Recent stories in the Times and Daily News have highlighted the increasingly fractious debate over allocating $4.55 billion in 9/11-related federal aid for transportation projects.

Some projects have won a broad consensus, including a Transit Center on Fulton Street, a block east of the Trade Center site and connected by an underground concourse to a new PATH station to replace the station destroyed with the Trade Center.

Far more contentious is a proposed "Super Shuttle" train between Jamaica, Queens and this new transit hub. The new rail link would run on Long Island Rail Road tracks from the Long Island Railroad's Jamaica Station in eastern Queens to downtown Brooklyn, then through a new tunnel to connect with subway lines into Fulton Street in downtown Manhattan.

The Super Shuttle rail link is pushed by Brookfield Properties, which has extensive downtown real estate holdings and strongly desires direct commuter rail access from the suburbs to downtown offices. The proposed Super Shuttle is a bit less than a super shuttle -- Long Island Rail Road riders would still need to transfer in Jamaica, and many would have a considerable walk from Fulton Street to offices at the southern tip of Manhattan. Travelers headed for Kennedy Airport would transfer in Jamaica to the AirTrain monorail now under construction.

The Super Shuttle would not improve access from Westchester, Connecticut or New Jersey at all. At a price tag of $1.9 to $5 billion, the New York Times notes that many transit officials consider the link to offer poor bang for the buck. Also important is that the new train would displace the C subway line, forcing downtown-bound C riders to transfer in Brooklyn.

The debate over the Super Shuttle exposes developing fault lines in how the different parties to the debate view lower Manhattan's needs and its future. Five main fault lines can be identified:

• How fast is fast enough? Everyone agrees on the importance of moving quickly to revive lower Manhattan. But what is "quick"? One definition is tied to expiration dates of leases for downtown office space. The lease of one of Brookfield Properties' major tenants, Merrill Lynch, expires in 2008. So under this definition, lower Manhattan should have better suburban rail access within six years. Others suggest that the solution is the Second Avenue Subway, which would relieve severe overcrowding between Grand Central Terminal and lower Manhattan. The timeframe for that project extends well beyond 2008, however, under even the most optimistic scenarios for its funding and construction.
• What is a "lower Manhattan" project? Carl Weisbrod of the Downtown Alliance argues that the $4.55 billion in federal aid allocated to transportation should be spent exclusively for projects directly tied to the Trade Center attacks. Replacing the PATH station unequivocally qualifies since it was destroyed by the attacks. By general consensus, the transit hub also qualifies because it ties into PATH and would clearly make traveling to the trade center area a more attractive experience. The relationship between 9/11 and other projects is in the eye of the beholder. Proponents of rebuilding the South Ferry station point to its integral role in connecting the Staten Island ferry to lower Manhattan. Yet Senator Charles Schumer and Weisbrod have questioned its relevance to revitalizing lower Manhattan. Proponents of the Super Shuttle argue that the Second Avenue Subway is not a lower Manhattan project. Yet building a tunnel in Brooklyn, part of the Super Shuttle project, is no more obviously related to lower Manhattan than building a tunnel on Manhattan's East Side.
• Who most needs improved access to lower Manhattan? Downtown property interests emphasize direct suburban commuter access to downtown. Yet most of the people who work downtown live in the five boroughs. Even among the upper echelons that decide whether a company should move to Midtown, many live on Manhattan's East and West Sides and would be helped by improved subway service, not a direct LIRR connection. How closely are the fortunes of lower Manhattan tied to suburban access versus access from other parts of the city? If lower Manhattan's future is as a 24/7 commercial and entertainment center, would not access from other parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of New Jersey just across the Hudson be more important than from more distant suburbs?
• What projects increase access to lower Manhattan? A new rail line from A to B would seem to clearly improve access to those locations. Yet analyses of the Super Shuttle suggest that the time savings for Long Island commuters would be negligible compared with their current routes -- traveling via Penn Station or the LIRR's Flatbush Avenue station in Brooklyn. At a recent forum on downtown transportation issues, Madelyn Wils of Community Board 1 argued that the transit hub and connectors are service improvements, not new transit services. Yet there is less of a difference than the distinction implies. Dingy stations and difficult transfers can be as much of a barrier as simple lack of service between two points.
• What modes really count? An unspoken assumption is that real business districts have commuter rail service. There has been little discussion of bus service, aside from accommodating tour buses that will descend on the planned memorial for victims. Ferry service, which now carries twice as many riders as pre-9/11, is mentioned more often. But advocates of suburban rail access feel that ferries are not a substitute to rail. Yet new ferry routes could be put in place far more quickly than new rail lines and could serve a wider variety of suburban locations. They might require a public subsidy, however, which raises a host of different institutional, political and financial issues.

Even with differing views on these questions, there is a consensus that lower Manhattan needs better suburban transit access. What would bring about that access, and quickly enough to make a difference?

First, it is critical to think about a package that utilizes various modes that may include rail, bus and ferry. The Super Shuttle proposal puts a huge amount of available funding into rail. A multi-modal approach that includes buses and ferries could be cheaper and quicker and win broader support.

Second, it is critical to think beyond concrete. Why do LIRR riders who work downtown mostly use Penn Station instead of going through Brooklyn? One reason is that Penn Station offers more frequent departures. Also, riders departing from Penn are less likely to have to transfer to another LIRR train in Jamaica. Improving access is not just a matter of pouring concrete. It's also a matter of how the service is configured, the frequency of service and cost. Transfers illustrate the point. While no one likes to transfer, a transfer between trains serving the same platform and offering frequent service is far different than a transfer that requires climbing stairs and long waits for the next train.

Finally, vision and political leadership are needed. Vision of what lower Manhattan will be in five, 10 or 20 years. Will it continue to be primarily an office and financial center? Will it be a 24/7 community with residential, shopping and entertainment? The vision will help define transportation needs.

Political leadership is also critical to define and articulate that vision and move diverse and often fractious interests toward a consensus. Post-election news reports that Governor Pataki intends to take a more direct role in the process, while also involving the city administration more integrally, is a welcome development.

Bruce Schaller is Principal of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis to government, business and non-profit groups seeking to identify and meet customer needs in the transportation sector. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.

When the Senate passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 early in October, it was one of those good news, bad news situations.

The legislation had already been passed by a wide margin in the Republican-controlled House, and the Democratic-controlled Senate passed it 92 to 2. The President, a Republican, has pledged to sign it into law. So the bill will be born into law with no lack of bi-partisan parentage. And that's good news.

The Help American Vote Act includes $3.86 billion in federal aid over the next four years to state and local governments to help them improve and upgrade current voting methods. The law includes stipulations to ensure that registered voters who show up at polling places will be allowed to vote that day, even if their names do not appear on the voter registration rolls. There are several provisions to address voter fraud and keep voting rolls accurate. There are timetables to ensure that within four years, statewide voter registration systems will be computerized and linked to state agencies for issuing driver's licenses. There are plans in place to allow voters the chance to correct balloting errors before the ballots are officially cast.

It is a comprehensive, timely, sweeping set of reforms designed to ensure that every eligible voter has the chance to cast a vote, and that the vote will be counted accurately. As I said, good news.

But as is often the case, New York City finds itself in a unique set of circumstances. That voting reforms are needed here in the city is a fact that few in government or public policy would dispute. But the two votes against the legislation in the U.S. Senate were both from the New York delegation: those of Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Hillary Clinton.

The reasons any legislator has for casting a vote either for or against a given piece of legislation are complicated. It can be difficult to say with certainty that even two Senators from the same party and the same state had all the same reasons for casting the same votes.

But a recent report by the Century Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, shows that the newly passed Help American Vote Act may not address every problem, particularly here in New York City.

In other words, the bad news.

The report looked at several campaigns that took place in 2001. It compared governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, and mayoral races in New York and Los Angeles. The report concluded that while voting technology was important, it was not as important as voter education, sufficient numbers of trained poll workers, and the availability of translators.

As an example, the report points to the fact that in New Jersey, there were more uncounted votes in 2001 than in 2000, even though the state upgraded its punch card ballot machines between the elections.

In New York City, the use of lever machines that constantly break down or otherwise malfunction was blamed for the city's tremendous numbers of lost, unmarked, or uncounted votes in the 2000 elections. Indeed, the number exceeded the lost votes cast in the rest of the nation combined. No one would argue against improving and modernizing the equipment. But just one year later, in 2001, the city had more complicated problems: lack of trained poll workers, lack of translators, and other problems resulting in barriers to non-English speaking voters.

This report may parallel some of the concerns that New York's two Senators had when they cast the only two voters against this otherwise widely popular legislation. Maybe they thought it would be a reminder that no matter how well intentioned or well-funded, any reform can be ineffective or even destructive if it is not carefully tested and monitored.

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B>The Help America Vote Act -- The Good News and Bad News For NYC

When the Senate passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 early in October, it was one of those good news, bad news situations.

The legislation had already been passed by a wide margin in the Republican-controlled House, and the Democratic-controlled Senate passed it 92 to 2. The President, a Republican, has pledged to sign it into law. So the bill will be born into law with no lack of bi-partisan parentage. And that's good news.

The Help American Vote Act includes $3.86 billion in federal aid over the next four years to state and local governments to help them improve and upgrade current voting methods. The law includes stipulations to ensure that registered voters who show up at polling places will be allowed to vote that day, even if their names do not appear on the voter registration rolls. There are several provisions to address voter fraud and keep voting rolls accurate. There are timetables to ensure that within four years, statewide voter registration systems will be computerized and linked to state agencies for issuing driver's licenses. There are plans in place to allow voters the chance to correct balloting errors before the ballots are officially cast.

It is a comprehensive, timely, sweeping set of reforms designed to ensure that every eligible voter has the chance to cast a vote, and that the vote will be counted accurately. As I said, good news.

But as is often the case, New York City finds itself in a unique set of circumstances. That voting reforms are needed here in the city is a fact that few in government or public policy would dispute. But the two votes against the legislation in the U.S. Senate were both from the New York delegation: those of Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Hillary Clinton.

The reasons any legislator has for casting a vote either for or against a given piece of legislation are complicated. It can be difficult to say with certainty that even two Senators from the same party and the same state had all the same reasons for casting the same votes.

But a recent report by the Century Foundation, a non-partisan think tank, shows that the newly passed Help American Vote Act may not address every problem, particularly here in New York City.

In other words, the bad news.

The report looked at several campaigns that took place in 2001. It compared governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, and mayoral races in New York and Los Angeles. The report concluded that while voting technology was important, it was not as important as voter education, sufficient numbers of trained poll workers, and the availability of translators.

As an example, the report points to the fact that in New Jersey, there were more uncounted votes in 2001 than in 2000, even though the state upgraded its punch card ballot machines between the elections.

In New York City, the use of lever machines that constantly break down or otherwise malfunction was blamed for the city's tremendous numbers of lost, unmarked, or uncounted votes in the 2000 elections. Indeed, the number exceeded the lost votes cast in the rest of the nation combined. No one would argue against improving and modernizing the equipment. But just one year later, in 2001, the city had more complicated problems: lack of trained poll workers, lack of translators, and other problems resulting in barriers to non-English speaking voters.

This report may parallel some of the concerns that New York's two Senators had when they cast the only two voters against this otherwise widely popular legislation. Maybe they thought it would be a reminder that no matter how well intentioned or well-funded, any reform can be ineffective or even destructive if it is not carefully tested and monitored.

Bruce Schaller is Principal of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis to government, business and non-profit groups seeking to identify and meet customer needs in the transportation sector. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.

The biggest transportation issue in this fall's election is literally on the ballot -- the $3.8 billion Transportation Bond Act of 2000. The bond act's money is equally split between highway and transit projects. The transit money would contribute to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's newly minted construction program that includes to begin planning a Second Ave. subway, buy 1,100 new subway cars, rehab 64 subway stations and buy 1,200 clean-fuel buses.

The bond act raises a surprisingly diverse set of issues. No one disputes the need to improve the state's highways and transit systems. But there is much uneasiness over the MTA's construction plan, which covers the next five years. Many in the transportation community feel it relies too heavily on debt and future fare increases without enough money from state and city operating funds. They also are not sure what they are getting -- the list of projects in the memorandum of understanding signed by legislative leaders and the Governor contains only partial funding for many long-term projects. Fiscal conservatives oppose the bond act because it would further balloon the state's already sky-high debt.

What happens if the bond act passes? Defeat automatically reopens the MTA capital program. That would give Albany the opportunity to improve the financing plan. But what would emerge -- a better plan or even less "real" money?

Voters this fall are taking a chance either way they vote. Vote yes -- but not be sure what projects will actually be built or whether straphangers will pick up most of the tab. Vote no -- and chance sinking a once-in-a-generation chance for a Second Avenue Subway and other vital transit projects.

Where They Stand

Firmly in the Yes column are Hillary Clinton and Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields. Writing in the Daily News, Fields says: For years, city civic and political leaders have decried the state's dwindling commitment to mass transit in the metropolitan area. This bond issue represents a chance to set things right and to make the transit improvements our region needs to stay competitive in the 21st century.

It's an opportunity we can't afford to pass up.

Other key players are supporting the bond act but with less enthusiasm. Governor Pataki has not thrown his full weight behind the proposal, something many consider essential to passage given the fact that 6 of 11 previous ballot measures for general obligation borrowing have been defeated over the past two decades. Mayor Giuliani recently endorsed the bond act, but his support is tepid. State Comptroller Carl McCall calls the transportation improvements essential but would prefer less borrowing. Worried about likely fare hikes, the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign criticized funding for the balance of the MTA capital program and calls on Albany to provide more state aid to transportation.

The most vocal opponent has been the conservative group, Change New York, which generally opposes debt spending.

Curiously, other key players have not taken a position. This group includes Rick Lazio.

Is it a surprise that a major ballot proposition for transportation improvements gets so little attention? Perhaps not when transportation ranks only #6 on New York City residents' lists of concerns, according to a survey just released by the City Council. Transportation is below education, crime, housing, jobs and poverty. It does beat out #7 - "nothing -- no concerns."

Bruce Schaller is Principal of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis to government, business and non-profit groups seeking to identify and meet customer needs in the transportation sector. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.

NEW YORK — Almost without fail, when a big storm hits the city, the power is knocked out somewhere. With Superstorm Sandy, it was much worse.

The day after the storm on Oct. 29, 2012, nearly 2 million resident were without electricity, with all of lower Manhattan south from 39th Street darkened along with large communities in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Wind or falling trees or limbs took down about 140 miles of cable. A record storm surge inundated substations and underground equipment.  

In an effort to respond to the tremendous toll on the electrical system caused by the storm, the City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to explore moving vulnerable overhead power lines underground.

Councilman Leroy Comrie, deputy majority leader and a sponsor of the legislation, said in remarks before the vote that the greatest impact of any study would be on the outer boroughs where most overhead power lines are located. "When we have a storm or ice storm or wind or heavy rain, we are losing power in our communities," he said.

The bill would require the city's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability to gather data from public utilities and analyze it for outage patterns; determine the estimated cost of moving power lines underground; and recommend neighborhoods that would not be good candidates for moving power lines underground.

Consolidated Edison, the utility that operates much of the city's electrical infrastructure, is exploring its options for dealing with the problem of overhead wires.

At a Jan. 18 Council hearing on emergency planning and management during the storm, John Miksad, a senior vice president of electrical operations at Con Ed, said the utility was "looking at selective hardening," saying that the utility had looked at burying overhead lines in the past but that "it is very pricey."

"But we think perhaps targeted undergrounding may be something that is appropriate," he said in his prepared testimony. "We're also looking at other system designs, with different polls, different connectors, different wire that would be more storm resilient."

The director of the Office of Long-Term Planning, Sergej Mahnovski, has also underscored that underground wires may be part of the solution — but certainly not the only one — to improving the resiliency of the electrical system.

"Underground networks have their own weaknesses, including vulnerability to flooding and salt deposition in coastal areas," Mahnovski said in prepared testimony dated Jan. 18. "Underground feeders are also more subject to overheating under peak summer conditions."

Since power outages have been the bane of urban communities for so long, the debate surrounding burying power lines underground is long and rich and has largely focused on the high cost of doing so. So while Superstorm Sandy may have exposed the fragility of the city's electrical system in a much larger scope, there was little surprise in it.

ALBANY, N.Y. — It’s been almost eight years in the making. Four governors have been in office since the planning officially got underway. The state has spent $12 million so far and allocated $75 million to it. The total cost is estimated to be around $220 million. But so far all there is to show for it is an empty parking lot in downtown Albany next to a Greyhound bus station that time forgot.

And that is likely all the New York State Convention Center is ever going to amount to because funding is expected to be zeroed out this year. Facing a looming $1 billion deficit that is expected to grow thanks to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, the state is likely to have more immediate concerns in the coming years. A convention center in Albany seems like a luxury when compared to the reconstruction and storm preparation needed in the five boroughs.

For the state to move forward on the convention center, it would have to commit to giving the remaining cash initially allocated for the project and to paying up to $9 million a year in rent to the authority. If, as it seems, the state cuts its funding for the project, then the saga of the convention center will become an example of how political patronage and state spending from the governor on down to the Assembly and Albany's mayor, can intersect and lead quite simply to waste. If somehow it becomes more than an empty lot, critics will still openly wonder why the state got itself into the convention center business — in Albany of all places.

Convention Authority Chair Gavin Donohue says Albany is a “capital of a state of 19 million people” that lacks,“a proper place to gather and do business.” Albany, meanwhile, is a city of around 97,000 people and over 700 abandoned buildings. Nevertheless, Donohue said he expects the center to boost the local economy and create jobs as well as be a convenient place for people with business in front of the Legislature to convene.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny, who also serves on the convention center board, said he believes the center will be funded.

“I expect to find an item for $75 million," he said. "The money has been there for several years. If it was zeroed out, if the item wasn’t there in the governor’s budget then it’s all over. Forget it. It would mean the governor is taking no ownership of it. I wouldn’t wait. I would resign from the board. But if the allocation is there, there is still hope.”

Cuomo failed to mention the Albany convention center in his State of the State speech this year when he debuted his plan for a privately funded convention center in Queens. At the time, Donohue told The Business Review he was “disappointed” by the omission.

When asked about funding for the convention center by the Times Union this October, Cuomo said he would defer to the area’s Economic Development Council. Cuomo created 10 of these councils last year. He said any discussion over cutting funding to the project would be made in consultation with the EDC. "You wouldn’t want the state to be funding a project they don’t believe in," he said.

Donohue says the convention center is totally separate from the EDC. “This is a unique thing. We have a separate funding source, separate funding in the budget," he said. "We were listed in their report but there is a pre-existing statute. If we were asking for money (from the EDC) and got turned down then I would be worried.”

Cuomo will set his budget priorities in his State of the State address in January, and won't unveil his budget until later.

ALBANY'S SAVIOR OR WHITE ELEPHANT?

It’s been called everything from Albany’s savior to a “white elephant” and a cash sink. It was Gov. George Pataki who first allocated $75 million for the project and it was Gov. David Paterson who released $10,000 to be spent on acquiring land in downtown Albany where the convention center would be built.

The convention center has it’s own authority made up of seven distinguished Albany residents. The Authority takes in more than $1 million a year from an Albany hotel tax.  It has two staff members — one who earns $118,890 a year and another who earns $77,626. Both employees are eligible for state pension benefits.

Critics, including a number of Albany Council members, have pointed out that Albany already has a convention center — it just so happens to be part of the Empire State Plaza (the megalith of urban design overseen by Gov. John Rockefeller that uprooted Albany communities and placed a gigantic concrete mall, concourse, state office buildings and underground system in the middle of the city’s downtown). But supporters of the new convention center insist that the existing convention center isn’t big enough to attract the kinds of conventions that would boost the city.

Critics like Albany Councilman Dominick Calsolaro have also noted that convention centers have historically been drags on local economies, have depressed business for existing hotels in the area, struggled to draw visitors and to pay for costs of operation. Those kind of results were achieved in cities like Boston, Chicago, Columbus Ohio, Dallas, Austin and Minneapolis — cities with a higher profile than Albany.

In fact, convention centers have been popping up and expanding across the country and competing for the same convention business. “Why did Minneapolis struggle to hit projected targets after it enlarged its convention center in 2002?” wrote Steven Malanga in for the Wall Street Journal in a December 2011 article titled “Have We Got a Convention Center to Sell You!”

"Other cities expanded right along with us,'' Minneapolis's convention center director, Jeff Johnson told the newspaper.

A study by Heywood T. Sanders of The University of Texas at San Antonio, Called "Convention Myths and Markets: A Critical Review of Convention Center Feasibility Studies" found that feasibility studies are bent to suit each individual market — with the outcome always being a recommendation to build or expand.

“This article reviews studies for more than 30 cities and demonstrates that they have been consistently flawed and misleading,” reads the description of the study. “Some analyses argue that successful convention centers need to expand to remain competitive. Others conclude that failing centers need to add space to succeed. Studies repeat the same positive findings verbatim from one city to another and fail to account for contradictory data. These market and feasibility studies thus offer no real basis for public investment and serve to bias public decision making and choice.”

GETTING INTO THE CONVENTION CENTER BUSINESS

So how did the state get involved in the convention center business? The long version is fairly complicated but the short version is two words: political patronage.

Gov. George Pataki set aside the cash for the convention center after die-hard lobbying by Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings who actually defied his party and endorsed Pataki in the 2002 election.

Jennings was a friend of now Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the convention center project has been called the baby of the 20-year mayor. He began talking about the project in 1997.

But it wasn’t just Jennings' connections to Pataki that made things move for the plan — Jennings got the money allocated — it took the power of the influential Assembly to get the money moving. Albany Assemblymen Ron Canestrari and Jack McEneny were both instrumental in getting the funding for the center during tough financial times.

Jennings and McEneny have touted the project as a way to revitalize Albany and insisted that the project would create construction jobs, service jobs and draw tourists in to the economically depressed city.

It was Gov. David Paterson who gave the project $10 million out of the allocated $75 million in 2008 — a year when the economy was collapsing and the state was digging itself out of a $15.4 billion deficit.

Canestrari and McEneny are influential people. Canestrari is Assembly Majority leader and McEneny is a member of LATFOR, the state redistricting commission. Both are senior members of the Assembly and important allies of Speaker Sheldon Silver. But that is coming to an end. Both members are retiring this year. Their retirement likely has a lot to do with why funding for the project seems to be in jeopardy.

WHAT FUTURE FOR THE CONVENTION CENTER?

Even Albany’s mayor has backed off on the project. At a meeting of the convention center authority in October, Jennings began publicly backing off the idea that the state would foot the bill for the entire convention center. "It's unrealistic for us to think that the state is going to free up a quarter of a billion dollars," Jennings was quoted as saying by the Albany Times Union.

Some observers believe that Jennings has read the political tea leaves. His friend Cuomo has advocated building a convention center in Queens, but private gambling interests would pay it for. Others say that Jennings has financial concerns of his own, since Albany’s budget is becoming hard to manage and he would rather have Cuomo increase aid for municipality funding rather than sink any cash into the convention center.

Calsolaro, who has consistently advocated the state to fund alternative economic development plans for the city, says he is sad to see the money go to waste. “The convention center has basically become a property management company over the last couple of years. They are overseeing closed parking lots and twiddling their thumbs," he said. "It has been seven years and they haven’t even put a shovel in the ground. It’s the longest running public works project where no construction has actually taken place.” The councilman would favor investment in rehabbilitating Albany’s hundreds of abandoned buildings or other economic initiatives for the city.

Donohue said the expects to see funding in the budget and plans to continue acquiring needed land for the project and perhaps invest in expanding existing sewer and electric lines in the area. He acknowledges that Cuomo may have bigger budget concerns.

“You always have to be concerned about that," he said. "The governor has a problem that is a big dollar problem and it is important but Albany is also important and I don’t think that has changed for the governor.”

Of course, if it seems the state is overwhelmed by the price tag, it could be revamped. The project has already undergone a number of revisions. The plans have been truncated over the past 7 years as development slowly moves forward. It could be that the convention center will live on in some form no matter what kind of funding the state decides to commit this year.

STATEN ISLAND — Exactly nine days after Superstorm Sandy devastated Staten Island, leaving 19 dead and hundreds without homes, about 150 Islanders made their way to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center to attend a meeting sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. 

The topic for the evening was not the EDC’s disaster recovery programs, bolstering the coastline to prevent future storm surges or potential dangers from the dozens of contaminated sites that line the North Shore and that were flooded during the storm.

Rather, the meeting that night centered on a new plan to build the world’s largest Ferris wheel on the St. George waterfront. Known as the New York Wheel, the ride will sit between the ferry terminal and the baseball stadium — in both areas that could flood during 100 and 500-year storms. Approximately, 1.5 miles north, Superstorm Sandy’s fierce waves washed a 712-ton oil tanker ashore.

The wheel is set to rise 84 feet higher than the Singapore Flyer, currently the title-holder for world’s largest Ferris wheel and will be accompanied by a 340,000-square-foot designer outlet retail complex and a 130,000-square-foot hotel.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the mega-project this September, saying it will bring much-needed economic development to the struggling North Shore of the island, which in 2010 had poverty rates 58 percent and unemployment rates 13 percent higher than in the rest of Staten Island.

Although a handful of residents, small business owners and union members at the Nov. 13 meeting on the development welcomed its promises of jobs and investment, more commonly, residents’ two-minute testimonies included adjectives like “insulting,” “outrageous” and “insensitive.”

"Part of our island was just devastated in the floodplains. And this is actually going to be built in the floodplain,” said local resident Stephanie Woodard. She called the structures “enormous, vulnerable.”

Officials with the company that will raise the New York Wheel assured meeting-goers that the structure would be designed to withstand 300-mile per hour winds and surges from storms as super-sized as those created by Sandy.

The rest of the complex, meanwhile, will be built to at least silver LEED certification and could actually help prevent damage from such storms, according to the company’s website. Furthermore,  the buildings will “include almost five acres of green roof” and a water capture system to absorb rainwater and release it on a controlled basis into the harbor, according to the site. “It is safe to say that our project significantly protects what is now an exposed and relatively old retaining wall at Richmond Terrace.”

However, Nancy Rooney, a nurse who attended the Nov. 13 meeting commented, "I think the timing is poor and we need to reconsider our priorities on this Island."

City Councilwoman Debi Rose, who said she “generally supports” the project, prefaced the meeting by stating that it “should have been postponed” in light of the fact that “Staten Island was ground zero for Hurricane Sandy.”

If the juxtaposition of the two events seems contradictory, closer observation of various land use plans and projects reveals that the New York Wheel tops a long line of seemingly contradictory development initiatives on the North Shore.

This 5-mile stretch of waterfront currently houses approximately 21 sites that are contaminated by previous or existing industrial development. All of them sit less than 70 feet from homes and along the shores of the Kill Van Kull, a tidal straight that is also part of the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site, the most costly cleanup ever undertaken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Long before Sandy hit, local activists were practically begging city officials, through emails, testimonies and public meetings, to better consider the effects of rising sea levels and climate change on the area. Beryl Thurman, president of the North Shore Waterfront Conservancy of Staten Island, has raised concerns about the city’s inattention to climate change, sea level rise and storm surges so often that some colleagues refer to her as “Chicken Little.”

Now that Chicken Little’s sky has actually fallen, will the Bloomberg administration proceed with the proliferation of development projects set to punctuate its end? Or will Sandy signal the start of a more systematized and careful approach to development that takes seriously toxic legacies on the North Shore and the effects of climate change? Events on the North Shore over the past two weeks indicate that Sandy’s alarm bells are growing faint indeed.

Mixed Use and Then Some…

The North Shore has always been a “mixed use” neighborhood. During the industrial revolution, Staten Island's waterways became integral to the city's growing economy, and industries multiplied along the North Shore, which was already the borough’s most populous area. Although 1961 zoning laws required that new residences be protected from certain kinds of industries, the city did not require that existing industries build buffers between their operations and homes.

Today, thanks to its industrial past and present, the North Shore hosts three federal Superfund sites, 15 state Superfund sites, an over-capacity sewer treatment plant, an industrial salt plant and other chemical-using businesses like a furniture reupholstering company, home heating oil company and auto body shops. The North Shore is also home to one of the East Coast’s busiest ports, and hundreds of ships and diesel trucks visit the neighborhood daily.

In the wake of Sandy, local activists are calling for the city, state and federal government to answer their questions about whether — and to what degree — those contaminants were distributed by flood waters.
In an email to city officials, Victoria Gillen, president of Elm Park Civic Association and the North Shore Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, wrote, “The bigger question is WILL THERE BE TESTING? People often live right next to these operations ... Can we get some GENUINE responses regarding our toxic sites on Staten Island? … Were we and our families and businesses, exposed to toxins?”

One of Gillen’s major concerns is a former linseed oil manufacturing plant owned by Archer Daniels Midland, or ADM. From 1939 to 1942, ADM agreed to use a portion of their property on Staten Island to store 1,200 tons of high-grade uranium ore en route from the Belgian Congo to be used in building the atomic bomb. However, at some point (either during initial delivery or eventual shipment), uranium spilled on the waterfront property, leaving levels of radium and uranium contamination nearly 10 times higher than allowable standards in some places.

Seventy years later, in 2010, the EPA announced that the US Army Corps of Engineers would assess and clean the site, now referred to as the “Richmond Terrace Radiological Site.” Currently remediation is set to begin in 2014.  

Last month, Sandy’s waters inundated site, according to neighboring residents. In a post-Sandy statement, the EPA states that it does not “believe that any [of its short-term removal or long-term remedial] sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities.” But some Staten Islanders remain highly concerned that future storms could unsettle and distribute radioactive contaminants from the site.

Local residents are now calling for the city to halt the development of approximately 89 two-family homes across the street from the radiological site. The houses will be in an “A” zone,  subject to a 100-year flood. Not only are residents worried that chemicals about the flooding, they say they are also concerned that the site may be located on a former wetland.  

At a Staten Island Community Board 1 Local Area Committee meeting last Tuesday, November 21st, Dan Walsh of the Office of Environmental Remediation maintained that the site is not in a known wetland. The site is likely to undergo additional environmental review, however, considering that it is in a flood area close to known environmental hazards.

Seven blocks west, a second property faces similar controversies —  a self-storage facility where high levels of chemical compounds were recently found in vapor samples. The owners of the site have enrolled the facility in the New York City Brownfield Cleanup Program. Partial remediation to mitigate is set to begin next year. But, local activists claim that it, too, is located in a historic wetland and is likely to flood often.

For Thurman, plans to partially remediate chemicals at the site are inadequate because they do not address enough of its contaminants and do not “deal with the possibilities of sea level rising, storm surges and flooding conditions.”

During Sandy, all of the units on the first floor of the storage facility flooded, and customers suffered significant losses.

Joelle Morrison of Stapleton and her husband were storing belongings at the facility temporarily as they prepared to move into a new house. “About 20 percent [of our belongings] are left,” she said. “And it all has to be cleaned… It smells terrible. There were sewage plants nearby and God knows what else.”

Even further west, the EDC is partnering with the New York Container terminal to expand the site to include a 50-foot-deep container ship berth. That berth site, which includes two city-owned parcels, extends into approximately 16.38 acres of tidal wetlands that will require filling or dredging.

The expansion coincides with the raising of the Bayonne Bridge to accommodate so-called “post-panamax ships,” or massive supertankers that will soon be coming through the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, recent studies find that regularly sized container ships can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing material chemicals as up to 50 million cars.

The EDC is currently preparing an environmental impact statement that it says will address the project’s impact on existing wetlands and other environmental implications, including air pollution from mobile sources such as cargo ships.

Sustainability Schizophrenia

Certainly, in dense urban spaces, especially industrial areas, competition between environmental, economic and other priorities is always fierce.

In a planning document entitled “The North Shore 2030,” the EDC outlines an ambitions set of goals for the 5-mile stretch of land: “Create and retain jobs in the active maritime industry; protect environmentally sensitive areas; enhance historic residential and commercial neighborhoods; provide greater public access to current and future recreational areas.”

The plan also notes that the area needs infrastructure improvements, including better stormwater drainage, sanitary sewers and traffic/road conditions.

Since the publication of the plan a year ago, industrial priorities emerge as clearly winning the race to the top of the EDC’s agenda. In particular, development practices support local activists’ claims that the current administration is paying insufficient attention to dangers from both climate change and environmental contaminants.

This past summer, the EDC announced its intent to designate portions of the North Shore as a new “Industrial Business Zone” or area “of land already used by the industrial sector that will be preserved for industrial purposes (as opposed to commercial and residential development).” Companies within these IBZs, or companies that relocate to them, are eligible for tax credits, enhanced sanitation services and employee training programs.

North Shore residents, however, were incensed to hear that their neighborhood might host more industries. “Bottom line: the areas with people of color, people without tremendous economic resources, are paying the price for Bloomberg's projects — while our taxes support these changes, we do not share in the benefits, and find ourselves, here on Staten Island, once again a dumping ground for the city's unwanted garbage,” wrote Gillen in a response to an editorial in Architect’s Newspaper.    

Also this summer, the Department of City Planning launched a new partnership with the Northfield Local Development Corporation on a state-funded “Brownfield Opportunity Area,” or BOA, grant to create a strategic plan for part of that same area. The BOA website states that project goals include “supporting new retail services and jobs, strengthening the working waterfront and providing needed amenities including open space and waterfront access." Importantly, the BOA is intended to “restore environmental quality to areas affected by industrial contaminants.”

But the areas designated for the BOA and the IBZ overlap. Thus, redevelopment stemming from the BOA will also have to comply with the IBZ, meaning redevelopment will have to prioritize industrial properties. The degree to which those types of properties will achieve the goal of restoring “environmental quality” to the area remains questionable.

As Thurman said, “We also don't want more industrial/manufacturing, which is going to poison us with contaminants and pollutants while being condoned by our officials … as something that is being done for the greater good.”

In other IBZs, the EDC has emphasized the need for bringing in industries that promote “environmentally friendly and efficient practices.” However, the EDC has provided no further details about whether it will seek such businesses on the North Shore, or what they would look like.

Taken together, the various plans and projects — the IBZ, the Container Terminal, the New York Wheel, the residential developments — promise to deliver more of what the North Shore already has.
Before development brings more business, more residents, more shoppers and more workers to the North Shore, residents want to know whether the city can first make the waterfront safer and more stable for those living and working there now.

“We need to bolster whatever efforts that are being made to prevent climate change issues from further damaging the shore line leading back to the residential communities,” Thurman said. “Nothing should be going on that waterfront unless they have a workable solution to combat climate change. Clearly we can do better than what we are doing, which amounts to continually shooting ourselves in the foot with poor choices.”

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Melissa Checker is associate professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, and of Anthropology and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Images of New York Wheel, Staten Island development courtesy of the mayor's office and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

NEW YORK — The $1 billion Barclays Center — the frog-like stadium that is the centerpiece of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn — opened last Friday with a mega-concert from Jay-Z, protests and some surprisingly enthusiastic reviews.

But it wasn’t long ago that it was the most debated construction site in the city, with residents in the footprint of the big development fighting to stop it with lawsuits and the developer trying to mollify the discontent with so-far unmet promises of new housing, jobs and economic revitalization.

Gotham Gazette has been reporting on the development over the past several years, looking at the use of eminent domain, the environmental review process and open space.

Here are a few highlights from the archives:

Eminent Domain Changes Seek to Limit State's Power to Seize Property

When Henry Weinstein bought a commercial building at 752 Pacific St. in Brooklyn 1985 he never expected that 20 years later the government would want to take it away and give it to a developer. Weinstein said that he would be shocked if his land was being taken for a hospital, a bridge or a library. But seeing it seized to make way for Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project shakes his faith in the government. "This is the most un-American thing I have ever experienced," he said. By David Howard King. February 04, 2010.

Atlantic Yards and the Sustainability Test

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long-term sustainability plan, (PlaNYC2030), is aimed at stemming global warming and promoting energy efficiency by concentrating new construction near transit hubs and using green building technology. At the same time, the mayor proposes to reduce traffic in densely developed areas with congestion pricing, to encourage bicycling, and to build new public open spaces in every neighborhood. Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn claims to do all of these things – along with providing thousands of new apartments and jobs and bringing a major league sports team, the NBA Nets, to Brooklyn. By Tom Angotti. June 2007.

Open Space in the Atlantic Yards Development

"A Garden of Eden grows in Brooklyn," announced the glossy brochure Brooklyn residents received in their mailboxes promoting the controversial Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. The brochure borrowed the words of former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp to promote developer Bruce Ratner's publicly subsidized mega-development slated to rise at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. In addition to building a Frank Gehry-designed basketball arena to bring the Nets to Brooklyn and 16 high-rises with up to 6,800 units of housing, the project promised open space and recreation for area with a severe shortage of parkland. By Anne Schwartz. August 2006.

Atlantic Yards: Through The Looking Glass

The Atlantic Yards story in Brooklyn is becoming a bit like the tale of Alice in Wonderland. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, everything appears backwards, Alice is caught up in a giant chess game of powerful players over which she has no control, and the characters she meets talk nonsense. By Tom Angotti. November 2005.

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Image taken from Flickr user Blue387, used under Creative Commons license.

NEW YORK – An expansion plan by New York University that will transform the historic neighborhood of Greenwich Village with nearly two million square feet of additional space, mostly for students and research, has been approved by the City Council.

The 44-to-1 vote on the NYU plan was the most notable – and contentious – decision by the Council at yesterday's stated meeting.

Lawmakers also approved a bill that sponsors said would bring greater transparency to affordable housing developments paid for by the city and another measure that makes nearly 200 revisions to the plumbing code.

Opponents of the NYU expansion immediately decried the Council's approval of the plan, calling it an insult to the community.

Two of the main groups opposing it -- representing historic preservationists and the other faculty -- have hired an international law firm specializing in land use.

Council members said they had listened to residents and had worked with NYU to trim the size of the plan so that the low-rise nature of the Village would be protected while giving the school room to grow.

“I think this plan appropriately balances the need of an important university to grow and expand — which is good for our city — with the historic neighborhood it’s in," said Council Speaker Christine Quinn before yesterday's stated meeting.

Councilman Charles Barron was the only member to vote against the plan.

Margaret Chin, the councilwoman who represents the neighborhood, said the plan had been substantially modified since it was first proposed by NYU. She emphasized that it was 26 percent smaller than in its initial form.

She said that mechanisms would be created as part of the plan to make sure that NYU is held accountable during the construction. She also said access to open space had been preserved.

"We addressed a lot of the concern that was raised by the community board," she said.

But Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said the plan did not address the main concerns of the community that included affordable housing and the give-away of public land to the university.  

"This was really a slap in the face to the thousands of people who, I think in good faith really engaged with the process in the hopes that their concerns were heard. But they were clearly not," said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

NYU President John Sexton said in a statement that the school was "very pleased" about the Council's vote.

He said the plan would create construction jobs and generate economic activity through increased research capacity for the university.

“This plan benefits not only NYU’s students and faculty," he said in the statement. "In very real and tangible ways, it benefits New York City."

There was little surprise to the approval by the Council, which had been expected since an influential committee weighed had given it the go-ahead last Tuesday.

The 20-year construction plan is expected to begin in 2014.

Photo by Camillo Miller

NEW YORK – Disappointed but not surprised – that was the refrain from groups opposed to the expansion of New York University's Manhattan campus after an influential committee voted to recommend a modified version of the plan 19-1 earlier today.

Members of the groups said they were weighing their options in their struggle to hold-up the expansion – including by turning to the courts – and even proposed an alternate plan that they said would be more environmentally friendly.

The City Council is expected to follow the land use committee's recommendation and approve the measure that would allow the university to expand by 2.45 million square feet in Greenwich Village.

The decisive vote in the land use committee came when the Village's representative, Councilwoman Margaret Chin, spoke in favor of the modifications negotiated between a sub-committee and school officials.

Chin said the changes took into consideration the most pressing of the community's concerns.  

“Last month I didn't support the plan as presented,” she said. “But this new proposal strikes an appropriate balance. There were major modifications and significant concessions, and though not everyone gets what they want, it's a compromise.”

By comparison, Patrick Deer, an associate professor of English at NYU and a key member of NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, called the changes “cosmetic" (The name of the group is in reference to NYU president John Sexton).

Groups opposed to the measure said the committee and its members had failed to uphold their responsibilities to constituents.

“Too many on the council abdicate responsibility by saying they'll do whatever the council person who comes from the district calls for,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “But they're elected to govern the entire city, not just part of it.”

Under the new plan, there will be a 21.6 percent reduction in density from the original application, with over half of that coming from two buildings: one at Washington Square Village, where density would be reduced "below grade"; and the proposed building at Mercer Street, where density would be "above grade."

The Washington Square Village would be reduced by 185,000 square feet – from 770,000 square feet to 585,000 square feet – while the Mercer Street building would be reduced from 250,000 square feet to 69,000 square feet.

The university will also set aside $150,000 of funding as a good faith measure to demonstrate their commitment to upkeep of open spaces in the expansion area, a key component that they say ensures the university will be able to pay if they go into default.

According to Lynn Brown, the senior vice president of NYU, the proposal was a win-win for the city and the school, and would add to the "fabric of the neighborhood and contribute to New York City's economic viability.”

The modified plans include a change in the height of some of the buildings, addressing concerns about blocking light and views – in particular, the building on the corner of Mercer Street and Bleecker Street will be lessened from 168-feet in height to 85-feet, which Chin applauded as a needed change.

The difference was demonstrated via two different images projected onto a screen that juxtaposed the sizes of the buildings. The images drew jeers from a frustrated crowd of anti-expansion advocates who wielded signs and used Occupy Wall Street hand signals to voice their opinion of what each speaker was saying.

Brown insisted the compromise “met the goals of addressing the community's needs,” calling the plan substantially different than the plan that was fought over in late June.

The lone dissenting vote came from Councilman Charles Barron, who encouraged his fellow land use committee members to “have the courage to vote no” on the proposal, which he argued failed to address a book-size list of complaints and concerns issued by the expansion's opposition.

“Did you read through all of the community's concerns?” he asked. “Because your presentation does not address any of them.”

These concerns, he said, stem from the air, water, and noise pollution that will come from the 20 years of construction that the expansion will take. “We need to listen to what the people who live in the neighborhood want and then send this back to the drawing board.”

While some other council members cited similar concerns – not to mention NYU's failure to act like a “good neighbor” in the past – they deferred to Chin, applauding her “hard work” in negotiating the compromise.

Even though she voted in favor of the changes, Councilwoman Inez Dickens had said Chin's reference to the “good faith” agreement with NYU regarding the neighborhood's concerns was insufficient.

“When we vote on this at the Council meeting next week, I want to see teeth in the enforcement,” Dickens said of NYU's responsibilities to maintain open space and work toward cleaner construction standards.

Ultimately, however, she said she would vote for the measure because “the area residents need those jobs.”

At least 25 percent of construction work must come locally from the area, the agreement mandates.

Meg Rooney, a graduate alumna actively involved with anti-expansion group that includes faculty, said they were committed to continuing the fight. But how exactly they would proceed was not yet clear, she said.

“There are a number of options,” she said, noting legal action was being considered.

Because of the number of faculty opposing the measure – over 40 departments have voted against the move – there has also been talk of a no-confidence vote in Sexton.  

Alicia Hurley, another vice-president at NYU who attended Tuesday's meeting, said more faculty supported the measure than opposed it.

Despite the number of departments opposed to the move, which include Stern Business School and the Economics department, the university has 170 departments.

Earlier that day, the faculty group had presented their own plan on the steps of City Hall just hours before the land use committee was scheduled to meet.

Called "Room for Everyone: NYU Faculty's Green Alternative to 2031," Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media, culture and communication, said it was a “green” plan in the “true sense of the word, unlike the "“green-washing” of the university's plan.

The proposal called for the re-purposing of space already owned by NYU that they said was either under- or inappropriately used.

The group pointed to administration buildings that could be moved out of the “core” of buildings in Greenwich Village, as one example, and a cafe that opened up in a school-owned building. This, added Deer, would accomplish the goal of expanding academic use of the available space.

The group of professors said that by NYU's own admission only 18 percent of the proposed buildings to be constructed in the next 10 years would go towards academic purposes, thereby undercutting the necessity of the expansion.

The remaining 82 percent would be for other uses, like a gym exclusively for student-athletes, a move that would allow the school to retain its NCAA credentials, as well as further administrative uses. More housing is also planned, but opponents questioned why it was required to be so close to campus.

The group also suggested the cost of the plan could well bankrupt the university. Most troubling, said Miller, was the lack of a business model explaining how the project would be paid for.

Although there is no definitive figure, NYU officials suggest the project will cost between $3 and $4 billion. Currently, NYU's endowment is at $2.83 billion, according to the faculty group.

NYU's Brown said the expansion plan is “essential” for the university to remain competitive.

She also said that concerns over funding were equally misplaced, adding that the university had successfully raised $3 billion in a fundraiser 4 years ago, an amount she is confident the school can easily exceed.

She also countered that NYU had built out at a rate of 200,000 to 300,000 square-feet per year over the past few years, and that the expansion plan would be consistent with that.

“We have some of the biggest real estate people on our board,” she continued. “They wouldn't let a project go forward if we couldn't pay for it.”

The university will provide “at least 7,500 square feet of the new Zipper building ground-floor space” to community use and a public atrium, according to information provided at yesterday's meeting.

An additional 6,000 square feet of “existing space for community use” will also be made available, they said.

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Matt Hunger, a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist, writes on everything from municipal issues to the arts and sports. He can be reached at matt.hunger(at)gmail.com. 

ALBANY, N.Y. – A nearly 60-year-old New York City program designed to help landlords improve conditions for tenants in hardscrabble living conditions has strayed so far from its original purpose that owners commonly use it to fix up co-ops and condos, says a report released earlier today. 

The J-51 program has become one of the city's most expensive incentives, costing $256 million in 2011, according to the report by the Community Service Society of New York, a 165-year-old group that does advocacy and research to address poverty. 

Even as the cost of the program increased 50 percent from 2001 to 2011, the number of apartments improved under the project only increased by 7 percent, the report said. And the apartments being improved aren't are all broken down hovels--some of them are luxury apartments. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is expected to introduce a bill in the state Legislature today that would renew the program, which expired at the end of last year, with some changes that could possibly restrict the use of the abatement for condos and apartments. The administration did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, said the group believes the policy continues to be useful to rental housing. 

“Given the very high level of real estate taxes, the program provides incentives to work to get the tax burden down," he said, adding that with the city's support he expected the bill to pass in Albany.  

Hilary Klein, lead organizer with the community-based organization Make the Road New York, said the city is giving tax breaks to landlords who make unnecessary improvements just to drive up the cost of their apartments.

“In spite of the original intentions behind it, J-51 functioned as a giveaway for landlords. It is enabling gentrification and displacement,” Klein said. “Our overall perspective is that it should not be renewed and that the resources would be used better elsewhere for other types of housing enforcement."  

“J-51 is helping to subsidize high-end, luxury apartments in places like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant that are obscenely unaffordable for the low and moderate-income New Yorkers,” said David R. Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society, in a statement. “It’s time to overhaul J-51 so that eligible property owners who receive tax exemptions and abatements are actually making improvements to affordable housing stock that otherwise would not occur.”

The abatement applies to buildings with a total of 709,000 apartments. Over a third of "dwelling units” in the city fall under the program, so a great deal of New Yorkers have been touched by the program in some way. 

But, according to the report's authors, the program has grown unwieldy and amorphous. Owners who convert apartments into coops and condos qualify for the benefit for three years after conversions are finished.

In fact, no one had to apply to make improvements under the abatement, the report said. Owners whose property met the qualifications were simply due the write-off regardless of whether they would have made the improvements themselves. 

The expiration of the abatement has set off a bit of a showdown between real estate and tenant groups. The latter want to see the abatement renewed without any changes, while some tenant groups want to see the abatement altered and used as a bargaining chip in Albany to get concessions on rent legislation they prefer. Still other tenant advocates would simply like to see the abatement expire.

Thomas Waters, a housing policy analyst at CSS who co-authored the report, says the city’s housing situation has changed dramatically since the abatement was created and amended.

The program was created in 1955 with the aim of converting coldwater tenements -- flats featuring a sink with only cold water -- into more modern apartments. 

In signing the program into law, Mayor Robert Wagner described J-51 as being designed “to encourage improvement of substandard dwellings and in a way to aid in providing decent living quarters for those who are unfortunate enough to be obliged to live in substandard housing built many years ago and lacking the ordinary decencies and comforts of modern dwellings.” 

The J-51 program works in three ways. First, owners who make eligible improvements to existing buildings qualify for exemptions and pay a reduced property tax. That amount is based on the value of the building before the improvements for 10 years and after that the new value is phased in over four years. Second, some owners receive abatements that reduce the overall amount of property tax they pay until almost all of what they spent on improvements has been reimbursed to them over a number of years. 

Some owners can actually qualify for both an exemption and an abatement depending on the kind of improvements they make. 

Government-assisted buildings and formerly city-owned buildings get 34-year tax abatements. 

Waters says he thinks the program needs to be refocused, but said that after undertaking his study “it is hard to say what J-51 does.”