Streetsblog New York City

If you’ve ever wished you could dodge more cars and inhale more exhaust on your way to the park, Downtown Brooklyn’s next green space is for you. It will be built on top of a garage with nearly 700 underground parking spots.

Last Thursday, the city’s Economic Development Corporation released a request for proposals to build Willoughby Square Park, a new public space set to open on Willoughby between Duffield and Gold. Instead of using city funds to build the park, EDC is building 694 parking spaces underground and getting the garage’s developer to pay for the park construction.

City officials have repeatedly referred to the new public space as Brooklyn’s Bryant Park. Like Bryant Park, it will be privately run and surrounded by towers. But here’s one major difference: Bryant Park sits on top of the stacks of the New York Public Library, not an enormous garage. Two decades ago, the city was thinking creatively about how to combine an ambitious park restoration with the storage of 3.2 million books and 500,000 reels of microfilm. These days, the city seems intent on combining its development and public space plans with the storage of congestion-causing, streetlife-suffocating private vehicles, even in incredibly transit-rich downtown Brooklyn.

The merger of park and parking garage is no surprise in an EDC-sponsored project. The agency has recently been in the headlines for building so much parking at Yankee Stadium that the developer may default on its bonds, and EDC president Seth Pinsky once told Streetsblog that providing too little parking at a project would be “the worst thing we could do.” You can also point the finger at the Department of City Planning, which put forward the idea for a park over a garage in its 2004 rezoning.

Fordham Plaza, one of the city's busiest transit and retail hubs, but also one of its most dangerous, is slated for a major redesign [PDF] by NYCDOT and the Economic Development Corporation. Highlights of the badly-needed overhaul include a massive increase in public space, a slew of safety improvements for pedestrians, and a block-long bus- and bike-only street.

Currently, Fordham Plaza is one of the most important public spaces in New York City. It has rich transit access, with the third-busiest Metro-North station in the system and eight bus lines, including the city's first Select Bus Service route. According to DOT counts, the retail corridor along Fordham Road sees as much foot traffic as Herald Square or Penn Station -- more than 80,000 pedestrians over the course of 12 hours.

Despite those assets, however, Fordham Plaza doesn't work the way it should. Its northwest corner, the intersection between Fordham Road and Webster Avenue, is the third most dangerous intersection in the city. According to CrashStat, between 1995 and 2005, drivers injured 116 pedestrians and cyclists and killed one pedestrian. Whether on their way to shop, to work, or to class, pedestrians are hemmed in by excessive asphalt. 

This plan should go a long way toward making Fordham Plaza the safe and vibrant place it ought to be. Many streets next to the plaza would get serious traffic-calming measures, with wider sidewalks helping pedestrians to cross streets. All told, the plan adds a full 15,750 square feet of pedestrian space to the area. 

At the heart of the plaza, Park Avenue would no longer extend north of 189th Street, opening up room for a large, contiguous public space. Third Avenue would become a one-block busway between 189th Street and Fordham Road, with sharrows to connect the bike network south of the plaza to the Fordham University campus. A slip lane at the hazardous Fordham and Webster intersection would be converted to sidewalk space.

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The subsidy for the new Yankee Stadium's 9,000 parking spaces keeps turning into a worse deal for New York City taxpayers. Juan Gonzalez reports in the Daily News that the garage operator is deep in the red, even after last year's extended championship season:

As of this month, Bronx Parking Development LLC owes the city $8.7 million in back rent and interest. That tab will soon grow to more than $10 million because city officials have allowed the firm to defer the rest of this year's rent as well.

Meanwhile, Bronx Parking, which has no connection to the Yankees, has yet to pay a nickel in property taxes.

One thing I'd add to Gonzalez's excellent piece is that this whole outcome was predictable, given the sordid politics behind the Yankee Stadium deal. Back in 2007, the geniuses on the board of the NYC Industrial Development Agency approved the subsidized parking deal before conducting an economic feasibility study. As Gonzalez notes, profitable Yankee Stadium garages now appear to be a delusion of the wishful thinkers at the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

The larger point is that the current situation proves the folly of the initial parking subsidies. Perversely, if the city is ever going to see revenue materialize from these monstrous garages, it's in their interest to see more cars drive to Yankee Stadium and flood the streets of the South Bronx. That pretty much sums up why a city that's purportedly committed to a sustainability plan should never subsidize parking.

On Sunday, a group of city officials and East Side electeds made their case for a deal to close the gap in the East River Greenway, addressing a full auditorium at the Schottenstein Cultural Center on East 34th Street. The deal has several moving parts, but the major takeaway was that the Bloomberg administration and a large group of legislators want to make the greenway happen.

Currently there is no greenway between 60th and 37th Streets -- a huge gap around the United Nations campus that forces cyclists on the East Side into some of the most harrowing traffic in the city. The linchpin of the deal unveiled Sunday involves trading city land for U.N. financial support to build the greenway connector.

The city would sell the western part of Robert Moses Playground, a rectangle of asphalt at the corner of 41st and First Avenue. An area that attracts occasional recreational use would be annexed. Space used for a dog run, handball and basketball courts would not be touched. In turn, the U.N. would pay the city $150 million, mainly for the right to construct a new building the same height as the current U.N. tower. The funding would be used to complete the East River waterfront esplanade and plug the greenway gap.

A succession of local electeds spoke in favor of the deal, including State Senator Liz Krueger, Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh, City Council Member Daniel Garodnick, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who told the crowd, “I want to ride my bike there.”

The details of the plan were fleshed out by Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and Madelyn Wils of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

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Construction is set to begin on the first stages of the South Bronx Greenway this summer, marking the first tangible results of a community-based, bottom-up campaign for more livable streets. The project will bring safer walking and biking and much-needed green space to neighborhoods where people-oriented streets are in short supply.

The redesigns of Lafayette Avenue and Hunts Point Avenue, as well as new waterfront park space at Hunts Point Landing, will all begin construction this summer, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Those streets will receive landscaped medians, expanded sidewalks, and new bike lanes. Work on Food Center Drive, which will include the first physically protected bike lane in the Bronx, is scheduled to begin this fall.

Implementation is close enough that people are getting excited about each construction truck that comes to the area, even though so far the crews are just doing regular road maintenance, said Miquela Craytor, the executive director of Sustainable South Bronx and a longstanding advocate for the greenway. 

Construction of the Randall's Island connector, which will eventually tie the South Bronx Greenway into the Manhattan bike network, is scheduled to begin in fall 2011, according to EDC. Adding a biking and walking path from the South Bronx to Randall's Island will give residents better access to the island's recreational facilities and provide a safe route to the new bike lanes planned for First and Second Avenue in Manhattan. When the connector is finished, said Craytor, the greenway will be between a quarter and a third complete.

What's about to be built differs somewhat from the original plans for the greenway, first put forward in 2006. In particular, plans to place pedestrian and bike paths along a median on Lafayette Avenue have been revised, with space for biking and walking shifted to the side of the street at the request of the Fire Department and the Department of Environmental Protection.

"We ended up putting quite a bit of that streetscaping to the sidewalk and expanding the sidewalk," said Craytor, noting that the center median will remain planted with trees and shrubs. She isn't particularly disappointed. "We successfully pushed back and ensured that the concept of slowing down traffic and narrowing the street was increased," said Craytor. "This will be an area for people, not vehicles."

More pictures below the fold:

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Gresham, Oregon used to look like your typical suburb. Lots of lawns and lots of parking. When Portland's MAX light-rail line expanded to Gresham, developers saw an opportunity to bring something different: walkable development. But a downturn in the local real estate market interceded. One developer trying to build a four-story condo project decided that he'd be better off with a video store surrounded by surface parking.

Metro -- Portland's regional government -- decided that wasn't good enough. They bought the site outright. Then Metro proceeded to double down on the original plans for the project, which it called The Crossings. Four stories became five, making the development the tallest building in Gresham. Condos became a mixed-use development with ground-floor retail, sidewalk cafés and engaging street-level facades.

There was still one big problem: financing. Charlotte Boxer, director of commercial real estate at Pacific Continental Bank, was skeptical of Metro's project. "What would draw people to live there, or what would make a retailer decide to lease there?" she asked. "There was substantial risk on Metro's part and on ours as the lender, because we had no comparables to go to that would say this would work." For the project to succeed financially, they'd have to charge rents 25 percent higher than the going rate in Gresham, for a type of development no one had ever tried there.

In many parts of America, efforts to build transit-oriented, walkable communities are foiled because financing can't be secured for projects that differ from the templates lenders have become used to since World War II. In Salt Lake City, for example, the local government's push for transit-oriented development has been stymied because local banks won't lend to projects without huge parking lots.

Why do lenders balk at development that reduces car dependence? In a word, inertia. "The lending industry appears to be very conservative, if your definition of conservative is doing the same thing this year as you did five years ago," said David Goldstein, the co-director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's energy program and an expert on environmental real estate financing. Because banks have no institutional memory of lending to transit-oriented development, they are reluctant to do so going forward.

In Portland, officials and activists have begun to escape this cycle. The policies they've pursued to foster walkable development are instructive for many American cities looking to grow without making traffic congestion worse.

Even in transit-rich New York, economic development officials have subsidized developers who import car-oriented standards. They are happy to secure favorable lending terms, underwritten by the U.S. government, for multi-story parking decks. It's safe to say that goals like enhancing the pedestrian environment or attaining sustainability targets are not motivating these decisions. Portland development officials do things differently. When planners there decided that urbanism and sustainability were good outcomes, they went out and started convincing lenders to change the way they do business.

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City Hall has another big vacancy to fill. This morning the Bloomberg administration announced that Robert Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development, is returning to the private sector. Lieber's portfolio includes the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of City Planning. His departure could create a window of opportunity to fill some of the biggest gaps in the city's sustainability agenda, PlaNYC 2030. 

Lieber has been a central figure in the administration's planning and development policy since taking the helm of EDC in 2006. In December 2007, he assumed his current post, succeeding PlaNYC architect Dan Doctoroff. From mega-developments like Hunter's Point and Willets Point to smaller rezonings around the city, Lieber's had a hand in guiding what gets built in New York City, and where.

Lieber's replacement will inherit responsibility for two of the city agencies doing the most to add more traffic to New York City's streets. DCP has shown no inclination to reform parking policies that devour real estate, inflate housing prices and increase car ownership rates across much of the city. EDC continues to subsidize projects that add massive amounts of parking for no justifiable reason. All this new off-street parking creates incentives to drive, generating traffic that impedes bus service and degrades the appeal of streets for walking and bicycling. These policies stands in clear opposition to PlaNYC's goal of reducing automobile use and prioritizing sustainable transportation.

The next deputy mayor for economic development can complete some of the biggest missing pieces in PlaNYC. Here's what two of New York's leading transportation advocates say Lieber's replacement can do for sustainability.

Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White highlighted the Economic Development Corporation as particularly in need of a sustainability shakeup. "The EDC's inexorable march towards more parking and car-oriented development is tarring the mayor's otherwise green record," said White. "This is the mayor's last, best chance to reverse course and bring land use policy into alignment with PlaNYC."

Lieber's successor could do more to make New York City's growth both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable, said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin.

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Between 1950 and 1964, Robert Moses gouged a path across two boroughs to build the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, the BQE slices through the urban fabric in the form of a below-grade trench, which has given many residents of those neighborhoods hope of covering that section of highway. As more people have moved to the west side of the ditch, the pressure to do something has mounted, but the BQE trench won't get capped any time soon.

The damage inflicted by the highway on residents' ears and lungs, however, could still be lessened, and some of the lost street connections can be restored. Right now, locals put up with traffic noise as high as 76 decibels -- at 80, you're subject to long-term hearing loss -- and dangerously elevated levels of asthma-causing particulate pollution. Their neighborhood is effectively split in two. A study sponsored by Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who secured $300,000 in federal funds, offers a few partial solutions to "fix the ditch."

The project team developing the study held its first community planning session last week, and the Brooklyn Eagle reports that improved bike-ped connections across the highway, noise-reducing walls, and environmental remediation measures are the favored changes. (This is a separate project from the reconstruction of the BQE in downtown Brooklyn, which could have major implications for the local and regional transportation system.)

The NYC Economic Development Corporation is leading the study, in partnership with NYCDOT and a host of consulting firms. The goal for now is to produce a plan that can be shopped around for additional funding. After two more community meetings, the lead planners will put out a conceptual design and engineering report in July. In the fall, they'll issue three alternative plans for the trench. The money isn't in place yet for the redesign itself. 

Neither is funding available for capping the trench, which could create new real estate for public space or private development. Seattle famously decked over part of I-5 to create Freeway Park, and Los Angeles is considering doing something similar where the 101 Freeway divides downtown. Though the Eagle reported that many residents near the BQE trench still hold out hope for such a bold scenario, planners don't expect to have access to the kind of money needed for more than incremental changes.

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Yesterday, Streetsblog looked at Flushing Commons, a mixed-use development in the heart of transit-rich downtown Flushing, where the New York City Economic Development Corporation has mandated suburban levels of parking. We asked the EDC why they required nearly 1,600 spaces in the development, and now we have an answer. It's a revealing look at how the city has relinquished its responsibility to set a coordinated parking policy, much less one in line with the goals of PlaNYC 2030.

EDC's 1,600-space requirement comes from just three numbers, according to an agency spokesperson:

1. Flushing Commons will be built on the site of a municipal surface parking lot with 1,101 spaces.
2. The minimum parking required by the Department of City Planning, based on the Flushing Commons development plan, is around 700 spaces.
3. The city is adding an additional 200 parking spaces to a nearby municipal lot.

EDC reasoned that Flushing Commons shouldn't eliminate any of the parking that already existed and that the planning department's parking minimums were a good guideline for the new development, so they added 1,100 and 700. Then they subtracted the 200 new off-site spaces, and voila, they decided that the project required 1,600 spaces. 

That kind of thinking leads straight to car-dependency. "EDC's approach to this reflects an implicit policy that New York City should become more auto-oriented," said UPenn professor and parking policy expert Rachel Weinberger. "By preserving existing spaces while adding additional spaces they are ensuring that more trips will be made by car."

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