Meetings on proposed Barclays-area BID, scheduled for May 2, have been postponed

I reported that there were two meetings scheduled for May 2 for the proposed Business Improvement District, but the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership says the meetings have been postponed. No new date has been announced yet.

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Proposed Barclays-area BID boundaries shrink, eliminate Atlantic Yards site east of Sixth Avenue, 470 Vanderbilt

Guess what? After criticism that a planned new Business Improvement District (BID) to serve the area around the Barclays Center, nearby malls, and the cultural district anchored by Brooklyn Academy of Music should not include undeveloped property in the Atlantic Yards Phase 2 site, the boundaries of the proposed BID have been shrunk.

The revised map at right (click to enlarge) now excludes the Atlantic Yards site east of Sixth Avenue beyond the arena block and the adjacent block west of Flatbush Avenue. (That block includes Site 5, home to Modell's and P.C. Richard, ultimately to be replaced by a 25-story tower that's part of Atlantic Yards. It also includes the Brooklyn Bear's Community Garden, not part of AY.)

The map now excludes 470 Vanderbilt, a large office building north of Atlantic Avenue that will have ground-floor retail and, ultimately, housing in an adjacent lot (perhaps with retail at its base).

See below left for the earlier proposed boundaries, which extended the new BID to Vanderbilt Avenue. As noted below, two public meetings May 2 will discuss the BID. [Update April 30: These meetings have been postponed.]



Pros and cons

Also see my original post for some pros and cons regarding BIDs. For example, services such as cleaning and security can both enhance public space but also exclude those that detract from BID members' commercial goals.

And while monitoring polices can foster accountability, a BID's influence can co-opt local government authority and give property owners a larger voice than residents. Hence concern that Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner will use the BID to amplify its voice.

Broad goals

The yet-unnamed BID has broad ambitions and boundaries, according to the original press release:

The service area could include Barclays Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Cultural District and commercial blocks on Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt Avenues. Property owners in the district would self-assess an additional property tax to fund services including sanitation, extra security, streetscape improvements and maintenance, programming as well as promotion and marketing opportunities. The BID also would facilitate economic development, urban planning and advocacy efforts for neighborhood services.

Though the new map excludes the second phase of Atlantic Yards, the BID, likely to be significantly influenced if not controlled by Forest City Ratner (by virtue of the arena and adjacent malls), likely would weigh in on Atlantic Yards.

Note that other nearby property owners, as well as BID organizer Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (itself steered significantly by FCR), on 2/27/13 urged that the state proceed expeditiously with a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement so as not to impede Forest City's Phase 2 plan for Atlantic Yards.

Since Forest City still has much to do on Phase 1 and has a loose timetable for Phase 2, that roadblock is more perceptual than actual. But surely Forest City would like the state to endorse Forest City's plan and not recommend--as some neighbors propose--that other developers be considered to get the project built at a timetable closer to the original ten years rather than the allowed 25 years.

Meetings May 2

As I wrote 4/23/13, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership announced two public meetings on May 2 regarding the BID, hosted with the support of the Brooklyn Community Boards 2, 6 and 8, Office of the Brooklyn Borough President, NYC Council 33rd District, NYC Council 35th District and the NYC Department of Small Business Services.

1st Public Meeting
Date: Thursday, May 2
Time: 9 to 11 am
Location: Brooklyn Borough Hall - Community Room at 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

2nd Public Meeting
Date: Thursday, May 2
Time: 6 to 8 pm
Location: 80 Arts - James E. Davis Arts Building at 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217

Attendees should confirm with Malina Tran at 718-403-1635 or MTran@downtownbrooklyn.com.

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Getting real on rezonings: "you’re dumping a whole lot of untapped value on property owners" (and an override of zoning is even more lucrative)

From The Great Air Race, an article about air rights and developer on the front of today's New York TImes Real Estate section:

Controversial when it was built, Trump World Tower has its defenders. “You could subscribe to the theory that towers like these are the Empire State Buildings of the 21st century,” said Joshua Stein, a prominent commercial real estate lawyer.
“In the real estate market,” he added, “some projects are very buffeted by the economic winds and some aren’t, but residential development projects are often the first to get buffeted. And now we’re in a market where people are developing again, which is why we’re talking about development rights again. Whenever you see a potential rezoning, like we’re seeing with Midtown East, you create unused development potential: you’re dumping a whole lot of untapped value on property owners.”

(Emphasis added)

He is saying the obvious, but the obvious needs to be said more often.

The rationale for rezonings

Rezonings aim not merely to increase density and pursue the goals of growth, as Department of City Planning said about the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning:

The Department of City Planning and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), in partnership with the Downtown Brooklyn Council (DBC), a local business organization, are proposing a new comprehensive development plan to facilitate the continued growth of Downtown Brooklyn. The plan recommends a series of zoning map and zoning text changes, new public open spaces, pedestrian and transit improvements, urban renewal, street mappings and other actions that would foster a multi-use urban environment to serve the residents, businesses, academic institutions and cultural institutions of Downtown Brooklyn and its surrounding communities. Building on the success of previous development efforts that have retained and attracted companies in New York, the plan would create new retail and housing, and would foster expanded academic and cultural facilities.

The Downtown Brooklyn rezoning also made numerous property owners rich, as it dumped "a whole lot of untapped value" on them. That's one of the themes of the film My Brooklyn.

Even better than a rezoning...

So, what dumps even more untapped value? An override of zoning for a particular applicant--essentially a private rezoning. And that's what happened with the Atlantic Yards project.

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Downtown Brooklyn rebranded: a new website and a sense of expansion, including the arena, Atlantic Yards, and Fort Greene

Forget the old website DBPartnership.org for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. It's all DowntownBrooklyn.com, baby.

It's part of a re-branding to encompass the growth and gentrification of Downtown Brooklyn. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, keep in mind that not everyone agrees with the organization's policies, like Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) and those policies, as detailed in the recent documentary My Brooklyn (returning in March), are driven significantly by major landowners.

And, I'd contend, there's clearly an effort to encompass a somewhat awkward extension to include the Atlantic Yards project--plus pieces of  Fort Greene and Clinton Hill--in a proposed BID (business improvement district).

After all, given that the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is disproportionately influenced--controlled, some would say--by Brooklyn's most powerful developer, Forest City Ratner, anything the DBP does must be evaluated with that in mind.

A recent post on the new website celebrated Write Night at Frank's, a reading series at Frank’s Cocktail Lounge on Fulton Street in Fort Greene. As it happens, Frank's is located on Fulton between Fort Greene Place and South Elliot Place, just outside the Downtown Brooklyn map, below.

But Downtown Brooklyn is an expanding phenomenon, isn't it? (Shh, the only mention of Whitman, Ingersoll, and Farragut public housing projects comes in the list of resident association partners.)

The official account

From Behind the Launch of DowntownBrooklyn.com:

Downtown Brooklyn Partnership President, Tucker Reed, said he’s particularly excited about the new website’s potential to positively impact the neighborhood. “It feels great to have created a real service for the community that showcases the diversity that Downtown Brooklyn has to offer.”
Along with drawing attention to the area and the people who live and work here, DowntownBrooklyn.com offers monthly deals to local businesses, and to commemorate the big launch this month, a special “Fly A Friend to Downtown Brooklyn” contest. The promotion was created thanks in large part to American Airlines recently joining the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership Board of Directors. “This is an area that everyone recognizes is booming,” said Patricia Ornst, Managing Director of State and Community Affairs for American Airlines. “My job is to find the niches we can grab onto and promote through them to a young, dynamic neighborhood.”
The part of the website where you find ‘Fly A Friend’ is, as you may have noticed, full of news and interviews from Downtown Brooklyn. That marks a new partnership with the folks at Brooklyn Magazine, who will help provide blog coverage for the website...
That team also includes smartass design, which created the website and its bold new look and logo. “I think of how, around the corner from here there’s a Shake Shack, and above it is some unknown discount vender. You can’t tell the story of Downtown Brooklyn by saying it’s all about the Shake Shack and not mentioning the discount vendor,” said founder Jon Hecht of the stark black-and-white cube design for DowntownBrooklyn.com’s new logo. “The black and white theme addresses that duality, and the cube shape adds dimensionality. The logo isn’t just a flat image, but a physical object that takes up space and has multiple dimensions, angles, and sides to see, and God knows, Downtown Brooklyn has that.”

Indeed, the notion of a Downtown Brooklyn walking tour encompasses Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and the Barclays Center.

Also see Hello Barclays, with an animated video suggesting people visit Fort Greene cultural groups, the Fulton Mall, parks like Fort Greene Park and Brooklyn Bridge park, among other things.



What's next

Under the What's Next section of the web site, the DBP offers a map of current development projects, with a status update. Note how the Atlantic Yards site doesn't quite fit on the map, as with a previous DBP map (bottom).

From the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership web site

Celebrating Downtown Brooklyn

A video released last July counts Downtown Brooklyn as the country's fastest-growing residential downtown, with 15,000 new residents. (Unmentioned is that the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning was aimed to increase office space.)




Previous map

From the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership previous web site

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Boosting Barclays? Downtown Brooklyn Partnership proposes BID to encompass arena, malls, cultural district, extending to Prospect Heights; Council approval sought this year

Current DBP Downtown Brooklyn map;
Atlantic Yards site begins at bottom right

Maybe it'll be called the Barclays-BAM-Area Business Improvement District (BID). Or the Flatlantic to Vanderbilt BID.

Whatever its name, the new BID proposed yesterday by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), the nonprofit organization that already manages three BIDs, would represent a radical expansion of the Downtown Brooklyn's boundaries, to Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, well beyond even the DBP's current map.

The BID, which would tax commercial property owners to fund additional services like sanitation and security, seems in part geared to help the largest landowner, Forest City Ratner, cope with the impact of properties like the Barclays Center arena and the Atlantic Terminal/Atlantic Center malls.

Forest City could wind up spending more than it currently does but at the same time see the costs spread more broadly, all under the umbrella of a non-public agency. That BID also could take responsibility for planning and advocacy issues that activists believe should be the realm of a AY-specific governance entity.

Proposed BID Boundaries = dotted red line;
this map was not released yesterday

The BID could confirm Forest City Ratner 's campaign to call the entire Atlantic Yards site part of Downtown Brooklyn, though the project site is not located within the area that the city rezoned. And it would back Borough President Marty Markowitz's wobbly claim that Atlantic Yards is in a "business district."

(Current DPB map above left, proposed BID boundaries at right, stretching from Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street at the northwest to Vanderbilt Avenue and Dean Streets at the southeast. Larger versions of the maps are further below.)

BIDs: popular but controversial

BIDs are popular but controversial. They're credited for providing additional services beyond those available from city agencies, but criticized for bypassing public oversight and concentrating power.

New York City has 67 BIDs, the most in the country, with significant numbers in west-central Brooklyn and affluent residential and business districts in Manhattan.

As the map above right indicates, the proposed BID would fill the gap between the FAB Alliance on Fulton Street and the North Flatbush BID, and nudging up against four BIDs to the west of Flatbush Avenue, three controlled by the DBP.

The proposed boundaries would encompass the entire Atlantic Yards site, even the "carve-out" along Dean Street, thus including residential properties on Dean--destined as the site for a tower, with retail at base--that have not yet been taken by eminent domain.

Broad boundaries, tasks

The yet-unnamed BID has broad ambitions and boundaries, according to the press release (bottom):

The service area could include Barclays Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Cultural District and commercial blocks on Flatbush, Atlantic and Vanderbilt Avenues. Property owners in the district would self-assess an additional property tax to fund services including sanitation, extra security, streetscape improvements and maintenance, programming as well as promotion and marketing opportunities. The BID also would facilitate economic development, urban planning and advocacy efforts for neighborhood services.

The boundaries also include the 470 Vanderbilt building, where new development and retail are planned, as well as development sites near BAM that should have retail and/or cultural facilities at the base.

Creation of the BID will require public hearings and approvals by Community Boards 2, 6 and 8, City Planning Commission and City Council. The review and approval process "is expected to be completed by the end of 2013," before two backers, Borough President Marty Markowitz and Mayor Mike Bloomberg, leave office.

Asked to comment, Council Member Letitia James, a backer of the controversial Fulton Street BID, said she "generally supports" BIDs. She has a representative on the BID steering committee.

Rob Perris, District Manager of Community Board 2, said he was cautiously optimistic: "I'm pleased to hear someone from [Forest City] saying, 'we've got some responsibilities, and we need a mechanism to deal with them.'"

When queried, Forest City deferred to the press release (bottom), which noted that a "steering committee comprised of representatives of local stakeholders – including 'mom & pop' retailers, cultural institutions, commercial property owners and government officials – has been formed to spearhead this effort" and will be surveyed about BID services.

Still, Forest City likely would be the BID heavyweight. According to state law, voting with a BID can be "weighted in proportion to the assessment" on properties, though no one member can have more than one-third of the vote.

Pending questions

One issue to be resolved: the overlap with the North Flatbush BID, which has previously encompassed properties going north from Dean and Flatbush up to Atlantic Avenue.

Also, though the map does not include most of Dean Street between Sixth and Vanderbilt avenues, presumably Forest City would be concerned about sidewalk safety, especially snow removal, for those walking from the arena to the parking lot.

While the BID's impact would likely be most obvious in terms of additional sanitation and security, its role in larger issues, like urban planning and economic development, could give the DBP particular weight in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene, beyond its historic boundaries.

And that could influence or even substitute for the proposals made for a new governance entity, or to channel public input, regarding Atlantic Yards.

Forest City likely would be the largest individual contributor to the BID. At the same time, a broad assessment might not only increase the amount of funding for services like arena-related security and sanitation, it also could help fund pedestrian traffic managers, who have been key to managing traffic flow around the arena--and which Forest City had not promised to fund in perpetuity.

Note that, according to the city's guide to BID creation, "There should be few government and other tax-exempt property owners, since they are generally exempt from any BID assessment." The arena is tax-exempt and officially government-owned (though leased back to Forest City for a buck), but surely in this case would be part of a BID assessment.

The DBP and BIDs

Current BID boundaries

The DBP, founded in 2006 with $2 million a year for three years from the mayor's office, was set up to manage the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, as chronicled in the new documentary film My Brooklyn.

But the DBP saw that funding cut significantly, leading to what Crain's called a "long-envisioned takeover of three local business-improvement districts and their reliable revenue streams."

While in the summer of 2010 saw the takeover of the MetroTech BID stalled, it proceeded in August 2011 thanks in part to what the New York Post called "pressure from City Hall and developer Forest City Ratner, which built Metro Tech’s office complex in the 1980s." The DBP since then has also been credited for improving retail storefronts.

According to the MetroTech BID web site, Forest City has the largest contingent of board members, though the list clearly has not been updated; it includes two executives, Scott Cantone and Bruce Bender, who left the company last year.

In May 2011, an audit from the Comptroller's office criticized the DBP for inadequate internal controls, such as the failure to properly record private contributions; the DBP agreed to reform procedures.

Map: preliminary boundaries

The preliminary boundaries of the BID were included in a document sent to stakeholders--which I obtained--but not included with yesterday's press release. Whether the boundaries are refined or not, presumably a map will be released for discussion before public hearings.

(The only other coverage of the new BID so far is a brief article in the New York Post's Brooklyn blog and a longer one on GlobeSt., both based on the press release.)

Distributed to potential stakeholders, shows existing area BIDs

Map: Downtown Brooklyn

From the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership web site

The debate over BIDs

According to this October 2006 Gotham Gazette article, "Supporters hail business improvement districts as an effective way to clean up a neighborhood, reduce crime and vacancy rates, and generally improve the community, all at no cost to the city." BIDs also lead to reductions in vacancy rates.

Detractors, including Columbia professor Moshe Adler, call BIDs undemocratic (weighted towards property owners), say they pay workers unfair wages, take on debt, and may not even have appropriate support.

As noted in this 2002 Cornell University analysis, regarding economic development:

• Pro: BIDs have the ability to revitalize deteriorating urban areas.
• Pro: Under the proper environmental conditions and organizational structures, BIDs are useful tools in attracting new business and investment.
• Con: BID programs for economic development do not address urban blight - they displace undesirable groups and business activities to neighboring districts.

Regarding targeting public investment:

• Pro: The additional services provided are justified because BIDs pay directly for these services.
• Pro: BIDs may be effective in reducing the unequal distribution of public services [especially between city and suburb]
• Con: BIDs may exacerbate the uneven distribution of public services [especially within the city]
• Con: The ability of BIDs to borrow may crowd out investment in other areas of a city.

Regarding management of public space:

• Pro: BIDs may increase democratic voice by enhancing the vitality and sustainability of public space
• Con: BIDs privatize public space by excluding those that detract from the commercial goals of the BID members.

Regarding democratic accountability:

• Pro: A BID's approval process can be structured to ensure accountability.
• Pro: Monitoring policies can be formed to ensure accountability.
• Con: A BID's influence within a district may co-opt local government authority.
• Con: BIDs are sometimes realized due to lack of informed opposition rather than majority approval.
• Con: A BID's voting structure may violate the constitutional principle of one-person, one-vote by favoring property owners over residents.

Downtown Brooklyn Partnership BID Press Release

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