New York City will be changing dramatically over the next two decades
as developers take advantage of the up-zoning that is being completed
by the Bloomberg administration. Vast spaces throughout the city have
already been rezoned for increased development. The most visible being
the Hudson Yards in west Midtown Manhattan.
Rezoning will permit huge developments as of right. No more government
intervention. No more protests from nearby residents and businesses. No
more political grandstanding, pro or con. Nowhere is this more evident
than in and around Downtown Brooklyn where nearly 60 million square feet
of new development has been approved and where the folks who live and
work in the area await the massive Nets arena project under development
by Forest City Ratner.
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce reports it is monitoring more than 250
individual projects throughout Brooklyn totaling, perhaps, 75 million
square feet of new residential, commercial and retail space. While most
of these projects are small, most of the larger ones are concentrated
in the Downtown area.
Brooklyn is facing development double the size of the Hudson Yards, more
than seven times the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Yet, none of
the planning and public largess that has gone into those Manhattan projects
is evident in Brooklyn. The consequence is that the city is making no
commitment to providing the infrastructure to support tens millions of
square feet of new development.
The city argues that, while they have rezoned Brooklyn to accommodate
tens of millions of square feet of residential, commercial, institutional
and retail space, there is no guarantee that it will actually be developed.
So why spend billions of government dollars for infrastructure that won’t
be needed?
Others believe that if the development does materialize, we can then address
the infrastructure problem. The problem with this reasoning is that it
takes decades to develop, engineer, finance and build new infrastructure.
New development is market and cost driven. Although no one can guarantee
the market over the next 20 or 30 years, the city is making it so easy
for developers to build with re-zoning, tax abatements and eminent domain,
and Brooklyn was booming even without these incentives, there is every
likelihood close to full development will occur.
By sheer demographics, the market very likely is there. The region’s
planners are anticipating another 250,000 residents in Brooklyn over the
next 20 years, 125,000 more people seeking employment and another 123,000
jobs in Brooklyn and 500,000 more jobs in Manhattan. We will need more
housing in Brooklyn, a county starved for affordable housing; we will
need more office buildings and other places for new jobs to locate. The
demand for new development looks strong.
What is missing is the supporting infrastructure, and in particular, the
additional roadway capacity to accommodate another 200,000 auto trips,
the added subway service to accommodate another 400,000 subway trips,
the improved and expanded bus service to accommodate another 100,000 bus
riders.
The New York City Department of Transportation recently released a revealing
overview of transportation conditions in Downtown Brooklyn. It reports
that our subways are crowded during peak hours but have some capacity
in the shoulder hours (the hour before and after the peak hour), but that
our local roads are at capacity for the entirety of commuter periods and
that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is at capacity for much of the day,
spilling over onto local streets. It also reports that office space will
double to 22 million square feet, that more than a third of the people
who work in Downtown Brooklyn drive, most alone, and that this proportion
has been growing. It warns Brooklyn that any additional development will
be hard to accommodate without careful planning and accommodation.
The Department of Transportation should bring its candor to the city and
state agencies that are promoting development in Downtown Brooklyn and
come up with a commitment comparable to those for Manhattan’s World
Trade Center site and the Hudson Yards site. What they would find is that
Downtown Brooklyn needs about $5 billion in new infrastructure to accommodate
the development that has already been approved.
There are a number of things that can be done to improve travel into and
through Downtown Brooklyn. Governor Pataki supports a LIRR connection
from Lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport. He actually has $2 billion in
terrorist money dedicated to the overall $5 billion price tag for this
project, but this project is not cost effective without two additions
— connect the service to the Second Avenue Subway and provide four
stations in Downtown Brooklyn.
The MTA should save 200 of the 900 subway cars they will scrap in 2008.
These should be rehabilitated and placed in service throughout the city
as demand grows. The obstacle is that the MTA does not now have the storage
capacity to expand their subway fleet. If the MTA continues to conceal
the need to expand the yards, it will never be able to add any trains,
regardless of demand and crowding will just get worse.
London and Paris have catapulted bus travel into the 21st century with
Bus Rapid Transit, taking advantage of GPS (global positioning systems)
and other communications technology to track buses and manage their flow.
Bus Rapid Transit is the best hope to entice motorists out of their cars,
especially those from the high auto-commuting areas of Brooklyn not serviced
by the subway.
To pay for all this, New York politicians need to forego flim-flam financing
and screw up the courage to tap the last remaining source that is not
paying its fair share of transport costs: drivers who cross the East River
bridges and the 60th Street cordon free of any charge. This action will
not only bring in sufficient funds to pay for the Second Avenue Subway
and all the transportation essential to make Downtown Brooklyn development
a success, but it will change travel patterns in the Downtown area so
dramatically that, by itself, it will make new development possible.
The city Department of Transportation report described above also estimates
that nearly half the traffic moving through Downtown Brooklyn is motorists
seeking free access to Manhattan. By saving a few bucks, these Manhattan-bound
motorists are creating traffic chaos in Downtown Brooklyn, usurping the
road space needed for Brooklyn development and threatening the health,
safety and comfort of everyone who lives, works and shops in the Downtown
area.
Downtown Brooklyn has an opportunity to become a truly model urban environment,
a lively walking city in which people of every shade and income level
can enjoy neighborhood streets, good housing and jobs, connected by transit
to almost everywhere. However, without careful planning and sound financing,
we will shoot ourselves in the foot. And, Senator Charles Schumer’s
warning about the promise of Downtown Brooklyn will become our reality:
“If they can’t get here, they will not come.”
The test of our resolve is the proposal by Forest City Ratner to build
a sports and entertainment arena as the enticement for the right to plop
17 towers, dwarfing Co-op City, at the borough’s most congested crossroads.
The giddy unquestioning embrace (or deafening silence) of most of our
elected officials of what may be the proverbial straw that breaks the
camel’s back portends that we will forfeit our last chance for a
transparent environmental assessment that honestly defines conditions
for showering subsidies on the best use of a major public asset. It will
be a tragic loss to everyone.
