Category Archives: The Future of Major Private Development

Final Project Update

May 15, 2015The Future of Major Private Developmentaffordable housing, East Harlem, East River Plaza Residential Developement, gentrification, pop ed piece, postcard, private developments, Project UpdateAbhishek Samdaria

As we reach the end of our semester, we also approach the completion of our popular education piece for the East Harlem community regarding the future of private developments in that area and the intertwined futures of the current residents of El Barrio. After last Wednesday’s group presentations in front of our peers and the community contacts for all the groups we were able to obtain quality feedback for the postcard, which Giselle mentioned in our last project update.

Our initial draft of the postcard which was presented looked like the following

On one side of the postcard we were going to provide the mass public with information on the residential towers and a little bit of what was going on behind the scenes. The first half of the postcard was going to talk about the buildings themselves as well as the contractor who wanted to start development on these buildings and the second half of the same side was going to mention how the ami of the community was calculated so that people know the injustices they were going to be put through.

Amanda created three block towers representing the three towers, which are the issues at hand, and list out important information which was declared in the appeal to start construction of the three towers. These towers, which are supposed to be 32, 41, and 47 stories tall, are widely believed to become an eyesore by the current residents of the community. The contractor promised 25% of the apartments to be affordable housing units in order to get the application approved and for construction to start. However, this contractor, Forest City Ratner, is the same company which was responsible for the Barclay center, where they promised to provide 10,000 jobs and 2,250 affordable housing units in order to gain the bid. Since the conception of the Barclay Center, Forest City Ratner has only provided 300 housing units.

The next topic at hand which we were going to introduce on this postcard was the ami calculations. The median income of East Harlem is $31,079 whereas the median income for New York City as a whole is $50,711, according to 2010-2012 estimates from the U.S. Census. Affordable housing units are priced according to the AMI of a particular group of counties. The AMI of New York City includes counties such as Nassau-Suffolk, Westchester, and Rockland County who have median incomes of $109,000, $105,700, $98,800 respectively.

On the back of our postcard we will be including a letter, addressed to the Honorable Speaker Mark-Viverito, talking about our concerns with the changes this private development will bring to the community. The residents of the community will be able to sign mail in these postcards.

This is what our second draft looked like

After speaking with the community contact and getting feedback from them we were able to change some of the information we were spreading out to the public. They appreciated the idea of having a postcard because it was a cheap and efficient manner to get the people’s attention as well as the attention of council members.

Andrew has also been working along side someone from the El Barrio Unite organization and has been working on gathering up the footage for the documentary and compiling it together. We will be posting that up on youtube once we have worked out the minor details with our community contacts.

Project Update

May 11, 2015The Future of Major Private DevelopmentGisella Dionio

With our white paper complete, we have been able to employ our research more fully into the pop ed products, and have a more finalized sense of what these pop ed products will be. As Mike communicated in the last project update, the East River Plaza Residential Development would be cause for an influx of new, high-income residents who will decrease the affordability of the rest of the neighborhood and increase displacement of current residents. Thus, targeting the current low-income demographic most detrimentally affected by gentrification would be one of the main goals of our pop ed products. The other goal would be to raise awareness on the development’s flaws as clearly and as accurately as possible, since some of the target demographic might not have access to quality education. At the same time, the product would have to have a lasting impact on its audience, containing a universal emotional appeal likely to incite action. This action would have to be something readily available to the audience–an accessible yet effective solution to the issues presented.

Because of these considerations, our ideas for the pop ed products have shifted over time. Initially, we had been planning on gathering information to display on posters we’d put up in East Harlem, as a sort of exposé on gentrification to the general public. As this idea was taking place, Abhishek and Amanda met to compile maps and statistics on inclusionary zoning; other specifics such as the boundaries of where AMI was taken from were researched. However, when our group attended the Interference Archive field trip, we came across a postcard addressed to Mayor De Blasio, where volunteers could submit their contact information and urge him to pass and fund a proposal which provides the right to counsel in eviction proceedings.

This postcard proved to be a valuable inspiration to us. Our goals for the pop ed product would be achieved, as distributing postcards would reach our target audience better than posters, which many could walk past and ignore. We could maintain the information already collected for the poster and simply condense it into a convenient, portable form. In contrast with the postcard we found, our product would be more visually aesthetic and contain short stats and evidence arranged throughout the card (rather than a continuous letter) along with maps and a visual representation of the East River Plaza development. There would be a different graphic on the back as well. Through this product, we would be able to convince East Harlem’s residences quickly and effectively, as we had imagined. The images and directness of the text would convey the emotional appeal while the postcard aspect would provide a ready and accessible solution.

It was also at the Interference Archive that we attempted to find past evidence on Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which we realized would contribute greatly to the overall persuasion of the card’s message. With no info found, we resolved to conduct our own research on the Barclays Center. Meeting to discuss the revised pop ed product, Amanda, Abhishek, Andrew, Ashwini and I went over the changes, added Barclays stats to the card, and were updated on the documentary Andrew was producing. The footage was shared via Facebook messaging–still our primary means of communicating–and the entire group was able to view the interviews of Roberto Anazagasti and Anne Kadamani. We hope to use the video as a detailed explanation of the aspects of the East River Plaza development that will not be explored as fully in the postcard. The video will be unique in that a subjective or more personal account of the development would be told, complementing the objective stats of our card by presenting them through a human perspective.

Project Update

April 22, 2015The Future of Major Private DevelopmentMichael Tirado

At this point in the semester, we have come to a meaningful understanding of the issue our project is set to address, the historical context leading up to this problem of uneven development, and possible (although radical) changes that can be made to attempt to remedy the problem. We have learned that gentrification can have a very bad connotation and denotation in that although it may make neighborhoods shinier and “more livable,” it can mean rent increase, other inflation of prices in the area, or even displacement for current residents of low-income neighborhoods. We understand that the history of affordability has been tipped in the favor of those who have more money and, as such, away from those who have less, even in their own neighborhoods. And so, we understand that the best chance we have of making a difference in the face of those who control land use in East Harlem is arming the low-income residents with knowledge in order to ensure that they are capable of standing up for their own rights. We believe that public education is key in both raising awareness of issues and producing solutions, and that is something we will be taking into account strongly as we construct our popular education product.

Since our white paper is in the revisions stage and our ideas are starting to take shape, now it is time to start considering the various aspects of our product. As we discussed in class on Monday, crafting our popular education product to cater to a certain audience is important, and what is even more important is determining the characteristics of the certain audience we want to have in mind. Our target neighborhood is one with very low income riddled with social issues, so we do not want to make our product too difficult to understand for people who may not have had access to a quality education. At the same time, we want our product to draw in the audience with some kind of emotional appeal that keeps their attention and helps them to understand that their home is at risk of severe re-shaping. Of course, knowledge of the problem is important, but ideas for a solution are equally as important, so we want to keep possible resolutions in mind as well as we create our product so we are not simply informing residents of their impending doom. We can encourage residents to do something as simple as writing a letter to the community board, or we can inform them about the community land trusts that were discussed at the last El Barrio Unite meeting. We need to encourage publicization of land, as privatization is the enemy of low-income residents.

In short, our product needs to be understandable, concise, appealing, and informative. A lack of any one of these qualities could result in an ineffective advertisement that does not raise the right type of awareness that it needs to. Something like a poster that we can put up in East Harlem seems very accessible to most of the people living there. If we were to pursue the idea of a poster, we would need to make sure that there is something that draws the audience in, something that informs them of the gravity of the issue, and something that informs them of what they might be able to do to make even a small difference.

Project Update

April 19, 2015The Future of Major Private DevelopmentAndrew McAllister

On April 15 I traveled to El Barrio Unite’s headquarters on East 116^th Street. There, I conducted interviews with Anne Kadamani and Roberto Anazagasti. The following questions were used:

What is El Barrio Unite?
- A newly formed organization of East Harlem residents
- Goal: to preserve and increase affordable housing in East Harlem
- Goal: to educate the public about the housing situation in East Harlem and about affordable housing in general
- Goal: oppose the construction of luxury housing developments
What is the East River Plaza Residential Development?
- A new luxury housing development being proposed over the existing East River Plaza mall
- It will consist of three towers between thrity five and forty five stories on top of the existing mall
Why and how is El Barrio Unite opposing this development?
- The development will bring in new, high-income residents to the community. They will be unlikely to shop within or contribute to the community. At the same time, their presence will result in an increase in property taxes in the community, thereby displacing current residents.
- El Barrio Unite is attempting to educate the public through meetings, social media campaigns, and rallies. The next rally in opposition to East River Plaza is May 16^th at the site of the development.
What is it about East Harlem that you are trying to preserve?
- El Barrio Unite is seeking to preserve affordable housing in East Harlem.
- They are also seeking to preserve the character of the largely Puerto Rican neighborhood. If wealthy residents move in, it will likely lead to the closure of many locally owned and operated businesses, as these new residents are more likely to “shop at Whole Foods and Macy’s” than at local grocery and clothing stores.
What are some policy recommendations you would make?
- Make mayor de Blasio understand that his current 80/20 plan regarding luxury and affordable housing requirements is not desirable/working/enough
- if the 421-A tax exemption is renewed, it would have to be seriously amended to better serve communities
  - add permanency requirements (at the moment, affordable housing created with 421-A is not required to be permanent)
  - disallow double dipping
- currently, developments may be eligible to double the FAR (floor area ratio) of projects if they set aside space for something that provides a community service
  - however, this can be anything, like a private doctors office or private (even luxury) day care center
  - suggesting stipulation that this community service provider be not-for-profit, and be locally owned and operated if possible

Anne Kadamani also talked at length about the developers behind the project, Blumenfeld Development Group and Forest City Ratner. She noted Blumenfeld’s known relationship with Bernie Madoff, and his being required to pay settlements in the Madoff case. She also talked about FCR’s well known Barclays Center project in Atlantic Yards. She noted their promise to deliver affordable housing and permanent jobs, neither of which they have done.

Roberto Anazagasti talked about the immigrant character of the neighborhood, and why the current exodus of low-income residents is different than those in the past: those residents, he says, left willingly, while the neighborhood’s current population wants to stay and is being forced out.

After the filming session, Roberto also expressed interest in involving El Barrio Unite (who act as landlords for the building containing their office) in the local Community Land trust.

Project Update March 24, 2015

March 25, 2015The Future of Major Private DevelopmentEast Harlem, el barrio unite, gentrificationashwinijchawla

Last week’s post by Amanda covered most of the climatic events that occurred last week. As the writer of this week’s project update I can say that this has been a transitionary week for our group, as we have completed many of our project goals in the past and are looking forward to completing even more beginning next week. This week has been fairly anticlimactic, in the sense that most of our events has passed or are coming up. Abhishek had suggested an event that would be relevant to our group that we will be attending later this month. This exhibition titled “Uneven Growth NYC” at the Museum of Modern Art will be attended by several of our group members, but not all. As the past project updates have stated, trying to attend an event as a whole group has proved to be quite difficult.

However, the communication between our group is our key point of strength and thanks to many social media sharing platforms we have been able to connect with each other’s ideas and build upon them. The Facebook messenger platform continues to be our consistent method to relay information in the group and for the any large chunks of information we now have a google document that Abhishek has created. This relates back to the earliest days of our group’s interactions where we used a google document created by Amanda to create our first assignment-the project brief. We are hoping to see success in utilizing google docs again.

Lastly, we have another event for El Barrio Unite coming up this Saturday in East Harlem. From last week’s experience with the Community Board meeting that Gisella and I attended, the emotional aspect to this project is becoming more clear as we delve deeper into it. The community board meeting was heavily raucous at times due to the attendee’s passion and strong opinions towards the speakers at the meeting. One man in particular was cheered on by the crowd but was abruptly cut off by the community board panel for taking up too much time. He spoke of his humble beginnings, growing up in the poor conditions of East Harlem. He said that as he grew older he had the motivation to find a good job, yet no one would give him an opportunity to prove his worth. He spoke of an organization in East Harlem that finally gave him a shot in the field of construction. He worked his way up from starting out as a painter, electrician, and handyman that worked for less than minimum wage to now making $50 per hour. The crowd cheered for his success story but it was clear that the community board wanted to calm any sense of entitlement that stirred the crowd before things got too wild. The overall vibe from the meeting brought a deeper level of investigation into this topic, for now we are beginning to see the realities of the consequences that stem from the rapid gentrification of East Harlem first hand.

Update 3/18

March 18, 2015The Future of Major Private Developmentamandasarantos

I think last week, Jamine’s post covered most of our goals as a group very specifically. Our project design hasn’t changed, but this week we were able to use the update and proposal as a guide for how we’re currently working through our project.

A general meeting for community board 11 was held last night, and was attended by Gisella and Ashwini. Because it wasn’t specific to development in east Harlem, there wasn’t much for our group to take away to shape our design, but they noted an interesting dynamic during the meeting. They reported that the community members were given less time than city council members to speak, yet were shown much more support from other community members. El Barrio representatives do attend these meetings and made one of the brief announcements on the East River Plaza Developments. They distributed two flyers, a fact sheet and one advertising a community meeting specific to the East River Plaza Plan on March 28, which we plan on attending.

We were also able to delegate specific tasks to individual group members in order to submit the proposed deliverables. We’ll be divided between the popular education product, a case study of historical research, and a letter to Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito. We then need to come up with a more concise plan for distributing letters. Abhishek has already been working through his case study portion on Greenpoint of the analysis, and we will all use the thesis paper sent by N.E.R.V.E. as well as the class readings in order to construct a more holistic investigation. This information will be filtered down into our popular education products: a pamphlet, a flyer and a film. We’ve also found zoning permits requested by the developer of the East River Plaza.

Communication has been very successful between all group members, though we’ve found it difficult to all meet at once, which is our goal when we meet with our community contact again. We’d like to schedule a second meeting before spring break in order to discuss our PAR. All members of the group have been able to attend events, so far several community board meetings as well as meeting with our contacts.

I’ve found that eastharlempreservation.org has been an incredibly helpful resource; it’s updated nearly every day with articles particularly relevant to development within east harlem. The link to the site’s news articles is below. Their most recent article, from March 15, discusses a permit filed to build a 23 story residential development on 103^rd st.

http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/03/16/108-units-coming-to-east-harlem/

http://eastharlempreservation.org/private-development-real-estate/

They also have a section specific to the East River Plaza Development

http://eastharlempreservation.org/private-development-real-estate/east-river-plaza/

Calendar of El Barrio Unite Events:

http://www.elbarriounite.org/important-upcoming-community-events/

Project Update

March 11, 2015The Future of Major Private Developmentaffordable housing, City Council, displacement, East Harlem, East River Plaza Residential Developement, El Barrio, future of major private developement, gentrification, Jasmine boone, macaulay, MELISSA MARK-VIVERITO, N.E.R.V.E., Project UpdateJasmine Boone

Our group contact is El Barrio Unite, an organized group of concerned citizens of East Harlem. Our Macaulay group has now met with El Barrio Unite members on two occasions. The initial meeting served as an introduction between our group and Roger Hernandez along with two of his associates from NERVE/El Barrio Unite. This meeting took place Monday March 2^nd, 2015, Abhishek and Andrew attended this initial meeting as representatives of our group. During this meeting, the N.E.R.V.E. provided us with some literature on their current concern of the East River Plaza Development project. We also made a few suggestions on how we can help them, which included the suggestion that we help them with a brochure. The second event was the community board meeting held Monday March 9, 2015 at the Casa Boricua Del Barrio. The representatives of our group who attended this were Michael, Andrew, and myself (Jasmine). The purpose of this meeting was to update and inform the attendees, who amongst us were concerned residents of East Harlem, about the controversial East River Expansion Project.

To summarize the East River Expansion Project, three residential buildings are being proposed to be built on top of the already existing East River Plaza. The towers will be about 32-47 stories and include 1000-1200 residential units. Of those new residential units, about 20% are said to be affordable housing units. Issues including health, flood zoning, displacement, and decrease in sunlight are just a few of the concerning issues the group is asking the companies leading of this new development to be held accountable for. The company Tiago Holdings, LLC under the development groups Blumenfield Development Group and Forest City Rangers are the ones heading this project. Both development groups have a history of not fulfilling its promises of benefiting the neighborhood. The plan they have presented has inconsistencies on how many affordable housing unites they will be providing and there is no real statement on how this will benefit the people of the neighborhood. As of now, it would seem that the application is still being reviewed for completion. Due to a lack of transparency, it is clear that an aggressive approach to receive, both, information and all developments in of the stages of the project.

At the meeting, Michael made a very valid comment tat the building plans look extremely out of place amongst the surrounding neighborhood. A typical building in that area isn’t more than 7 stories. In this course, we have read enough literature to be well aware of the long-term detrimental effects of a plan such as this

The next steps for our group are to negotiate our next personal meeting with El Barrio. We are still in the beginning phases of this where we are trying to work out a day and time where a majority of the members are available to attend. Ideally, there will be several dates and times that we can come up with. Those dates and times will then be presented to Roger Hernandez to arrive at a mutually convenient scheduled date. We plan to schedule this sometime prior to Spring Break (April 3-12, 2015). Moreover, the group will try to attend some of the upcoming city planning commission meetings held on Wednesdays and Thursdays. At the coming city planning meetings, El Barrio plans to request an environment and a health impact assessment, which is supposed to be provided to the public anyway. In addition they will ask the companies to declare a community benefit agreement. By being present and consistent the needs of the community are heard. Also, the city planning commission will update the organization on what stage the plan is at. It is important that a open rejection of the plans with valid concerns that can be see and measured are expressed to elected officials. March 17^th at 6:00 pm is the next full community board meeting, where El Barrio is scheduled to meet. Our group plans to be present at this meeting as a show of support for N.E.R.V.E/ El Barrio Unite.

El Barrio asked if our group could help with a letter to Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Council Speaker of District 8, and other elected officials. What is wanted is a pre-made letter that can be distributed, for members of the community and other concerned citizens to sign, in-order to show elected officials that this is not what the community needs nor will it benefit those who live there. El Barrio has a goal of at least thirty signatures, but it is the shared belief, of our group and the attendees of the March 9^th meeting, that more than thirty letters can be mailed to City Council members. A suggestion of distributing the letters to our class and on City College campus caused others to suggest organizations like the teachers union, because there are 5 schools in the immediate area of the proposed construction site. Of course signatures have to be voluntary, but it is our belief that people would be willing to sign if they were aware. City Council members are the ones who have to sign off on the developers project, rezoning, and land use. Additionally, the letter requests that the plan not be approved until it is shown to more of a benefit to the community. Factors such as increase the amount of affordable housing to 40% and have it permanently contracted as affordable housing. Also, community preference should be given, so that local construction business can help with the building, which would result in jobs for community members, and residents obtain preference for selection once the units are ready to house.

As a group, we are communicating well. Our primary form of communication at this point is Facebook private messenger and has shown to be effective thus far. Everyone has been well informed of up coming events. The literature given to Abhishek and Andrew by N.E.R.V.E. has been emailed to all the members of the group who could not attend the initial meeting. We definitely have a solid starting ground and vision of where we are taking this project. N.E.R.V.E. is very excited to be working with us and using our group as an asset. The group is encouraged to follow and share El Barrio Unite on Twitter and Facebook as they have been and will continue to update the page with events and the stages of development. There is great promise for the impact our group can have and the power behind community organizing. I will be adding the link for their social media websites as well as their website for any of the other class mates who are interested in their work.

Facebook Page

Twitter Page

Official Website