EDC trying to have it both ways

Reblogged from Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

Crain's Insider-in response to our rebuttal of its original post on the long delayed Willets Point/Van Wyck ramp report-now comes forth, courtesy of the serial prevaricators at EDC, with the following explanation for the egregious failure of the agency to follow the Freedom of Information Law: "Willets Point opponents, whose repeated Freedom of Information Law requests for the city's assessment of traffic impacts have been denied and called premature, were shocked to read in the Insider that the assessment is under review by state and federal agencies. A city spokesman says it is just a draft and therefore not public yet."

Hold on for just one minute. The purpose of WPU filing a FOIL request for the revised AMR was precisely so it could review the document before it was publicly released-as it did with the original flawed, and possibly fraudulent, ramp report. It was as a result of that successful FOIL request that we were able to flag the phony data submissions from the EDC consultants that led to the report's rightful demise.

Having lost its appeal of the original AMR FOIL, EDC and NYSDOT simply have no legal right to withhold the revision-and they know it. So, we are left with the simple explanation that there are ample reasons-none that comport with good public policy or the public interest-for the stonewalling. Chief among them is the fear of premature exposure of the agency's continual malfeasance in regard to this matter. What EDC wants to do is to truncate the review process and bum rush another flawed AMR through the state and federal oversight authorities without giving critics-and the impacted communities-adequate time to evaluate the revised ramp report.

All of which dramatizes the need for NYS DOT to initiate an independent evaluation of the feasibility of building Willets Point ramps-as NRDC, the Sierra Club, and eight community groups have asked for. It is our view, bolstered by the work of ace traffic consultant Brian Ketcham, that there is simply no way for these two proposed ramps to accommodate the 80,000 daily car and truck trips that the Willets Point project will generate-not to mention the millions of more feet of development going on in and around the Willets Point area.

EDC's secrecy, delay, and conscious withholding of data in violation of the law, makes abundantly clear that our suspicions are correct-and that this review process needs to be forcefully wrested from EDC's cold dead hands.

EDC's year-long coverup continues

From the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

It is now approaching a year since Willets Point United and its traffic maven Brian Ketcham blew the whistle on a fraud that was about to be committed by EDC over the application to build ramps off of the Van Wyck Expressway to accommodate.

What has transpired since last February is nothing less than a vaudeville act. The DOT, after promising transparency and cooperation with whistle blower Ketcham, circled its wagons and has refused any direct information exchange with the expert who prevented the agency from looking like a compliant horse's ass. The actions of EDC, however, are even more egregious-it has refused to give up any information on the work product that has gone into the AMR's revision-and this is after DOT promised WPU that it would have a revised AMR by no later than October 1st.

Can any one concerned with accurate and open government defend the actions of these two agencies?

...WPU has got ungatz from either DOT or the NYC EDC-a stonewalling that further compels that this entire process should be opened up for an independent and public review process. But review aside, EDC is breaking the open government law-refusing to hand over documents that it is required to do under the Freedom of Information Act; a refusal that is instructive about the way this quasi-public agency goes about its business.

The Willets Point development is a massive use of tax payer funds that, while forcibly removing property owners, will have a huge impact on, not only the immediate Willets Point/Corona/Flushing neighborhoods, but the entire region. The proposed Van Wyck ramps are the linchpin of this development, and their ability to accommodate and mitigate thousands of daily car and truck trips is essential for the ability of this development to function smoothly-and NYC has admitted this in court papers.

Put simply, if the ramps either aren't built, or can't perform the tasks assigned to them, the entire Willets Point development becomes a collapsing house of cards. Therefore, the review of these ramps is a crucial variable in evaluating the feasibility of the entire Willets Point project.

If, however, the process is suborned by agency collusion-aided and abetted by an administration used to getting its way in spite of any perceived contradictory facts-a disaster awaits Queens County and its road and mass transit infrastructure. EDC is in dire need of an intervention-the people of Queens and the rest of NYC, including the embattled Willets Point property owners deserve no less.

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!

List of developers vying to build at Willets Point released

From the NY Observer:

World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, Queens developer Jeff Levine and Related Cos. chairman Stephen Ross are among those seeking to develop Willets Point, the polluted, 62-acre auto repair district next to Citi Field, according to city records.

The names are part of a list of 29 firms released by the Bloomberg administration in response to a freedom of information request made to the city earlier this year. The list includes five firms—Related, Muss Development, the Westfield Corporation, TDC Development and the Macerich Company—that bid in 2006 on the project as part of an earlier solicitation by the city to develop the site. Three of those earlier finalists did not bid this time around, ending their ability to win the development: Forest City Ratner, Vornado Realty Trust and General Growth Properties.

Here's the full list:

Albanese Organization

Artimus

Castlerock Partners

Ciampa Organization

CPC Resources, Inc

Douglaston Development

Edward J Minskoff Equities, Inc

Gotham Organization

Hamlin Ventures, LLC

King's Associates Inc

L & M Development Partners

Macerich

Melrose Associates

Muss Development

Related

Richman Group of New York, LLC

Rosenshein Associates/LCOR Incorporated

Settlement House Fund, Inc

Silverstein Properties, Inc

Smart Inc

SSJ Development, LLC

Sterling Equities

TDC Development

The Arker Companies

The Beechwood Organization

The Georgetown Company

Triangle Equites

Triple Five

Westfield Group

Denied FOIL request overturned by court

From the NY Observer:

The New York Court of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously ruled that the state's economic development agency, which administers eminent domain, must turn a set of records over that Mr. Sprayregen had requested through the Freedom of Information Law. The agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, had provided numerous documents but withheld a set related to a 2004 agreement between the agency and Columbia. Mr. Sprayregen appealed the agency's denial of his FOIL request, and was denied again. He then sued in state Supreme Court and won, though ESDC did not provide all the documents, preferring to appeal. He won again at the appellate level; ESDC appealed again; and now the agency has exhausted its appeals.

The ruling of the court Tuesday found that the agency was overly broad in denying Mr. Sprayregen's FOIL request, and then changed its reasoning for not providing the documents, with the court saying and its "initial determination was superficial, at best."

WPU has been FOILing documents, too, and has also been denied for no valid reason. A decision with respect to our requests will likely end up being decided by a court as well since EDC is being secretive and uncooperative with the public information they possess.