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Originally Posted by antinimby
Typical big announcements and ambitions which ultimately gets watered down by the public's input of not wanting tall buildings and lots of open space for light and air. We'll end up with a bunch of sterile, short, modern day towers-in-the-park ala Battery Park City, LIC waterfront.
I've seen this all before.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby
And we know that you can't put a bunch of affordable units together in one place because they end up having the same problems like we've seen with housing projects.
They need mixed income and market rates interdispersed with the affordable units. They also need to make it true mixed use including office, retail and entertainment, otherwise it'll just be a sterile bedroom community that only residents go back to at night.
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I think you are somehow mistaking low income housing with affordable housing. They are not one in the same, but I agree on a mix, which is what would happen here.
But de Blasio isn't talking about building "Manhattan scale" towers across the city's neighborhoods. He's saying that buildings would be "larger" than what you would normally see or expect in some areas. If that means a 15-story building instead of a 5-story buidling, then so be it. The city is growing, and people have to be put somewhere. There's a reason land is so precious in the city, and that's because there isn't more of it coming. What you have is what you get. Unlike the rivers and oceans that surround it, there are limits to how far the city can expand. Unless, of course, that expansion is up.
People are always quick to jump into the conversation to tell you how things won't and shouldn't be done. But the fact is, nothing will ever get done without the conversation first. The west side of Manhattan and the railyards there are developing nicely. Is it the plan the Bloomberg originally envisioned? No, it isn't. But it was Bloomberg's initiatives that got us where we are today, despite the many critics of that plan.
The mayor is right to push for a plan (the specifics can come later) to put those unused air rights - that will sit there forever - on the table, especially with his push for more affordable housing. Whatever else is built along with the affordable housing is on the table.
http://observer.com/2015/02/de-blasi...ards-proposal/
De Blasio Thinks There’s a ‘Way Forward’ for Sunnyside Yards Proposal
By Jillian Jorgensen
02/04/15
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo may not be on board with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to turn a railyard in Queens into a sweeping affordable housing development—but Mr. de Blasio wasn’t letting that put a damper on his plans today.
“I think we’re going to find a way forward here,” Mr. de Blasio told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer this morning.
Yesterday in his State of the City address, Mr. de Blasio laid out plans envisioning a development called “Sunnyside Yards,” which would include more than 11,000 affordable apartments built in the image of Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village. The mayor proposed building above the more than 200-acre working railyard, where both Amtrak and the MTA have operations.
Mr. Cuomo almost immediately threw cold water on the plan. In a statement, his spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa said the yard was not available due to its use by the MTA, state-run agency.
“The MTA uses Sunnyside Yards as an important facility for our transportation system, and it is not available for any other use in the near term. The State and the MTA are studying several potential future uses of the site from a long term planning perspective,” she said.
But Amtrak owns most of the site—150 acres—and the national railroad said yesterday it was open to developing above the property.
“Amtrak has begun conceptualizing future opportunities for development over our 150 acre Sunnyside Yards property. We are working with the City and others to understand what potential exists for this incredibly unique site and recognize and support the Mayor’s strong interest in advancing affordable housing as part of any major new development,” Amtrak said in a statement.
And today, Mr. de Blasio noted the city would own the air rights above the rail yard.
“The rail yards have to be there, no question about it, they have to be there. But we think we can have them there…but also get a lot done in terms of affordable housing and other things that the city needs,” Mr. de Blasio said.
.....Mr. de Blasio said big projects were what the city needed.
“Leaders are supposed to lead. We’re supposed to point a way,” he said.
Some people want development to happen only in small-scale developments, as opposed to the massive amount of mixed low- and high-rise housing he’s proposed for Sunnyside Yards. But if the models of Peter Cooper Village and Stuy Town worked before, and the city has an opportunity to target development above a massive parcel, it should try those models again.
“Why on earth would we not grab that opportunity? So I’m going to be very, very focused on this,” he said.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/h...icle-1.2103652
De Blasio’s bold building bet
To expand the ladder of opportunity, stretch the city skyward
February 4, 2015
BY HARRY SIEGEL
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Tuesday, de Blasio pointed as a model to the housing plan of Mayor Ed Koch, who said then “we’re creating more than just apartments — we’re re-creating neighborhoods.” But Koch was able to do that because many parts of the city had hollowed out, leaving empty spaces and buildings.
Today, New York is bursting at the seams and land is so scarce that one big part of de Blasio’s plan involves a multi-billion-dollar proposal — that Gov. Cuomo has already poured cold water on — to cover the huge rail yard in Sunnyside and then entice private developers to create a neighborhood with 11,250 units of affordable housing.
Beyond Sunnyside, the core of his plan involves zoning changes allowing bigger new buildings in various pockets of the city — and requiring developers to provide permanently affordable new housing (along with market-rate units) in exchange for the extra height.
That’s a jackpot — assuming things get built. But before they put up seven or eight figures, developers have to be confident that the numbers will add up — that the increased development rights (along with government subsidies, especially in places like East New York) will cover the cost of the below-market units.
For the city, there’s little downside: If nothing gets built in some places, we’re no worse off than now. And where buildings do go up, de Blasio will have proven he can collect more affordable housing eggs without killing the development goose. And that we can get new market-rate housing, and affordable units along with them, outside the confines of Mayor Bloomberg’s luxury city.
The New York Times this week labeled de Blasio’s approach “Bloombergism with a twist,” as — like his predecessor — the new mayor banks on private development to pay for his promise of new affordable housing. The twist: De Blasio would do much more to ensure construction benefits current residents, not just those drawn in as so-called luxury buildings rise and coffee houses and craft beer bars spring up like mushrooms in their shadows.
I wrote last year that “the simple way out of this Chinese finger trap, where the more subsidized housing we have, the more outrageously expensive it gets for everyone not lucky enough to have it, is (building up) — an approach largely favored by an unlikely coalition of developers, trade unionists and affordable housing advocates.”
In short, to convince developers they can still profit while giving a bigger cut of potential profits to New Yorkers lucky enough to win the affordable housing lottery, and to increase supply enough to help relieve the pressure on the rest of us. And to convince New Yorkers already in the places he’s aiming to transform that years of construction is in their interests.
That’s a tough sell after a 50-year cycle in which, to put it crudely, residents who hung on or moved in and fought to improve neighborhoods damaged by white flight, then found themselves pushed out by white influx as the city became more attractive.
Taking the gentrification bull by the horns, de Blasio credited two decades of declining crime with drawing people to the city, bringing with them “jobs and amenities, more activities, safer streets. The problem comes when we reach the tipping point . . . when New Yorkers get priced out of their own neighborhoods.”
Who could disagree? But let’s be honest: As long as people want to be here, someone will always be pricing someone else out . And any plan for a better future will encounter fierce resistance from people who like where they live now, and can afford it.
As much as I like de Blasio’s vision, I wouldn’t trade years of noisy construction intended to dramatically change my corner of Brooklyn to provide lower rents in a few years, mostly to people who aren’t even here yet. Would you?
Good luck, Mr. Mayor.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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