Approving Blood Center Project, City Council Overrides 'Member Deference' for First Time in Over a Decade
Th City Council (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
The New York City Council voted 43-5 to approve a rezoning of the New York Blood Center to create a new life sciences hub on the Upper East Side, in a rare vote that overrode the wishes of local Council Member Ben Kallos.
The Council has typically followed the tradition of “member deference” on land use matters, voting along with the member whose district includes the proposed rezoning. In the case of the Blood Center, negotiations had been going on for many months among Kallos, other elected officials, the Blood Center and its developer partner, Longfellow Real Estate Partners, and other stakeholders including the de Blasio administration. Even after the proposal changed significantly over time, Kallos had several remaining objections to the project, including the building height and inclusion of additional “luxury” commercial area.
But the Council chose overwhelmingly to approve the project, with supporters arguing that it held citywide importance. It was the first time since 2009 that the Council had taken such a vote.
“This has been a process that has been one that's done by consensus,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson explained, at a news conference shortly before the vote. The project had the backing of the land use chair, Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr., Council Member Keith Powers, whose district neighbors Kallos’ and overlaps with a part of the rezoning area, and the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus of the Council. It was also supported by a number of labor unions, community groups, and business organizations.
“It was a continuous conversation within the body to say this project has citywide importance because of what the Blood Center does for the healthcare system, for hospitals, for the future of life sciences in New York City,” Johnson said of the nonprofit that supplies much of the city’s blood reserves.
While Kallos claimed that the developers refused to meet with him and the community board, Powers said he had fruitful meetings to get to an agreement. “I know I sat in a number of meetings that included a lot of the elected officials and stakeholders. That was all about getting to a yes and building consensus,” he said at the news conference.
The final deal, reached without Kallos, did reduce the height of the proposed building from 334 feet to 218 feet, but Kallos nonetheless wanted to see it lowered further. He represented a large group of local residents and other elected officials representing the area who said they weren't against the Blood Center growing but felt it was out of context for a mid-block development in a low-rise residential street and would cast shadows on a nearby school and park.
Opponents of the rezoning sought to prevent Tuesday’s vote, including by unsuccessfully pleading for a temporary restraining order in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. Aspects of the deal were also reportedly referred to the Department of Investigation for potential corruption. Those opponents and Kallos had also invoked an obscure provision of the City Charter that would have required three-fourths of the Council, or 39 votes, to approve the rezoning, a point made moot by the 44 votes cast in its favor.
“The Blood Center rezoning is not just a project that affects New York City,” Salamanca Jr. said at the vote. “This project affects millions of Americans who would benefit from the medical breakthroughs that will be researched and discovered at this location.”
At the full Council meeting, Kallos said the vote was a death knell for member deference. “The fight over the new Blood Center building was never about blood,” he said. ‘It's been about two other issues. How high should the Center’s for-profit partner Longfellow Development’s commercial offices tower over residential neighborhood and member deference.”
Kallos said his attempts to negotiate with the developer were rejected “because Longfellow wanted more valuable commercial space and because the mayor and special interests want to prove a point. Local Council members don't matter anymore and can no longer represent their communities.” Besides Kallos, the other Council members who voted “no” on the project were Carlos Menchaca, Kalman Yeger, Robert Holden, and Ruben Diaz Sr.
Menchaca said he supported Kallos’ call for member deference, which he himself previously used to stop the proposed Industry City rezoning last year. “The local Council member’s not in support. What does that matter? Well, it's mattered for a long time,” Menchaca said Tuesday. “And we haven't had a discussion as a body to change that. The game changed at the end of this process and I think that is of much concern.”
Kallos also pointed to nearly $750 million in city subsidies that the project would receive. “Approval from the full Council would create a blueprint for deep-pocketed developers to get whatever they want,” he said. “Don't be fooled into thinking this will work for affordable housing developers, homeless services, faith-based groups, or nonprofit providers.”
Council Member Brad Lander, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said the vote reflected deeper issues with the city’s land use process. “I do believe this is an important moment to stop and look at what is broken in our reactive land use process,” said Lander, who has been pushing for “comprehensive planning,” before voting for the Blood Center rezoning. “In the era of the climate crisis, of an affordability crisis, of aging infrastructure, we need a more strategic and more proactive process that grounds future planning in the shared values of New Yorkers. It doesn't work to have the vast majority of proposals proposed by a developer or come from City Hall, have a community get in a defensive crouch and fight against them and then have it land here amidst what's so often a shrill debate.”
Lander, the city comptroller-elect, saw the Council also overwhelmingly approve the Gowanus neighborhood rezoning plan that he had worked on for years at Tuesday’s meeting. That project includes many changes and investments for parts of his Brooklyn district.
Council Member Antonio Reynoso, the next Brooklyn Borough President and another supporter of moving to “comprehensive planning,” said the Blood Center rezoning was for “the greater good.”
“I don't think that this is truly an attack on member deference,” he told Gotham Gazette before the vote. “I felt like any other time where there was a project where many Council members thought it was significant citywide, that the member always was able to get to a yes through negotiations. It's the same thing communicated to the local Council member here and it doesn't seem like he got to a yes.”
All of the Council members mentioned above are Democrats.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
‘The New Commissioner Really Has Her Work Cut Out For Her’: Adrienne Adams on Police Reform, Running for City Council Speaker, and More
City Council Member Adrienne Adams (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
The New York Police Department needs a major culture shift, according to City Council Member Adrienne Adams, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Council’s public safety committee, and incoming Mayor Eric Adams can lead the way.
Speaking at length on a recent episode of the Max Politics podcast from Gotham Gazette, Adams outlined key takeaways from a series of oversight hearings she has chaired and her other thoughts on problems at the NYPD that need to be addressed under the next administration, which takes office January 1.
"There has to be a substantial change made in the culture of the NYPD,” Council Member Adams said on the podcast, “and that is a culture that has so many strong roots, decades and decades of a lot of strength, a lot of impression, in the department."
“It is my hope that incoming officers coming into the ranks will have a new perspective, and again, it's going to have to start with the top-down,” said Adrienne Adams, who endorsed Eric Adams (no relation) in the Democratic primary for mayor and is vying to become the next Speaker of the City Council herself. “That's why I say the new [police] commissioner really has her work cut out for her,” she added, referring to Eric Adams’ pledge to appoint the first woman in the city’s history to the top-cop role.
Adams, who represents Council District 28 in Southeast Queens, told host Ben Max about failures she’s seen through her oversight work at the NYPD’s Special Victims Division and elsewhere in the department. She also spoke about challenges related to school security (and her belief that school safety agents should remain part of the NYPD, not the Department of Education as has been planned), sexual assault perpetrated on guards at the Rikers Island jails, and other issues.
She discussed expectations for Mayor-Elect Adams and their long-time relationship going back to their high school years, as well as her bid to become the city’s first Black Speaker of the City Council and support she says she has from U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, who is the Queens County Democratic Party leader.
Adams said some responsibilities of the NYPD should be redistributed by investing in more mental health and social services, and that public safety should be a more expansive topic than is usually considered in city politics, including advocacy and services for children. She cautioned, though, that substantial change to the role of police in society will take time and a “hybrid model” will be needed at least for the near future.
“Until we get the number of providers that we need, the strength in providers that we need to be this backbone and create this infrastructure that we need to handle said social services and mental health services and advocacy, once we develop that infrastructure...I think we can move that hybrid along to something that will be much more stable and permanent,” Adams said of shifting some responsibilities away from officers with guns.
Discussing a recent oversight hearing she chaired on the NYPD’s Special Victims Division that focus on its mishandling of rape case, Adams expressed frustration about how the division has been run for a long time.
“It has been very enlightening to uncover through our oversight committees just how many holes there are in the system,” she said. She described how cases of rape and sexual assault were not adressed adequately by the SVD and victims were often ignored, mistreated, and disrespected by officers. She expressed some cautious optimism about the new leadership of the division, but said she will be holding their feet to the fire in the future based on assurances that were made at the hearing.
Discussing School Safety Agents, Adams stressed that they are unarmed and mostly women of color, and said that right now she does not believe they should be transferred from the NYPD, but said she understands concerns about over-policing of students of color and the need for better training.
“The DOE right now is handling children now coming in from the pandemic, full-time, no remote learning,” said Adams. “It's tremendous, but we are going to give the DOE the responsibility or management of hundreds of school safety agents? I don't necessarily agree with it. I know the mayor [Bill de Blasio] talks about phasing in, but I'm not all the way there yet. I'm not all the way convinced that, number one, this is what the SSAs want, and I'm not convinced that this is what is best for the students in the schools.”
Incoming Mayor Eric Adams has also said he wants the SSAs to say in the NYPD and it is a decision that he will ultimately make.
Council Member Adams also spoke about her high expectations for Mayor-Elect Adams, whom she has known since high school in Queens.
“My confidence in our Democratic nominee for mayor is in his plan to bring New York out of the pandemic and into stability once again,” said Adams. “And not just stability, but bring us into abundance, to bring our tourism back, to bring our streets back, our safety back, to bring back the confidence in New York that the world has always had.”
In the podcast’s final few minutes, Adams discussed her hopes to be voted by her colleagues as the first Black Speaker of the City Council. That vote will take place among the new City Council class of 51 members come January, though jockeying is ongoing and one candidate for speaker could foster a winning coalition at any time.
Despite being close friends with Eric Adams and having endorsed him in the mayoral primary, Council Member Adams made it a point to say that she is looking to be named speaker based only on her work in the City Council, that she differs with the mayor-elect on some issues, and that the Council is a separate branch of government.
“I am hoping that however the chips may fall, that for my merit and for my leadership capabilities, the things that I've done in the past, what I've done for my district - more than any other of my predecessors - and what I've brought in leadership to the New York City Council over the past four years, Ben, that is what I'm standing on to become the next Speaker of the New York City Council,” said Adams.
And she noted that in this competition for speaker she has Meeks’ support, which could prove pivotal depending on what constellation of agreements can be reached among powerful entities. “I have the full support of my county leader. He's one of my mentors, so I have for a very long time,” said Adams, explaining that the two were on good terms despite throwing their weight behind different mayoral candidates in the primary when Meeks backed Ray McGuire. “No matter who the primary candidate was in the past, the past is past and now we're looking on to elect Eric Adams as the next mayor of New York City.”
[Listen to the full conversation: Max Politics Podcast: City Council Member Adrienne Adams on NYPD Oversight, Running for Speaker, & More]
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by Lachlan Hyatt, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Max Politics Podcast: City Council Member Francisco Moya on Zoning Battles, Running for Speaker, & More
City Council Member Francisco Moya (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
November 20, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: City Council Member Francisco Moya on Zoning Battles, Running for Speaker, & More
City Council Member Francisco Moya joined the show to discuss his work chairing the Council's zoning subcommittee, recent land use debates and larger issues of development, and his bid to become the next Council Speaker.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.
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