Letter: Willets Point plan paid off only for developers

Letter to the editor of the Times Ledger:

TimesLedger Newspapers’ recent Queens Tomorrow magazine includes the article “Willets shops look for home” and contains a rendering of what purports to be the 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall slated for the current parking lot adjacent to Citi Field.

With all due respect, the public is entitled to a clearer picture of what is involved.

Claiming Willets Point was a blighted area ignores the fact that the blight, if any, was caused by the city collecting sewer rent from the area’s owners when there were no sewers and other taxes without addressing the area’s infrastructure. The Bloomberg administration decided the 225 small businesses in the area, with their hundreds of employees, had to go to be replaced by a development said at the time to include retail shops, a school, a convention center and luxury housing with a portion set aside for affordable housing.

The preliminary presentation went before Community Board 7, since the area was within its jurisdiction. CB 7 approved the application in no small part because of the inclusion of affordable housing and because then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg assured the board it would have input in the selection of the project’s developer.

Bloomberg reneged on his promise and the board had no input or knowledge of who the developer was until it was a fait accompli.

One of the several developers interested in the project was Related Cos. and Sterling Equities, affiliated with the Wilpons, owners of the New York Mets, the lease holder of Citi Field. Subsequent developments suggest they were the selected developers and had little interest in the project as approved in 2008.

What they really wanted was to have included a gaming casino and, when it appeared that was never going to happen, the project became dormant until 2012, at which time they came up with a new plan.

They sought what they claimed was a slight change in the approved 2008 plan. They wanted permission to have constructed in Willets Point a large parking lot. Not a significant change until it became clear there was an elephant in the room. They wanted the parking lot so they could transfer the Citi Field parking lot to Willets Point and on the vacated Citi Field parking lot construct a 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall, that to be done notwithstanding the Citi Field parking lot is on Flushing Meadows Corona Park land, and bypass Uniform Land Use Review Procedure and park land alienation requirements.

The City Council, which consistently views large real estate interests as their true constituents and the public be damned, approved the application. As bad as it was for the Council to ignore the bypassing of ULURP and park alienation requirements, the deal was so financially outrageous as to make the misdeeds of Boss Tweed a simple panhandler.

The 2012 deal the City went along with involved the sale of the Willets Point property, which the city acquired for tens of millions of dollars, to the billionaire developers for $1 — a subsidy of $99 million and a tax abatement of about $50 million.

As nefarious as all this was, it was just the tip of the iceberg. The Council went along with the developers’ priority. The developers would construct the Willets Point parking lot and, freeing up the Citi Field parking lot, it would enable them to proceed with their 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall.

The least priority, which one would recall was an important linchpin in the approved 2008 plan, was affordable housing. Under the 2012 plan, affordable housing was put on the back burner and will not be accomplished until 2025, if at all. Apart from the fact that that would be 17 years after it was approved in 2008, I say “if at all,” because it will never happen.

The plan approved gives the developers the right to withdraw from Willets Point by forfeiting something like $35 million. As greedy as Related Cos., Sterling Equities and the Wilpons are, they are astute business people, not stupid. After spending billions on the mall, a penalty to walk away from affordable housing, a financial loser, for about $35 million dollars is pennies. Walk is what will happen.

If stupidity in elective office were a crime, the past and current Council members who approved this abomination would be in trouble. It is to be noted that litigation is pending to let right be done and undo the above. One hopes the courts will do so.

Benjamin Haber
Flushing

Rally against the Willets West shopping mall on public parkland

Video of full speakers' statements at last Saturday's rally opposing the "Willets West" mall on parkland. Provided by LoScalzo Media Design LLC; copyright 2014

Read about the rally at the Queens Chronicle's website.

Haber’s Sound Advice: Ignore Julissa Ferreras

In this week’s Times Ledger Ben Haber issues some sound advice to the city council: Ignore Julissa Ferreras because the violation of law involved in the current city proposal to build a mall on CitiField’s parking lot is too egregious to allow one council member’s lack of intelligence to prevail:

“For too long there has been an unwritten law that in connection with legislation pending before the New York City Council, the Council member whose district encompasses the area on which there may be an impact has the say on whether the legislation should be enacted or rejected. Not only does this not comport with legitimate democratic processes, but it ignores the fact that a single Council member does not speak for all the residents of a district and ignores the fact there may be an impact upon an entire borough as well as the city.”

The question of whom Ferreras actually speaks for is an open one, but we can discount any notion that she speaks for the public interest. Her apparent support of a mall on parkland is a case in point:

“To allow this deception is to sanction the taking of a huge section of Flushing Meadows Corona Park land on which the current lot sits and to sanction a significant land use change without the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. All Council members, guardians of the public’s interests, must protect the integrity of ULURP and land use change for the entire city. To ignore that duty is to lay the groundwork for further intrusions in the future in other Council districts.”

Haber goes on to underscore why Ferreras is wrong about Willets West:

“While I am uncertain as to where Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) stands on the issue, from what I have heard her say, she supports the mall. If she does, I urge all Council members to make an independent judgment and not accord Ferreras any greater weight. Not only should they give great weight to the attempt to bypass a mall ULURP and land use change requirements, they should consider the effect a shopping mall will have on the hundreds of small merchants and existing malls throughout Queens and the city and the traffic congestion it will cause on the Grand Central Parkway, the Van Wyck Expressway, Northern Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue.”

Her lack of sensibility on this issue is highlighted by her support of a BID in the contiguous commercial areas around the proposed mall-a proposal that has drawn the fire of local merchants:

“Some business owners are saying no to the expansion that would bring a business improvement district (BID) to the Jackson Heights and Corona area for fear of losing what makes the community diverse.
The 82nd Street Partnership, a non-profit group promoting the current local BID covering four blocks and over 160 businesses, announced in March it would be extending all the way through 114th Street as part of Councilmember Julissa Ferreras’ New Deal for Roosevelt Avenue to form the Jackson Heights-Corona BID.”

The crackpot idea that promoting a BID will mitigate the impact of a 1.4 million square foot mall as a neighbor gives a god indication of the lucidity of the council member’s thinking process. In fact, the BID-by raising the rents of store owners-will only exacerbate a bad situation and make it that much worse:

“The commercial rents are extremely high,” said Ruben Pena, a liquor store owner and community activist. “The community is going to get hurt. They are fighting to make ends meet.” The BID expansion is a component of Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras’ “New Deal” for Roosevelt Ave., which focused on cleaning up the corridor, which cuts through several Queens neighborhoods. Ferreras cites safety issues, poor lighting and cleanliness as the top complaints among residents.  

“The current problems on Roosevelt Ave. hurt everyone,” Ferreras said in a statement. “This is why I believe a business improvement district is a solution to this problem.” 

Ferreras is, unfortunately, going nowhere for the next four years. But that doesn’t prevent more intelligent members of the council from interceding in an intervention to promote good government. Haber is right, and he deserves the final word:

“If great weight is to be given to a particular area, the Council should take note that Ferreras’ district contains Community Board 3, which, after conducting a ULURP on the amendment to allow a parking lot at Willets Point, rejected the application with a vote of 30-1 with 1 abstention. That rejection made clear the board was not going to allow a phony amendment to the 2008 plan as a cover-up for a 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall.

It is CB 3 that speaks for the community and not Ferreras. I believe all of the above are good reasons why allowing a single Council member to decide if a bill should or should not be enacted has no place in our Council.”

Crony Capitalism as Economic Development

Ben Haber, the Socrates of Queens County, has penned a prescient letter to the Ledger calling on the City Council to vote the current Willets Point project down. As Haber points out, the bait and switch has yielded a huge mall that will feather the nest of the mayor’s rich friends while causing heartache to the residents of Corona, Jackson Heights and Flushing:

“The amendment that seeks to build a parking lot at Willets Point is a ploy to sneak through the back door a transfer of the Citi Field parking lots to allow construction on the vacated lots a 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall. This is without a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure and replacing parkland, since Citi Field is on land that is part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Affordable housing will not be built until 2015, if ever.” 

Now we think that Ben means 2025, because there will be no housing without the Van Wyck ramps that will be built on the 12th of Never. But Haber gets to the root of the sham when he ridicules the idea that the billionaire owners, and mayoral BFFs, of Related and Sterling Equities couldn’t afford to develop the rest of Willets Point with the affordable housing and the other goodies unless they got to build their mall:

“At the top of the list of deceptions that have accompanied the application is the claim for requiring a prioritized Citi Field shopping mall as a financial engine to generate enough funds with which to construct the original Willets Point plan, suggesting that without it the original plan cannot be accomplished.  

Ignoring its speculation, it is untrue and a ploy to have the mall, which is what the application is all about. Related Cos. are the developers of the $20 billion development underway over the Hudson Yards in Manhattan. The claim that these multibillion-dollar companies — which are being given the Willets Point land the city has acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars and more in the future for $1 and a subsidy of $99 million — do not have the financial wherewithal to build Willets Point without a huge shopping mall is an in insult unworthy of belief and a reason to reject the application.”

Haber goes on to question whether the city council represents the people-a rather droll inquiry that has an unfortunate answer:

“The original Willets Point plan approved by the Council in 2008 is one thing. A deceptive huge shopping mall is something different and unacceptable. It remains to be seen if the word from the Council is that its constituents are not just billionaire real estate moguls but the little people, the poor, the middle class and small businesses, which are the backbone of an urban society and reject the application.”

We know where the formerly Mighty Quinn stands, but what about the supposed progressives on the city council? And what about the Public Advocate? When it comes to real estate it seems that the pols represent the 1%-unless we see a radical departure from the Permanent Government script.

The Willets Point plan: a bad deal in every way

Queens Chronicle OP-ED:

The Willets Point plan: a bad deal in every way
by Benjamin M. Haber

Good and responsible government does not exist in the absence of transparency, and in particular when it involves land use matters which have been notorious in favoring real estate interests and those with political connections. Years ago Daniel Doctoroff, then Mayor Bloomberg’s economic czar, bragged before a group of real estate moguls that under the Bloomberg administration they received about 90 percent of all zoning requests they wanted.

When it comes to transparency the Bloomberg administration earns a failing grade. A case in point is Willets Point. For decades, and most of Mayor Bloomberg’s term in office, the city collected sewer rent from the owners of property in Willets Point, notwithstanding there were no sewers. It collected real estate and other taxes and did not spend any money on the area’s infrastructure.

A body and fender shop’s operations, which for the most part serve the needs of the poor and the middle class, cannot be as spotless as a Bloomingdale’s department store, which makes it all the more important government take care of the infrastructure.

As a coverup for his failure in doing so, Bloomberg declared the site a blight that must go, even though it would mean removing more than 200 small businesses, terminating employment for their 1,000 employees and causing havoc to their thousands of dependents. Cleanup of the so-called blight, which the city will pay for, for the benefit of a developer, could have been done for Willets Point businesses. But it will not be, since they are not real estate moguls with tentacles in the city treasury.

The cost to correct the area and repair the infrastructure, to alienate parkland, free of charge, and to provide subsidies, will be several hundreds of millions of dollars, all to be paid for by taxpayers for the benefit of a private developer. For Bloomberg to allow this taxpayer ripoff ignores his responsibility to be fair and above-board with the public. It’s unacceptable.

It was Bloomberg’s original plan to develop Willets Point into a huge shopping mall, with yet another convention center; luxury housing with a small portion of affordable housing for the middle class; a small park and a school. Building a school next door to LaGuardia Airport, the Mets’ stadium, the United States Tennis Association and a huge mall would be absurd, a feigned icing on the cake to make it appear the proposal was not a private commercial development, but a needed public undertaking.

Willets Point and its surrounding areas have automobile access only through the Van Wyck Expressway, Grand Central Parkway, Northern Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, private streets being out of the question. These arteries have been and are choked to capacity. Queens was ranked as having one of the most congested vehicular arteries in the country and there is no way — I repeat, no way — to increase their capacity to absorb the tens of thousands of additional vehicles the Bloomberg plan would bring.

Faced with a vehicular nightmare and unable to come up with a solution, Mayor Bloomberg has devised what can be described as the mother of all lack of transparencies. The original Willets Point plan has suddenly been split into two phases. His much-heralded original Willets Point plan is now relegated to phase two, which for all practical purposes will be on the back burner and probably not accomplished for decades.

The reason for the so-called split is not just the vehicular problem, but Bloomberg’s desire to help out his billionaire friend Fred Wilpon, the owner of the Mets, who have not being doing well financially. Phase one will allow Wilpon to move his parking lots — which are on parkland, as is Citi Field — to Willets Point and to construct a huge mall on the current Mets parking lots. Parking in Willets Point and the mall will not address the vehicular problem, but will destroy the small businesses on Northern Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue and 108th Street, the malls in Rego Park and on 20th Avenue in Whitestone, and the shops in downtown Flushing. Were I in business in any of those areas, I would hesitate to sign a long-term lease. Unless these merchants and the public make known to the mayor, their City Council members and community boards their opposition, the mayor’s plans will be a fait accompli.

Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said he wished to be remembered for what he did for the poor and not for the rich. Notwithstanding some laudable philanthropic acts Bloomberg has accomplished as a private individual, as mayor he has viewed his constituents as the wealthy and powerful and not the poor and middle class. I do not believe he will leave a legacy as noteworthy as that of President Roosevelt.

Benjamin M. Haber is a civic activist and retired attorney who lives in Flushing.

City is subsidizing billionaire's project

The following letter to the editor was printed December 2, 2012 in the Times Ledger:

The New York Times reported in its Nov. 12 issue that Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to increase school lunches to $2.50 from $1.50, slash $8.3 million from libraries and increase fees on parking meters.

It is to be noted that Bloomberg has no plans to reduce the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that will subsidize his ill-advised Willets Point plan, nor does he plan to reduce subsidies that will benefit New York Mets billionaire owner Fred Wilpon for a shopping mall adjacent to the Mets stadium.

While Bloomberg is to be applauded for his philanthropic contributions as a private citizen, his current plans demonstrate once again that as mayor he has no interest in the poor, the middle class and small businesses in this city.

It should make one recognize the value of term limits.

Benjamin Haber
Flushing

Traffic hearing must be rescheduled

Letter in this week's Times Ledger:

In addition to the loss of hundreds of small businesses and the jobs of thousands of employees and their dependents, the proposed Willets Point project also involves the general public, whose daily lives will be affected by the huge increase in the volume of vehicular traffic on the Grand Central Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway.

Suffice it to say, the Willets Point businesses and their employees and the general public are entitled to a full and fair discussion of the issues, something the Bloomberg administration and the city Economic Development Corp. have sought to avoid. They are now joined by state Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn), who announced the cancellation of a much-awaited and -needed meeting to consider the traffic concerns the proposed project will generate (“State cancels Willets meet,” TimesLedger Newspapers, April 12).

Dilan’s claim that the meeting was cancelled because of an “unavoidable scheduling conflict” without even describing the claimed conflict and rescheduling an early date is patent political nonsense. An investigation is called for to determine the real reason and at whose request the meeting was cancelled. The public is entitled to no less.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing

CB 7 has done much disservice to the neighborhood of Flushing

Letter to the editor of the Times Ledger:

The editorial page of a newspaper is where its publisher and editors express their opinions on a wide variety of subjects, as is their right. Letters to the editor are where a responsible company, like TimesLedger Newspapers, give readers an opportunity to express their views on articles, including editorials.

A case in point is the Flushing Times editorial “CB 7 Deserves A ‘Well Done’” that appeared in the July 1-7, 2010, edition. CB 7 and Chairman Eugene Kelty, glowingly described, are not the ones I know.

The ones I know thought it was fine to destroy more than 100 trees in Flushing Meadows Corona Park and build a grand prix race track in an urban park — an absurdity that was finally brought down by public outrage and the criminal exposure of a discredited and now-deceased Queens borough president, the prime backer for the track.

The ones I know thought it was fine to double the space in Flushing Meadows for the United States Tennis Association, notwithstanding when they were first given intrusion in our park they promised never to ask for more parkland, but once given more land moved their head offices out of Manhattan to Harrison, N.Y. — a cuckolding of taxpayers if their ever was one.

The ones I know over the years have shown no or little interest in protecting the integrity of the park as an important and non-renewable urban space.

The ones I know think it fine to destroy more than 200 small businesses and the lives of thousands of workers and their families in Willets Point for the benefit of fat cat real estate moguls.

I note in passing there are members of CB 7 who may have disagreed with Kelty, but of course majority rules. While I believe there is more to urban living than fat cat real estate developments, with much evidence in downtown Flushing, others may disagree.

In the end, it will be for the public to decide the merits.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing