone calls.
Mr. Trent, the Kansan, had a special hardship fighting his case: When it
was filed, he was serving as a U.S. ambassador with the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq. He says the case began after he rejected a
"low-ball" offer from Home Depot's developer, then flew to Baghdad. His
lawyer tried to fend off the taking, but a state court in Pittsburg let it
go forward this spring. Mr. Trent is challenging the compensation. That
case is pending.
Allen Gill, Pittsburgh's city manager, says Mr. Trent was well compensated,
receiving more than $1 million for his property -- a large sum for rural
Kansas. He also says Mr. Trent and another owner's opposition blocked a
badly needed project that has already sparked other development in town.
"Does the greater good outweigh the inconvenience to the two?" Mr. Gill asks.
In a statement, Atlanta-based Home Depot said the project would bring "good
paying jobs and economic development," adding that "the City of Pittsburg
identified this site as an area in need of redevelopment, and the Home
Depot was receptive to working with the developer who was negotiating with
the city."
Your vote needed - Brennan Center Reforms
Received From Mary
maybe item 1 & 2 for board 9 blog ....
Mary
From: "Tracey Denton/DFNYC"
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: [DFNYC] Your vote needed - Brennan Center Reforms
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:13:02 -0500
Dear Democracy for NYC,
(1) Urgent Action on Brennan Center Reforms - Your Vote Requested
(2) Brennan Center Forum at NYU, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 5pm
(3) Democratic Clubs, Vigil for victims in Sudan, etc.
(1) Urgent Action on Brennan Center Reforms - Your Vote Requested
We are currently faced with an urgent action here in New York. The Brennan
Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has declared the New York State
legislature the worst in the nation. Along with this diagnosis, the Brennan
Center proposed several reforms to the state legislative process.
Most of these reforms are simply changes to the rules in the State Senate
and the Assembly, which means that each chamber can pass the reforms
independent of each other and independent of the governor, bypassing the
"three men in a room" scenario.
The Brennan Center reforms will make the State Senate and the Assembly more democratic and more open to debate and consideration of bills. Many of you may be familiar with the Brennan Center reforms, and we encourage you to write to your State Senator and Assemblymember to request that they vote for the reforms in January.
We are hearing that many legislators are not receiving many messages on this issue, so your email or phone call will be significant. (To find and
contact your Assemblymember and State Senator, visit this link at our
website: http://www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1128).
For more information about the Brennan Center's proposed reforms for
Albany, please visit this page at the Democracy for NYC website:
www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1100
Be sure to also read our update on activity on the Brennan Center reforms,
which includes Assemblymember Scott Stringer's resolution and his
appearance at our Meetup: www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1261
Due to the urgent nature of this issue, we have adopted an email voting
system. We will not formally endorse any issue or candidate without the
support of our members. Please email your full name and your vote on the
endorsement (yes, no, or abstain) to bevangelist@dfnyc.org. Your vote must
be received by Monday, December 13th at noon in order to be counted.
Over the coming months, we will be rolling out the registration process to
become an official voting member of DFNYC and a system of paper verified
voting. We will notify you at Meetups, on the website, and through our
newsletter when these processes are in place.
(2) Brennan Center Forum at NYU, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 5pm
This Wednesday, December 15, the Brennan center for Justice at NYU School
of Law will be hosting a forum about reforming Albany. The forum will be
held at Tishman Auditorium, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South.
RSVP is required, please contact Mary Lapas at (212) 998-6734 or
mary.lapas@nyu.edu.
For more information about this event, including speakers, please see this
page at the Democracy for NYC website:
www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1253
(3) Democratic Clubs, Vigil for victims in Sudan, etc.
Please visit the Democracy for NYC website, www.DemocracyforNYC.org for
information about NYC Democratic Clubs and upcoming events, including a
candlelight vigil to take a stand against the genocide and ethnic cleansing
in the Darfur region of Sudan, (Mon. 6:30pm in Washington Square Park,
sponsored by several groups.)
Thank you,
Tracey Denton
www.DemocracyforNYC.org - local DFA group
www.DemocracyforNewYork.org - state coalition of DFA groups
Email: tdenton@dfnyc.org
Phone: 646.251.0680
maybe item 1 & 2 for board 9 blog ....
Mary
From: "Tracey Denton/DFNYC"
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: [DFNYC] Your vote needed - Brennan Center Reforms
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:13:02 -0500
Dear Democracy for NYC,
(1) Urgent Action on Brennan Center Reforms - Your Vote Requested
(2) Brennan Center Forum at NYU, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 5pm
(3) Democratic Clubs, Vigil for victims in Sudan, etc.
(1) Urgent Action on Brennan Center Reforms - Your Vote Requested
We are currently faced with an urgent action here in New York. The Brennan
Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has declared the New York State
legislature the worst in the nation. Along with this diagnosis, the Brennan
Center proposed several reforms to the state legislative process.
Most of these reforms are simply changes to the rules in the State Senate
and the Assembly, which means that each chamber can pass the reforms
independent of each other and independent of the governor, bypassing the
"three men in a room" scenario.
The Brennan Center reforms will make the State Senate and the Assembly more democratic and more open to debate and consideration of bills. Many of you may be familiar with the Brennan Center reforms, and we encourage you to write to your State Senator and Assemblymember to request that they vote for the reforms in January.
We are hearing that many legislators are not receiving many messages on this issue, so your email or phone call will be significant. (To find and
contact your Assemblymember and State Senator, visit this link at our
website: http://www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1128).
For more information about the Brennan Center's proposed reforms for
Albany, please visit this page at the Democracy for NYC website:
www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1100
Be sure to also read our update on activity on the Brennan Center reforms,
which includes Assemblymember Scott Stringer's resolution and his
appearance at our Meetup: www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1261
Due to the urgent nature of this issue, we have adopted an email voting
system. We will not formally endorse any issue or candidate without the
support of our members. Please email your full name and your vote on the
endorsement (yes, no, or abstain) to bevangelist@dfnyc.org. Your vote must
be received by Monday, December 13th at noon in order to be counted.
Over the coming months, we will be rolling out the registration process to
become an official voting member of DFNYC and a system of paper verified
voting. We will notify you at Meetups, on the website, and through our
newsletter when these processes are in place.
(2) Brennan Center Forum at NYU, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 5pm
This Wednesday, December 15, the Brennan center for Justice at NYU School
of Law will be hosting a forum about reforming Albany. The forum will be
held at Tishman Auditorium, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South.
RSVP is required, please contact Mary Lapas at (212) 998-6734 or
mary.lapas@nyu.edu.
For more information about this event, including speakers, please see this
page at the Democracy for NYC website:
www.dfnyc.org/cms/node/view/1253
(3) Democratic Clubs, Vigil for victims in Sudan, etc.
Please visit the Democracy for NYC website, www.DemocracyforNYC.org for
information about NYC Democratic Clubs and upcoming events, including a
candlelight vigil to take a stand against the genocide and ethnic cleansing
in the Darfur region of Sudan, (Mon. 6:30pm in Washington Square Park,
sponsored by several groups.)
Thank you,
Tracey Denton
www.DemocracyforNYC.org - local DFA group
www.DemocracyforNewYork.org - state coalition of DFA groups
Email: tdenton@dfnyc.org
Phone: 646.251.0680
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Where Starbucks Foundered, Old and New Cafes Flourish
December 10, 2004 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version
Where Starbucks Foundered, Old and New Cafes Flourish
BY JEREMY SMERD - Special to the Sun
December 10, 2004
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/6085
Jean Delphouse is trying to do something Starbucks couldn't do: successfully run a coffeehouse at the Dominican stronghold of Hamilton Heights, where people like their coffee strong, cheap, and served in Spanish.
Last month, Mr. Delphouse opened an outlet of Java's Brewin', the coffeehouse chain's first Manhattan franchise, on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 140th Street. The venture challenges the notion that cafe culture might find a foothold in a neighborhood known more for crime than for coffee, where the barbers outnumber the biscotti.
"I'm trying to offer something you can't get across the street," Mr. Delphouse, 30, said, pointing to a recently closed restaurant that serves the typical local fare of rice and beans.
When Starbucks moved into the renovated storefront of the Gotham Theatre, on Broadway at 138th Street, three years ago, La Flor De Broadway, a Cuban coffee and sandwich counter across the street, had everything to lose.
"At first, we thought we were going to have to close," the man working behind the counter, Angel Franco, said. Wearing a white apron and paper hat, Mr. Franco looks more like a short-order cook than a "barista" - in the Starbucks lexicon, a coffee server.
In May, however, it was the coffee giant that shuttered its doors. The reason was poor performance by the store, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Beckman, told The New York Sun. La Flor De Broadway, meanwhile, grinds on, as it has for 40 years.
"You never saw it full," Mr. Franco, who likes a frappuccino as much as the next guy, said of Starbucks. "Just some students doing homework."
One reason, according to the chairman of Community Board 9, Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, was the corporate chain's inability to tap into local tastes.
"They were not attracting the neighborhood support because of a lack of cultural affinity," he said. "Most of the people don't go to hang out in a cafe. If they hang out, they hang out on the sidewalk. And it's mostly old men talking about the old days."
Indeed, tiny La Flor De Broadway is the anti-coffeehouse. It has no seats, and it does not encourage loiterers. A sign politely asks newspaper addicts to take their reading to the back counter.
Nevertheless, even people like Gabriel Serpa, 27, who enjoyed Starbucks for its chairs, didn't necessarily spend money there, preferring cheaper, better coffee at La Flor De Broadway.
"I'd sometimes bring my cup of coffee over to Starbucks," Mr. Serpa, an artist, said as he stood with a cup of coffee and a Cuban steak sandwich in his hands. "They never bothered me about that stuff. They just let me sit there."
Another sign in La Flor De Broadway reads: "You can't eat food from other places."
Others identified simple economics as the culprit for the demise of the local Starbucks. Why pay $3 for a cup of coffee when 80 cents will do?
Those factors make for tough competition, Mr. Delphouse acknowledged as he puzzled over the best ways to attract Dominicans to his cafe.
"I'm starting to wonder," he asked, "when a young Dominican guy takes a girl out, where does he take her?"
He said he hopes owning a franchise will give him more flexibility to cater to local tastes. He points out that his coffee, which costs $2, is cheaper than many a Starbucks offering, and he also sells soups, breakfast sandwiches, and, soon, paninis and poetry for the crowd from City College, which is one block away. Wednesday nights already bring live music.
Half a block uptown, Stacy Morris, 35, is planning her own neighborhood revolution, what she calls "the second coming of the second Harlem Renaissance." As she waited for the exterminator at her bistro, which she hopes to open in mid-December, she brushed off concerns that she had to cater to Dominican tastes to survive.
"I really think this neighborhood is changing," Ms. Morris, a City College graduate who learned the art of running a coffee shop while on a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany, said. "It's becoming much more of a melting pot. People want a place where they can sit without having to go downtown." She added: "As far as Starbucks failing, I don't have a problem with that."
Neighborhood groups, such as the Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association, did: They petitioned Starbucks to keep its store open. The chairman of the association said, however, that it was encouraging to see other businesses trying to create what Starbucks couldn't. "If you walk around the neighborhood, it continues to improve every month," Marcus Edward, the chairman, said. "The opening or closing of one store doesn't change that."
Still, the group's persistence may pay off. Starbucks is in the process of identifying possible sites for a new store in Hamilton Heights, though no location has been specified yet, Ms. Beckman, the company spokeswoman, said.
December 10, 2004 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version
Where Starbucks Foundered, Old and New Cafes Flourish
BY JEREMY SMERD - Special to the Sun
December 10, 2004
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/6085
Jean Delphouse is trying to do something Starbucks couldn't do: successfully run a coffeehouse at the Dominican stronghold of Hamilton Heights, where people like their coffee strong, cheap, and served in Spanish.
Last month, Mr. Delphouse opened an outlet of Java's Brewin', the coffeehouse chain's first Manhattan franchise, on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 140th Street. The venture challenges the notion that cafe culture might find a foothold in a neighborhood known more for crime than for coffee, where the barbers outnumber the biscotti.
"I'm trying to offer something you can't get across the street," Mr. Delphouse, 30, said, pointing to a recently closed restaurant that serves the typical local fare of rice and beans.
When Starbucks moved into the renovated storefront of the Gotham Theatre, on Broadway at 138th Street, three years ago, La Flor De Broadway, a Cuban coffee and sandwich counter across the street, had everything to lose.
"At first, we thought we were going to have to close," the man working behind the counter, Angel Franco, said. Wearing a white apron and paper hat, Mr. Franco looks more like a short-order cook than a "barista" - in the Starbucks lexicon, a coffee server.
In May, however, it was the coffee giant that shuttered its doors. The reason was poor performance by the store, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Beckman, told The New York Sun. La Flor De Broadway, meanwhile, grinds on, as it has for 40 years.
"You never saw it full," Mr. Franco, who likes a frappuccino as much as the next guy, said of Starbucks. "Just some students doing homework."
One reason, according to the chairman of Community Board 9, Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, was the corporate chain's inability to tap into local tastes.
"They were not attracting the neighborhood support because of a lack of cultural affinity," he said. "Most of the people don't go to hang out in a cafe. If they hang out, they hang out on the sidewalk. And it's mostly old men talking about the old days."
Indeed, tiny La Flor De Broadway is the anti-coffeehouse. It has no seats, and it does not encourage loiterers. A sign politely asks newspaper addicts to take their reading to the back counter.
Nevertheless, even people like Gabriel Serpa, 27, who enjoyed Starbucks for its chairs, didn't necessarily spend money there, preferring cheaper, better coffee at La Flor De Broadway.
"I'd sometimes bring my cup of coffee over to Starbucks," Mr. Serpa, an artist, said as he stood with a cup of coffee and a Cuban steak sandwich in his hands. "They never bothered me about that stuff. They just let me sit there."
Another sign in La Flor De Broadway reads: "You can't eat food from other places."
Others identified simple economics as the culprit for the demise of the local Starbucks. Why pay $3 for a cup of coffee when 80 cents will do?
Those factors make for tough competition, Mr. Delphouse acknowledged as he puzzled over the best ways to attract Dominicans to his cafe.
"I'm starting to wonder," he asked, "when a young Dominican guy takes a girl out, where does he take her?"
He said he hopes owning a franchise will give him more flexibility to cater to local tastes. He points out that his coffee, which costs $2, is cheaper than many a Starbucks offering, and he also sells soups, breakfast sandwiches, and, soon, paninis and poetry for the crowd from City College, which is one block away. Wednesday nights already bring live music.
Half a block uptown, Stacy Morris, 35, is planning her own neighborhood revolution, what she calls "the second coming of the second Harlem Renaissance." As she waited for the exterminator at her bistro, which she hopes to open in mid-December, she brushed off concerns that she had to cater to Dominican tastes to survive.
"I really think this neighborhood is changing," Ms. Morris, a City College graduate who learned the art of running a coffee shop while on a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany, said. "It's becoming much more of a melting pot. People want a place where they can sit without having to go downtown." She added: "As far as Starbucks failing, I don't have a problem with that."
Neighborhood groups, such as the Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association, did: They petitioned Starbucks to keep its store open. The chairman of the association said, however, that it was encouraging to see other businesses trying to create what Starbucks couldn't. "If you walk around the neighborhood, it continues to improve every month," Marcus Edward, the chairman, said. "The opening or closing of one store doesn't change that."
Still, the group's persistence may pay off. Starbucks is in the process of identifying possible sites for a new store in Hamilton Heights, though no location has been specified yet, Ms. Beckman, the company spokeswoman, said.
December 10, 2004 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Javits Center
Subject: AP/Newsday: Legislature OKs expansion of Javits Center
Date: 12/7/2004 5:55:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Legislature OKs expansion of Javits Center
Newsday
by MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
December 7, 2004, 5:31 PM EST
ALBANY, N.Y. -- The Legislature on Tuesday approved a $1.2 billion
expansion of Manhattan's Javits Center that is expected to attract millions
of dollars in revenue for the state and city.
The deal negotiated between Assembly and Senate leaders overnight and
quickly brought to a vote, also provides $350 million in economic
development funds for projects outside New York City. Those projects have
not yet been determined.
"We don't know where the money is going," said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery,
a Brooklyn Democrat. "So in a sense the Javits Center expansion is being
hijacked ... this is a blank check to a certain three _ and you all know
who they are."
Under the bill, the $350 million for project outside New York City will be
divvied up by Gov. George Pataki, fellow Republican Senate Majority Leader
Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The spending comes when the state is projected to face a $6 billion deficit
in the 2005-06 fiscal year.
The near doubling of the Javits Center will include a hotel with 1,500
rooms and a ballroom and will employ 10,000 people.
"Javits is a huge investment by the city and state," Bruno said just before
his chamber approved the bill. "It will mean a lot of revenue for the city
and the state. So that's a no-brainer."
Tuesday's action doesn't directly affect the more controversial proposal to
build a connecting $1.4 billion stadium for the New York Jets.
The measure passed Tuesday, pending Gov. George Pataki's approval, would
restructure bonds, adjust the boundaries of the center and add a $1.50
surcharge to hotel taxes, worth $500 million. The state will borrow $350
million and $350 million will come from New York City. The hotel will be
paid for with separate borrowing.
Pataki and Silver said they support the proposal.
The Javits Center, named for the former long-serving U.S. senator, covers
five blocks between 34th and 39th streets and 11th and 12th avenues,
adjoining the city's Hudson rail yards. At 814,000-square feet, it's the
14th largest convention center in the nation. The expansion will make the
center the nation's third or fourth largest.
New York City's tourism bureau estimated the city loses $1.5 million a day
in visitor spending because of the center's size.
The bill passed 58-1; Manhattan Democrat Liz Krueger opposed it. She
complained the bill was negotiated by Bruno, Silver and Pataki behind
closed doors then rushed to a vote, undermining efforts to open up the
legislative process and make it more accountable.
Subject: Latengano is a no-brainer
Date: 12/5/2004 7:05:43 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Say too-small Javits costs 1.5M a day
BY MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
December 5, 2004
New York City is losing $1.5million per day in business revenue because the
Javits Convention Center is too small, according to new data from the
tourism bureau. Supporters of the city's plan to expand the Javits,
including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and NYC & Company Chairman Jonathan
Tisch, are scheduled to tout the $1.5 million figure at a news conference
in Manhattan today.
The startling sum, which critics immediately blasted as nonsense, also will
be part of a new ad campaign. "This figure clearly indicates that the
expansion to Javits is crucial to New York City's economy," said Cristyne
Nicholas, president and CEO of NYC & Company, the tourism bureau.
The state Legislature is expected this week to consider the proposal to
expand the center, which has 760,000 square feet of exhibition space and
ranks 18th nationwide in overall capacity. The $1.4 billion project would
increase the center's size to 1.1 million square feet of exhibition space,
and add 256,000 square feet of meeting rooms and 86,000 square feet in new
ballroom space.
"There's not much we could do in New York that would create more good jobs
more quickly than finally expanding the Javits," Schumer told the Daily
News. "We have the opportunity to get this done now, and we should take it."
But critics questioned the accuracy of the bureau's data.
"I would be suspicious of their claims," said Steve Malanga, senior fellow
at the Manhattan Institute. "And the question is not merely what business
is not coming to the city, but how much more business do you have to
attract to pay for a billion-dollar investment."
Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of
Texas in San Antonio and an expert on the economics of convention centers,
said the bureau's study is irrelevant. "The likelihood of getting a
significant increase in business at a larger center is very, very slim,"
Sanders said. "We have a convention marketplace [nationwide] that is
enormously oversupplied with space."
John Fisher, who heads a West Side neighborhood group, said the data to
support the expansion "are just as phony as the Jets stadium numbers." The
city is also planning to build a $1.4 billion stadium that would serve as
part of the convention center.
Nicholas defended the figures, saying they are not only accurate but
"conservative."And the demand for New York City conventions, she said, is
very different than in other cities across the nation. "This, to me, is a
no-brainer, and to the tourism industry it's a no-brainer," she said.
Originally published on December 5, 2004
Date: 12/7/2004 5:55:47 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Legislature OKs expansion of Javits Center
Newsday
by MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
December 7, 2004, 5:31 PM EST
ALBANY, N.Y. -- The Legislature on Tuesday approved a $1.2 billion
expansion of Manhattan's Javits Center that is expected to attract millions
of dollars in revenue for the state and city.
The deal negotiated between Assembly and Senate leaders overnight and
quickly brought to a vote, also provides $350 million in economic
development funds for projects outside New York City. Those projects have
not yet been determined.
"We don't know where the money is going," said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery,
a Brooklyn Democrat. "So in a sense the Javits Center expansion is being
hijacked ... this is a blank check to a certain three _ and you all know
who they are."
Under the bill, the $350 million for project outside New York City will be
divvied up by Gov. George Pataki, fellow Republican Senate Majority Leader
Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The spending comes when the state is projected to face a $6 billion deficit
in the 2005-06 fiscal year.
The near doubling of the Javits Center will include a hotel with 1,500
rooms and a ballroom and will employ 10,000 people.
"Javits is a huge investment by the city and state," Bruno said just before
his chamber approved the bill. "It will mean a lot of revenue for the city
and the state. So that's a no-brainer."
Tuesday's action doesn't directly affect the more controversial proposal to
build a connecting $1.4 billion stadium for the New York Jets.
The measure passed Tuesday, pending Gov. George Pataki's approval, would
restructure bonds, adjust the boundaries of the center and add a $1.50
surcharge to hotel taxes, worth $500 million. The state will borrow $350
million and $350 million will come from New York City. The hotel will be
paid for with separate borrowing.
Pataki and Silver said they support the proposal.
The Javits Center, named for the former long-serving U.S. senator, covers
five blocks between 34th and 39th streets and 11th and 12th avenues,
adjoining the city's Hudson rail yards. At 814,000-square feet, it's the
14th largest convention center in the nation. The expansion will make the
center the nation's third or fourth largest.
New York City's tourism bureau estimated the city loses $1.5 million a day
in visitor spending because of the center's size.
The bill passed 58-1; Manhattan Democrat Liz Krueger opposed it. She
complained the bill was negotiated by Bruno, Silver and Pataki behind
closed doors then rushed to a vote, undermining efforts to open up the
legislative process and make it more accountable.
Subject: Latengano is a no-brainer
Date: 12/5/2004 7:05:43 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Say too-small Javits costs 1.5M a day
BY MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
December 5, 2004
New York City is losing $1.5million per day in business revenue because the
Javits Convention Center is too small, according to new data from the
tourism bureau. Supporters of the city's plan to expand the Javits,
including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and NYC & Company Chairman Jonathan
Tisch, are scheduled to tout the $1.5 million figure at a news conference
in Manhattan today.
The startling sum, which critics immediately blasted as nonsense, also will
be part of a new ad campaign. "This figure clearly indicates that the
expansion to Javits is crucial to New York City's economy," said Cristyne
Nicholas, president and CEO of NYC & Company, the tourism bureau.
The state Legislature is expected this week to consider the proposal to
expand the center, which has 760,000 square feet of exhibition space and
ranks 18th nationwide in overall capacity. The $1.4 billion project would
increase the center's size to 1.1 million square feet of exhibition space,
and add 256,000 square feet of meeting rooms and 86,000 square feet in new
ballroom space.
"There's not much we could do in New York that would create more good jobs
more quickly than finally expanding the Javits," Schumer told the Daily
News. "We have the opportunity to get this done now, and we should take it."
But critics questioned the accuracy of the bureau's data.
"I would be suspicious of their claims," said Steve Malanga, senior fellow
at the Manhattan Institute. "And the question is not merely what business
is not coming to the city, but how much more business do you have to
attract to pay for a billion-dollar investment."
Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of
Texas in San Antonio and an expert on the economics of convention centers,
said the bureau's study is irrelevant. "The likelihood of getting a
significant increase in business at a larger center is very, very slim,"
Sanders said. "We have a convention marketplace [nationwide] that is
enormously oversupplied with space."
John Fisher, who heads a West Side neighborhood group, said the data to
support the expansion "are just as phony as the Jets stadium numbers." The
city is also planning to build a $1.4 billion stadium that would serve as
part of the convention center.
Nicholas defended the figures, saying they are not only accurate but
"conservative."And the demand for New York City conventions, she said, is
very different than in other cities across the nation. "This, to me, is a
no-brainer, and to the tourism industry it's a no-brainer," she said.
Originally published on December 5, 2004
Silverstein to get double $$ (but no office demand; Dwntwn 15.9% vacant
Subject: Silverstein to get double $$ (but no office demand; Dwntwn 15.9% vacant)
Date: 12/7/2004 8:26:35 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
The New York Times
December 7, 2004
Towers' Insurers Must Pay Double
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
A federal jury said yesterday that the destruction of the World Trade
Center constituted two separate attacks, entitling the developer Larry A.
Silverstein to collect up to $2.2 billion, or double the insurance coverage
provided by nine insurers at the complex.
The jury's decision, which came at the end of 11 days of deliberation and
represented a major development in the rebuilding effort, almost certainly
ensures that the proposed $1.5 billion, 1,776-foot Freedom Tower will be
constructed at the trade center site, although appeals are likely and it
may be some time before all the insurance money is paid out. It also
ensures that Mr. Silverstein, who leased the trade center only six weeks
before it was destroyed, will remain in control of the rebuilding effort
for some time.
Insurance experts predicted yesterday that the verdict would send ripples
through the insurance industry, with premiums for property coverage almost
guaranteed to rise substantially.
Mr. Silverstein, who plans to use the money to rebuild the trade center,
issued a statement yesterday saying he was thrilled with the verdict. It
will "ensure a timely and complete rebuild of the World Trade Center," he
said, adding that the insurers "had an obligation to pay their fair share
to help make Lower Manhattan whole again."
Mr. Silverstein has argued that because two jets slammed into two towers at
the trade center on Sept. 11, he was entitled to a double payment of the
$3.55 billion policy, or $7 billion. The jury's decision yesterday related
to nine insurance companies, which provided $1.1 billion of the $3.55
billion worth of coverage. If the verdict stands, the nine companies will
have to pay $2.2 billion.
It was Mr. Silverstein's first legal victory during the 38-month legal
battle he has waged against two dozen insurers at the trade center. Last
spring, a jury decided that Swiss Re and eight other insurers had provided
coverage based on a policy devised by Mr. Silverstein's brokers. The court
had already ruled that that policy entitled Mr. Silverstein to only a
single payment. The developer also settled with five other insurers. That
cut Mr. Silverstein's quest for $7 billion to a maximum of $4.65 billion,
if he won the second trial.
The extra $1.1 billion is needed downtown, where officials estimate that it
will cost more than $9 billion to rebuild the trade center, a complex that
is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and once included
10 million square feet of office space for investment banks and insurance
companies, a retail mall, a hotel and a major rail station.
"It's a tremendous victory for Larry and for everyone else who has an
interest in Lower Manhattan," said Kevin M. Rampe, president of the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation. "The funds are going to ensure that
Lower Manhattan recovers in the amount of time we've laid out."
But just as Mr. Silverstein is appealing the verdict in the first trial,
the nine insurance companies are expected to appeal the decision.
John Novaria, a spokesman for Industrial Risk Insurers, one of the nine
companies involved in the verdict, said his company still believed that the
attack on the trade center was "one occurrence." Asked whether Industrial
Risk would file an appeal, he said the company was "examining its options."
In a separate element of the dispute, the final amount of insurance money
is under review by a court-approved panel of three appraisers, who will
determine the extent of the damages at the trade center and how much each
company must pay.
Nevertheless, Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a
private planning group, said that yesterday's decision ensures that the
Freedom Tower, the first of four or five office towers planned for the
site, will be built. But, Mr. Yaro said, the time has come for a public
accounting.
"There needs to be a sorting out between Larry and the Port Authority about
what needs to be built and who's going to pay for it," Mr. Yaro said.
Gov. George E. Pataki has promoted the Freedom Tower as a symbol of
downtown rejuvenation. But some critics have questioned the wisdom of
building a huge and costly skyscraper when there are no potential tenants
in sight and the vacancy rate in Lower Manhattan is high. Some executives
at the Port Authority say privately that the money would be better spent on
an estimated $1.5 billion to bring the site up to grade as it is rebuilt to
ground level, so that it is ready when the real estate market improves.
According to Newmark & Company Real Estate, the vacancy rate downtown
climbed to 15.9 percent in November, and could hit a nine-year high this
month with the introduction of 7 World Trade Center, an office tower Mr.
Silverstein is building nearby.
So far, the insurance companies paid out $2.03 billion, and $1.55 billion
has been spent. If yesterday's verdict survives the appeal process, that
would leave about $4 billion for a reconstruction effort that might cost $9
billion. Mr. Silverstein's legal battles have cost an estimated $125
million, according to Port Authority commissioners.
Experts were already debating the effect of the verdict on the insurance
industry. Robert P. Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information
Institute, a trade group, said he doubted there would be a larger precedent
growing out of the case.
For example, the four recent hurricanes in Florida were treated by insurers
as four occurrences because each was separated by a standard interval
exceeding 72 hours, he said. If they had all struck within 72 hours, they
would likely have been treated as one occurrence, he said.
Mr. Silverstein's lawyers succeeded in persuading jurors that there was
some doubt about the definition of occurrence, Mr. Hartwig said, because
all of the policies had not been fully negotiated.
Andy Barile, an insurance executive and litigation consultant based in
Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., said the decision would "dramatically change the
industry."
Agents, reinsurers and consumers will have to scrutinize their policies and
some property owners may face premium increases when they renew their
policies in January, he said, adding, "With companies being forced to pay
out twice their policy limits, it's going to have a dramatic effect on
increasing premiums."
David W. Dunlap and Anthony Ramirez contributed reporting for this article.
Date: 12/7/2004 8:26:35 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
The New York Times
December 7, 2004
Towers' Insurers Must Pay Double
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
A federal jury said yesterday that the destruction of the World Trade
Center constituted two separate attacks, entitling the developer Larry A.
Silverstein to collect up to $2.2 billion, or double the insurance coverage
provided by nine insurers at the complex.
The jury's decision, which came at the end of 11 days of deliberation and
represented a major development in the rebuilding effort, almost certainly
ensures that the proposed $1.5 billion, 1,776-foot Freedom Tower will be
constructed at the trade center site, although appeals are likely and it
may be some time before all the insurance money is paid out. It also
ensures that Mr. Silverstein, who leased the trade center only six weeks
before it was destroyed, will remain in control of the rebuilding effort
for some time.
Insurance experts predicted yesterday that the verdict would send ripples
through the insurance industry, with premiums for property coverage almost
guaranteed to rise substantially.
Mr. Silverstein, who plans to use the money to rebuild the trade center,
issued a statement yesterday saying he was thrilled with the verdict. It
will "ensure a timely and complete rebuild of the World Trade Center," he
said, adding that the insurers "had an obligation to pay their fair share
to help make Lower Manhattan whole again."
Mr. Silverstein has argued that because two jets slammed into two towers at
the trade center on Sept. 11, he was entitled to a double payment of the
$3.55 billion policy, or $7 billion. The jury's decision yesterday related
to nine insurance companies, which provided $1.1 billion of the $3.55
billion worth of coverage. If the verdict stands, the nine companies will
have to pay $2.2 billion.
It was Mr. Silverstein's first legal victory during the 38-month legal
battle he has waged against two dozen insurers at the trade center. Last
spring, a jury decided that Swiss Re and eight other insurers had provided
coverage based on a policy devised by Mr. Silverstein's brokers. The court
had already ruled that that policy entitled Mr. Silverstein to only a
single payment. The developer also settled with five other insurers. That
cut Mr. Silverstein's quest for $7 billion to a maximum of $4.65 billion,
if he won the second trial.
The extra $1.1 billion is needed downtown, where officials estimate that it
will cost more than $9 billion to rebuild the trade center, a complex that
is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and once included
10 million square feet of office space for investment banks and insurance
companies, a retail mall, a hotel and a major rail station.
"It's a tremendous victory for Larry and for everyone else who has an
interest in Lower Manhattan," said Kevin M. Rampe, president of the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation. "The funds are going to ensure that
Lower Manhattan recovers in the amount of time we've laid out."
But just as Mr. Silverstein is appealing the verdict in the first trial,
the nine insurance companies are expected to appeal the decision.
John Novaria, a spokesman for Industrial Risk Insurers, one of the nine
companies involved in the verdict, said his company still believed that the
attack on the trade center was "one occurrence." Asked whether Industrial
Risk would file an appeal, he said the company was "examining its options."
In a separate element of the dispute, the final amount of insurance money
is under review by a court-approved panel of three appraisers, who will
determine the extent of the damages at the trade center and how much each
company must pay.
Nevertheless, Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a
private planning group, said that yesterday's decision ensures that the
Freedom Tower, the first of four or five office towers planned for the
site, will be built. But, Mr. Yaro said, the time has come for a public
accounting.
"There needs to be a sorting out between Larry and the Port Authority about
what needs to be built and who's going to pay for it," Mr. Yaro said.
Gov. George E. Pataki has promoted the Freedom Tower as a symbol of
downtown rejuvenation. But some critics have questioned the wisdom of
building a huge and costly skyscraper when there are no potential tenants
in sight and the vacancy rate in Lower Manhattan is high. Some executives
at the Port Authority say privately that the money would be better spent on
an estimated $1.5 billion to bring the site up to grade as it is rebuilt to
ground level, so that it is ready when the real estate market improves.
According to Newmark & Company Real Estate, the vacancy rate downtown
climbed to 15.9 percent in November, and could hit a nine-year high this
month with the introduction of 7 World Trade Center, an office tower Mr.
Silverstein is building nearby.
So far, the insurance companies paid out $2.03 billion, and $1.55 billion
has been spent. If yesterday's verdict survives the appeal process, that
would leave about $4 billion for a reconstruction effort that might cost $9
billion. Mr. Silverstein's legal battles have cost an estimated $125
million, according to Port Authority commissioners.
Experts were already debating the effect of the verdict on the insurance
industry. Robert P. Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information
Institute, a trade group, said he doubted there would be a larger precedent
growing out of the case.
For example, the four recent hurricanes in Florida were treated by insurers
as four occurrences because each was separated by a standard interval
exceeding 72 hours, he said. If they had all struck within 72 hours, they
would likely have been treated as one occurrence, he said.
Mr. Silverstein's lawyers succeeded in persuading jurors that there was
some doubt about the definition of occurrence, Mr. Hartwig said, because
all of the policies had not been fully negotiated.
Andy Barile, an insurance executive and litigation consultant based in
Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., said the decision would "dramatically change the
industry."
Agents, reinsurers and consumers will have to scrutinize their policies and
some property owners may face premium increases when they renew their
policies in January, he said, adding, "With companies being forced to pay
out twice their policy limits, it's going to have a dramatic effect on
increasing premiums."
David W. Dunlap and Anthony Ramirez contributed reporting for this article.
Games cities play
Subject: Games cities play
Date: 12/6/2004 5:40:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Games cities play
http://www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-8/110222773550270.xml
Stadiums worth $700 million were designed to host Cleveland's professional
sports teams and foster economic development. Instead, the downtown is
faltering, the U.S. Census revealed the city is America's poorest and old
insults are resurfacing
Sunday, December 05, 2004
BY GEORGE E. JORDAN
Newark Star-Ledger Staff
CLEVELAND -- Nobody believed in this city's downtown more than Jeffrey
Alpern, a third- generation clothier.
For years, he sat on committees, lobbied other shopkeepers and did all he
could to restore the luster to one of the rustiest cities in the Rust Belt.
Then, it happened. A decrepit public market in the Gateway District
disappeared. In short order came Jacobs Field, a throwback baseball
stadium, and the swank basketball venue, Gund Arena. A few blocks away, the
glitzier Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a football stadium for the
Cleveland Browns were the exclamation point.
Alpern and the rest of this city figured their fortunes had changed. What
happened next serves as a warning to any city that bets on professional
sports as a catalyst for urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization.
Today, the main streets in and around the Gateway are marked by empty
office towers, vacant department stores and storefronts with "For Lease"
signs. After spending $700 million to build the nation's most extensive
sports infrastructure, this city finds itself in a familiar place: trying
to fix a downtown abandoned by businesses and the middle class, with
neighborhoods gripped by despair.
This fall, the city of 425,000, won a distinction many here didn't think
possible a few years ago: It was named America's poorest city by the U.S.
Census.
And Alpern? He moved his Gold Fish Uniform store from the Gateway District,
two miles east to the fringe of downtown. The building boom displaced
blue-collar families that shopped downtown. In their place came sports fans
who pay $10 to park and go home after the game, he said.
"People were sold a bill of goods," he said in a recent interview in a
showroom filled with work boots, parkas and blue security- guard uniforms.
"What it did was implode the area around the arena. The concept was, 'Let's
change downtown Cleveland to make it more comfortable for white
suburbanites,' and they ruined it."
Newark officials frequently say they want to duplicate Cleveland's success
story by building a $310 million arena for the New Jersey Devils hockey team.
They argue with evangelic fervor that the downtown arena will spur jobs and
first-class places to live, a hotel and parkland along the Passaic River.
Newark, second to Cleveland in the poverty survey, will throw off its past
and embrace a future filled with promise, they say. The point is to make
Newark into a destination.
The city has "moved to create the biggest economic and social engine in its
history," Newark Mayor Sharpe James, the arena's biggest cheerleader, said
last month as the City Council agreed to spend $200 million on the project.
The Devils' ownership will fund the rest.
A committee of civic leaders created by James to assess the proposal
projected the arena will generate $12 million in annual taxes, $291 million
in increased economic activity and 1,000 jobs when the first phase of
building is complete.
For all that, Cuyahoga County Commissioner Roy Peter Jones, an original
supporter of Cleveland's sports bonanza, offered this warning.
"There is no doubt that Gateway has not delivered the renaissance promised.
It was probably overstated to begin with. The area in the immediate
vicinity of the project has been substantially upgraded, but it certainly
hasn't been the savior of downtown."
Jones' conclusion isn't all that surprising. A series of academic studies
has found sports stadiums don't deliver on their promise of jobs and
economic activity. An Indiana University report, for example, concluded
Cleveland's $300 million public investment in Jacobs Field and Gund Arena
development generated roughly 2,000 full- and part-time jobs.
These days, Cleveland officials point with pride to four square blocks
north of Jacobs Field and Gund Arena, to the eateries and bars sprouting up
in the Warehouse District, an emerging community of 2,000 loft apartments.
Long lines of young people form Friday and Saturday night outside dance
clubs with names like Spy and Funky Budda.
Nancy McCann, a vice president at Forest City Ratner, a development company
that owns Tower City, a historic office tower renovated with $7 million in
taxpayer subsidies, said Cleveland's problems can't be pinned on the
building boom.
"There's a lot of factors that contributed to the situation," she said.
"Without critical mass -- people, shopping and restaurants -- and good
schools, it's not going to happen."
Center of transportation
Cleveland has always been a hardscrabble kind of place.
Founded by Gen. Moses Cleaveland in 1796 as an outpost known as "New
Connecticut," the city used its location along busy Lake Erie and the
Cuyahoga River to evolve into a center for transportation, steel and oil.
By 1920, Cleveland's population of 797,000 made it the fifth-largest city
in the United States. During the following decades, the city would leave
its imprint on America in a variety of ways. The sprinter Jesse Owens
hailed from Cleveland, as did the creators of Superman, and Carl Stokes,
the first black mayor of a major city. During the 1950s, local disc jockey
Alan Freed coined the term "rock'n' roll."
In some ways, Cleveland was no different than other industrial cities in
the Midwest and Northeast, such as Pittsburgh and Detroit, which endured
the demise of smokestack industries and the flight of residents to the
suburbs during the 1960s.
Cleveland just seemed to suffer more than most.
When the polluted Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969, it became a
national joke. When Cleveland's finances sank so far into red ink that the
city defaulted in 1978, the "Mistake by the Lake" became ingrained in the
nation's consciousness.
So, it was no surprise that Cleveland voters approved a $300 million "sin
tax" on alcohol and tobacco purchases in 1990 to help finance Gund Arena,
home of the NBA's Cavaliers, and the Indians' Jacobs Field. They opened for
business four years later and became national sensations.
The Indians, once one of baseball's most moribund franchises, sold every
ticket for 455 consecutive home games, a league record. At Gund Arena, the
Cavaliers also packed in the crowds during three consecutive trips to the
NBA playoffs, drawing 1 million fans a year.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which opened in 1995, added a different
kind of cachet to the city, helping to offset the psychological loss of the
Browns to Baltimore in 1996.
"The question is, where would we be had we not built them? Are we better
off? Sure, we're much better off," said Councilman Zach Reed, a candidate
for mayor who represents a predominantly black neighborhood near downtown
wrecked by drug abuse and poverty.
"The problem we had was that outsiders got the high-end construction jobs.
But once it was built, we got the low-end jobs, the concessions and service
jobs," Reed said during a break in a poverty summit last month for 100
homeless people, advocates for the poor and elderly care-givers.
'They all left'
Cleveland was the toast of American cities when the calendar flipped in
January 2000.
But soon the economy tumbled toward recession and Ohio bore the brunt. The
state's economy lost 263,507 jobs during the past four years, just more
than a third of the 710,000 jobs lost nationwide during that period.
"People just started disappearing and went to the suburbs," said Frank
Gibson, 71, a gray-haired retired factory worker, who has rented an
apartment in downtown Cleveland since 1973. "The businesses went and the
people went with them. Small businesses, big businesses, they all left."
The result is a downtown office vacancy rate of 20 percent, seven
percentage points higher than at the start of the 2001 recession.
Jobs and families headed to the eastern fringes of Cuyahoga County, to
fast-growing communities such as Solon, Westlake and Beechwood, where there
are expensive shopping malls and housing developments with names like
Crocker Park and Legacy Village.
A staggering 31.3 percent of Clevelanders last year lived in poverty,
according to the U.S. Census -- ahead of Newark, Detroit, Fresno, Calif.,
Miami and El Paso, Texas.
Cleveland's median household income, $22,978 yearly, ranks last in the
nation among major cities, and unemployment hovers at 17 percent.
Vacant buildings are the byproduct of a shrinking tax base that has thrown
Cleveland into a budget crisis. This year, the city fired more than 300
police officers and firefighters, and hundreds of teachers and other school
workers. Voters this month rejected a proposed $68 million tax increase to
restore some of the school cuts.
"We know that people need to work," said Celeste Glasgow Ribbins, a
spokeswoman for first-term Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, who faces
re-election next year. "We need to bring jobs to the city that pay a living
wage."
A symbol of the city's job loss is the 45-story glass and steel tower built
in 1985 as headquarters for Standard Oil of Ohio. The company was later
acquired by British Petroleum and the headquarters eventually moved to
Chicago, leaving the BP Tower near the center of downtown Cleveland mostly
empty.
Even the Flats, a celebrated entertainment district along the Cuyahoga
River, has become a ghost town. Assaults and gunplay in recent years have
scared away office workers and sports fans leaving the Gateway and Browns
Stadium four blocks away. The exodus has left a few dance clubs and go- go
bars amid an array of shuttered former tourist haunts. A stroll through the
empty parking lots means, in some places, stepping over discarded heroin
needles.
"People come down for a game and look at what we're looking at and say,
'Why do I want to go there?'" said Gibson, the downtown apartment dweller,
motioning toward a group of panhandlers milling outside a 24-hour
convenient store. "Every 10 years, it's like a generation of people say,
'Forget it' and just leave."
Seeking a savior
On a Saturday afternoon game last month, budding superstar LeBron James lit
up the Washington Wizards for 24 points, and the Cavaliers won 105-74. As
the game clock ran out, fans poured from Gund Arena across a public plaza
and headed directly into a parking structure. Some strolled through
enclosed, heated walkways.
A block from the arena, only a handful of the crowd streaming toward
parking lots stopped two blocks from the East 4th Street entrances at four
mostly empty sports bars, doors open wide and jukeboxes blaring.
Within a half hour after the game ended, it was as though it never
happened. The streets of Gateway were mostly empty.
It wasn't all that different during the summer. Attendance at Jacobs Field
fell for the fifth year in a row -- it's down 48 percent from its 1999 peak.
Now, some leaders are looking at a different kind of economic savior.
People as politically diverse as mainstream Democratic Cuyahoga
Commissioner Jones and neighborhood activists like Councilman Reed have
publicly called for opening up downtown to casino gambling.
The idea, still in the planning stages, is to lure a casino company willing
to build a hotel and subsidize a convention center, Jones said. The
Cleveland casino would compete for gamblers who make the four-hour trek to
Detroit and Windsor, Canada.
The economic boost from the hotel and meeting center, Jones said, would far
outweigh any social ills and negative impact on existing businesses from
casino gambling.
"At this juncture, we should not be over-paternalistic," he said. "We have
to believe the vast, vast majority of people are not going to go gamble
when they have to pay the rent and put food on the table."
"Cleveland was a comeback city in the '80s and has to mount another
comeback," he said, "and hopefully, each time with new ideas, that will
make us an all-star."
George E. Jordan can be reached at gjordan@starledger.com or (973)392-1801.
Date: 12/6/2004 5:40:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Games cities play
http://www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-8/110222773550270.xml
Stadiums worth $700 million were designed to host Cleveland's professional
sports teams and foster economic development. Instead, the downtown is
faltering, the U.S. Census revealed the city is America's poorest and old
insults are resurfacing
Sunday, December 05, 2004
BY GEORGE E. JORDAN
Newark Star-Ledger Staff
CLEVELAND -- Nobody believed in this city's downtown more than Jeffrey
Alpern, a third- generation clothier.
For years, he sat on committees, lobbied other shopkeepers and did all he
could to restore the luster to one of the rustiest cities in the Rust Belt.
Then, it happened. A decrepit public market in the Gateway District
disappeared. In short order came Jacobs Field, a throwback baseball
stadium, and the swank basketball venue, Gund Arena. A few blocks away, the
glitzier Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a football stadium for the
Cleveland Browns were the exclamation point.
Alpern and the rest of this city figured their fortunes had changed. What
happened next serves as a warning to any city that bets on professional
sports as a catalyst for urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization.
Today, the main streets in and around the Gateway are marked by empty
office towers, vacant department stores and storefronts with "For Lease"
signs. After spending $700 million to build the nation's most extensive
sports infrastructure, this city finds itself in a familiar place: trying
to fix a downtown abandoned by businesses and the middle class, with
neighborhoods gripped by despair.
This fall, the city of 425,000, won a distinction many here didn't think
possible a few years ago: It was named America's poorest city by the U.S.
Census.
And Alpern? He moved his Gold Fish Uniform store from the Gateway District,
two miles east to the fringe of downtown. The building boom displaced
blue-collar families that shopped downtown. In their place came sports fans
who pay $10 to park and go home after the game, he said.
"People were sold a bill of goods," he said in a recent interview in a
showroom filled with work boots, parkas and blue security- guard uniforms.
"What it did was implode the area around the arena. The concept was, 'Let's
change downtown Cleveland to make it more comfortable for white
suburbanites,' and they ruined it."
Newark officials frequently say they want to duplicate Cleveland's success
story by building a $310 million arena for the New Jersey Devils hockey team.
They argue with evangelic fervor that the downtown arena will spur jobs and
first-class places to live, a hotel and parkland along the Passaic River.
Newark, second to Cleveland in the poverty survey, will throw off its past
and embrace a future filled with promise, they say. The point is to make
Newark into a destination.
The city has "moved to create the biggest economic and social engine in its
history," Newark Mayor Sharpe James, the arena's biggest cheerleader, said
last month as the City Council agreed to spend $200 million on the project.
The Devils' ownership will fund the rest.
A committee of civic leaders created by James to assess the proposal
projected the arena will generate $12 million in annual taxes, $291 million
in increased economic activity and 1,000 jobs when the first phase of
building is complete.
For all that, Cuyahoga County Commissioner Roy Peter Jones, an original
supporter of Cleveland's sports bonanza, offered this warning.
"There is no doubt that Gateway has not delivered the renaissance promised.
It was probably overstated to begin with. The area in the immediate
vicinity of the project has been substantially upgraded, but it certainly
hasn't been the savior of downtown."
Jones' conclusion isn't all that surprising. A series of academic studies
has found sports stadiums don't deliver on their promise of jobs and
economic activity. An Indiana University report, for example, concluded
Cleveland's $300 million public investment in Jacobs Field and Gund Arena
development generated roughly 2,000 full- and part-time jobs.
These days, Cleveland officials point with pride to four square blocks
north of Jacobs Field and Gund Arena, to the eateries and bars sprouting up
in the Warehouse District, an emerging community of 2,000 loft apartments.
Long lines of young people form Friday and Saturday night outside dance
clubs with names like Spy and Funky Budda.
Nancy McCann, a vice president at Forest City Ratner, a development company
that owns Tower City, a historic office tower renovated with $7 million in
taxpayer subsidies, said Cleveland's problems can't be pinned on the
building boom.
"There's a lot of factors that contributed to the situation," she said.
"Without critical mass -- people, shopping and restaurants -- and good
schools, it's not going to happen."
Center of transportation
Cleveland has always been a hardscrabble kind of place.
Founded by Gen. Moses Cleaveland in 1796 as an outpost known as "New
Connecticut," the city used its location along busy Lake Erie and the
Cuyahoga River to evolve into a center for transportation, steel and oil.
By 1920, Cleveland's population of 797,000 made it the fifth-largest city
in the United States. During the following decades, the city would leave
its imprint on America in a variety of ways. The sprinter Jesse Owens
hailed from Cleveland, as did the creators of Superman, and Carl Stokes,
the first black mayor of a major city. During the 1950s, local disc jockey
Alan Freed coined the term "rock'n' roll."
In some ways, Cleveland was no different than other industrial cities in
the Midwest and Northeast, such as Pittsburgh and Detroit, which endured
the demise of smokestack industries and the flight of residents to the
suburbs during the 1960s.
Cleveland just seemed to suffer more than most.
When the polluted Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969, it became a
national joke. When Cleveland's finances sank so far into red ink that the
city defaulted in 1978, the "Mistake by the Lake" became ingrained in the
nation's consciousness.
So, it was no surprise that Cleveland voters approved a $300 million "sin
tax" on alcohol and tobacco purchases in 1990 to help finance Gund Arena,
home of the NBA's Cavaliers, and the Indians' Jacobs Field. They opened for
business four years later and became national sensations.
The Indians, once one of baseball's most moribund franchises, sold every
ticket for 455 consecutive home games, a league record. At Gund Arena, the
Cavaliers also packed in the crowds during three consecutive trips to the
NBA playoffs, drawing 1 million fans a year.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which opened in 1995, added a different
kind of cachet to the city, helping to offset the psychological loss of the
Browns to Baltimore in 1996.
"The question is, where would we be had we not built them? Are we better
off? Sure, we're much better off," said Councilman Zach Reed, a candidate
for mayor who represents a predominantly black neighborhood near downtown
wrecked by drug abuse and poverty.
"The problem we had was that outsiders got the high-end construction jobs.
But once it was built, we got the low-end jobs, the concessions and service
jobs," Reed said during a break in a poverty summit last month for 100
homeless people, advocates for the poor and elderly care-givers.
'They all left'
Cleveland was the toast of American cities when the calendar flipped in
January 2000.
But soon the economy tumbled toward recession and Ohio bore the brunt. The
state's economy lost 263,507 jobs during the past four years, just more
than a third of the 710,000 jobs lost nationwide during that period.
"People just started disappearing and went to the suburbs," said Frank
Gibson, 71, a gray-haired retired factory worker, who has rented an
apartment in downtown Cleveland since 1973. "The businesses went and the
people went with them. Small businesses, big businesses, they all left."
The result is a downtown office vacancy rate of 20 percent, seven
percentage points higher than at the start of the 2001 recession.
Jobs and families headed to the eastern fringes of Cuyahoga County, to
fast-growing communities such as Solon, Westlake and Beechwood, where there
are expensive shopping malls and housing developments with names like
Crocker Park and Legacy Village.
A staggering 31.3 percent of Clevelanders last year lived in poverty,
according to the U.S. Census -- ahead of Newark, Detroit, Fresno, Calif.,
Miami and El Paso, Texas.
Cleveland's median household income, $22,978 yearly, ranks last in the
nation among major cities, and unemployment hovers at 17 percent.
Vacant buildings are the byproduct of a shrinking tax base that has thrown
Cleveland into a budget crisis. This year, the city fired more than 300
police officers and firefighters, and hundreds of teachers and other school
workers. Voters this month rejected a proposed $68 million tax increase to
restore some of the school cuts.
"We know that people need to work," said Celeste Glasgow Ribbins, a
spokeswoman for first-term Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, who faces
re-election next year. "We need to bring jobs to the city that pay a living
wage."
A symbol of the city's job loss is the 45-story glass and steel tower built
in 1985 as headquarters for Standard Oil of Ohio. The company was later
acquired by British Petroleum and the headquarters eventually moved to
Chicago, leaving the BP Tower near the center of downtown Cleveland mostly
empty.
Even the Flats, a celebrated entertainment district along the Cuyahoga
River, has become a ghost town. Assaults and gunplay in recent years have
scared away office workers and sports fans leaving the Gateway and Browns
Stadium four blocks away. The exodus has left a few dance clubs and go- go
bars amid an array of shuttered former tourist haunts. A stroll through the
empty parking lots means, in some places, stepping over discarded heroin
needles.
"People come down for a game and look at what we're looking at and say,
'Why do I want to go there?'" said Gibson, the downtown apartment dweller,
motioning toward a group of panhandlers milling outside a 24-hour
convenient store. "Every 10 years, it's like a generation of people say,
'Forget it' and just leave."
Seeking a savior
On a Saturday afternoon game last month, budding superstar LeBron James lit
up the Washington Wizards for 24 points, and the Cavaliers won 105-74. As
the game clock ran out, fans poured from Gund Arena across a public plaza
and headed directly into a parking structure. Some strolled through
enclosed, heated walkways.
A block from the arena, only a handful of the crowd streaming toward
parking lots stopped two blocks from the East 4th Street entrances at four
mostly empty sports bars, doors open wide and jukeboxes blaring.
Within a half hour after the game ended, it was as though it never
happened. The streets of Gateway were mostly empty.
It wasn't all that different during the summer. Attendance at Jacobs Field
fell for the fifth year in a row -- it's down 48 percent from its 1999 peak.
Now, some leaders are looking at a different kind of economic savior.
People as politically diverse as mainstream Democratic Cuyahoga
Commissioner Jones and neighborhood activists like Councilman Reed have
publicly called for opening up downtown to casino gambling.
The idea, still in the planning stages, is to lure a casino company willing
to build a hotel and subsidize a convention center, Jones said. The
Cleveland casino would compete for gamblers who make the four-hour trek to
Detroit and Windsor, Canada.
The economic boost from the hotel and meeting center, Jones said, would far
outweigh any social ills and negative impact on existing businesses from
casino gambling.
"At this juncture, we should not be over-paternalistic," he said. "We have
to believe the vast, vast majority of people are not going to go gamble
when they have to pay the rent and put food on the table."
"Cleveland was a comeback city in the '80s and has to mount another
comeback," he said, "and hopefully, each time with new ideas, that will
make us an all-star."
George E. Jordan can be reached at gjordan@starledger.com or (973)392-1801.
Kids hospitalised for illiteracy: report
Australia: Kids hospitalised for illiteracy: report Could this happen in the US?
http://au.news.yahoo.com/041107/2/rmd4.html
http://aap.com.au/
Monday December 6, 05:17 AM
Kids hospitalised for illiteracy: report
A federal government inquiry has found that children's clinics in hospitals across the country are being swamped with patients whose only problem is their inability to read.
The head of the government's inquiry into reading, Ken Rowe, said hospital psychology clinics were straining to cope with children seeking medical attention for problems caused by their failure to learn at school.
"Hospitals are complaining that their clinics are being filled with kids who are being referred for things like (ADHD)," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"But once the paediatricians sort out the children's literacy problems the behaviour problems disappear."
What was essentially an education issue had become a health issue, he said.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/041107/2/rmd4.html
http://aap.com.au/
Monday December 6, 05:17 AM
Kids hospitalised for illiteracy: report
A federal government inquiry has found that children's clinics in hospitals across the country are being swamped with patients whose only problem is their inability to read.
The head of the government's inquiry into reading, Ken Rowe, said hospital psychology clinics were straining to cope with children seeking medical attention for problems caused by their failure to learn at school.
"Hospitals are complaining that their clinics are being filled with kids who are being referred for things like (ADHD)," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"But once the paediatricians sort out the children's literacy problems the behaviour problems disappear."
What was essentially an education issue had become a health issue, he said.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
DEP seeks new craft to probe Delaware Aqueduct
DEP seeks new craft to probe Delaware Aqueduct
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: December 5, 2004)
The Department of Environmental Protection is seeking a new remotely piloted submarine with a 16.5-mile tether — a length never before attempted — in an attempt to figure out why the Delaware Aqueduct continues to lose 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water a month.
The remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, would be used to provide detailed information about the extent of two sets of cracks in the concrete and steel water tunnel. The aqueduct supplies up to 70 percent of the drinking water for Westchester and Putnam counties and New York City.
The monthly water loss represents more than the combined daily water usage of Pelham Manor, New Rochelle, Eastchester, Port Chester, Dobbs Ferry, Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant, Pelham, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Rye, Rye Brook and Larchmont.
"It certainly is a challenge," said John McCarthy, vice president of the New Jersey-based Malcolm Pirnie engineering firm, which will oversee the project. "It's never been done at this length. There has been no need for it anywhere else in the world. It's quite rare to find someone who needs a 16-mile cable."
The remote-control crafts are usually used in the open ocean and are dropped a mile or two to explore such sites as the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The longest tether, only six miles, was used in a water tunnel in Helsinki, Finland. DEP officials said the tether for the aqueduct will have to be unusually long to enable engineers to control the craft between the widely spaced access shafts.
The Delaware Aqueduct is the largest and most crucial of the three aqueducts that bring water from New York City's network of reservoirs and lakes to a system that serves 9 million residents. The aqueduct was built in three sections, which range from 13.5 feet to 19.5 feet in diameter, and was cut through bedrock that is between 300 feet and 2,400 feet deep. The section to be explored, under the towns of Wawarsing and Roseton on the western side of the Hudson River, starts at 800 feet below the surface and slopes downward to 1,200 feet.
The aqueduct crosses two seismic fault lines, originating in Wappingers Falls, which are believed to be responsible for the cracks that were first detected in the aqueduct around 1990. The faults became active in a 1974 earthquake triggered by extensive surface mining of a rock quarry in the town. Leonard Sykes, Higgins professor of earth and environmental science at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, said most of the eastern U.S. is under tremendous horizontal pressure.
"When you remove a vertical load like a rock quarry," said Sykes, "you can move a fault towards failure."
The leaks in the aqueduct at Roseton and Wawarsing have pushed through the cracked bedrock to the surface in the Roseton area, creating a freshwater spring, a small lake and a 35-foot sinkhole. A horizontal tunnel drilled parallel to the aqueduct found that the water came through the fractured rock with such force that it eroded the limestone bedrock and created an unstable and heavy water-filled slurry.
For this reason, the DEP cannot simply drain the tunnel to examine it because only the pressure from the water is keeping the Delaware from being crushed by the slurry.
McCarthy said the water pressure in the tunnel is about 640 pounds per square inch, about 21 times the pressure in the average bathroom shower. The DEP's intention is to close off the aqueduct for about 10 days so it remains filled with water, but the water would not be moving and pulling on the tethered craft.
William Meekan, the DEP's project manager, said the agency wanted to use an ROV two years ago, but companies that make and operate the machines were not willing to try to make a vehicle with such a long tether. But with improvements in technology and materials, he said, several firms now believe the long exploration line is possible.
In June 2003, the DEP launched an AUV, or autonomous underwater vehicle, built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which floated through the center of the tunnel and took pictures of a 44-mile segment from the Rondout Reservoir in Wawarsing to the West Branch Reservoir in Kent.
"The AUV gave us a quick snapshot in a small amount of time," Meekan said. "The information was useful in helping us pinpoint areas we want to look at."
The ROV, however, will be able to stop at specific locations, maneuver to the wall and perform a variety of functions, including releasing dyes to test the water's flow into the cracks and drilling through the steel lining and concrete to take samples of those materials and the fractured rock beyond. McCarthy said the craft should be ready to operate in late 2006.
Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566.Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566.
Please visit our website:
www.newyorkwater.org
By ROGER WITHERSPOON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: December 5, 2004)
The Department of Environmental Protection is seeking a new remotely piloted submarine with a 16.5-mile tether — a length never before attempted — in an attempt to figure out why the Delaware Aqueduct continues to lose 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water a month.
The remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, would be used to provide detailed information about the extent of two sets of cracks in the concrete and steel water tunnel. The aqueduct supplies up to 70 percent of the drinking water for Westchester and Putnam counties and New York City.
The monthly water loss represents more than the combined daily water usage of Pelham Manor, New Rochelle, Eastchester, Port Chester, Dobbs Ferry, Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant, Pelham, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Rye, Rye Brook and Larchmont.
"It certainly is a challenge," said John McCarthy, vice president of the New Jersey-based Malcolm Pirnie engineering firm, which will oversee the project. "It's never been done at this length. There has been no need for it anywhere else in the world. It's quite rare to find someone who needs a 16-mile cable."
The remote-control crafts are usually used in the open ocean and are dropped a mile or two to explore such sites as the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The longest tether, only six miles, was used in a water tunnel in Helsinki, Finland. DEP officials said the tether for the aqueduct will have to be unusually long to enable engineers to control the craft between the widely spaced access shafts.
The Delaware Aqueduct is the largest and most crucial of the three aqueducts that bring water from New York City's network of reservoirs and lakes to a system that serves 9 million residents. The aqueduct was built in three sections, which range from 13.5 feet to 19.5 feet in diameter, and was cut through bedrock that is between 300 feet and 2,400 feet deep. The section to be explored, under the towns of Wawarsing and Roseton on the western side of the Hudson River, starts at 800 feet below the surface and slopes downward to 1,200 feet.
The aqueduct crosses two seismic fault lines, originating in Wappingers Falls, which are believed to be responsible for the cracks that were first detected in the aqueduct around 1990. The faults became active in a 1974 earthquake triggered by extensive surface mining of a rock quarry in the town. Leonard Sykes, Higgins professor of earth and environmental science at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, said most of the eastern U.S. is under tremendous horizontal pressure.
"When you remove a vertical load like a rock quarry," said Sykes, "you can move a fault towards failure."
The leaks in the aqueduct at Roseton and Wawarsing have pushed through the cracked bedrock to the surface in the Roseton area, creating a freshwater spring, a small lake and a 35-foot sinkhole. A horizontal tunnel drilled parallel to the aqueduct found that the water came through the fractured rock with such force that it eroded the limestone bedrock and created an unstable and heavy water-filled slurry.
For this reason, the DEP cannot simply drain the tunnel to examine it because only the pressure from the water is keeping the Delaware from being crushed by the slurry.
McCarthy said the water pressure in the tunnel is about 640 pounds per square inch, about 21 times the pressure in the average bathroom shower. The DEP's intention is to close off the aqueduct for about 10 days so it remains filled with water, but the water would not be moving and pulling on the tethered craft.
William Meekan, the DEP's project manager, said the agency wanted to use an ROV two years ago, but companies that make and operate the machines were not willing to try to make a vehicle with such a long tether. But with improvements in technology and materials, he said, several firms now believe the long exploration line is possible.
In June 2003, the DEP launched an AUV, or autonomous underwater vehicle, built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which floated through the center of the tunnel and took pictures of a 44-mile segment from the Rondout Reservoir in Wawarsing to the West Branch Reservoir in Kent.
"The AUV gave us a quick snapshot in a small amount of time," Meekan said. "The information was useful in helping us pinpoint areas we want to look at."
The ROV, however, will be able to stop at specific locations, maneuver to the wall and perform a variety of functions, including releasing dyes to test the water's flow into the cracks and drilling through the steel lining and concrete to take samples of those materials and the fractured rock beyond. McCarthy said the craft should be ready to operate in late 2006.
Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566.Reach Roger Witherspoon at rwithers@thejournalnews.com or 914-696-8566.
Please visit our website:
www.newyorkwater.org
'Retratos': The Lesson for Today Is in Spanish
Click here: The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Art Review 'Retratos': The Lesson for Today Is in Spanish
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/arts/design/03cott.html?ex=1103080712&ei=1&en=8d2144548d276416
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 3, 2004
ART REVIEW 'RETRATOS'
The Lesson for Today Is in Spanish
By HOLLAND COTTER
OW great that New York City's big art institutions are finally catching up with El Museo del Barrio, which started tiny in an East Harlem storefront in 1969 and now perches, larger, grander, still venturesome - and under-visited - on upper Fifth Avenue.
For 35 years the museum has devoted itself to showing Latin American artists, which basically meant introducing them, as almost no one else was doing so. And all that time, it was contributing to a huge new history. Today New York is a Latin American city: well over a quarter of its residents have roots there. That percentage continues to grow, and El Museo, where an eye-opening survey of Latin American portraiture opens today, is growing with it.
So is a broad interest in art from Latin America, to judge by its visibility in museums. Tops among special exhibitions is "The Aztec Empire" at the Guggenheim, focused on material from pre-Columbian Mexico. The show is just fantastic, a killer. It's not only the most intense art experience in Manhattan, but possibly the most intense theatrical experience, too. It will turn your notions of art-as-beauty-and-goodness inside out and infiltrate your dreams.
"The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830" at the Metropolitan Museum dramatizes, epochally, the glorious fusion and ruinous collision of native and European cultures that was Nuevo Mundo. And the reinstalled Museum of Modern Art has Latin America on its mind, too: a small white painting by the Venezulean artist Armando Reverón (1889-1954) now floats, like a patch of Caribbean cloud covering, among the Pollocks and Picassos.
Which brings us back to El Museo, where "Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" offers a taste of all of the above. Reverón is here. So are colonial painting and pre-Columbian sculpture. Organized with the San Antonio Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the show follows a still-life survey at El Museo four years ago but is far more ambitious in scope and scale, with 100 or so loans from a dozen Latin American countries. The two-millennium time span is a liability; a close-up look at any portion of it would have been more satisfying. But with so much art from Latin America, of all eras, still so little known, the sampler approach is understandable. And besides, there is an absolutely riveting smaller show locked inside the big one.
To establish the antiquity of a portrait tradition in the Americas, the survey starts way before Columbus or the Aztecs, with a half-dozen ceramic vessels made by the Moche people in Peru between the second and seventh centuries. All are in the shape of a male head, and the face of each is closely observed and individualized, right down to frown lines and minor scars.
From there, though, we shoot to the 16th century and a painting by Andrés Sánchez Galque's titled "Mulattoes of Esmereldas" (1599), on loan from the Prado and one of the show's prizes. The earliest known dated portrait from colonial South America, it depicts three elegant dark-skinned men, descendants of Indians and African slaves in what is now Ecuador. Identified by name and age in inscriptions, they wear European silks and ruffed collars but also display distinctly unEuropean lip rings and nose plugs of gold.
To the Spanish king for whom it was made, the painting would have been exotic proof of geographical sovereignty. To 21st-century eyes, its blend of African, European and native elements distills the essence of a multicultural continent and of a society built on minutely calibrated hierarchies of race and class.
Art of the colonial, or viceregal, era (1492-1810) constitutes the bulk of the exhibition and a fascinating show in itself. This was a time of flourishing religious and secular portraiture, of Baroque extravagance and Enlightenment restraint, of regal polish and regional verve, of brutality coursing through beauty. Spanish artists, Creole artists and mixed-blood mestizo artists, many of them self-taught, shared the patronage of an image-hungry colonial society and generated an art unique to the Americas.
Some of its distinctiveness lay in details: the carved maraca clutched by the young daughter of a colonial governor and the funky little island farmhouse behind a chic equestrienne in portraits by the wonderful Puerto Rican artist José Campeche (1751-1809).
At the same time, entire art genres were invented, as in the case of portraits of nuns wearing floral crowns and breastplate-size medallions, or "shields," painted with religious scenes. Such images were commissioned when a nun took her final vows, exchanging an old life for a new one, and they are as fragrant with symbols of purity and desire as wedding bouquets.
Mortuary portraits of children marked a different kind of transition. In one dated 1805, a toddler named José Manuel de Cervantes y Velasco lies in his lace-trimmed coffin dressed as the Archangel Michael, with jewel-studded wings and a plumed crown. Interestingly, his costume finds an echo in a similar outfit, like something designed for "Les Indes Gallantes" and topped by a feathered hat, worn by the Inca King Tupac Amaru in a portrait in the Met's Andes show. This likeness, too, was posthumous, but done nearly two centuries after the king had been causelessly beheaded by order of the Spanish viceroy, an act of political violence that burned like an ember in Inca memory.
Art in Latin America has always been a vehicle for social and political commentary. This translates into straight-out propaganda in a full-length portrait of the independence leader Simón Bolívar, his heroism trumpeted in a scarlet banderole, by the Peruvian painter José Gil de Castro, an artist to remember. Elsewhere the politics of class and race are more obliquely evoked, as in a magnificent mid-19th-century portrait of an Afro-Brazilian woman from Bahia, who wears a scoop-neck dress, white gloves and gold necklaces that could be straight from Ghana.
Even with its culturally specific content, this painting fits effortlessly into the international styles of its day. So did Latin American modernism in the early 20th century. Far from being out of the loop, it helped to create the loop. Diego Rivera developed a bravura brand of Cubism in Paris before switching to descriptive realism for his mural art. And he later applied that realism to portraits of New World socialites like Elisa Saldívar de Gutiérrez Roldán, whom he depicted, surely with irony, in lace-up sandals and a flounced "peasant" skirt, self-conscious signs of Méxicanidad.
Frida Kahlo made such Mexicanness, with its lingering revolutionary associations, insistently personal. In her self-portraits, she wears it like armor, a nun's shield painted with the Crucifixion. This sense of identity also inflects María Izquierdo's 1940 portrait of her three young nieces, but here, radiating in their mestizo faces, it feels warm and soaked-in, like tropical light.
These extraordinary painters have had a resounding impact on artists who have succeeded them. In a 1991 self-portrait by the Mexican painter Nahum Zenil, Kahlo's face appears as a giant heart swelling from his chest. And the political dynamic intrinsic to Latin American art has had wide influence, anticipating as it did the identity-based art that swept the United States in the 1980's and 90's.
In fact, the realities of race, class and power implicit in "Mulattoes of Esmereldas" in the 16th century and in "Woman From Bahia" in the 19th century are every bit as complex and history-shaping now as they ever were, and new art acknowledges this.
The last piece in the last gallery is a 1998 painting by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, "Carter, Anna and Daryl." Although it looks abstract, it is based on digitized images of DNA samples taken from members of the artist's family. Ethnicity and gender seem invisible here, but through science they may also be manipulable, rendering the fleet, imprecise thing that portraiture has always been even more elusive, more ephemeral.
By the time we get to the end of the show - a curatorial team effort led by Marion Oettinger Jr. of the San Antonio Museum, Fatima Bercht of El Museo del Barrio and Carolyn Kinder Carr and Miguel Bretos of the National Portrait Gallery - we've covered an exhausting tract of cultural ground, much of it unfamiliar. And if the trip proves at once too much and not enough, what can you do? Americans know shockingly little about their own history, and the history of Latin America is now every American's history. As we move through "Retratos," we start to learn.
We also traverse a museum that has lessons of its own to impart. It balances aesthetics and politics simply by acknowledging that the two are intertwined. It pushes and prods the past, when letting it sit there looking pretty would be easier. And it offers some of the most beautiful and disquieting art there is. These are some of the reasons that El Museo is increasingly looking not like the last stop on Museum Mile but the first, like a one-ship armada leading the fleet.
"Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" remains at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, (212) 831-7272, through March 20. It travels to the San Diego Museum of Art (April 16-June 12); Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach. (July 23-Oct. 2); National Portrait Gallery in Washington (Oct. 21-Jan. 8, 2006); and the San Antonio Museum of Art (Feb. 4-April 30, 2006)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/arts/design/03cott.html?ex=1103080712&ei=1&en=8d2144548d276416
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 3, 2004
ART REVIEW 'RETRATOS'
The Lesson for Today Is in Spanish
By HOLLAND COTTER
OW great that New York City's big art institutions are finally catching up with El Museo del Barrio, which started tiny in an East Harlem storefront in 1969 and now perches, larger, grander, still venturesome - and under-visited - on upper Fifth Avenue.
For 35 years the museum has devoted itself to showing Latin American artists, which basically meant introducing them, as almost no one else was doing so. And all that time, it was contributing to a huge new history. Today New York is a Latin American city: well over a quarter of its residents have roots there. That percentage continues to grow, and El Museo, where an eye-opening survey of Latin American portraiture opens today, is growing with it.
So is a broad interest in art from Latin America, to judge by its visibility in museums. Tops among special exhibitions is "The Aztec Empire" at the Guggenheim, focused on material from pre-Columbian Mexico. The show is just fantastic, a killer. It's not only the most intense art experience in Manhattan, but possibly the most intense theatrical experience, too. It will turn your notions of art-as-beauty-and-goodness inside out and infiltrate your dreams.
"The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830" at the Metropolitan Museum dramatizes, epochally, the glorious fusion and ruinous collision of native and European cultures that was Nuevo Mundo. And the reinstalled Museum of Modern Art has Latin America on its mind, too: a small white painting by the Venezulean artist Armando Reverón (1889-1954) now floats, like a patch of Caribbean cloud covering, among the Pollocks and Picassos.
Which brings us back to El Museo, where "Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" offers a taste of all of the above. Reverón is here. So are colonial painting and pre-Columbian sculpture. Organized with the San Antonio Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the show follows a still-life survey at El Museo four years ago but is far more ambitious in scope and scale, with 100 or so loans from a dozen Latin American countries. The two-millennium time span is a liability; a close-up look at any portion of it would have been more satisfying. But with so much art from Latin America, of all eras, still so little known, the sampler approach is understandable. And besides, there is an absolutely riveting smaller show locked inside the big one.
To establish the antiquity of a portrait tradition in the Americas, the survey starts way before Columbus or the Aztecs, with a half-dozen ceramic vessels made by the Moche people in Peru between the second and seventh centuries. All are in the shape of a male head, and the face of each is closely observed and individualized, right down to frown lines and minor scars.
From there, though, we shoot to the 16th century and a painting by Andrés Sánchez Galque's titled "Mulattoes of Esmereldas" (1599), on loan from the Prado and one of the show's prizes. The earliest known dated portrait from colonial South America, it depicts three elegant dark-skinned men, descendants of Indians and African slaves in what is now Ecuador. Identified by name and age in inscriptions, they wear European silks and ruffed collars but also display distinctly unEuropean lip rings and nose plugs of gold.
To the Spanish king for whom it was made, the painting would have been exotic proof of geographical sovereignty. To 21st-century eyes, its blend of African, European and native elements distills the essence of a multicultural continent and of a society built on minutely calibrated hierarchies of race and class.
Art of the colonial, or viceregal, era (1492-1810) constitutes the bulk of the exhibition and a fascinating show in itself. This was a time of flourishing religious and secular portraiture, of Baroque extravagance and Enlightenment restraint, of regal polish and regional verve, of brutality coursing through beauty. Spanish artists, Creole artists and mixed-blood mestizo artists, many of them self-taught, shared the patronage of an image-hungry colonial society and generated an art unique to the Americas.
Some of its distinctiveness lay in details: the carved maraca clutched by the young daughter of a colonial governor and the funky little island farmhouse behind a chic equestrienne in portraits by the wonderful Puerto Rican artist José Campeche (1751-1809).
At the same time, entire art genres were invented, as in the case of portraits of nuns wearing floral crowns and breastplate-size medallions, or "shields," painted with religious scenes. Such images were commissioned when a nun took her final vows, exchanging an old life for a new one, and they are as fragrant with symbols of purity and desire as wedding bouquets.
Mortuary portraits of children marked a different kind of transition. In one dated 1805, a toddler named José Manuel de Cervantes y Velasco lies in his lace-trimmed coffin dressed as the Archangel Michael, with jewel-studded wings and a plumed crown. Interestingly, his costume finds an echo in a similar outfit, like something designed for "Les Indes Gallantes" and topped by a feathered hat, worn by the Inca King Tupac Amaru in a portrait in the Met's Andes show. This likeness, too, was posthumous, but done nearly two centuries after the king had been causelessly beheaded by order of the Spanish viceroy, an act of political violence that burned like an ember in Inca memory.
Art in Latin America has always been a vehicle for social and political commentary. This translates into straight-out propaganda in a full-length portrait of the independence leader Simón Bolívar, his heroism trumpeted in a scarlet banderole, by the Peruvian painter José Gil de Castro, an artist to remember. Elsewhere the politics of class and race are more obliquely evoked, as in a magnificent mid-19th-century portrait of an Afro-Brazilian woman from Bahia, who wears a scoop-neck dress, white gloves and gold necklaces that could be straight from Ghana.
Even with its culturally specific content, this painting fits effortlessly into the international styles of its day. So did Latin American modernism in the early 20th century. Far from being out of the loop, it helped to create the loop. Diego Rivera developed a bravura brand of Cubism in Paris before switching to descriptive realism for his mural art. And he later applied that realism to portraits of New World socialites like Elisa Saldívar de Gutiérrez Roldán, whom he depicted, surely with irony, in lace-up sandals and a flounced "peasant" skirt, self-conscious signs of Méxicanidad.
Frida Kahlo made such Mexicanness, with its lingering revolutionary associations, insistently personal. In her self-portraits, she wears it like armor, a nun's shield painted with the Crucifixion. This sense of identity also inflects María Izquierdo's 1940 portrait of her three young nieces, but here, radiating in their mestizo faces, it feels warm and soaked-in, like tropical light.
These extraordinary painters have had a resounding impact on artists who have succeeded them. In a 1991 self-portrait by the Mexican painter Nahum Zenil, Kahlo's face appears as a giant heart swelling from his chest. And the political dynamic intrinsic to Latin American art has had wide influence, anticipating as it did the identity-based art that swept the United States in the 1980's and 90's.
In fact, the realities of race, class and power implicit in "Mulattoes of Esmereldas" in the 16th century and in "Woman From Bahia" in the 19th century are every bit as complex and history-shaping now as they ever were, and new art acknowledges this.
The last piece in the last gallery is a 1998 painting by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, "Carter, Anna and Daryl." Although it looks abstract, it is based on digitized images of DNA samples taken from members of the artist's family. Ethnicity and gender seem invisible here, but through science they may also be manipulable, rendering the fleet, imprecise thing that portraiture has always been even more elusive, more ephemeral.
By the time we get to the end of the show - a curatorial team effort led by Marion Oettinger Jr. of the San Antonio Museum, Fatima Bercht of El Museo del Barrio and Carolyn Kinder Carr and Miguel Bretos of the National Portrait Gallery - we've covered an exhausting tract of cultural ground, much of it unfamiliar. And if the trip proves at once too much and not enough, what can you do? Americans know shockingly little about their own history, and the history of Latin America is now every American's history. As we move through "Retratos," we start to learn.
We also traverse a museum that has lessons of its own to impart. It balances aesthetics and politics simply by acknowledging that the two are intertwined. It pushes and prods the past, when letting it sit there looking pretty would be easier. And it offers some of the most beautiful and disquieting art there is. These are some of the reasons that El Museo is increasingly looking not like the last stop on Museum Mile but the first, like a one-ship armada leading the fleet.
"Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" remains at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, (212) 831-7272, through March 20. It travels to the San Diego Museum of Art (April 16-June 12); Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach. (July 23-Oct. 2); National Portrait Gallery in Washington (Oct. 21-Jan. 8, 2006); and the San Antonio Museum of Art (Feb. 4-April 30, 2006)
Thursday, December 02, 2004
NYTimes Editorial 2Dec04: A Sound Basic Education
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/opinion/02thu1.html?ex=1103001827&ei=1&en=9d6b5d6e640532a9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 2, 2004
EDITORIAL
A Sound Basic Education
Anybody who knows about public schools in New York City has known for a long time what the problems are. Too many classes are overcrowded. Too many books are outdated. Equipment is too often antiquated or broken or missing altogether. These and other deficiencies are so alarming, so debilitating and so unfair for the city's 1.1 million public school students that New York has now officially joined other states that have the courts, not educators or politicians, taking charge of the schools.
After 11 years of litigation in place of government action, three court-appointed referees finally reported this week on how much money it would take to fix the city's schools. To give students the "sound basic education" promised by New York's Constitution, these referees said, the state and city should phase in a mountainous $5.6 billion more a year in spending for operating costs, plus $9.2 billion for new classrooms and other facilities.
The numbers are huge, but should not surprise city and state leaders, who allowed the courts to seize control of the city's schools by refusing to fix the problem themselves. Now New York has to pay this long overdue bill.
Politicians - mainly Gov. George Pataki, the State Legislature's leaders and Mayor Michael Bloomberg - have been negotiating with the lead plaintiff in this case to try to shave a little off the bottom line. That won't solve much. Even with a slight discount, it is hard to see how New York can pay this hefty tab without raising taxes.
Nobody wants more taxes, especially in a state with such a heavy tax burden. And politicians at all levels have huffed that raising taxes is unthinkable. So they are floating proposals like using gambling proceeds or adding to the state's debt. Gambling shoves the school problems disproportionately onto the poor, and borrowing doesn't avoid higher taxes - it simply delays them for tomorrow's taxpayers.
As the Citizens Budget Commission has noted, some of the money can be raised by closing loopholes for sales taxes and corporate income. And it says the city should go to a 12-month school year as quickly as possible, a move long overdue, to relieve overcrowding. But even the commission's tax-averse analysts had trouble seeing how to avoid a tax increase in New York State if the additional cost for city schools was around $3.2 billion a year. The court referees topped that by just under $2.5 billion.
On a basic level, the referees' report stands as another reminder that New York's politicians - particularly those in Albany - have failed to do their jobs. Justice Leland DeGrasse of the State Supreme Court set a deadline a year ago for the Legislature and Governor Pataki to act by the end of July. August came and went, and still there was no plan.
Justice DeGrasse has 90 days to react to the referees' proposal. Representatives of the nonprofit group that started the lawsuit and of the governor, the mayor, the state leaders and the unions have a last chance to come up with a decent proposal to pay for schools and make administrators more accountable for a much bigger budget. As sad evidence from other states has shown, a negotiated settlement would be far better for the students than making the schools wards of the court.
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December 2, 2004
EDITORIAL
A Sound Basic Education
Anybody who knows about public schools in New York City has known for a long time what the problems are. Too many classes are overcrowded. Too many books are outdated. Equipment is too often antiquated or broken or missing altogether. These and other deficiencies are so alarming, so debilitating and so unfair for the city's 1.1 million public school students that New York has now officially joined other states that have the courts, not educators or politicians, taking charge of the schools.
After 11 years of litigation in place of government action, three court-appointed referees finally reported this week on how much money it would take to fix the city's schools. To give students the "sound basic education" promised by New York's Constitution, these referees said, the state and city should phase in a mountainous $5.6 billion more a year in spending for operating costs, plus $9.2 billion for new classrooms and other facilities.
The numbers are huge, but should not surprise city and state leaders, who allowed the courts to seize control of the city's schools by refusing to fix the problem themselves. Now New York has to pay this long overdue bill.
Politicians - mainly Gov. George Pataki, the State Legislature's leaders and Mayor Michael Bloomberg - have been negotiating with the lead plaintiff in this case to try to shave a little off the bottom line. That won't solve much. Even with a slight discount, it is hard to see how New York can pay this hefty tab without raising taxes.
Nobody wants more taxes, especially in a state with such a heavy tax burden. And politicians at all levels have huffed that raising taxes is unthinkable. So they are floating proposals like using gambling proceeds or adding to the state's debt. Gambling shoves the school problems disproportionately onto the poor, and borrowing doesn't avoid higher taxes - it simply delays them for tomorrow's taxpayers.
As the Citizens Budget Commission has noted, some of the money can be raised by closing loopholes for sales taxes and corporate income. And it says the city should go to a 12-month school year as quickly as possible, a move long overdue, to relieve overcrowding. But even the commission's tax-averse analysts had trouble seeing how to avoid a tax increase in New York State if the additional cost for city schools was around $3.2 billion a year. The court referees topped that by just under $2.5 billion.
On a basic level, the referees' report stands as another reminder that New York's politicians - particularly those in Albany - have failed to do their jobs. Justice Leland DeGrasse of the State Supreme Court set a deadline a year ago for the Legislature and Governor Pataki to act by the end of July. August came and went, and still there was no plan.
Justice DeGrasse has 90 days to react to the referees' proposal. Representatives of the nonprofit group that started the lawsuit and of the governor, the mayor, the state leaders and the unions have a last chance to come up with a decent proposal to pay for schools and make administrators more accountable for a much bigger budget. As sad evidence from other states has shown, a negotiated settlement would be far better for the students than making the schools wards of the court.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Chicago's Lake Shore Drive a model for Henry Hudson Parkway
Subject: Chicago's Lake Shore Drive a model for Henry Hudson Parkway Date: 12/1/2004 5:42:36 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: hilary@kitasei.com
To: info@henryhudsonparkway.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Members and friends of the Henry Hudson Parkway Task Force:
My poor daughters’ college search is limited to cities with great roads. Hence I had the unexpectedly sublime pleasure of driving on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago last weekend. This urban parkway was built the same year as the Henry Hudson with which it shares many features. Its recent restoration by the Illinois and Chicago DOT’s is magnificent, and worthy of our careful study. (The restoration garnered numerous awards for Edwards & Kelcey, including the FHWA 2004 Innovation in Highway Design: http://www.tfhrc.gov/focus/sep04/05.htm.
This heavily-used commuter arterial courses through a string of parks, with Lake Michigan on one side, and historic districts, the museum campus and Gold Coast skyline on the other. It shares the corridor with a greenway and railway. Park infrastructure (including a stadium and convention center, which is a work of art and not a shoe-box) incorporates stunning new modern designs with historically restored designs. The recent project replaced the jersey barrier median and shoulders with aesthetically pleasing ones. Paved areas were returned to green space. Four beautiful bicycle & pedestrian tunnels and overpasses were added to link the lakeshore with the rest of the park. Traffic-calming and aesthetic devices were introduced to return the drive into a “boulevard parkway.” From University of Chicago to Northwestern, nary a billboard or piece of chain link!
Will report next from Cal Tech on the Seco Arroyo (aka the Pasadena Freeway), a national scenic byway connecting Pasadena and Los Angeles.
Hilary Kitasei
From: hilary@kitasei.com
To: info@henryhudsonparkway.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Members and friends of the Henry Hudson Parkway Task Force:
My poor daughters’ college search is limited to cities with great roads. Hence I had the unexpectedly sublime pleasure of driving on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago last weekend. This urban parkway was built the same year as the Henry Hudson with which it shares many features. Its recent restoration by the Illinois and Chicago DOT’s is magnificent, and worthy of our careful study. (The restoration garnered numerous awards for Edwards & Kelcey, including the FHWA 2004 Innovation in Highway Design: http://www.tfhrc.gov/focus/sep04/05.htm.
This heavily-used commuter arterial courses through a string of parks, with Lake Michigan on one side, and historic districts, the museum campus and Gold Coast skyline on the other. It shares the corridor with a greenway and railway. Park infrastructure (including a stadium and convention center, which is a work of art and not a shoe-box) incorporates stunning new modern designs with historically restored designs. The recent project replaced the jersey barrier median and shoulders with aesthetically pleasing ones. Paved areas were returned to green space. Four beautiful bicycle & pedestrian tunnels and overpasses were added to link the lakeshore with the rest of the park. Traffic-calming and aesthetic devices were introduced to return the drive into a “boulevard parkway.” From University of Chicago to Northwestern, nary a billboard or piece of chain link!
Will report next from Cal Tech on the Seco Arroyo (aka the Pasadena Freeway), a national scenic byway connecting Pasadena and Los Angeles.
Hilary Kitasei
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