Bidding Adieu to Christine Quinn

As Malcolm said in Macbeth, so we can say about the departing Speaker Quinn: “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” Her departure is most welcome for those of us who have had the distinct displeasure to watch as she has devolved form a somewhat principled community activist into a blatant shill for the real estate industry-from the Bronx Terminal Market to Willets Point, she has never taken a stand for either small businesses or communities under siege from over-development.

Even when Quinn did take a stand in her career-joining opponents of Costco in Hell’s Kitchen and those fighting the Kingsbridge Armory development in the Bronx-she did so by being dragged, almost kicking and screaming, into the ranks of the opposition; compelled to do so be sheer political expediency. Her temperament and intellect were ill suited to any chief executive role, and the more the electorate got to know more about her, the greater the distaste she evinced.

Of course, her signature betrayal of the voters on term limits earned her the sobriquet, Quinnberg-and her actions through eight years simply enforced the perception that she was Bloomberg’s mini-me. It is fitting that the two of them leave office in tandem.

When it comes to the upcoming decision on Willets Point, no one should doubt that she is looking to bequeath one last gift to her patrons at Related-but that doesn’t mean that the other council members are obliged any more to follow her perverted priorities and ratify a deal that is a spit in the face of city council oversight. It is a moment when the council can recapture its independence from a mayor and a speaker that the voters have vehemently rejected. Let’s see if they are up to the task.

Quinn, Willets Point and living wage

Quinn, Willets Point, and Living Wage
A desperate Christine Quinn is staggering around in search of a compelling idea. The latest involves the living wage:

“In a sign that the New York City mayoral primary has lurched to the left, during Tuesday evening's mayoral debate Council Speaker Christine Quinn said that as mayor she would apply a living-wage requirement at all future city-subsidized projects.  

It was a startling revelation, given that Ms. Quinn herself was the main impediment to such a sweeping living-wage law during her tenure as City Council speaker. She eventually negotiated a compromise bill that significantly narrowed the legislation, which had been championed by a retail-workers union that later endorsed her.”

Quinn went on to say:

"I helped lead the effort that got living wage and prevailing wage passed into law in this city and when I'm mayor I will expand living wage requirements to every dollar we spend in our Economic Development Corp...I think that's why I've been endorsed by the RWDSU union, the lead union behind living wage." 

"Let me be clear, when I'm mayor I will expand living wage to include all of EDC," she later added.”

So, does that mean that the deal she is going to negotiate with the city on Willets Point will include a living wage component that is currently absent after it was sh*tcanned by EDC? And what about the retail workers that the RWDSU were supposed to advocate for?

“It was not clear if Ms. Quinn would also require tenants at subsidized projects to pay a living wage; currently tenants are exempted, as Ms. Quinn insisted during negotiations on the bill. So while the developer of a project would have to pay its employees on the site the wage required by the law, a retailer renting space there would not. The retail-workers union nonetheless supported the compromise, which was seen by some as a foot in the door for the living-wage movement.”

We assume that much will depend whether or not the flailing speaker manages to sneak into a run-off. We think that a living wage for retail workers is a great idea-and a likely deal killer for the mayor. Wonder what Bill de Blasio has to say about this?

Hard of Hearing

The City Council, when we last checked, purports to be a deliberative body, but when you get really close to examine how it really functions you come to understand that it is deliberately obtuse when it comes to the interests of small businesses, and communities impacted by mega-development. Take the ULURP application for the slyly named Willets West-a project that emerged like Rosemary’s Baby from the failure of the original Willets Point development that passed under a false flag in 2008. If what we have seen so far is any indication, the council is preparing to roll over because of an inordinate obsequiousness to the interests of Joe Crowley and the Queens County Democrats.

In the first case, the initial hearing is scheduled for September the 3rd, the first business day after the Labor Day holiday. Acting like folks who want to remain inaccessible and perhaps even incognito, the notice for the hearing was posted on Thursday the 29th, leaving a single day before the holiday for the word to get out.

When it comes to the hearing itself, the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises is signaing that it really doesn’t want to have a vigorous debate on a project that remains promiscuously controversial considering the illegal lobbying that drove the original council approval five years ago. It is doing so first by shutting down the request from Willets Point United to present a 20 minute power point that deconstructs the numerous erroneous assumptions from EDC - an entity that was forced to reconstruct itself after orchestrating the aforementioned illegal lobbying.

There’s really no excuse for doing this since WPU has been willing to forego the time of five or six of its testifiers so that the power point could be presented. The only conclusion an impartial observer can draw from this is that the committee is trying to tamp down the opposition’s ability to make its case. Will the committee limit the developers to 2 minutes? No, we don’t think so - and Chairman Weprin needs to explain why he needs to act as a homer for the developers.

In addition, the time being allotted to each speaker has been reduced to 2 minutes! - another example of favoritism since the developers, being the prototypical special interests, normally have fewer people coming to testify. Two minutes for some of the folks who stand to lose their businesses and their property if this corrupt deal is approved is the quintessential example of the stacked deck.

The committee is also showing its true colors by disrespecting the expected testimony of many of the Hispanic immigrant workers and business owners. No Spanish translator will be provided at this hearing – despite the ULURP application that is at issue requiring that 100+ businesses vacate the premises that are owned and operated predominantly by people who speak Spanish. The City previously failed to provide any Spanish translator at the eminent domain hearing which was widely criticized at the time. Apparently the City has not learned any lesson and is content to steamroll the 100+ immigrant businesses without hearing them at the Council. And why hasn't Julissa Ferreras, the home rule council member who has been working for years with the tenant businesses, demanded interpretation services for her constituents, or spoken out against the skulduggery being perpetrated by the City against Willets Point land and business owners?

The above points, taken all together, demonstrate the City Council's active contempt for public testimony about the proposed Willets West mall / Willets Point Phase One ULURP application. Speaker Quinn, Land Use Committee Chair Leroy Comrie, and subcommittee Chair Mark Weprin should be ashamed of themselves. These latest examples of bias come a year after the Mayor's Office and NYCEDC selected Sterling Equities and Related Companies, and their plan to expand the development from 62 to 108.9 acres including constructing a shopping mall on parkland, in a private process that shut out the Queens-based Willets Point Advisory Committee from the developer selection process, contrary to multiple written promises. The fix appears to be in; let the Council now show us - and all New Yorkers - otherwise.

Political Corruption and Willets Point: The Christine Quinn Story

Wayne Barrett-as per usual-has a riveting expose of the unlikely rise of Christine Quinn to the Speakership of the City Council in 2005. The rise of this former community activist and neighborhood scourge was predicated on some good old fashioned insider trading-relying on the quid pro quo support of three of the city’s Democratic County bosses: Joe Crowley, Jose Rivera and the now disgraced Vito Lopez.

As Barrett points out:

“It was December 2005 and 39-year-old Christine Quinn, an obscure one-term Chelsea councilwoman, was on her way to the Westchester Square headquarters of the Bronx Democratic County Committee to close the deal that would make her speaker, second only to the mayor in the power she would wield in City Hall. Her path to the Council leadership—positioning her to shape the city’s fiscal and development policies for the next four, and ultimately eight years—was, by city charter design, an inside game.”

And it was a game she played well-and continued to play well as certain special interests feasted on their special relationship with the former enfant terrible of community organizing. This was seen right off the bat in 2006 when Quinn took over and rolled over for the Bronx Terminal Market and Yankee Stadium deals midwived by the Bronx political bosses:

“Just a couple of months into her speakership, in February 2006, Quinn was embroiled in the Council’s consideration of the two projects that meant more to Jose Rivera than any others in his reign as Bronx Democratic leader: the redevelopment of Yankee Stadium and the construction of the nearby Gateway Center Mall. They were giant projects – and, hence, opportunities to gather campaign contributions and political sway. (One measure of the value: between 2004 and the end of 2008, when Rivera was ousted as leader, his varied campaign committees collected $58,625 from the Yankees and the Related Companies, which built the mall).”

When both deals were concluded, the developers of the BTM and the Yankees got the goldmine and the tax payers got the shaft-a trend that was to characterize Quinn’s entire tenure as council speaker:

“The Yankees wanted a new Metro North train stop at the stadium and didn’t want to contribute a cent to the project, even though there was no money in the MTA budget to pay for it. In the final 24 hours of pre-vote negotiations at the Council, they got it, outraging The New York Times editorial board.

The size of the project meant that new parks would need to be built near the stadium, replacing old community parks. At the Yankees’ urging, the Council agreed to pay the entire cost of these parks, which would escalate from $116 million to $190 million over the life of the project. The Yankees also made it a condition of the deal that the city would pick up the cost of a 9,300-space parking garage, which totaled $100 million in direct subsidies and $278 million in tax-exempt bonds.”

The Terminal market became terminal for the 23 mostly minority wholesalers who were evicted in the ultimate sweetheart deal-these entrepreneurs were scattered to the four winds and most have gone out of business after losing the synergy of the market and its location. The developer Related, however, did a tad better owing to the close friendship between Deputy Mayor Doctoroff and Related boss Steve Ross:

“The Related Companies’ no-bid contract for the mall, approved by the Council a few weeks before the Yankees’ deal in early 2006, did not require any percentage payments to the city geared to mall revenues, unlike many projects on city-owned land. Instead, while Related earns $27 million a year from its current mall tenants, it is only paying the city $800,000 as compensation for the project. The justification is that it generates jobs – a point that Yankees President Randy Levine has made repeatedly, at one point saying critics “should be encouraging us to create jobs instead of engaging in political grandstanding.” But the pay averages $8 an hour, a thin reed on which to justify such a huge subsidy. The Council rubber-stamped these terms, and Related became one of Quinn’s biggest financial supporters, having bundled or donated $58,254 to her campaigns since 2006.”

This, as we shall see, was a harbinger of the Willets Point deal that came later.

”Roll the calendar forward to 2009. That’s when Queens leader Joe Crowley surfaced at the Council with a project of his own to champion. A member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Crowley rarely gets involved in Queens controversies. But he interjected himself into the debate over another Related Companies project: the $3 billion redevelopment of Willets Point.”

Here’s where insider trading gave way to outright corruption-with Quinn paddling along with the tide:

“It didn’t help appearances that the project was a bit of an ethical mess. Claire Shulman, the 83-year-old former Queens borough president, had set up a nonprofit local development corporation, Flushing Willets Point Corona LDC, to build grassroots support for the project. The LDC was underwritten by a $250,000 city grant and real estate interests, including Related’s co-developer on the project, Sterling Equities, the real estate arm of Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. But Shulman had failed to register the group as a lobbyist with the city clerk and was fined $52,000 for the omission. Then she registered it, and a storm ensued, since LDCs are barred by law from lobbying the Council. The Times quoted her saying that “we lobbied the city for the city,” a statement that eventually resulted in a state attorney general’s finding that the LDC had “flouted the law” and a settlement that barred it from lobbying the Council. Quinn did not criticize the grandmotherly Shulman at the time - indeed, she shared stages with her, beaming about Willets Point – and remains silent on the lobbying gaffe.”

A true partner in crime-and Quinn made sure that the council did not do any real over sight of the Willets Point development even though it became obvious that the illegal and unethical actions of the city and its consultants were polluting the development process:

“As quickly as the cheering died down, the angry Willets Point businesses sued the city to block the project. The case dragged on until May 2012, when on the eve of an appellate review of elements of it, the Bloomberg administration suddenly withdrew its plan. The winning lawyer said: “The city knew it was going to lose.” Among other things, the city had presented two conflicting environmental impact statements, one saying that traffic on a new expressway ramp to be built for the project would boom by 50 percent, the other estimating a 15 percent increase. It held a public hearing on the project without a Spanish interpreter, though the room was filled with clamoring Hispanic businessmen.”

At every corrupt step of the way, Quinn shot down any oversight or council review-she was all in for Joe Crowley from the beginning and was not going to abandon him in his hour of need; and the EDC’s fraudulent environmental/traffic review could not garner a council oversight hearing with Quinn’s thumb on the scale.

This is depressingly similar to the deal making in the Bronx-even more so now that Related has been injected into the Willets Point deal with predictable conclusions: gone is the affoirdabkle housing, replaced by-what else?-another mall:

“Now, a revised project is back before Quinn, slated to come to a Council vote in October. Critics note that it cuts the affordable housing units in half, and that the developers may not have to build any if they delay the housing project for a decade, which they are permitted to do under the deal. The emphasis now is on a huge mall, an echo of Related’s Gateway development in the Bronx.”

This brings us to the present and the City Council’s first hearing on Willets Point scheduled for Tuesday. The signs are indeed ominous with Quinn still at the helm-but with a great deal of hope that current mayoral frontrunner will put the kibosh on this corporate welfare deal when and if he gets into office in January (Or that Bill Thompson will also set it aside when he finds out all that went into this toxic farrago).

Making things even more foreboding is that the land use subcommittee is balking at letting WPU do a 20 minute power point presentation at Tuesday’s hearing. The power point is a devastating takedown of the city’s proposal and we can understand why proponents of the project would balk at its use. But why would the council committee not want it shown? After all, the city gets unlimited time for all of its phony dog and pony shows.

Our main concern goes back to Barrett’s original thesis: the unseemly role of the county leaders in the selection of the speaker. That hasn’t really changed, and Joe Crowley still wields enormous power and he definitely doesn’t want a public exposure of all the unethical and illegal maneuvers that he has spawned and continues to sanction.

Exit question: are the aspirants for speaker blocking the Willets Point presentation for tawdry political reasons and not simply housekeeping logistics? If so, they are putting their own political ambitions before the needs of the residents of Queens, the businesses of Willets Point, and the tax payers of NYC-just like Christine Quinn has done for 8 years.

Planning Commission Rubber Stamps Willets West: Morphs into the Board of Health

In what is really not a news story - when was the last time the City Planning Commission turned down a mayoral initiative? (Answer: Never) - the CPC approved the bastardized Willets West development with a lone dissenting vote. As the NY Daily News reports:“The City Planning Commission approved a plan to build a mega mall near Citi Field as part of a larger redevelopment of the gritty stretch of auto body shops.”

We got a big kick out of New York’s Burden - the chair of CPC - who remarked: “Willets Point is on its way to becoming remediated and ultimately becoming an active and inviting destination.”

From a woman famous for her own extreme makeovers, we weren’t surprised by the comment. Amanda Burden has had this sinecure for twelve years and the only thing that would bring more fresh air to the city than the mayor’s departure would be the removal of this toady from her sinecure. Burden gives a certain class comfort to the rubber stamp nature of the CPC - perhaps there will be a spot for her on the Board of Health in a new mayoral administration. After all, she has shown great skill in simply following orders.

There was, however, one dissenting opinion in this charade: “Board member Michelle de la Uz was the lone dissenting voice during the meeting. She argued that there are a glut of malls already in Queens and said “questionable and weak” efforts have been made to relocate the immigrant shop owners working in the auto body shops.”


De la Uz was appointed by Public Advocate de Blasio and it raises questions about what a mayor de Blaio would do if he were asked to review this horrible crony capitalist bait and switch adventure. After all, the litany of the false promises and illegalities pave the road along the way to this mega mall project-and a new mayor is under no obligation to pony up $200 million worth of property and close to $100 million for “remediation” just to aggrandize Steve Ross and Jeff Wilpon’s fortunes.

The measure now goes to the city council where Speaker Quinn will have the opportunity to demonstrate her total obeisance to the agenda of Big Real Estate. There can be no other explanation-the absence of a public good here is blindingly glaring.

Condemning the Garden Party

The NY Post is editorializing about the city’s effort to force MSG to move the Garden so a giant refurbishing of Penn Station can be done-and lurking in the background are the city’s Bobbsey Twins, Steve Ross (Related) and Steve Roth (Vornado), who want their companies to be able to cash in on all of this:

“Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Chris Quinn are no longer pretending: They want Madison Square Garden gone, so they can rebuild Penn Station. But they don’t have the guts to evict the arena the legal way — eminent domain.

“Madison Square Garden will have to move,” Quinn huffed, after the council recently voted for a permit limited to 10 years. The new clarity about ousting the Garden is a step up. For a time, the Bloomberg folks claimed they were OK with fixing up the transit hub and leaving the arena where it is. Now they’re at least being honest about wanting it to move.”

But they do have the guts to evict Nick Sprayregen from his storage company’s sites in West Harlem and the small property owners from Willets Point-beating up the little guys is a time honored tradition with the mayor. No, however, the former community organizer Chris Quinn is fitting smoothly into the methodology of the rich exploiters. But Jim Dolan is not someone that can be easily removed so the political class is trying this zoning permit end run:

“But revoking the Garden’s permit in 2023 is still sneaky. If Bloomberg, Quinn & Co. really seek to give MSG the boot, they should invoke eminent domain.”

The last time Dolan got involved in a political fight-over the West Side Stadium-the mayor got his ass kicked. And the Post implies that the little guy may not want a repeat beating:

“We know why: Resorting to eminent domain would make clear this is all about taking private property from its owner. That in turn would likely set off a political firestorm that wouldn’t reflect well on our political class — and might even backfire. 

Well, too bad. Abusing a permitting process to squeeze the Garden will only scare off other businesses. Besides, New Yorkers deserve the debate. If our pols want MSG out, let them use the proper tool and make the proper arguments.”

What this would mean is that we would get a public discussion about the city’s abuse of property rights-and that would be a good thing, The use of condemnation over at Willets Point has ended up by ceding other people’s property over to Related and Sterling Equities for a hill of beans ($1). This is not even close to being a public use. Every property owner in the city should know that their land is not safe if the Quinnberg regime is allowed to continue in office.

Some Parks are More Equal than Others

As the city’s continuing effort to decimate Flushing Meadows Park winds its way through city planning and on to the city council, the lingering question is what will Speaker Quinn do. We know that one of the developers of the project, Related, has had an unusually close relationship with her. As Capitol New York has pointed out:

"Related Companies, part of whose massive Hudson Yards project was exempted from the Living Wage bill, has donated more money to Christine Quinn's campaign.

The most recent campaign finance disclosures, released today, show that executives from Related Companies donated $6,600 to Quinn's still-undeclared campaign for mayor, between January and July." 

We also are finding out that Quinn has a real affection for at least one park-even though detractors might call it a faux park. City and State has the story:

“The High Line is revered internationally for repurposing a post-industrial wreck into a refreshing aesthetic public experience. The park has also anchored an explosion of billions of dollars of high-end development in the Council-rezoned “Special West Chelsea District,” designed specifically around the High Line.

The organization that built and runs the park, Friends of the High Line, is dominated by a wealthy and politically connected coterie of real estate developers and property owners, which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, directly and as intermediaries, into Christine Quinn’s mayoral election campaign. Friends of the High Line, formed in 1999 as a tiny nonprofit by two civic-minded fans of urban decrepitude, has quickly become the richest park conservancy in the city, after the Central Park Conservancy.”

In spite of its ample funds, however, the High Line is treated with great deference by the city council and by Speaker Quinn:

“The City Council, first under Gifford Miller and then Christine Quinn, has doused the High Line with cash. Estimates of city funding for the High Line before it even opened range between $130 and $170 million: This money was only for improvement of an existing structure, because the rail line itself was donated to the city by the CSX Corporation. Since the park opened, despite the largesse of FoHL and its claims that 90 percent of park expenses are raised privately, the Council continues to make allocations to its expansion and maintenance, including a $5 million capital disbursement two years ago.”

What makes this problematic is not only that we have a well funded faux park receiving a great deal of public support when there are ample private funds to support it, but that the funding is inextricably linked with the city council’s “slush fund” scandal:

“When the City Council “slush fund” scandal was revealed five years ago, it turned out that the largest beneficiary of these improper disbursements was the High Line. The scandal, in which the Speaker’s office budgeted Council funds to shell organizations in order to dispense the money later to favored groups, resulted in $290,000 going to FoHL. The group has received yearly allocations of $75,000 to $100,000 from the Council since then.”

This at a time when local parks all over the city are being shafted by the current mayoral regime-raising the question of where the speaker’s priorities lie. Even more so since there appears to be a quid pro quo operating in this slushy environment:

“The real question is, why give money to the FoHL at all? They don’t need it. The organization is awash in cash from its board and corporate sponsors. The High Line floats in the center of billions of dollars of residential real estate that was built specifically around it. One of the highest paid staffers for the FoHL is a person listed officially as “Director of Food,” who makes more than $100,000 per year. It doesn’t seem like they would miss an annual five-figure disbursement if the Council decided to direct the money toward some other park.

Perhaps the Council’s little allocations are more like tribute than funding: annual tokens that the Speaker makes to the real estate and special interests to whom she owes so much. And they accept it because it affirms to them that here, here is someone we can trust, who will continue to do our bidding.”

And these interests in turn support her political aspirations. This brings us to Willets Point/Flushing Meadows, where a real park that is underfunded is being targeted for extinction-and there are no rich real estate interests that can be seen supporting the park and its maintenance. In fact, the rich real estate interests her want to destroy the park.

Speaker Quinn has a choice: to support the survival of Flushing Meadows, or the greed of the Related Company and its partner Sterling Equities. Quite a troubling choice for the champion of the middle class.

Peralta denounces "bait-and-switch" tactics of Willets Point developers

Jose Peralta letter to Bloomberg, Quinn and Marshall by unitedtriangle

Senator Jose Peralta demands that housing be guaranteed and prioritized in the Willets Point redevelopment. It has been put off indefinitely, when it was originally supposed to be the first part of the project to get done after remediation.

Traffic is Quinn's issue with Armory project - why not with Willets Point?

From Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

"Almost lost in the euphoria over the defeat of the Kingsbridge Armory project was the crucial role played by Brian Ketcham's masterful traffic analysis-because ultimately it is traffic and socio-economic impacts that must be the determining factor in any land use decision.

This was brought home by the comments of Speaker Quinn relayed in a live blog by the Bronx News Network: "12:35 Quinn is talking now. Says they're disappointed they couldn't come to an agreement with the administration. Urging all colleagues to vote to disapprove the proposal today."After numerous and lengthy discussions, there's a significant public health and traffic impact. We cannot approve a project that brings more people to an already crowded area. .. without a true plan to deal with that traffic congestion."Other issues important and significant but not part of vote today, she said: Current plan is simply not the right proposal for the residents of this community at this time." Praises Annabel Palma, Bx delegation leader, and her Bronx colleagues."

The reality here is, that the amount of traffic that this project would generate-once again contradicting the Kermit the Mayor image of the city's richest man-would have been a real hardship on the Kingsbridge Heights neighborhood. And the inadequacies of the Related traffic study should initiate a call for ULURP reform so that the traffic analysis is taken out of the hands of developer puppets claiming independent expertise.

So hats off to Ketcham-and a cautionary tale for EDC in its effort to cover up just how inadequate the Willets Point traffic study really is. If the mayor is gonna be going green, than he needs to become more honest-and insure that his policies reflect the high minded rhetoric that he graces world gatherings with."

Christine Quinn ordered the City Council to vote yes on the Willets Point project despite the immitigable traffic impacts that even the City admits will result from the development and the construction of ramps for the Van Wyck Expressway.

Why the double standard, Chris?