COMMISSION EYES LAND USE PROCESS

Borough President Helen Marshall (at mic) argues for more resources at the June 24 Charter Revision Commission hearing. (photo: Sam Goldman) The Charter Revision Commission set up shop at the Flushing branch of the Queens Library last Thursday, June 24 to hear various perspectives of the city’s approach to land use and how to improve it.

The borough perspective

The meeting began with a statement from Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, the only elected official to appear at the hearing.

Borough presidents and community boards “need to be given stronger voice,” she claimed.

Specifically—in themes that would be repeated throughout the night—she called for rules that would allow the borough president’s recommendation to be overturned only by a “supermajority” of the City Planning Commission, and for the borough presidents and community boards to be given more funding, dedicated technical help and access to experts.

“We have perfected democracy,” she said, “but we must never stop perfecting democracy.”

The city’s perspective

David Karnovsky, who serves as general counsel to the Department of City Planning (DCP), stated the city’s position that the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure—the mechanism by which stakeholders vet and review new construction projects, created by a 1975 Charter Revision Commission— is “strong and robust.”

“The key word in ULURP is ‘uniform,’” he explained, noting that the “layered, sequenced process that moves considerations and land use issues from the local to the borough to the citywide level,” giving all parties the ability to weigh in while not allowing the process to drag on or end up in “a kind of limbo.”

“It is slow,” he would note, “but it is also predictable.”

The clock—which in essence prevents the ULURP from taking more than 215 days, although Karnovsky noted that the process rarely takes that long—forces developers to anticipate issues and make steps to address them beforehand.

He then turned to the “advisory” role of borough presidents and community boards, which was codified in the 1975 revision to the City Charter and reviewed without change in 1988.

The DCP takes the advisory recommendations seriously, Karnovsky assured; “if after 90 days of review in the ULURP process ... no progress has been made in resolving the issues raised by the board and the borough president, the application arrives at the Planning Commission with a healthy degree of skepticism.”

It’s then the agency’s job to bring “a citywide planning perspective to the table.”

The activist’s perspective

“There is today a sharp divide between the ‘pre-ULURP’ and ULURP process,” said Prof. Tom Angotti of Hunter College.

Angotti, who had worked on land use issues with communities across the city, claimed that informal agreements are made behind closed doors between communities, lawmakers and developers that turn the actual ULURP into “a fairly formalistic process.”

“No applicant wants to go through a seven-month process,” he explained, “... and find that their applications is going to be turned down because they didn’t anticipate the opposition of certain groups.”

“This leads to frustration, cynicism, division and anger within communities because they perceive that what is presented is a fait accompli,” he told the commission

He also blasted the city’s environmental review process, claiming it is “too long [and] too complicated” and charging that “they don’t really inform decision-making.”

In particular, he called the “fair share” law, designed to ensure that boroughs and neighborhoods evenly spilt city and community facilities, “meaningless.”

Finally, he tackled the city’s planning strategy, claiming that the city’s boasts about rezoning was not enough.

“The citywide comprehensive planning is inadequate,” he claimed, accusing the city of focusing on zoning changes at the expense of true planning. “Zoning does not deal with the complex issues New Yorkers care about.”

Meanwhile, “197a plans”—community planning documents created by local civic groups and community boards, nicknamed after the portion of the City Charter that governs their use—have been rendered “meaningless,” he claimed.

Twelve such plans have been approved since 1989, but in several neighborhoods, the DCP would later rezone areas in direct contradiction to an approved 197a plan. Angotti called Williamsburg, Brooklyn “case number one,” noting that after a 197a plan was approved after 12 years, the city rezoned the area only two years later.

Like Marshall, Angotti pressed for more funding for community boards and allowing them to “hire—and fire” an urban planner. He also called for increasing the outreach process for board membership to create boards that are more representative of their neighborhoods, and for sunlight to be shone upon the “pre-ULURP” process.

“Good planning is essential for good policy and land use,” he concluded.

The lawyer’s perspective

“There are two principal goals of the process,” said Paul Selver, a partner at the law firm of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP: “it should facilitate New York City’s continued role as one of the leading cities in the world,” and “be designed to allow to allow all of the stakeholders in a land use decision an appropriate say in the process.”

The LPC and the City Council must consider the “economic impact” to the area before approving landmark status on a building or district, he stated, and any such landmark status should not regulate areas that are hidden from public view.

The global perspective

“I categorically believe that ULURP works,” Prof. Vishaan Chakrabarti of Columbia University stated, “because everyone comes out of the process somewhat unhappy.”

Having worked with Manhattan Community Board 4 on the Hudson Yards project, he called criticism of community boards’ “advisory” role overrated, as their input was “critical” to the project’s design and scope.

Chakrabarti’s criticisms of the process dealt mostly with time issues, as he claimed that “we are steadily becoming anti-growth in comparison to London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sao Paulo or Mumbai.”

As an example, he pointed to Moynihan Station, slated to be the replacement for Penn Station inside the current Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan.

According to Chakrabarti, the city has spent about $12 million on four separate environmental impact statements, “yet we have no train station, we have process.”

While Selver, who heads the firm’s land use practice, agreed that the ULURP’s “basic structure is sound,” he offered suggestions that he called “fine-tuning the motor rather than reinventing the wheel.”

Selver called for a prohibition on conditions placed on ULURP applications that have little to do with the project itself, such as “community benefit agreements” that require such things as job hiring or construction preferences.

Community-created 197a plans, he said, should sunset in 10 years.

“If they are to become meaningful, they need to be both current and accurate,” he explained.

He also urged that 25 percent of community board members be owners or operators of area businesses.

“The business community may have a vision of a neighborhood that is different than the vision of its residents,” he told the crowd.

Selver also took the time to address the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) process, which he accused of becoming “a de facto land use process” as communities allegedly attempt to stop development by seeking landmark status for their district.

The length means that projects tend to run past “the economic boom and bust cycles,” leading to projects that are half-finished, heavily modified or scrapped entirely.

He urged that city agencies work to make the process faster and more predictable, and asked that community benefit agreements be outlawed.

He also claimed that state government has too much sway over the land use process, a power he called “largely vestigial and largely inappropriate.

The policy wonk’s perspective

“I do not see what I would call a major problem” with the city’s land use procedures, stated Christopher Collins, vice chairman of the city Board of Standards an Appeals and a former staff member in the City Council’s Land Use Committee, “and I would urge great caution in changing it.”

He also defended the “advisory” recommendation process by claiming that during his time in the City Council, “the recommendations of community boards were always considered.”

“To simply say that community boards are advisory is not the same as saying they are without influence,” he added.

His recommendation was that the City Council be given greater leeway when making scope determinations (as well as a longer period of review time) under section 197d-d of the City Charter; the section allows the Council to send a modification to a proposal back to the DCP to determine whether the modifications should be subject to environmental review.

The commission’s perspective

The Charter Commission’s questions centered on, as Commissioner Hope Cohen put it, “integrating planning and zoning more holistically” possibly by integrating the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability with the DCP.

Angotti, in response, praised Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 as “the first time there’s been a long-term sustainability goal for the city” but expressed dismay that it was never entered as a formal plan and thus not put up for debate.

“It remained at the top; it never got to the bottom,” he lamented.

As for community planning documents, Karnovsky argued that the 197a plans “are not dead letters” but Angotti criticized the DCP and the city, claiming that they look at zoning before planning, while many cities such as Chicago do it the other way around.

The result, he claimed was overcrowded schools and subways.

He also charged that 197a plans are not implemented in low-income, minority areas.

Karnovsky, by way of a response, read language from the 1975 Charter Revision Commission stating that “a citywide master plan is an anachronism.”

Commissioner Stephen Fiala, a former City Council Member, asked the members of the panel to weigh in on Borough President Marshall’s “supermajority” proposal, claiming that the 1989 Charter Revision Commission “eviscerated the role of borough presidents,” due in part to legal considerations.

“Isn’t it a disservice to the city ... that the boroughwide perspective isn’t given the weight that the mayoralty and the districtwide perspective [have]?” he asked. “It’s clearly not.”

Selver noted that giving borough presidents a stronger vote would give them “more power than they’re entitled to,” while simultaneously noting that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has used “his bully pulpit” to affect results without the need for additional power.

“One should not underestimate the power of a borough president,” said Karnovsky.

Collins also added that borough delegations in the City Council—who often vote as a bloc—provide a “borough voice” in the city legislature.

“I believe that the common impression out there is that the mayor controls the votes on the City Planning Commission,” argued Angotti. “In theory, they may be independent, but that’s the practice.”

Commissioner Betty Chen wondered if the Commission should get involved in policing community benefit agreements. The panel was in agreement that such agreements were dangerous and should be discouraged, although the reasons varied widely.

Collins worried that such agreements must be “legally defensible,” while Karnovsky, Angotti and Chakrabarti each stated that the ULURP process needed to be amended to incorporate the issues raised by community benefit agreements.

Daniel Goldstein, the chairman of the Charter Revision Commission, worried about the long time projects seem to take, asked if there were any lessons the city can learn from the rest of the world.

“It’s almost as if we are living in a village that is hermetically sealed from the rest of the world,” he told the crowd.

“Democracy is very messy,” Selver replied, noting that with the threat of litigation, one man can hold up an entire project.

Chakrabarti noted that other countries such as China spend substantially more on infrastructure than municipalities in the United States.

The public’s perspective

Many speakers called upon the Charter Revision Commission to strengthen the fair share provisions of city law.

“Since the ’89 [Charter] revision, the City Council has enacted rules making the fair share process meaningless,” Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Manhattan Community Board 3 (Lower East Side/Chinatown), stated. “My community is not one that bears an unfair share, but we strongly believe in the fair share provision.”

Stetzer also noted that her body is in the process of creating a 197a plan for Chinatown, and urged the Commission to strengthen the laws concerning them.

“Fair share needs repair,” urged Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development, charging that “a few, largely low-income neighborhoods continue to host most facilities, suffering the harmful health consequences” that come with them.

Nizjoni Granville, the chairperson of Brooklyn Community Board 8 (Crown Heights/Prospect Heights), called on the Commission to allow Community Boards to vet “any and all uses of real property.”

“Too often developers seek loopholes to avoid the input of the community they are attempting to infiltrate,” she claimed, often by making deals with state government and thus avoiding the city’s ULURP process.

Henry Euler of the Auburndale Improvement Association argued that the BSA and LPC should be decentralized, with offices in each borough.

“I find that too much of city government is Manhattan-centralized,” he said. “We have four other boroughs besides Manhattan and they should be given their due as well.”

David Reck, who chairs the Land Use Committee at Manhattan Community Board 2 (Greenwich Village/ SoHo) urged the Commission to give community boards more help and education, claiming they were “overwhelmed” with complex issues.

As an example, Reck noted that his committee was halfway through reviewing a proposal by St. Vincent’s Hospital that would allow it to demolish a landmarked building and build a new one—a very rare “hardship” application, which he claimed was only the second such application in New York City history—when “everything went to hell on us” and the hospital had to close.