Pratt Center’s Joan Byron Nails Willets Point Development Defects

Joan Byron of the Pratt Center for Community Development testified last year about the glaring defects of the city’s newly reconfigured re-development of Willets Point. Her comments should be heeded by a city council that was snookered by the EDC when it approved the deal in 2008.

As Byron pointed out, the city is looking at developing Flushing Meadows Park in a way that makes little planning sense and, by the way, will destroy the park for any recreational use by the nearby communities:

“We join with community representatives in calling for a full new Environmental Impact Study that will allow a comprehensive approach to this and other transformative projects now proposed within Flushing Meadows Corona Park. 

These projects represent both a threat and an opportunity for the communities of northern Queens, and for the City as a whole. Neither the threat nor the opportunity can be understood without a new, comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement that takes into account the City’s current understanding of economic and environmental reality – including the costs and challenges of remediating sites within the established Willets Point Special District, and the degree to which these conditions make it unrealistic to develop the project as proposed in the original EIS, and defers the construction of the promised housing units until at least 2028.”

Ah yes, the housing that was promised-a promise that all of a sudden has become uneconomical today when it apparently wasn’t in the midst of the economic catastrophe in 2008:

“The development of that housing, along with the schools, retail space, etc. that would create “a lively, mixed use district” – was presented in 2008 as a public benefit that justified the taking of private property, the disposition of public land, and enormous public investment in property acquisition, remediation, and infrastructure.

The City agencies who administer our laws, programs and regulations, the legislators who represent us, and above all, the people who live and work in the impacted communities, and the taxpayers of New York City, all deserve a full and up-to-date set of facts in which to ground our thinking about the development not only of the proposed “Willets West” addition to the district, but about the full set of projects being proposed within and around the borough’s flagship park.”

Or, in other words, the people of New York deserve the truth-something that the ethically challenged EDC is seemingly incapable of providing.  And Byron makes a strong case that the mall can’t be built without alienating the land as parkland:

“We do not accept the premise that a mall falls within the definition of “edification” or other activities permitted on this site without new alienation legislation. Even if that were the case, a decision about the future of a major site, in the heart of an area undergoing profound change, and facing serious shortages of open space, housing, schools, and community facilities, should not be made solely on the basis of administrative expediency. If this site is to be put into play, ALL potential uses, including housing, should be considered.”

Well, yes they should-but they won’t under this mayor and what passes for oversight under the present city council. That means that it is imperative for those council members to realize that they have an opportunity to act independently, and in the public interest, by sending Willets West back to a more intelligent drawing board.

Remember, the mayor called Willets Point the city’s first green neighborhood-and instead we have a mall that makes little public policy sense: “Less than a mile away another large mall, Sky View opened in 2010 and remains only partially leased up.”

The mall’s traffic generation would further mock the city’s efforts at sustainability-as Byron strongly demonstrates:

“A mall of this size generates thousands of car trips per day – tens of thousands on peak shopping weekends. And peak traffic to this mall would inevitably coincide with peak days for other destinations, including game days at CitiField and at the proposed soccer stadium, if it is built.

Though the Number 7 train is accessible, the 7 will continue to operate at unacceptable levels of crowding, even if new technologies allow for more frequent service. Mall shopping trips differ drastically from trips to traditional retail streets, and skew heavily toward driving. The proposed project contravenes the laudable goals of PlaNYC 2030, and the good work of the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, to reduce car trips and the concomitant greenhouse gas emissions.”

Can we imagine a lesser public interest than a mall and a parking lot? And a mall and a parking lot combined with a gift of $200 million and an additional $99 million in subsidies-partly and allegedly for remediation. Willets West is a catastrophe built on a scandal-and the city council should afford it the euthanasia it deserves.

WPU Statement re: News Concerning the EA for Van Wyck ramps

Contrary to information apparently being disseminated today by NYCEDC, and contrary to certain erroneous news reports, the reported progress with the Environmental Assessment does NOT constitute approval of the proposed Van Wyck ramps. It is approval of the Environmental Assessment document merely for the purpose of holding a public hearing pertaining to it, which is the next step for NYC EDC; but the public hearing has yet to occur and will include expert submissions from WPU, then a subsequent decision by NYS DOT on whether to approve the ramps, a decision by FHWA on whether to require a full EIS, and then a decision by FHWA on whether or not to approve the ramps.

WPU is taking all appropriate steps to challenge and prevent the approval of ramps, and will continue to do so.

Round one goes to the City

Justice Joan Madden's decision was handed down today with regard to Willets Point United's article 78 challenge of the City's Environmental Impact Statement. She has ruled in favor of the City of New York. Our official statement is after the judge's decision below.

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"This decision is a two-edged sword for the City. It dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the environmental impact statement adequately disclosed the project’s impacts. But in so doing, it stressed the terrible traffic effects forecast by the EIS; the need for federal approval for the Van Wyck ramps; and the fact that if the ramps are not approved, the project cannot go forward. It will be interesting to see how the City will now back away from its recent claims that the project wouldn’t be so bad for traffic after all. The City can’t paint one picture to the court and a completely different picture to the federal government." - Attorney Michael Gerrard of the law firm Arnold and Porter, representing Willets Point United.

Garbage in, garbage out

From the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

...there has been a great deal of prattling on about how the Willets Point development will somehow become the culmination of Mike Bloomberg's 2030 vision of sustainable development-and much of the prattling is unmoored from any sense of what kind of impact the project-as it is currently envisioned-will have on the immediate surrounding neighborhoods; as well as on Queens County as a whole.

Just a cursory look at what is planned for the site-and a concomitant look at the site itself-should instill a note of caution to anyone with sustainable development dreams (and that includes some misguided-and perhaps deluded with some incentives-environmental groups that rushed to the mayor;'s side to sing praises to the EDC-driven new Willets Point vision).

Now for a reality check. Willets Point, unlike, say, Battery Park City, isn't a nice short walk from not only the city's financial sector, but to as many mass transit options as any Transportation Alternatives aficionado could ever want. Willets Point is relatively isolated, and the major mass transit option-as we have been writing about in respect to the Flushing Commons project-is the already overcrowded 7 Line. The same goes for the myriad bus lines that move in and out of the Flushing transit hub.

Now, according to the Willets Point EIS-which will have to stand in for a definitive document until something a bit more accurate can be commissioned-the development will generate around 80,000 car and truck trips a day onto the already gridlocked intersections that plague the surrounding communities of Corona, East Elmhurst and Flushing. Now keep in mind boys and girls that this 80,000 trip estimate devolves from a methodology that projects almost half of all the Willets Point activity will be somehow effected through the use of the aforementioned over-capacitied train and buses.

The three card monte scammers at AKRF-through the active collusion of its subcontractor Eng Wang Taub-came to this conclusion by the use of a neat methodological sleight of hand: basing the car trip generation on the assertion that only around 70% of Queens residents own cars (and not the over 90% that NYMTC concludes). You get it? Garbage in, garbage out.

WPU's traffic expert to meet with DOT

From the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

Representatives of Willets Point United-joined by traffic expert Brian Ketcham-will be meeting with the regional staff of NYSDOT today to discuss just why the group believes that the agency shouldn't approve the city's (actually EDC's) application to build ramps off of the Van Wyck Expressway. This should be quite an interesting get together.

Initially, NYSDOT had cancelled the originally scheduled meeting when it found out that representatives of state elected officials planned to attend in order to learn more about why WPU felt that the ramps were not feasible. The implication for the cancellation was that the meeting was becoming, "too political."

This is a situation that genuinely puzzled us. In close to thirty years of lobbying city and state agencies, we have never seen such skittishness about who's coming to a meeting-and the need to micromanage who should or shouldn't be there. Subsequent to the original cancellation, NYSDOT has tried to further restrict attendance-claiming that we shouldn't be there because the meeting is purely, "technical." Yet EDC, the lead political agency for the development, will be represented.

So what's motivating this need to restrict? In our view, it appears that EDC is playing an overbearing role-and if what we suspect is true, than the above board nature of the approval process is thrown into doubt. Now we know that NYSDOT doesn't have the in-house capacity to evaluate the work of URS, EDC's traffic consultants. And in the absence of that capacity, the agency is normally inclined to (relatively) uncritically accept the proffered work.

WPU has thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into the normal review process by submitting-with today's power point presentation by forty year veteran Ketcham-a detailed rebuttal to the URS assertions. And the flawed nature of the submission will be revealed in an extremely harsh light. Put simply, the traffic ramp report (AMR) so thoroughly contradicts the original traffic study done for the ULURP EIS, that the good intentions of EDC must be called into question.

Derailing the Collusion Express

Courtesy of Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

In the run up to the city council land use vote on Willets Point one thing is crystal clear: no one bothered to even read the fictional narrative prepared by AKRF in lieu of an actual environmental review. If they had, a great deal of negotiated modification would have occurred-spurred by local council members concerned about just how to mitigate the 80,000 cars a day that the project will generate (and that's according to the low ball figures provided by the city's favorite consulting lap dog).

And in addition, there might have been more safeguards negotiated to insure that the final environmental review for the one actual mitigating factor-proposed ramps off of the Van Wyck-was done by an independent team of consultants, with a proviso that the entire review process be re-submitted to the council for approval. All of this might have happened if there was any genuine concern for environmental impacts at either the city council or the city planning commission.

The reality is, however, that the entire ULURP process has degenerated into a Kabuki theater performance-with the AKRF's and URS's of the world getting paid huge coin for an expensive pantomime act that is never really examined by any of the decision makers in the legislative play acting. In fact, as we told our consultant Ketcham-a true Diogenes in a world of liars for hire-the only time these traffic studies actually get read is when the Alliance hires him to review them.

So, while a reform of the ULURP fraud is way over due, we come back to the sleight-of-hand exercise on the Willets Point traffic stop. The original EIS-and its accompanying traffic study-was handled by the folks at AKRF, the same candid cameras who gave us the duel representation effort on the Columbia expansion scheme; representing the city for a blight study, and Columbia for the environmental review.

Now AKRF doesn't do the traffic work-and in the case of Willets Point the work was farmed out to an outfit called Eng-Wong Taub. Still, as we pointed out, E-WT's analysis, although alarming and severe, was still de minimis, underestimating just what the overall traffic volume would do to the contiguous communities. But what is truly alarming, is that the second subcontractor for the AMR (ramps) report-URS-has managed to submit traffic data that totally contradicts what is contained in the original traffic study done under ULURP for the original zoning application.

As Brian Ketcham's letter has told NYSDOT-the review agency for the ramps-the AMR report fails to account for the original documentation provided the city under CEQR: "However, I will show you that the draft AMR does not appear to fully account for the Willets Point Development Plan and other approved development in close proximity to the ramps that will generate approximately 100,000 trips per day in 2017 (including 80,000 from the Willets Point project) and will continue to do so in 2035."

Which means that AKRF-yes, once again-as the general contractor for both the FGEIS and the AMR report (or at least the consultant that was most familiar with both documents) has managed to keep quiet about what it should know intimately: that the two reports are contradictory, with the AMR document a clear attempt to both minimize and mislead the NYSDOT and the FHWA authority so that the ramps can be approved-even though they will apparently do little to mitigate the severe traffic impacts that the Willets Point development will foist on its neighboring communities.

All of which should provide ample fodder for a State Senate Transportation Committee hearing-and the fact that Senator Perkins, the official who has led the fight against agency/consultant collusion, also sits on the committee is fortuitous for those who want to put an end to fixed development games sponsored by quasi-independent state or city agencies. In the case of Willets Point, sunlight will be the best disinfectant.

Taking our fight to the courts

Willets Point United has been busy filing court documents and making appearances.

Our attorney, Mike Rikon, filed an Amicus Brief in the Goldstein v. Pataki case which is being heard October 15th in front of the NY State Court of Appeals. The Empire State Development Corporation tried to block the brief, but it was admitted by the court (see below).



Also on August 21st, WPU's attorney, Michael Gerrard, challenged the city's environmental impact statement in front of NYS Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden and we are awaiting her decision. Here is our brief in that case.