“Gehry's Plan for Brooklyn”

ONE OF THE TRADARCH MEMBERS WROTE:

So one question one might ask is "Why 'stifle' such 'secondary' or 'tertiary' (in terms of popularity) neighborhoods and discourage them from improving themselves with increased density, additional primary uses and a more diverse stock of buildings, both residential and commercial (as was done in some parts of Brooklyn Heights, for instance, in previous Brooklyn boom times)?"  Why not use current demand and popularity as an opportunity to remedy a neighborhood's "deficiencies" ... and make such neighborhoods more resilient and less likely to lose popularity in future down times?

At this stage in planning and development, as long as the city's planning method is to react to the proposals of developers like Ratner, rather than leading the way with form-based codes that suggest form, character and mass, New York City will get few proposals which "use current demand and popularity as an opportunity to remedy a neighborhood's "deficiencies" ... and make such neighborhoods more resilient and less likely to lose popularity in future down times."

It is the city and its citizens, rather than the developer, who have that goal.

Under Mayor Giuliani, Planning Commissioner Joe Rose tried to implement form-based planning, which used the existing physical form of the neighborhood as a template for future development. The new plan allowed larger buildigns on the avenues than on the side streets, with the height of the new buildings influenced by the heights of the buildings already on the blocks around it.

The New York development community, which supplies all the largest political donors in New York, quickly stopped that plan, because in 2006, developers get a substantially higher price for any apartment they can build above the 15th floor. Ratner may be interested in the improvement of Brooklyn, I don't know, but his idea of the "best and highest use" for the site is the one that maximizes his profit, and that means as many towers as he can get the city to approve.

There are exceptions to this rule, like Rose, who is a third-generation New York developer. But it is easier for developers like Rose, whose family owns two-generations worth of rental buildings all around the city, to take the long view than developers who look to hit a short-term home run with each project.

BTW, Rose's family had the rights to the sight in the 1970s, and Rose's cousin Jonathan tried to develop the site in a more enlightened way, with a project designed by the New Urban planner Peter Calthorpe. You can find the design and its history in Peter Katz's New Urbanism book. They planned an office tower over the railyards, surrounded by low and medium rise development that knit the neighborhoods together where their form unraveled at Atlantic Avenue. Their plan was for the immediate site around the railyards, while Ratner has persuaded the Empire State Development Corporation to use its powers of eminent domain to considerably expand the site.

But Jonathan Rose was stopped by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued to prevent the development, saying that Rose's single tower over the railyards would cause more pollution than low-rise development.

"If I don't build this project at this transportation hub, the pollution will be worse," Rose said (paraphrasing), "because the jobs in the tower will be spread around Long Island or New Jersey, where the workers will drive to them."

"Yes, but Long Island and New Jersey aren't under our watch," the NRDC said, "New York is," in a position just as focused on the short-term and individual interest as Ratner's.