Living Wage and Dishonesty at Willets Point: A Challenge to de Blasio

We have underscored the hypocritical dishonesty of EDC about the question of a living wage at the Willets Point development before, but now that a vote is imminent it is appropriate to return to this field of schemes that the city is trying to foist on Queens. Here’s what we pointed out almost two years ago:

“In the battle over whether the city should adopt a living wage for retail workers when a development project is heavily subsidized the issue of Willets Point has wormed its way into the discussion. 

City Hall News lays out the reasons:

"In June 2008, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Stuart Appelbaum, stood on the steps of City Hall to praise the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Along with several other powerful union bosses, Appelbaum touted the EDC plan to jumpstart a long-stalled, $3 billion project at Willets Point in Queens, because he said it would lead to the creation of so-called “living wage” retail jobs for his workers – paying a minimum of $10 an hour.

“It won’t just mean thousands of jobs,” Appelbaum said. “It will mean thousands of construction and permanent jobs that pay prevailing wages and living wages.”

Juan Gonzales in the NY Daily News also weighs in on the correlation:

"And in 2008, when the mayor wanted the City Council to approve a proposed $3 billion Willets Point development project, his deputy mayor then, Robert Lieber, made such a deal with several labor unions.Under that deal, the city would require that all construction, maintenance and security jobs at Willets Point pay “prevailing” wages — far higher than $10 an hour. 

As for retail jobs, Lieber promised to “view favorably” Willets Point proposals that “maximize” the number of “living wage jobs.” He even specified $10 an hour for a living wage. Because of those promises, the unions backed the plan and the City Council approved WilletsPoint."

Only one problem: EDC has-like it has done with so many other things -- reneged on the deal. In doing so EDC and the rest of the gang down at city hall demonstrate that they will say almost anything just to advance their crooked scheme to abscond with the Willets Point property. The key prevaricator in all of this is former Deputy Mayor Lieber -- a stone chump if there ever was one.

As City Hall reports:

"Appelbaum’s contentions that his members could expect living wage jobs at Willets Point were based upon by a letter penned in April 2008 by Robert Lieber, then the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, to the then-head of the city’s umbrella labor organization, Gary LaBarbera.

“NYCEDC will view favorably development plans that maximize the number of jobs that meet the City’s living wage and health benefits standards,” Lieber wrote. “The proposal must explain how the proposed tenanting plan maximizes the number of jobs that meet these criteria.”

That was then, and this is now-just as WPU has already reported: "

Yet this May – when the EDC put out a 125-page request for Willets Point proposals to developers – there was not a single mention of living wage jobs. It did state that developers had to hire construction contractors who would pay prevailing wage and that some building workers would get prevailing wage salaries—but retail workers were left out completely. Earlier this week, far from offering tacit support for a living wage, the EDC released a list of 36 projects around the city, including Willets Point, that it said could be jeopardized by the living wage bill."

In response EDC has started to spin like a top: 

"EDC spokesman David Lombino declined to directly address why living wage language from the 2008 letter never made it into the requests for proposal. “When seeking proposals for development, the city always considers the creation of well-paying jobs in addition to other factors like the feasibility of the project, proposed uses, job density, and cost to taxpayers,” Lombino said."

And so it goes-just like with the purported revenues at Hudson Yards. The city never lives up to its promises, but now we have a new team coming into office and Bill de Blasio has made living wage and affordable housing his signature issues for dealing with income inequality. The WSJ reports today:

“A proposal by Bill de Blasio to guarantee higher wages at city-subsidized projects could set up a battle with business and real-estate interests if he is elected. Real-estate and business leaders and labor experts alike said they were surprised to learn that Mr. de Blasio, the Democratic nominee and front-runner, would demand a so-called living wage of $11.75 an hour in cash and benefits to all workers on most city-subsidized projects—including, most controversially, to retail workers.” (emphasis added) 

Yes, the same workers that Stuart Appelbaum is supposed to represent have been thrown under the speeding bus. That brings us to de Blasio-and his promises on this issue:

“A campaign spokesman said the plan is part of an economic-development vision "that is less about trickle-down, subsidizing a fast-food restaurant, providing subsidies to low-road, low-wage employers."

"We're not saying that's all the Bloomberg administration did, but to the extent that the mega-development projects had a high focus on retail, often low-wage retail, we'll look to invest development dollars and target development dollars into creating good jobs," said the spokesman, Jonathan Rosen, calling it a "very high priority."

Okay, then. This thrusts the Willets Point deal right into center stage, because as we have seen, the promises have not been kept-and the trickle down here is more a trickle up, up to the coffers of the Mets and Related. But we shouldn’t be surprised at the comments from Bloomberg lackey Seth Pinsky:

“The Bloomberg model has proven to be a successful one. If someone is campaigning on the concept of trying something different, I think that person has a high bar they need to achieve in terms of explaining how that something different will work better," Mr. Pinsky said.

Mr. de Blasio's plan would address a critique of the Bloomberg administration: that too many of the jobs created have been low-paid.”

Success, we guess, is really in the eyes of the beholder-and as far as little Seth is concerned his world view, and current paycheck, comes right from Big Real Estate. Yet Pinsky is experiencing some cognitive dissonance-even while lacking any sense of irony:

"Mr. Pinsky said the next mayor will need to tackle inequality—a growing issue nationwide. Of Mr. de Blasio he said: "He's hit upon an issue that is absolutely critical to the future of the city. The income gap could be an existential issue to the future of the city."

The Bloomberg model has aggrandized the Relateds and Vornados of the world at the expense of neighborhoods and small business. In the process, the average New Yorker has been short changed and all of this has been promoted through the generous use of tax subsidies.

Willets Point could be de Blasio’s Rubicon-a river if crossed that will mean his rhetoric is not matched by his real commitment to equality and fairness. How do you come back from this unethical corporate welfare scheme? We’re all waiting to see what Bill will do.

State DOT unhappy with EDC's made-up traffic stats

From the NY Times:

Even as the Bloomberg administration promotes the $3 billion development of Willets Point in Queens as one of its signature projects, state officials whose approval is needed have privately raised concerns over highway ramps crucial to the proposal and have questioned whether the development will ever get off the ground.

State officials have repeatedly expressed frustration with the city’s inability to provide reliable information and the pressure it was placing on them to expedite their analysis, according to a review of hundreds of e-mails involving the Willets Point project that were provided to The New York Times by an opponent of the project.

Michael Bergmann, a structural engineer for the State Department of Transportation who was part of the team reviewing the city’s application, wrote to the department’s regional director and other colleagues on Dec. 28: “Unless the preparers of this report start accepting the idea that it is seriously flawed, we are going nowhere.”

About a month later, after pointing out a mistake in a document that put the development’s completion date as 2107 instead of 2017, Peter King, a project manager for the state, wrote to a colleague, “Perhaps that reference to 2107 may have been closer to the truth than anyone realizes.”

By that point, the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which was overseeing the project, was pushing state officials to finish their work so that the ramps, which would connect Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway, could move on to the final stage of approval by the Federal Highway Administration.

Several months later, state officials did not seem very optimistic about the project’s future.

“If I were a betting man, I’d start dropping the odds regarding success for E.D.C. on this project,” Mr. King said in an e-mail to a state transportation analyst on May 11. “Resistance seems to be building.”

He was reacting in part to a group of business and property owners in Willets Point who had organized an effort to try to derail the project. As part of that, the opponents had filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the State Transportation Department seeking copies of all communications on the plan, hoping to pry open a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic process the public often knows very little about.

They also were hoping the e-mails would provide fodder for their campaign. The messages — about 200 from May 2007 to May 2010, among State Transportation Department staff members, federal highway officials, city officials and private consultants — show the state’s concern about the safety, design and traffic impact of the ramps.

What seems unusual is the annoyance state regulators expressed with the work of the consultants hired by the city to work on the ramps’ design. The consultants submitted numerous written responses and clarifications to questions and sat with the regulators in several meetings, but still failed to satisfy them, the messages show.

This NY Times article scratches the surface, but does not describe how the involved agencies are rigging the process to ensure approval of ramps. The article also lets EDC spokesperson David Lombino get away with remarking that EDC routinely collaborates to optimize projects, which is contrary to information found in the responses to our FOIL requests.

But don't worry...more is coming to set the record straight!

It all comes down to the ramps...

From the Queens Courier:

At issue is whether the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and State Department of Transportation (DOT) will approve two new highway ramps on the Van Wyck Expressway in order to help alleviate some of the additional traffic that is expected in the area. So, it’s not surprising that advocates from each side have very different views on the issue.

“We think that the highways cannot physically handle the massive amount of traffic that the Willets Point project would dump on it,” said Michael Gerrard, a lawyer representing WPU. “Merely adding ramps doesn’t increase the mainline capacity of the Van Wyck that will remain a chokepoint.”

Dave Lombino, a spokesperson for the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which is the lead agency working on the Willets Point project, said that the approval for the ramps is all part of the redevelopment process and that lobbyists for the WPU are trying to create a false impression of uncertainty around a critical project that will generate thousands of jobs and economic development for the city.

“But we’re hopeful there will not be any significant delay in the approvals, and we’re confident we will remain on target to complete the project on the timetable we’ve set forth,” Lombino said.

In February, the city submitted its preliminary draft environmental assessment to representatives from the two agencies, and Brian Ketcham, a traffic engineer hired by the WPU, said the report was fraught with errors. He believes that EDC is under-estimating the additional traffic that will result from the development of Willets Point and the nearby Flushing Commons development at downtown Municipal Lot 1.

Ketcham said that the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for both projects conceded that in 2017 there would be gridlock traffic conditions on the highway, but the initial AMR projections for 2035 showed significantly less traffic.

“I cannot imagine what goes through the minds of EDC when they have two projects that are reporting gridlock conditions, and then they turn around and they say there will be free-flowing traffic,” Ketcham said.

Jake Bono, a third generation owner of Bono Sawdust that has called Willets Point home for nearly 80 years, said that the city’s initial presentation to the FHWA and DOT was not surprising because they have been employing the same tactics from the beginning.

“They are committed to doing whatever it takes to get the project done. If it’s illegal, if it’s immoral, it doesn’t matter,” Bono said. “At the end of the day they can never produce a report that will work.”

Reading between the lines

From the NYC EDC:

"New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) today released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to identify developers for the first stage of the Willets Point District in northeastern Queens. The entire 62-acre District is proposed to become one of the City’s first “Green” communities, with housing, retail, community space and other uses. NYCEDC will subsequently issue one or more Targeted Requests for Proposals (RFP) to selected firms responding to this RFQ. Additionally, the City continues to be successful in its commitment to acquire privately-owned property in Willets Point by negotiated acquisition, recently acquiring three additional parcels from private owners in Willets Point totaling 65,480 square feet."

They are just now putting out an RFQ. The developer was supposed to have been chosen months ago, according to EDC's schedule. They haven't even had the first round tryouts.



Then it continues: "The City is contemplating moving forward with a staged development strategy for Willets Point that will first focus on the southwest portion of the District that includes approximately 18 acres of development area and streets and about four acres of an interim buffer zone."

Notice the word "contemplating". The previous phrase was "committed to".

From Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

Curbed is reporting on the latest EDC efforts to appear as if it has a great deal of momentum going in its plan to redevelop Willets Point-and remove the legitimate property owners: "Now, with the one-year anniversary of the rezoning win fast approaching, there is Willets Point news to report. The city's Economic Development Corporation has announced a new set of acquisition deals with landowners in the, er, colorful area, bringing the total amount of iTri land acquired to about 70 percent. And now the bigger headline: The EDC has issued a Request for Qualifications to interested developers. Could this crazy plan actually be happening? You gotta believe!"

What's left out of EDC's Lombino breathlessness, is that the city agency doesn't have agreements with over half of the current property owners-and that its methodology has apparently been changed, indicating an almost complete absence of truthfulness. As its press release tells us: "The City is contemplating moving forward with a staged development strategy for Willets Point that will first focus on the southwest portion of the District that includes approximately 18 acres of development area and streets and about four acres of an interim buffer zone."

This is a complete about face from its original assertion that, because of the soil contamination, the entire 60 or so acre parcel needed to be developed all at once. So, as Meatloaf used to sing: "What'll it be boy?" To us, it looks as if the city is continuing to posture-and we're in for a long an expensive process that the city lacks funds to see to a conclusion. Just wait until the budget starts to crater and the re-elected Bloomberg tells New Yorkers that he's going to spend $700 million to evict hundreds of tax paying businesses and thousands of workers-mostly immigrants (another example of how the mayor's campaign rhetoric directed at immigrants rings hollow.)

As fantasy prone as the EDC statement is, it lacks the imagination of the Queens BP who commented as follows: "Each step forward gives us a clearer vision of a plan that will redevelop Willets Point in way that will capitalize on the resources surrounding it, including recreational uses and a network of highways, while strengthening the entire region. The redevelopment of Willets Point will also provide construction and permanent jobs that will broaden our City’s tax base and create a much improved, greener environment for a new generation of residents and businesses.”

Our funny bone got tickled with the "network of highways" remark-an indication that Helen has overlooked the fact that there is no rational plan in place to get people in and out from upwards of 1,000,000 square feet of development. And we're still waiting for the city to put a price on all of this malarkey. The city should be informed at the costs-after all, the pie in the sky benefits are being trumpeted, so why not put a price tag on all of this so we can do our own cost-benefit analysis?