Yes, They Really Did Say "Half a Billion Dollars" for Remediation

A contentious point about the proposed Willets Point development has been the alleged need for remediation of the property. Willets Point United Inc. believes that during 2008, the City greatly exaggerated the alleged need for remediation in order to horrify the City Council and provide some basis to approve the land grab involving our property. That the City is now awkwardly backing away from its 2008 claim proves our point.

During a 2008 City Council public hearing, the cost to remediate the entire 62 acres of Willets Point, according to the City, was said to be between $470 million and $570 million – "half a billion dollars", as then-Councilman Hiram Monserrate put it – a large sum that implied a large amount of remediation was required. That a developer would foot such a bill was touted as a benefit of proceeding with the entire proposed project.

Now, five years later, the City's contract with chosen developers Sterling/Related anticipates the cost of remediating one-third of Willets Point (the "Phase One" area) to be just $40 million, or less.
Extrapolated to the full 62 acres of Willets Point, the cost would be $120 million – which is dwarfed by the original $570 million quoted to the City Council during 2008. Moreover, Sterling/Related now won't even pay the $40 million cost – the taxpayers will, by virtue of a grant of taxpayer funds to the developers to cover the remediation. The previously-claimed benefit to the taxpayers – that a developer would pay for and do extensive remediation – has been stood on its head.

A lingering question for the City is: What happened to the $570 million remediation program that was said to be necessary during 2008? What explanation is there, for drastically reducing the cost of remediation from $570 million, to $120 million (or less, per the contract)?

Incredibly, when the issue came up during a committee meeting of Queens Community Board 7 on April 11, 2013, NYCEDC's Tom McKnight tried to create the impression that people are mis-remembering the $570 million figure, and that $570 million somehow was never said. Strange that McKnight would do this now, as he was seated just feet behind then-Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber and NYCEDC President Seth Pinsky at the City Council during 2008 when the discussion of the "half a billion dollars" occurred.

For anyone who doubts this, here is a video clip that shows a portion of the City Council Q&A. At no time does anyone dispute the $570 million remediation cost that is discussed – only how it might be paid.



We emphasize that today, this cost is down to just $40 million for one-third of the site, with the taxpayers – not the developers – paying the bill. The need for remediation is nowhere near what the City Council was told during 2008; and in any case, the cost of paying for it has been shifted from the developers to the taxpayers, and is now a taxpayer liability instead of the benefit we were promised.

See Willets Point United Inc.'s Gerald Antonacci's explanation of this, in our YouTube video ("Willets Point Factual Update") beginning at 9:39 (9 minutes, 39 seconds).

Robert Lieber's living wage letter of guarantee

Robert Lieber's Living Wage Letter

Living Wage: What Unions & the City Council said in 2008

The New York City Economic Development Corporation has solicited developer firms to implement the Willets Point development, on the basis of a Request for Proposals ("RFP") that contains NO living wage provision. However, that plainly contradicts the announcements and testimony of union officials during 2008.

This 4-minute video compilation shows union officials during 2008 announcing, and testifying to the New York City Council on the record regarding, an agreement that requires a living wage provision to be included in the Request for Proposals seeking developer firms to implement the Willets Point development.

No matter what the unions may now have us believe, it is quite clear from this video that:

(1.) The unions unequivocally state that a living wage provision is "guaranteed" and "required" to be included in the Willets Point RFP, and that this has been memorialized in a written and signed agreement (i.e., there is no wiggle room);

(2.) The agreement to include a living wage provision in the Willets Point RFP was "critical to labor's support on this [Willets Point] project";

(3.) The agreement was consistent with the ideology of the local City Council member (Hiram Monserrate), without whose consent approval of the proposed Willets Point development would have been unlikely;

(4.) The local City Council member forewarned that in the future, the City of New York might attempt to avoid implementing agreed labor provisions, but that the City must honor its commitments to labor and to the City Council;

(5.) The City Council requested, and union officials agreed to provide to the City Council, a copy of the written agreement pertaining to the the inclusion of a living wage provision within the Willets Point RFP. Therefore, that agreement is part of the record on which the City Council based its decision to approve the proposed Willets Point development.

Now that the City has reneged on its commitment to include a living wage provision within the Willets Point RFP, who will challenge this? Will the unions -- whose agreement apparently has been violated by the City -- bring a lawsuit to require a new RFP that includes a living wage provision? Will the City Council act? Will law enforcement?

Or, were union officials exaggerating, or perhaps deceiving themselves, during 2008?

EDC Phase I Completely Contradicts ULURP Application

We have been discussing why the partial, segmented development of Willets Point is illegal. What we haven't yet discussed, however, is the extent to which city officials-and other supporters of the project-have made the full, comprehensive and complete development of the 62 acres of the Iron Triangle an absolute necessity.

In the following embedded video you will get to see just how strenuously the city argued against any partial development of the Willets Point area-with serial prevaricator Robert Lieber leading the charge claiming that, because of the flood plain nature of the land, the "high water table," and the years of soil contamination, the project could not be developed in a piece meal fashion. Lieber told the city council that developing Willets Point was a, "transformative exercise," that must be dealt with, "in its totality."

Not to be outdone, EDC's Senior Vice President Thomas McKnight told CB #7 that because of the extensive nature of the environmental clean up, "those kinds of comprehensive things can't really happen with the businesses there...We want to redevelop the entire Willets Point district."

Queens BP Helen Marshall, reading from the EDC script given to her, told the City Planning Commission that Willets Point, "must proceed comprehensively, and Not be phased in." Finally there's UpChuck Apelian, the chair of CB#7, who told his board that, "the site Must be remediated as one complete site."

Well what has changed, and why is EDC proceeding in a manner that it said was environmentally proscribed three years ago? The only possible answer to this is the fact that WPU's intervention on the ramps introduced a high level of uncertainty for the city's crack development team-and the new Phase I was and is a desperate attempt to end run, not only proper traffic reviews,but EDC's own prescriptions for an environmentally sound development plan.

It is hard to conceive of how this will all pass a legal challenge from WPU. In the end the city and EDC's own words will serve to convict them of a fraudulent attempt to rewrite history in order to promote an environmentally unsound development at the expense of small property owners.

EDeceit

At the eminent domain hearing of the other week, EDC reached new heights in deception-or, perhaps, depths is a better turn of phrase. Somehow the agency is trying to find a way to make its totally new Phase I segmentation of the Willets Point development pass muster- even though there has never been any portion of the project that has been conceived that doesn’t include ramps.

Here’s what the agency’s crack spokesperson told the hearing:

“The plan does not anticipate completion of new connections to the Van Wyck Expressway during Phase 1, as was previously contemplated. This is primarily attributed to the need to prioritize among the multiple infrastructure and site improvements that will be provided by the City as part of the district's redevelopment. The completion of the new connections to the Van Wyck Expressway is not necessary for the initial development phase, and thus may be deferred until after the completion of Phase 1. We are continuing to work towards the necessary regulatory approvals for the ramps, and anticipate approval in the coming months. Phase 1 will be completed and the substantial Phase 1 benefits will be realized, even – even if the connections are not approved by the Federal Highway Administration and the New York State Department of Transportation."

Read the first two sentences with great care. Somehow, the decision to leave the building of ramps to a later phase of development is a result of needing to, “prioritize among the multiple infrastructure and site improvements...” Oh, please! The reason for leaving out the ramps is because WPU has traffic jammed EDC with the regulators.

But the real nugget in the EDC statement is the assertion that the new phase of development will go forward to completion “even if” the ramps are not approved. Really? What does this mean?

If the ramps are never approved, then only the small Phase 1 can proceed. That is a major departure from what the City Council reviewed and approved, because ALL scenarios considered by the Council included at least the possibility and promise that the entire 62 acre site would eventually be developed.

It was that goal that the Council deemed worthy of supporting, and (rightly or wrongly) worthy of the use of eminent domain. ("… it is a transformation exercise on all 62 acres" -- Bob Lieber testimony to Council, November 29, 2007.) Had the Council been asked to approve just a mini-development to complement the Wilpons' CitiField, and to authorize eminent domain to achieve it, the outcome might have been very different.

But there is another real sticking point in the EDC strategy-segmentation. As WPU’s lawyer Mike Gerrard told the Daily News: “All of their documentation shows it's a single project for which the ramps are needed." If it now turns out that it isn’t a seamless development, EDC must submit a supplemental EIS for a land use review.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

From the NY Times:

Robert C. Lieber, the former Wall Street executive who has guided the Bloomberg administration’s economic development efforts during the recession, told his staff on Wednesday that he would step down as deputy mayor in June.

Mr. Lieber, 55, who has been in the job since January 2008, has focused on projects including the redevelopment of Coney Island, the city’s takeover of Governors Island and the rezoning of Willets Point in Queens. He also has pushed the city’s economic development strategy beyond big real estate deals to include smaller entrepreneurial initiatives and a number of growing industries.

Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for small businesses who opposed the city’s plan to redevelop Willets Point and to use eminent domain to gain control of the land, said that Mr. Lieber’s approach failed to account for the collateral damage to the neighborhood.

“The deputy mayor and his agency have proceeded in a recession to promote a project that is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and displace scores of small businesses and thousands of workers without any conceivable plan or a developer to implement it,” Mr. Lipsky said.

Mayors and politicians have come and gone over the decades, but we are still here. And we plan on being here for many more decades to come.

What our EIS challenge focused on

This is from the Crain's insider, published Thursday, August 20th, 2009:

Willets Point of attack

Tomorrow, for the first time, opponents of the Bloomberg administration’s Willets Point project will make their case in state court. Their attorneys will say the environmental impact statement for the proposed redevelopment has gaping holes, notably a failure to address the effect on the Van Wyck Expressway.

“This is going to cause traffic problems of unprecedented proportions that will stop emergency response vehicles in their tracks,” says Nelson Johnson, counsel at Arnold & Porter and a specialist in environmental law. “The [impact statement] did not consider it at all.” A comprehensive study is mandated by state law.

Johnson and colleague Michael Gerrard are representing businesses and one resident who want to remain at Willets Point. The city wants to move them out, if necessary by buying the land through eminent domain, to make way for an elaborate development. The plaintiffs are suing separately in federal court, demanding services that the city has denied them for decades.

The lawyers will tell state Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden that the project requires two new ramps to the Van Wyck, triggering the need for Federal Highway Administration approval, which is far from certain. They’ll also argue that the impact statement should not have been prepared by Deputy Mayor Bob Lieber. The agency compiling the EIS must be the one that carries out, funds or approves the project. “The deputy mayor’s office wasn’t any of those things,” Johnson claims.

The city has agreed not to condemn any land until it receives the rest of its approvals, including from the state Department of Transportation. But “just the threat of condemnation is enough to drive away customers,” Johnson says. “It has a chilling effect on the ability of these people to do business.”