Comments on: City Planning Can Set the Bar Higher on Fourth Avenue

By: eh?

eh? — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:37:30 +0000

Mike Lydon – “You don’t get mixed-use if you don’t require mixed-use”? Are you making Wendell Cox’s arguments for him?

By: JW

JW — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:39:19 +0000

portland requires in the city center all ground floor spaces to be retail or designed for a future conversion to retail. if they can do it in portland, they can do it in nyc.

By: Felix

Felix — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:03:25 +0000

Wait, please tell me I read this wrong. We’re not really allowing ground level parking in Park Slope in 2010, are we?

By: Ian Dutton

Ian Dutton — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:14:17 +0000

My question was a more-direct phrasing of the one referred to above, and I wish it was my version to put DCP on the spot. It was along the lines of, “Don’t minimum parking restrictions actually force developers to create the very same dead-street environment that everyone is here to lament? Don’t they functionally prohibit ground-floor retail?”

By: Mike Lydon

Mike Lydon — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:50:49 +0000

You don’t get mixed-use if you don’t require mixed-use. Thus, retail or not, any developer with an architect worth his license should be able to design attractive, habitable space along the ground floor.

However, if the city zoning code has no teeth, which apparently it doesn’t, then said developer clearly has little incentive to do so, especially if he is also dealing with parking requirements. Indeed, I am sure the developer rather rent out the ground floor than be forced to subsidize tenant parking space.

By: Mark Walker

Mark Walker — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:11:57 +0000

Mr. Bloomberg, tear down this wall.

By: Westchesterite

Westchesterite — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:18:12 +0000

Many Westchester residents were families priced out of Park Slope, and miss the walkability. These developers are idiots if they think people want a car-based lifestyle. Most of us suburbanites were sad to have to leave Park Slope.

By: JK

JK — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:56:51 +0000

I’m curious, why is it “Hard to compel retail” in NYC. Other cities compel retail all the time. Who is running the show here, developers or the Department of City Planning? The Crest on 4th is an anti-pedestrian, urban planning abomination.

Take a look at the picture of the Boulder, Colorado parking garage wrapped in attractive retail pictured in the 2/23 Streetsblog piece “Want to Foster Walking, Biking and Transit? You Need Good Parking Policy.” How is it a dinky western city gets this and NYC does not?

By: Eric McClure

Eric McClure — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:46:12 +0000

A temporarily vacant storefront is far preferable to a permanent air vent or blank wall. There will be plenty of demand for retail as these buildings fill up, and vibrant retail would actually be an amenity that could spur higher rents or sales prices. City Planning is attempting to lay blame on developers rather than where it clearly belongs — at their own feet, for butchering the rezoning, and the city’s misguided minimum-parking requirements.