On a sunny Thursday afternoon, Mike Kim is sitting at the front table
of Duffield Street Seafood, reading a Bible and greeting long-time customers,
who flock to his shop just off Fulton Mall for plates of hot fish and
chips.
With the sound of crackling oil in the background, and the smell of tartar
sauce thick in the air, Kim explains to a visiting attorney that he’s
had his business in the area for more than 17 years.
Kim is one of many Asian-American merchants in Downtown Brooklyn to whom
a pair of Manhattan attorneys are offering legal assistance.
With a massive rezoning plan — which would court soaring new office
and residential towers in a 60-block swath of downtown — currently
under city review, many local businesses fear they will be priced out
or their properties condemned to make way for future development.
Francis Hseuh, an attorney in his early 30s who recently left a corporate
firm to open a private practice in Chinatown, is trying to educate the
roughly 50 Asian-American merchants in the area about what could happen
to their livelihoods if the Downtown Brooklyn Plan is approved.
The Brooklyn Law School graduate, who has also worked with the Asian American
Legal Defense Fund, has been following the plan with a watchful eye.
“It seemed like there was no response from Asian owners,” said
Hseuh.
“Generally, in Asian countries, people are used to governments being
more authoritarian. Whatever comes down from above, that is what we’re
supposed to do. There isn’t this same notion of let’s try to
get input from the community and then reach consensus,” he said.
Part of the challenge is convincing people that there’s a way to
fight the plan, said Hseuh.
For the downtown effort, the Chinese-American lawyer has teamed up with
Austin Kyongwon So, a Korean-American attorney, to reach out to the two
predominant Asian ethnic groups among business owners in the area. They
are offering their services to the merchants for free.
The plan provides for the construction of at least 6.7 million square
feet of office space, 1 million square feet of retail, 1,000 units of
housing and 2,500 parking spaces.
As part of the complex proposal, the city intends to use the power of
eminent domain to condemn seven acres of private property, including 130
residential units and 100 businesses.
Armed with fliers written in Chinese and a stack of newspaper clippings,
Hseuh walked in the Fulton Mall area last week distributing information
and encouraging business owners to attend the City Planning Commission’s
public hearing on the plan (in the Klitgord Auditorium at New York City
Technical College at 285 Jay St.) at 10 am on Wednesday, March 24.
Last Saturday, So, a corporate attorney and board member of the Korean
American League for Civic Action (KALCA) organized a meeting with 15 Korean-American
business owners along with local groups who are opposed to the plan.
“Most residents and business owners don’t seem to have been
adequately informed,” said So, who is also helping to organize an
association of merchants in the downtown area.
While KALCA has not taken an official stance on the Downtown Brooklyn
Plan, So says they are busy trying to educate owners and encourage them
to speak out at the public hearing.
Called for comment on the Asian-American effort, Michael Weiss, executive
director of the Metrotech Business Improvement District, which also operates
the Fulton Mall Improvement Association, said the city had notified any
merchants who would be affected by the plan.
And Michael Burke, executive director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council,
the group that helped devise the Downtown Plan, said his organization
had reached out to merchants in the area.
“In China, government will do something like condemn a factory, and
basically their decision is like a mandate from heaven,” said Hsueh.
“You can see that in peoples’ mindsets when government is announcing
they are going to do something, a feeling of, ‘Oh, of course they
can do it.”
Businesses owners who face condemnation will be offered assistance in
finding “suitable new commercial space in the area,” according
to Carol Abrams, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing, Preservation
and Development. In addition, she said,, they will be provided “moving
expenses, dislocation allowances and fixture awards.”
If the Downtown Plan is approved, Kim’s Duffield Street Seafood may
be among the first to go.
Just across the street, the city is planning to build Willoughby Square,
a 1.5-acre open space over an underground parking garage.
The surrounding blocks are designated as development sites for premiere
office space.
But Kim, who moved here from Korea 25 years ago, said he does not want
to relocate.
And neither do his customers.
“This place is like an institution,” said Roberto Doomful, who
works at the ASA Institute around the corner and grabs lunch at Duffield
Street Seafood almost every day.
Standing outside the shop, Hseuh took a look along Duffield Street and
said, “This project would not just affect the landscape, but thousands
of lives.”
