brooklyn views

How Green Is Demolition?

2007-03-24T23:22:00.000-04:00

Forest City Ratner put out a press release last week announcing the pending demolition of the Ward Bakery, as if this would somehow be good for the environment. This historic building is one of the most significant architectural buildings on the site, and should be recycled and reused as a component in the overall development. But instead, it is being demolished to make an enormous at-grade parking lot that will be in place for decades, according to the designers.

So how is the demolition of this important building good for the environment? Turns out that since “at least 75% of the demolition debris is expected to be recycled”, the demolition is good news, helping the overall project qualify for LEED certification. LEED certification is one measure of sustainable and environmentally sensitive design. According to Mr. Ratner, the developers are “seeking out every possible way to make Atlantic Yards as eco-friendly and environmentally responsible as possible”.

Oh c’mon. Demolishing this building to make a giant parking lot is as “eco-friendly” as driving a Hummer to the supermarket to buy air-freighted “organic” food. Besides running counter to well-known concepts of embedded energy, as explained in Norman Oder’s blog recently, confusing demolition with a sustainable strategy is very clearly counter to the intent of the LEED guidelines.

LEED assigns points for various green initiatives in a project, and awards levels of certification according to how many points a project obtains. The Atlantic Yards project, according to the press release, is apparently trying for a “Certified” level, which is obtained by achieving 26 to 32 LEED points. The next level, Silver, had been mentioned earlier, but requires projects to achieve 33 to 38 points. Gold is awarded for 39 to 51 points, and Platinum for 52 to 69 points. Not surprisingly, a “Certified” level is very easily obtained by most projects. The City’s Local Law 86, signed by Mayor Bloomberg on October 3rd, 2005, requires all projects with any City funding with an estimated construction cost of over $2 million to design for a Silver level, as a minimum.

One way to increase the number of LEED points available to the project would be by maintaining existing buildings in place. The LEED rating system is far from perfect, but it is very explicit in encouraging the reuse of buildings in place, rather than expending energy to take them apart. According to the LEED guidelines for Credits MR 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, the intent of these credits is to “Extend the life cycle of existing building stock, conserve resources, retain cultural resources, reduce waste and reduce environmental impacts of new buildings as they relate to materials manufacturing and transport.” If the project was really as “eco-friendly and environmentally responsible as possible”, it would reuse the significant existing buildings.

Useless Space

2007-03-04T17:04:00.000-05:00

“I think space on streets is actually useless space”

2007-02-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

Photo from BrooklynSpeaks

The cat’s out of the bag, our suspicions have been confirmed. Why does the plan for Atlantic Yards call for Pacific Street to be closed between Vanderbilt and Carlton? In yesterday’s Observer, Matthew Schuerman has a revealing interview with Laurie Olin, the landscape architect for the project. “Mr. Olin admits that the site plan was put together to establish the parameters of the project—the ratio of open to built space—to go through the approval process.”

So the designers have finally come clean and admitted that the plan is not about making a great space, and not about what’s best for the city. As the project team looked for opportunities to increase the ratio of open space to built space in order to make the project seem smaller that it really is, it found a tricky strategy: rather than decrease the built space, the site can be “expanded” by taking the area of the streets. By demapping the streets and counting them as open space, the project’s ratio of open to built space looks better - as a number. According to the designer whose name is on the plans, the taking of streets really is about making the numbers look good. Never mind that the space will no longer be public space, and - according to the EIS – the space will now not even be accessible to the public for good parts of the day. (Presumably the details of how to keep people out of this so-called “publicly accessible space” / gated community - a high fence? a private security detail? - will be released at some point.)

Even so, this strategy could not have been fully realized without real antipathy towards the urban environment. Now we know how the designers really feel about Brooklyn streets. “I think space on streets is actually useless space”. Maybe it’s OK for a landscape architect to say that, landscape architects are typically not called upon to be urban designers; their purvue is typically limited to laying out areas dedicated for landscape. But, at Atlantic Yards, according to Mr. Schuerman, some might think the landscape architect was “brought in to compensate for Mr. Gehry’s reputed lack of urban-design skills”, and the landscape architect has spent his time laboring to shape the buildings into “catcher mitts”, a scope of work somewhat beyond a typical landscape architect’s.

“I think space on streets is actually useless space”. Yes, it is useless to the developer, he can’t charge for it, or take credit for it in his calculations. But it isn’t useless to the city, which uses streets to run utilities, buses, service vehicles, patrol and emergency vehicles. It’s not useless to the adjacent communities, which use streets, mediated in Brownstone Brooklyn by stoops- as the first opening out of private space. It is shared recreation space, it is transition space, it is transit space used to get from A to B and along the way meet neighbors and observe strangers. It is the epitome of what Christopher Alexander has called a semilattice: An environment in which several different systems can overlap. If the city recognizes that “The public realm in New York is primarily composed of streets and sidewalks”, why are we letting this project close the streets?

Will Atlantic Yards Preclude the One Seat Ride to JFK?

2007-02-19T23:03:00.000-05:00

The AY plan superimposed on the released rail link study (South is up)

While no one seems to know exactly how to find the holy grail of Lower Manhattan development - the one seat ride to JFK airport (or, as some say, the commuter rail link from Long Island to Lower Manhattan) – there is no shortage of ideas. Post 9/11, the link has been seen by many as a critical component to the region’s growth, and there has been strong support for the idea from both the city and state. In a press-release in May, 2004, Governor Pataki said: “It is projected that the rail link will result in an increased economic output of $6 to 8 billion annually, generated in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and as much as $9 to $12 billion in the region as a whole”. And one thing that all likely plans have in common is a rail by-pass at the LIRR Atlantic Terminal. Will this opportunity be precluded by the current plans for Atlantic Yards?

We have no reason to believe that the current plan for Atlantic Yards is making any provision for the rail link. The MTA’s belated Request for Proposals for the disposition of Vanderbilt Yard indicated that the only operational issues that need to be considered are to provide additional storage; it made no mention of accommodating a possible future rail link. And in the Memorandum of Understanding between Forest City Ratner and the MTA, the required ongoing operational functions of Vanderbilt Yard are listed, but there is no mention of intent to provide for a future rail link. The only mention of the rail link in the EIS came in responses to questions, which basically state that the link was not studied since it will have its own EIS (Responses 29, 13-42). In other words, whatever will happen is of no concern to this project. (Sort of like the bad old days when the streets get ripped up for one project, repaved, then ripped up the next week by another city agency. Paid for by guess-who. Only here we’re talking billions.)

The plans for the rail link from Long Island to Lower Manhattan have a long, well-known history. Now, after studying dozens of alternatives over several years, the City and State have narrowed the realistic options down to two. And according to recent reports, a new Congress is likely to approve funding for it. According to the June 2005 scoping documents for the rail link, “Both alternatives, in order to access Lower Manhattan, break out of the LIRR Atlantic Branch tunnel east of the LIRR/NYCT Atlantic Terminal”, ie, somewhere near or at Vanderbilt Yard. According to the posted engineering study, it appears that a spur off the existing LIRR right-of-way would slope down and under the existing Vanderbilt Yard, in the footprint of the proposed arena and adjacent towers. There is no excuse for the Atlantic Yards project to preclude the link project.

And here’s the thing: If the purpose and need of the Atlantic Yards project is that it will be so great for the region, so great that we should ignore the local neighborhood whining about density and such, why is there no transportation plan associated with it? While we’re rediscovering Robert Moses, let’s recognize what it was about big plans that helped the development of the region: Robert Moses realized that transportation was key. He opposed creating a venue event that would stop-up the flow of traffic in this area. Why don’t we have a real intermodal project that orchestrates the trains, bus facilities, taxi stands and bicycles and yes, a possible rail link from Lower Manhattan to Long Island and JFK? Isn't there an opportunity to locate a state-of-the-art station here? Instead we have a plan to locate a plug of 3800 cars in an existing bottleneck.

Now that it looks more likely that a new congress will approve funding for a new rail link to Lower Manhattan, shouldn’t someone be asking how the current plans for the Atlantic Yards project will impact this link?

Learning from New Haven

2007-01-20T14:35:00.000-05:00

The New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum was demolished this morning. According to Jennifer Medina, writing in yesterday’s Times, “The decision to destroy the Coliseum reflects a shift in philosophy on urban planning, with Mayor John DeStefano Jr. choosing to focus on arts, education and small retail buildings rather than on large-scale public spaces. “I think we are taking an approach that is smarter about what works in building a city,” Mr. DeStefano said. Some people still like the idea of big projects, he said, “but successful urban life gets woven from lots of small things, not one grand gesture.” Talking about the Coliseum, he added, “This was a particularly grand gesture for its time.”

And in a review of the track record for other arenas, Medina notes: “Bridgeport built its 10,000-seat stadium in 2001. While performers like James Taylor and Andrea Bocelli have drawn large crowds, there is little evidence that the stadium has boosted other downtown business.”

Perhaps it just wasn’t grand enough.

A Herd of Trojan Horses

2007-01-07T00:57:00.000-05:00

A full house at the Center for Architecture watched Brooklyn Matters

Brooklyn Matters, a new documentary film about the project at Atlantic Yards by Isabel Hill, was screened on Thursday evening at the Center for Architecture. It’s an object lesson on how to game the system to push through enormous projects. Yet, for those already familiar with the project and had witnessed first-hand the attempts at intimidation in the public EIS forums, this second viewing of those events may carry a somewhat more poignant note. While we were aggravated by the histrionics at the forums, the film serves to dilute the emotions, presenting the events more dispassionately, and allows them to be understood in a wider context. It does provide the sense of how the real overwhelming need for affordable housing in Brooklyn can be maneuvered into a political influence, and used to expedite the approval of a project without ever weighing the overall costs against the overall benefits. Julia Vitullo-Martin put it most succinctly: “The truth is today, if you’re a developer with a bad project, a large bad project that shouldn’t be built…The smart thing to do is say, ‘Y’know what, I’m going to provide you with some really good affordable housing.' So affordable housing is the Trojan Horse these days on big bad projects that shouldn’t get done.”

While Acorn had the experience and knowledge to attempt to negotiate real benefits for a real constituency – a point driven home by Bertha Lewis when she explains how their team of accountants and lawyers faced-off against the developers’ and worked hard to negotiate an agreement; other constituencies had even less leverage. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the newly minted labor organization supported by FCR also supports the project. But while no one can argue with the need for jobs, the efficiency of job production with this program is extremely cynical. And why haven’t any pre-existing, non-special-interest community groups that represent the local residential and business communities, such as the Community Boards, had the chance to do the hard work?

What is not addressed in the film is how there has been no outreach on design issues; the architecture of the project is also a Trojan Horse. The promise of a major project in New York City by Frank Gehry has been enormously successful in muting potential opposition by the cultural "elite". But the project only looks like a gift because it’s wrapped by Frank Gehry; the architecture masks a slew of problems. As the panel discussion after the film made clear, architects and planners know this project is not being pursued correctly. Comments that Mr. Gehry himself has made (here and here: he was uncomfortable with this scale…thought others should be involved…it felt better to leave some of the existing buildings) indicate that he knows what all the other architects and planners who have followed this process know: the design of any project of this scale on this site should follow a publicly transparent, iterative process, a process in which planning comes before urban design, and urban design comes before architecture.

Progress in Brooklyn

2006-12-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

Here we go again. You can’t stop progress, so the plan for closing streets and building the most dense 22 acres in New York City, including a 20,000 seat arena and 3,800 parking spaces in an area surrounded by Brownstones, at one of the most congested intersections in Brooklyn is actually fine. Why? Because it’s progress. Sound familiar?

Jonathan Liu recently wrote in N + 1 Magazine: “The authenticity of a place as volatile and heterodox as Brooklyn, and New York in general, lies in incongruity, the disorienting juxtaposition of century-old brownstones and Gehry’s warped, twisting towers. …to reject Gehry on the basis of “context,” seems a disavowal of the progress of urban life itself.”

Well, here’s some breaking news: the so-called “progress” of urban life has not been a history of unequivocal success. Left to their own devices, the forces of business expedience in urban areas have often overwhelmed quality of life issues, the possibilities for meaning inherent in existing structures, and the potential that existing structures have for adaptive reuse. To define New York's sense of place as based on ”incongruity” and “disorienting” is an exceptionally superficial read. While a range of scales is part of the urban form here, our urban morphology is better defined by walkable streets, public open space, and coexisting mixed-use forms where no one factor overwhelms the others. Architects - visionary, progressive or otherwise - don’t make real streets; they merely contribute to their success or their demise. And while an “architecture of nostalgia” may not claim to make urban history, the history of urban form is not defined by any style of architecture, but by these streets.

So now Mr. Liu suggests that Mr. Letham and Mr. Ratner retire to some presumably smoke-free room to hash out their differences and arrive at a suitable design for the site. He writes: “Mr. Lethem and the opposition could steer the city toward any number of them (other options for the site) if they held their collective nose and negotiated directly with the developer” or, easier yet, “engage in the process and ask Frank Gehry, a fellow artist, for better. It may not be as engorging as obstructionism, but it is at least the stuff history is made of”. Thanks for the history lesson Mr. Liu, it actually is news to us that the history of urban form in the city is really a reflection of concerned individuals negotiating directly with developers and their architects. And here we thought all this time that that there was some means of bringing public pressure to bear to do the right thing through the institutions of the press, the political systems, and the courts.

We do want progress in Brooklyn, and we should know how to get it right: there is such a thing as a design process that could bring us the development we deserve. It typically begins with planning. Perhaps Mr. Liu could speak with the development team about that?

Learning from Verizon Center

2006-11-26T22:22:00.000-05:00

In the EIS and in several responses to comments, the question of the compatibility of the arena with surrounding uses is addressed. Some of the responses are confusing, such as this phrase used several times throughout the documents:

“Experience has shown that arenas and other sports facilities thrive in combination with a strong mix of commercial and residential land uses, both as proposed elements of a larger master plan or as a catalyst for urban development.”

The writer seems to be saying that sports facilities are not only financially successful in mixed-use environments (which is good for the developer but doesn’t really address the current concerns of the community) but that sports facilities also encourage nearby urban development. Or something like that; what does “both as proposed elements…or as a catalyst” really mean? Both/or? Come to think of it, how could a sports facility thrive as a “proposed” element? A virtual thriving? In any case, the “prime example” for this auspicious collocation of uses is Verizon Center:

Opened in 1997, the Verizon Center has proven to be compatible with commercial and mixed-use redevelopment in this downtown neighborhood. Washington’s Comprehensive Plan, the District's official public policy statement on land use, transportation, housing, the environment, public facilities, urban design, and similar issues, proposes the introduction of high density residential uses to the mix of uses immediately adjacent to the Verizon Center.
An interesting case, because Verizon Center had a controversial genesis. Look at the grain of this area of Washington relative to Brooklyn. A large arena a few blocks from I-395, served by a modern subway system with large parking lots at suburban stations, is perhaps not that far out of place in a city of large footprints and wide streets. But the selected site at Seventh and F streets NW required the demolition of buildings and closing of streets in order to achieve a large enough footprint, breaking the historic urban plan layed out by Pierre L’Enfant for the nation’s capital.

As Glen Worthington, a student at Georgetown University Law Center has pointed out, “ For all practical puposes, the proposed D.C. Arena (now MCI Center) was going to be built regardless of historic preservation concerns…The Mayor (Marion Barry) and similarly powerful parties – both municipal and private – wanted the project to proceed, and so it did. The story of the MCI Center is not a little-engine-that-could story about persevering through a burdensome planning process; rather, it is a bulldozer story about plowing through the historic preservation obstacles meant to derail such projects” P. 23. And, when weighed against potential economic benefits to the District of Columbia which will result from the arena project, “…any street can be closed as long as public comment is allowed – comment, of course, can be ignored…no matter how many groups agree that there are substantial adverse effects to historic structures, losses to historic preservation can always be outweighed by economic benefits”(P. 27). Sound familiar?

Richard Layman, in his blog on Washington’s urban design issues, has noted that Verizon Center did not begin the revitalization of 7th Street NW; it started long before. Rather, the arena’s major accomplishments - in the eyes of the city’s business community - was to encourage suburbanites to “sample” the city, and encourage others in the business community to invest in commercial activity downtown, neither of which are particularly the challenge for us in Brownstone Brooklyn. On the other hand, Verizon Center also hastened the displacement of smaller retail outlets as well as Chinatown itself, and the urban fabric that contributed to making the East End something different from the typical mall. Now, as the arena is full with basketball, rock concerts and wrestling, the streets are indeed attracting big box retail and chain stores and yes, suburbanites as well because, well, the East End is looking a lot more like a suburban mall. Never mind that while the District spent $80 million dollars on infrastructure costs, and the arena is exempt from property taxes, by all accounts the challenges of affordable housing, traffic, and a dysfunctional public school system remain unadressed. According to the District of Columbia Police Department’s web site, in the area around Verizon Center total crime is up 46% this year.

In today’s Times, Tom Wolfe, writing about the debate on 2 Columbus Circle, recounts how the chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission acquiesced to the commissions diminishing authority by only promising he was “going to hold a hearing…hold a hearing….hold a hearing...hold a hearing”. In the theme of cynical big city politics, sing to that tune in Chicago.

How have we come to call the lowest common denominator in culture “progress”? The national chains of retail outlets, working along with retailing experts and consultants, provide very precise guidance for what “works” for retailing, and what doesn’t. These specifications are formulas for contemporary shopping, tested in modern cities like Los Angeles and Cleveland; not intended for the mom and pop stores of days gone by. And while national chains can provide a “quality” product – I’ll confess that I like my Starbucks as much as the next person – the relentless roll of accruing capital in fewer centers comes at the cost of individual communities' sense of place.

So also in today’s Times, there’s controversy about locating an F.A.O. Schwarz in Park Slope. “It’s not a Park Slope place”, explains a denizen, Gropp Lowry. And keep in mind, we’re talking about a toy store, not the “extreme sports” venue planned for Atlantic Yards. (see P.11)

To dismiss that sense of place as anti-development or anti-progress misses the fact that places we know reflect who we are together. There is meaning in urban form, the living history of the development of a community is to be found only in the built form and layout of the streets. Like plastic surgery, you can change it, but you can’t invent this meaning anew. The physicality of a place is significant beyond the intentions of a design team. The cultural history of a place makes its streets.

So the battle is joined. It’s Team Progress vs. Team Meaning. Watch for it on the next Apprentice.

Learning From Newark

2006-11-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

In April 2005, the former Mayor of Newark, Sharpe James, hosted a presentation of the Newark/Devils Arena. While somewhat smaller than that proposed for Brooklyn, Mr. James spoke enthusistically about the new arena. “Today is a great day for the City of Newark", he said, "…we are putting Newark on the world stage and it will be the world’s star performer”. The Newark arena had been intended to replace the Continental Airlines Arena as the home of the Nets, before the Nets were purchased by Bruce Ratner.

Needless to say, Mr. James is no longer mayor. But in an article in the Times last week, Andrew Jacobs noted that recently elected reform-minded Mayor Cory Booker has made a deal with the Devils for the new arena, which appears to be nearing the midpoint of construction. What Booker had called a “boondoggle and a “betrayal of public trust” for committing the city to paying $210 million of the arena’s cost, is now inevitable; there was no choice but to make the best of it. Where did Newark go wrong in the first place? Let’s start with the “reinvention” of a downtown that closed streets and internalized them, emptying the downtown streets of any potential for vitality by stripping them of the opportunities for casual pedestrian interactions. And now, although the arena site is close to major transportation systems, the plan is to build more car parking to bring crowds in from the suburbs. The arena will need to compete for “rock concerts and ice-skating extravaganzas” to be financially viable, but Jacobs quotes an enthusiastic history professor at Rutgers (edited here just a bit): “this project is another acknowledgment that cities like Newark can become beacons of …. in this case, sports”.

The case for locating large event venues like arenas in urban areas can be briefly stated. The transportation infrastructure for moving large numbers of people is designed for the peak loads. In business areas, peak loads are only in the morning and evening rush hours, and it does make sense to leverage an investment in transportation systems by using it more fully in off-peak hours. An event venue requires the movement of huge numbers of people, and if the infrastructure with adequate capacity is not in place, it would need to be built. In non-urban areas, this required new construction consists of new systems of roadways and vehicle storage areas. Less new construction is required by a project located near existing infrastructure, because the project can - in essence - piggy-back on the existing transportation systems.

However, event venues have unique characteristics and demands on transportation systems and existing infrastructure. The surge of fans arriving and (especially) leaving an event will cause any system to exceed its maximum capacity, causing what transportation planners call a “crush load”. These are inherently uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situations if not properly managed, and are not at all compatible with a normal street life. This is why we don’t see normal streets around event venues. It is not an accident that city planners require event venues to be built at some distance from residential areas, it is a necessity.

Why does the Atlantic Yards project need an arena? Would the project financing be more difficult without an arena? Actually no, most believe that the arena will not make money, it requires huge subsidies. Would there be less site area available to provide open space or build housing without an arena? No, there would be more space available; we could build more housing and provide more open space. Would traffic be worse without an arena? No, it would be better. What about the impact on the environment? Better. Opportunities for a vibrant mixed-use community? Much better.

There are those who might be nostalgic about the loss of the Dodgers, and think that Brooklyn has some inalienable right or obligation to host major league sports. If you don’t remember the Dodgers maybe you’re not really a true Brooklynite, and you shouldn’t have a voice in this debate. But most of us, especially those of us who are native New Yorkers, know that what makes us great is not our teams, but our ability to attract talented people, and our acceptance and integration of others. So maybe the new Devils arena is great for Newark, and will make it a great beacon for…sports. But crush loads driving in from the suburbs for sports, or rock concerts, or ice-skating extravaganzas drive out opportunities for a vibrant community, and are not compatible with a vision of a dynamic mixed-use street life in Brownstone Brooklyn. This is not an anti-development sentiment; it is pro-development, pro integrated planned growth that builds on the strengths of the existing urban fabric.

Purpose and Need

2006-09-04T23:02:00.000-04:00

5th Avenue: A vibrant, mixed-use community.

For those who asked, this is basically what I intended to say at the August 23rd hearing, but after waiting 4 hours didn’t get the chance.

The statement of the “Purpose and Need” in the EIS describes the objectives for a project. According to the CEQR methodology followed for this particular project, the description of the purpose and need “should be framed in terms of how the action meets public needs and responds to public policies”. The CEQR manual further explains that “the (statement of the) project’s objectives is also important because it can help define the range of alternatives analyzed in the EIS”. That is, the point of looking at alternatives is to ascertain if there are other ways of achieving the same or similar objectives, while reducing negative impacts. In order to review a range of means to achieve the objectives, the objectives must be framed in a way that identifies the specific public policies that are intended to be addressed.

Initially, the DEIS for Atlantic Yards is as clear as it can be about the project’s Purpose and Need: “The overarching goal of the proposed project is to transform a blighted area into a vibrant mixed-use community”. It is not required to acquiesce to the use of the term “blight”, necessary for eminent domain takings, to agree that further development of a mixed-use community would be a good thing here. But note what is not required by this initial statement: there is no mention of an “ambitious scale”; there is no mention of an arena in this basic framing of the project’s objectives. So it makes sense that the alternatives explored later in the document include no-arena and reduced scale configurations, implying that the arena and the specific scale of the project are not integral to the project’s objectives, but merely the means to an end: transforming a blighted area into a vibrant mixed-use community.

But further on in the same Purpose and Need section of the document, more detail of the proposed design is provided. Does the Purpose and Need include providing an arena, a hotel, and exactly 6,860 units of housing? These sound more like specific features of the current plan. To include them as part of the Purpose and Need confuses the means with the ends, resulting in a document that can not be disputed but is ultimately meaningless: since the project is the same as the objectives, nothing can be changed. Because if it was, it wouldn’t meet the objectives. And, as we’ve previously noted, we see the results of this in the subsequent dismissal of the alternatives.

So we have two competing interpretations of the Purpose and Need statement: it is either a general statement on goals that we can all agree to, for which it is worthwhile exploring alternatives, or it is a description of the specific features of this particular design, as if this particular plan is the only way to further the goals. We have to believe this second interpretation is not intended by policy, because it is all too clear that there are a range of ways of achieving vibrant mixed-use communities. And when we look for examples of vibrant, mixed-use communities, we don’t need to look far. The areas surrounding the site are great examples of vibrant neighborhoods, continually developing and supporting residential and commercial activity integrated into the communities.

On the other hand, an enormous event venue, which causes huge traffic surges, congestion, noise and air pollution, is in fact the antithesis of a vibrant mixed-use community. That is why, for example, it would be necessary to override current zoning that does not provide for arenas in residential areas. Enormous event venues can be, in fact, blighting influences in and of themselves. If anyone doubts this, a visit to the areas surrounding Madison Square Garden, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, or Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands is in order. Show us one event venue of this scale that even coexists with a vibrant mixed-use community, let alone supports it. It is all too apparent that these enormous event places degrade the areas around them, creating and perpetuating blighted conditions. And the requirements of paying for the arena, a condition not explored in the EIS, results in a much denser development than would otherwise be required. As a matter of public policy, an event venue does not remove the conditions of blight, and in important ways constitutes a stronger blighting influence on a mixed-use community than current conditions.

If the Purpose and Need were to be clarified, other chapters would need to be reexamined. For example, Chapter 16 (Neighborhood Character) claims, with no elaboration or argument, that the arena supports the project’s purpose and need by “creating a center of pedestrian activity desirable in higher-density commercial areas.” (P.16-2). This is fudging the issue. Never mind that the desirability of creating a huge event venue in higher-density commercial locations is of dubious merit, the goal here is not a higher-density commercial area, but a vibrant mixed-use area of unspecified density. If the arena is, in fact, part of the purpose and need of the project, say so, and show clearly how it furthers public policy. If the scale is required to make the project financing work, show us. The EIS should not be executed with a nod and a wink. Revise and resubmit a truly transparent document.

In Need of Some Restraint

2006-08-09T22:29:00.000-04:00

Image modified from FCR Website

We’ve previously discussed the enormous scale of this project. Rather than an outgrowth of a rational planning process, it seems to us now that the project has developed as a collection of wish lists, assembled for maximum political support and financial gain: Affordable housing? We can do that. An arena? Not a problem, we’ll recoup our costs in other parts of the project. Market-rate housing? Check. Retail, office space, parking? We’ll do all that too - big time - and more! The best project EVER! By providing something for everyone, the project has ballooned into an enormous delirious wish list of desires; there is no push-back.

What's the point of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the enormous study developed by the same group of not disinterested individuals who are promoting the real estate development scheme for the site? The reasons for the project are neatly developed in the Executive Summary: “The overarching goal of the proposed project is to transform a blighted area into a vibrant mixed-use community, incorporating principles of environmental sustainability”. And then, after conceding that there would be “significant adverse impacts” “in areas such as schools, cultural resources, shadows, traffic, transit and pedestrians, and noise”, the authors opine: “notwithstanding these impacts, the proposed project is expected to achieve the long-term State and City goals of 1) enhancing the vitality of the Atlantic Terminal area; 2) providing substantial new housing, including much needed affordable housing; and 3) improving railroad facilities and pedestrian access to Brooklyn’s largest transit hub”. There you have it, in a nutshell, the project’s purpose is to achieve goals 1, 2, and 3. Nothing more or nothing less. These long-term State and City goals are the only justification for the project. So as it turns out, there is no real need to read past the first page, because it’s just full of problems that ultimately don’t really matter as long as the “goals” are achieved.

But while we can all agree that these are worthwhile goals, we still have a nagging question: is this the only way of achieving them? If that’s too high a bar, is this the best way of achieving them? One of the best ways? Or, at the very least, if there is a range of possible projects that could achieve the goals, are the down-side trade-offs inherent in this particular configuration worthwhile?The language of the EIS is not helpful here. It claims only that, notwithstanding the many significant adverse impacts in the full range of issues studied, the proposed project is expected to achieve the goals.

The Daily News, in an editorial last week, suggested that critics of the development should not be scouring the DEIS for ways of helping fight the eminent domain case. This got us thinking about the language throughout the document, and the logic behind it. What if the proposed configuration is not, in fact, one of the best ways of providing a vibrant mixed-use community, is not one the most cost effective ways, and the down-side risks are not manageable? Alternatives are ruled out in the DEIS by tautologies such as this: “The Reduced Density – No Arena Alternative would not provide the economic, entertainment, and cultural benefits of an arena. Therefore, the Reduced Density – No Arena Alternative would fail to meet many of the project’s goals” (P. 20-2). You can’t make this stuff up. Now the project goal is to build an arena on this site, so any alternative plan is, by definition, unacceptable. This position - that although there will be unmitigatable significant adverse impacts, the project will still achieve some shared “goals” so it’s OK - does seem to us to be more of a defense of the taking of property by eminent domain than a reasonable defense of this particular project configuration.

Before we put shovels to the ground, let’s take the big view. In the final analysis, a mountain of wish lists from individual pressure groups and politicians does not a project plan make. It is not the design team’s role to edit this colossal heap of desires. Urban planners, transportation planners, financial planners and public policy advocates should study the full range of options, including alternative sites for all program components, in full daylight, for real public review and input. Because the DEIS does not recognize that sometimes the wrong we do is just from trying to do too much.

“Publicly Accessible Open Space” Closes in Manhattan

2006-07-30T14:37:00.000-04:00

Similar concept at the Gowanus Houses

From today’s Times: a story by Jennifer Bleyer about how private "public space" is used at Masaryk Towers, a Mitchell-Lama project in lower Manhattan. Many of the 5,000 residents of the Baruch Houses use the passage - in preference to the poorly developed public streets. Now Masaryk Towers has decided to close the space. “It’s nothing Machiavellian”, says the vice president of the management company, “We’re just trying to reduce annual operating costs”.

Democratic Space

2006-07-20T23:51:00.000-04:00

Finally, something to write about: the Draft Environmental No-Impact Statement was released this week. Although I’m still making my way through the Table of Contents (it’s 34 pages!), I skipped ahead a bit and got an overall impression of how, as the saying goes, figures can lie, and liars can figure.

The document now recognizes that a Floor Area Ratio without streets is a different measure of density than a Floor Area Ratio with streets. But not so for the Open Space Ratio. So, you may be surprised to read, as I was initially, that after building over 8 million square feet of concrete, steel and glass, plus parking for 3800 cars, the open space ratio for “passive” open space throughout the neighborhood actually improves! Incredible! How could this be? It’s because when an area is used as a public street, it is not counted as open space, despite Ms. Burden’s contention. But when the street is given to a private project to be used for “strolling, dog walking, and bird watching” it IS counted as open space.

One would think that a qualitative assessment of potential open space impacts would address how removing street right-of-ways impacts effective open space ratios. One reason that the city has a planning goal of 2.5 acres per 1,000 residents for large projects, while the median existing local area open space ratios is 1.5 acres per 1,000 residents, is that large projects provide an opportunity to correct problems, rather than exacerbate them. Another reason why the goal for large projects should be higher than the existing median is that in large areas without streets there is more of a need for views of the sky, light, and landscape, features which are typically provided by streets. Imagine an area with no streets. Would a given open space ratio there provide the same benefits as an equivalent open space ratio in an area with streets? Of course not.

Throughout the document, private “open space” is referred to as “publicly accessible open space” (not to be confused with real open space, which is public and doesn’t require authorization for access). But now we learn that “publicly accessible open space” is not public open space at all, and would only be “available for public use” during limited hours. After all, “security” for the open space, the document states, would be provided by the project sponsors. So if you thought that this was your borough, think again. If you give away this amount of property, including the streets, you give away that essential quality of cities: democratic participation in public space. Sure, a developer can be benevolent, but he doesn’t need to be. But let’s not misplace our anger: the developer is trying to make a buck, it’s our elected officials who are facilitating this defeat of our public realm. And we voted for them!

The Great Man Theory of Architecture

2006-06-04T22:08:00.000-04:00

R. Buckminster Fuller and Walter O'Malley with a model of the stadium, from walteromalley.com via flickr

By design, much of the discussion about the project in the mainstream press revolves around the world famous architect Frank Gehry’s design. But this is not the first time that a star architect has been called in to sell a big project on this site. In 1955, Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had a plan to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. “With the help of the Borough President, O’Malley found the perfect site for his new stadium…the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues”. O’Malley also found the perfect architect: he sought out and commissioned perhaps the most advanced American architect of the time, Buckminster Fuller, to design the new stadium. (Mr. Fuller went on to win the AIA Gold Medal in 1970; Frank Gehry won it in 1999).

Why wasn’t it built? Even in 1955, the proposed site at Flatbush and Atlantic was extremely problematic. O’Malley defended his selection of this site by claiming that “many people would travel to stadium events using public transportation, improving traffic in the congested area”. But Robert Moses, yes that Robert Moses, while sympathetic to the desire to keep the Dodgers in the city, knew that this was the wrong site for a stadium. Moses’s success in projects like driving the BQE through Brooklyn (even though famously stymied in Brooklyn Heights) taught him a thing or two about local traffic. He knew that people would continue to drive to games, and that the local streets would be overrun with cars. A stadium on this site, he is quoted as saying, would create “a China wall of traffic”. And while Moses was not at all reluctant to use the powers of eminent domain for public projects, even he did not believe that eminent domain could or should be used to acquire land for a private stadium. In addition to reasons “of law and sound policy”, Moses argued, the property-acquiring powers of a state agency should not be used to encourage “speculation” in baseball enterprises. In a letter to O’Malley, Moses wrote: “The natural question everyone will ask about the Atlantic Avenue site as you describe it is.....if you really want to stay in Brooklyn, why don’t you buy the property at a private sale?”.

Besides the stadium, there have been many plans by great architects that were never realized in New York. It is well known how difficult it is to get anything built here. But we also appreciate why New York is a great place, and the two are related. The emotional connections people have to their streets, the sense of ownership of the public places, and New Yorkers’ attitudes about engaging in issues of importance all contribute to a dense atmosphere of meaning in the public realm. Robert Moses could have some success, in a previous era, by claiming he was working for the needs of the public over individual/group territories (after all, besides the highways pushed through, he created hundreds of parks and true public spaces). But we are wary of projects that ignore the rules to do something “good” for us but that also, by the way, are required to be economically “feasible” for a private developer who does not have to show his hand.

There is a problem with looking at this project as just one more chapter in the biography of a great architect: it masks the real issues critical to the development of cities. The process by which we provide housing, jobs, public space and transportation has very little to do with the skills of an individual architect. So here’s the litmus test for this project: would we even be having this discussion if the architect wasn’t a star? (Quick: who designed Rockefeller Center?) We don't believe that the only way of solving the city's problems is to cook up a process in private. And on that, we’re also telling our elected officials: if you think that somehow a star architect, in some kind of “partnership” with a well-connected developer, who is in some kind of “partnership” with the ESDC can make this project, as currently conceived, politically palatable, you just haven’t been paying attention. If Brooklyn Heights could improve the plans of an unelected Robert Moses, brownstone Brooklyn can improve the plans of an unelected Forest City Ratner.

We’ll never know how things would have turned out if Mr. O’Malley had successfully persuaded the state to condemn the property, and Buckminster Fuller had designed the stadium in our neighborhood. Our sense is that the stadium would not have aged well, but perhaps the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn. However, had O’Malley built his stadium here, it is extremely unlikely that brownstone Brooklyn would look as it does today, and might be looking a whole lot more like the Yankee Stadium area in the South Bronx. So we lost the Dodgers, but we gained some great neighborhoods. Instead of second guessing the loss of the Dodgers, things could be worse; we could be asking ourselves: “Who lost Brooklyn?”.

It's The Scale, Stupid

2006-05-21T20:59:00.000-04:00

Fifth Avenue Before

Fifth Avenue After

Important aspects of a project are beyond an architect’s control. Most importantly, the architect does not decide the size of the project. The architect does not set the program, and is therefore challenged with configuring a given amount of building on a provided site. So while it’s one thing to go out and defend a project that you have accepted as a challenge, there is a danger in being hoisted by the developer's petard when taking on a project that is seriously flawed in its conception. Has the intransigence of the developer – in continually asserting a program that is so far beyond a reasonable scale - jeopardized the ability to do a project at all? The Gehry renderings will not help sway public opinion, and the informed design community is all too aware of what lurks behind the curtain here.

We were wary to begin with of a developer with a consistent track record of getting the worst work out of good designers. Now David Caruso in an AP report in Newsday quotes Mr. Gehry: “"What we are trying to do is create a skyline,'' he (Gehry) said, with buildings of different materials and heights, as if they had been developed over time.” As if they had been developed over time! When Frank Gehry is asked to try his hand at post-modern pastiche, it’s the final confirmation that this project is way off track. Why would you want to create new buildings that look “as if” they had been developed over time, when you have real substantial buildings on the site that really have been developed over time? And why would you ask Frank Gehry, of all people, to do that? If you want a fake New York, go to Las Vegas.

Yet the design team has soldered on. In attempting to dismiss critics of the project, Mr. Gehry said: “They should’ve been picketing Henry Ford….there is progress everywhere.” This particular view of progress, in which bigger is always better, and the development of short-term economically tempting models takes precedence over the meaning inherent in the existing built environment, is not shared by us. Though Henry Ford is not one of our heros, and not just for the obvious reasons, we do believe in progress but of a different type. In Brooklyn, we don’t define our urban experience by our relationship to the car. We walk. We take public transit. We bike. And so we experience space differently than those in an automobile culture like L.A. do. Progress, for us, would be recognizing the opportunity to integrate the various transit modes at this site, and design a ground plane for them to coexist, privileging the pedestrian. Mr. Olin claims: “We’re optimists who believe that through our work we ought to make the world better…If you believe in change, there are people who are frightened of it or resist it…The more ambitious the scale, the more daring the project, the more upset some people will always be”. Well, if you were an optimist before Metrotech, if you were an optimist before Atlantic Center, the glass is looking decidedly more empty now. Defining progress as building at an “ambitious scale” just seems so incredibly out of touch.

We don’t believe that making the world “better” requires using public subsidies to bail out the purchase of an NBA team (a team that pays players upwards of $10 million each), build a sports venue for 18 to 20 thousand fans and provide parking for 4,000 cars, so they don’t lose their New Jersey fan base, at one of the most congested intersections in Brooklyn - an existing choke-point for traveling between Brooklyn and Manhattan – on the back of affordable housing and the existing scale of a neighborhood. How does ignoring any guidelines provided by existing zoning, providing no alternative energy ideas, no concept of security, privatizing public streets and calling them the project’s “open space”, and proposing a development that totally circumvents the city’s process for public review make the world better? Let’s think some more about what “better” means. What does “better” have to do with an “ambitious” scale? Where are the limits to this ambition?

Locating density near mass transit is a good idea, but like all good ideas, it has its limits in real world applications. These limits are provided by other facts, such as the fact that we are not building on a tabla rasa Jeffersonian grid with no history or topography. Brooklyn is not a primordial swamp with a bridge to it from Manhattan. There is an existing world at-grade with a history, a scale, and a host of issues, not the least of which is a surface traffic nightmare. The “progressive” “ambitiously scaled” projects of the 1960s failed, not because they were done in the 60’s, but because interventions, at that scale, in existing fabric, were extremely traumatic to the urban morphology. This project (now 8.66 million sf) would be like locating the former World Trade Center towers (only 7.6 million sf combined) plus Madison Square Garden, somewhere near the W.4th Street Transit Hub because of all the trains there. It is so unfathomably beyond the scale of any reasonable intervention.

Finally, the oft-stated canard: “It has to be big, because of the infrastructure costs.” Not true. Many of the infrastructure costs identified by FCRC are merely a result of the proposed scale of the project, not the other way around. Larger loads come from larger projects. Don’t provide venue parking and you won’t have to excavate for it. Don’t close the streets and you won’t have to relocate sewers and utilities. The city will not accept public utilities under private property, because it requires continual maintenance access to water, storm and sewer, gas and electric lines. The need to relocate utilities is caused by closing the streets. Don’t build so dense and the demands on the infrastructure will be less.

What is the appropriate size for development here? We’ve previously suggested that an FAR of 6 was the intent of the ambitious, progressive, optimistic, and relatively public process of upzoning Brooklyn. An FAR of 6, on an existing site of 825,320 sf (not counting the streets, to make the FAR measure relative to other sites) would result in a total building size of 4,951,920 sf. Don’t provide venue parking, don’t close the streets, provide for intermodal connections, and with significantly reduced infrastructure costs, building under 5 million square feet would be doing the right thing for Brooklyn. And encourage the design team to provide quality design, rather than defend an indefensible program.

How Big Is It Now?

2006-05-15T22:25:00.000-04:00

Image from nytimes.com

On the Brian Lehrer Show this morning, Jim Stuckey claimed that the FAR of the project is “roughly” 8, and it didn’t sound right. The FAR, or Floor Area Ratio, is a measure of density, calculated by dividing the building area by the site area. The higher the FAR, the more dense the project. And this “roughly 8” is OK, he said, because it is built over 22 acres, a very significant amount of land, as opposed to a smaller site. Why is a higher FAR more acceptable on a larger site than it is on a smaller site? Because the designer has the opportunity to leave more open space? But on this larger site, the “open space”, still so far below city guidelines, includes the streets. So the area that would normally be open streets, providing light and air and views, is now counted as “project open space”, AND added to the denominator of the FAR calculation. Outside of the street area taken from the public, there is no significant open space.

And what about this FAR figure? Once again, lets do the math. The project now is 8.66 million sf, according to the recent press releases. If you think that the streets are part of the site, and the site is 22 acres (958,320 sf), then the FAR is 8,660,000 divided by 958,320, or 9.0, not “roughly” 8. This is using the developer’s own figures. Why did Mr. Stuckey say 8? To be 8, a project on a real 22 acre site would have to be only 8 x 958,320 = 7,666,560 sf, which is one million sf smaller. Is that their intention? Moreover, as we’ve previously discussed, the site for the purposes of FAR, which is to compare similar sites across the city, should not include the areas that are existing streets. Because other sites across the city do not include existing streets. We’ve shown that the existing site, without the streets, is more like 825,320 sf.

8,700,000 divided by 825,000 is 10.5. So the real FAR, for comparing it to other sites, big or small, is not at all close to 8, it’s roughly 10.5. And this is not counting the fact that an arena occupies a good part of the site, so the FAR on the remaining site is significantly greater. (Note to developer: is our math correct? Are the site dimensions correct? Please provide a dimensioned site plan, and we’ll confirm.).

An Amazing Technical Feat of Illusion

2006-05-09T22:10:00.000-04:00

Image from FCRCs Web Site

The dioramas at the Museum of Natural History, “amazing technical feats of illusion” are created by seamlessly blending 3D modeling with 2D scenography. In a similar manner, a dissolving slide show of recent renderings for the project blends a depiction of real space with the wall of a building. By glossing over the inconvenient reality of sight lines, and in an attempt to make the landscaped areas seem larger than they could really be, a natural park-like setting replete with waterfalls and forest is superimposed on the base of a proposed tower. These are not two different images, it is one image containing contradictory ideas for the space. A revealing view of conflicting goals: the same space can’t be occupied by both a building and a landscape.

Much has been written about the unsolicited promotional flyer that the developer distributed in the mail this week. It contains dozens of images of attractive people, and nice photographs of our existing neighborhood, but only two images of the project: a landscape plan and a rendering of the pond. Why show a row of brownstones when the project is a mass of highrises taller and wider than the Williamsburgh Savings Bank? Like the rendering, the brochure is a sop to the neighborhood, masking the true intentions of the project. For those unfamiliar with the design intent, it would be impossible to understand the proposed scale of the development from the information provided. That large green area rendered in plan? Why not come clean with the fact that it would actually be well over 100 feet above the street, on the roof of the basketball arena?

The flyer does begin to flesh out the program for the arena: in addition to basketball, it will host “community events – including school sports, high school and college graduations – and family events such as concerts and circuses “. While we’re actually not looking forward to a giant Madison Square Gardens style venue for concerts in our backyard, not to be accused of NIMBYism we won’t argue with the dire need for more venues for circuses at this intersection. But this isn’t the full program: why no mention of the “extreme sports” events that were presented to City Council by the developer last year? And about space for school graduation ceremonies: as veterans of the public school system will attest, the challenge for schools is really not where graduations will be held. It’s in preparation for graduations. Wouldn’t a real community masterplan, “thoughtful and visionary – for the Brooklyn we know and love” with a budget of 3.5 billion dollars, be investing in our kids by including a new school?

We have posted previously about how limited the area of new open space at-grade really is, given the proposed density. The space assumed by taking an existing street and calling it “the project’s open space” does not create more space. It merely transfers the ownership of existing public space to private control. And ultimately, this is not better space than a street. A real street provides real connections to the surrounding area and, by allowing through-circulation integrated with the circulation patterns of the city, ties the life of new buildings to the surrounding communities. By closing the street, the new development isolates itself, both physically and in spirit, from the surrounding areas. Saying it’s connected does not make it connect. An image of a great space does not make a space great. We’re not taken with this illusion, and a glossy brochure showing happy people and existing brownstones is just not enough to get Brooklyn singing Kumbaya around this project.

There’s A (Private) Beach Under The Street

2006-04-30T13:05:00.000-04:00

Image from FCRC's website

Coincidentally, we paid respect to Jane Jacobs in a recent post (“Good Streets/Bad Streets”), just before she died. But her death made us wonder at how current events have developed from a previous era. In 1968, as students in Paris ripped up paving stones and hurled them at the police, one of the rallying cries was “sous le pave: la plage” (under the pavement: the beach). The public beach - the epitomy of undesignated non-utilitarian optimistic space - was the opposite of the street, an historic relic of an oppressive and cynical society based on private property.

In Brooklyn, the idea of taking a street to build a beach reveals a less optimistic view. The beach chairs shown in the latest renderings, sitting on what is now Pacific Street, are illustrated to support the taking of existing public streets and small parcels to make a huge assemblage of private property, and building towers in a park. What is the pressing need to develop at this scale? Why not let market forces continue to develop the properties, adhering to established criteria for height and bulk (commonly known as zoning)? Because there’s an opportunity to make the numbers work to construct the basketball arena that can’t pay for itself. For the developer, the arena is the excuse for the density. For the politicians, it’s the other way around. Either way, this pile-on opportunism results in yet another dysfunctional plan. Like Atlantic Center, the urban plan was not developed by designers, but by developers and politicians.

Perhaps, as a suburban office park, the rendering’s depiction of open space would be believable. (No dogs and no kids off-leash. No balls, no bikes, no schools. No street!) But as an urban model for real mixed-use, it’s just not realistic. Pretty drawings do not convince us that you can build more dense than mid-town Manhattan, include an 18 or 20 thousand seat arena, and yet maintain a one-to-one relationship with nature for individuals sitting on beach chairs. On-grade, in open space, in the middle of 8.7 million sf of new construction. Anything can be drawn. But ultimately, judged as a vision of the public good and aspirations for a better world, this defense of this economic model for aggregating public space is deeply cynical.

In today’s Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff looks for ways to criticize Jane Jacobs, largely by attacking the straw-man New Urbanists. It takes guts to write about the “beauty” of Los Angeles caused by the freeways, and to idealize the former World Trade Center plaza. But to suggest that SoHo is really just the same as the superblock misses the concept of how scale matters. And to criticize Ms. Jacobs because “she could not see that the same freeway that isolated her beloved, working-class North End from downtown Boston also protected it from gentrification” is a pretty strange defense of the Robert Moses mindset. Looking for beneficial unintended consequences of this bad idea is like pointing out that the redeeming quality of bad schools is that their students won’t have to worry about paying higher income taxes if/when they get jobs.

Why remember the ‘60’s? In 1963, Pennsylvania Station was demolished to build Madison Square Garden. According to A.J. Greenough, Pennsylvania Railroad President at the time, the idea was to “transform the area from a static uneconomic burden on the railroad into a viable commercial and recreational center of benefit to the entire West Thirty-fourth Street neighborhood and the public at large”. Never mind that this demolition instigated the origin of the city’s Landmarks Commission, due to the efforts of Ms. Jacobs and others. We now know how the arena at Madison Square Garden “transformed” the local West Thirty-fourth street neighborhood. We’ve learned from our mistakes, and we don’t deserve the same fate here.

What Public Process?

2006-04-22T12:19:00.000-04:00

Image from Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy

Nicholas Confessore wrote a piece in the Times recently about bloggers’ public postings on the project. Norman Oder, on the Atlantic Yards Report, and others have responded. How is the project being informed by public discussion? On FCRC’s web site, in a section called Public Process, it is claimed that:

“In addition to numerous meetings FCRC has held with community organizations, local leaders and elected officials, the general public had the opportunity to participate at the Public Scoping meeting held by ESDC on October 18, 2005. The public submitted comments on the Draft Scope of Analysis which explains in detail the environmental issues that will be analyzed in the DEIS”

So we have been informed that the public review process has begun, because in addition to private meetings, there was a public meeting for the Draft Scope of Analysis for the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). (A record of the “numerous” private meetings would be helpful, because behind the blogging issue is a general sense that the information is not getting through.) Let’s be clear about what that meeting for the “general public” was. The meeting was not a discussion about the project. The stated purpose of the meeting was to receive comments on the proposed scope of a proposed study of the project’s impact, as narrowly defined as that is by the state’s EIS process. Ironically, the EIS does not include issues of sustainable design, security, or other critical design issues; the EIS is not even a full discussion of the project’s impact. While the scope of the study was discussed, the specific impact of the project on the local area was not the subject of the meeting. Again, the discussion was supposed to be only about the scope of a study, which is quite different from a discussion about the project itself. A real discussion about the project would address the process, the financing, the schedule, and the idea of what this project means for Brooklyn.

Why does this matter? A successful design must ultimately synthesize all the constraints on the site and program in a way that appears seamless. To do that, the design team, including the funding parties, must fully understand the issues as perceived by all stakeholders. And a successful design must be seen to understand them by reaching out to the local communities, not just to self-appointed representatives. This is not “design by committee”, but a necessary recognition that there is important information in people’s opinions that should inform the design. We don’t need more public meetings to talk about the scope of a study. We do need real public discussions about the site, the program, the design, and the process.

Good Streets, Bad Streets

2006-04-09T16:50:00.000-04:00

5th Avenue Looking North

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FCR's Proposal for the Area Currently Known as Pacific Street

“A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the building and other uses that border it…streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs”.

Jane Jacobs

Interim Surface Parking

2006-04-03T23:12:00.000-04:00

Meadowlands Parking Lot

The Meadowlands site claims that there is currently parking for 4,000 cars in the immediate arena area, only 200 cars more than the 3,800 proposed for this site.

One change in the Final Scope is the admission that an unspecified amount of “interim surface parking” on the eastern part of the project site will be constructed during Phase I. (P.14). This “use” of the site could be in-place for some time. While the Phase I analysis year is 2010 and Phase II is 2016, schedules for large projects are notorious for being accurate only at the moment they are proposed.

The Transportation Argument

2006-03-27T20:46:00.000-05:00

We’re told that it makes sense to locate a major development at the proposed site, because it’s already a transportation hub. A nice sound bite, but it’s not the full story.

It certainly is a good idea to use an existing transportation infrastructure in off-peak times. The trains are full to capacity at the peak of rush-hour, and underutilized at other times. Our investment in this infrastructure would yield better returns if it could be used more consistently throughout the day, since much of the capital cost of the infrastructure is fixed (stations, trains, etc), regardless of how often it is used. It’s a strong case, as far as the trains go.

But for better or worse, transportation is not only about trains in Brooklyn. Taxis, commuter vans (aka “dollar vans”), and livery cars operate at peak times, when the mass transit system is full to capacity, but also at proportionally higher levels in inclement weather and at off-peak times, when trains are underused. Trains operate less frequently in off-peak hours, resulting in longer waits on platforms. The smaller organizations of dollar vans allow them to be more responsive to the immediate demands of the market. And in a similar way, private cars often crowd the streets in off-peak times; driving is a more attractive option when the trains are infrequent. On any trip, there can be bottlenecks.

Drivers know that the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic, and 4th Avenue is one of the most congested in the borough, at virtually all hours of the day and night. Driving over the Manhattan Bridge and along Flatbush into Brooklyn, the first major point of congestion is often Junior’s Restaurant, where double parking and stopping in the drive lanes is still tolerated by the police, perhaps in deference to the iconic status of Junior’s as a political landmark. And continuing along Flatbush, traffic crawls through the developing BAM area and stalls at Atlantic. Traffic in this area is not bad just at rush hour; it’s always bad, degrading the pedestrian environment.

When we talk about taking property for the public good, lets think about options for improving the public realm as well as the larger economy. (In 1853 eminent domain was used to take the properties required to build Central Park; Prospect Park was finished in 1868. The most disturbing thing about the use of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project is that the vision of what constitutes the public good is so degraded).

The only way to improve the public realm in this area is to have fewer cars traveling through, not more. Suggestions for improvements have been made: drive lanes should be reduced, not increased. Sidewalks should be widened, not narrowed. Provide less parking, not more. Institute permit parking for residents even without the proposed development, to discourage drivers from parking near the Atlantic/Pacific hub to take the subway into Manhattan; develop park and ride stations further from downtown Brooklyn and closer to the commuters’ origins. And tolls on the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges with congestion pricing would significantly reduce the number of vehicles that are just passing through.

If those who are calling for an arena at any cost really cared about doing it right, there would have been a study of a range of possible sites, with pros and cons identified and analyzed. Yes, there will always be local opposition to any proposed site for a huge development, but the fact that there will always be opposition is not a sufficient reason for ignoring the issues. The fact is, few outside of the immediate area of any proposed development are concerned with the impact of development on the local area. And in this case, an impact on the local area will have repercussions on a much greater area, from Boerum Hill, Park Slope, and Crown Heights to Prospect Park South, Midwood and beyond. In a real study of possible sites, locating a surge of 19,000 additional people at one of the most congested intersections of a main artery in Brooklyn would not likely be selected as the best fit for this program.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

2006-03-12T14:18:00.000-05:00

Recent "development", near the site.

Categories include:
a. Neighborhood Context / Urban Design
b. Planning/Programming
c. Public Outreach / Process
d. Public/Private Development
e. Other

Six Reasons to Close the Streets / Not!

2006-02-19T11:58:00.000-05:00

The area formerly known as Pacific Street

Last week, City Planning Chair Amanda Burden made a strong case for an open Cortlandt Street at the World Trade Center site. “We need our streets,” she said, “we need connectivity, we need an open Cortlandt Street for light and air and to create normal blocks”. But that’s Manhattan. Brooklyn is different. In Brooklyn, there are six reasons to close Pacific Street between Vanderbilt and Carlton. Lets review:

1. The blocks, as they stand, are not “viable development sites”.
This is one reason City Planning has given in the past for demapping streets in the Downtown Brooklyn Plan. But that was for combining small blocks. These are already huge blocks. And the plans show no buildings on the former street area.

2. Closing Pacific Street will allow for better vehicular circulation.
This is the other reason City Planning has given in the past for demapping streets in the Downtown Brooklyn Plan. Pacific Street is currently a very long, well used street. Since the proposed arena location requires Pacific to be closed between 6th Avenue and Flatbush, closing Pacific between Carlton and Vanderbilt will keep the remaining block between 6th Avenue and Carlton clear of through traffic, which would be diverted to Atlantic, Dean, Bergen, St. Marks Place and further south. Earlier plans (thank you wayback machine) did show vehicular entrances to below grade parking in line with Pacific, but the plans attached to the Memorandum of Understanding with the City don’t show that arrangement.

3. The street area can be used to make “open space”, as in “we are providing 6 acres of Publicly Accessible Open Space”.
But the streets are already open now. As Ms. Burden has pointed out about Lower Manhattan, “The public realm in New York is primarily composed of streets and sidewalks. As such, Dey and Cortlandt provide key opportunities to expand the amount of open space”. In fact, streets and sidewalks are the quintessential public open space in Brooklyn. We use these areas to plant trees, for our kids to play, to walk, jog, bike, skateboard, rollerblade, have stoop sales, meet our neighbors, walk the dog, and the street areas provide views, light and air to the adjacent built form. They connect our communities; they make our place.

4. Closing the street will provide more site, so more building can be constructed.
This is false. The total geographic area remains the same. Closing the streets only makes the site look bigger in FAR calculations, which would be a misuse of the intent of that measure.

5. Creating a super block at the east end of the site provides another possible location for the arena.
O.K., we’re stretching here. But it occurs to us that the currently proposed site for the arena may not work out. There may be infrastructure issues that make it impractical. The required taking of the properties may be unsuccessful. However, locating the arena at the east end of the site would stretch the arena crowds from the subway and railroad across the entire site, rendering the residential aspect less desirable. Relocating the arena would also require an updated Environmental Impact Statement, with attendant scheduling impact. Not likely, but don’t rule it out.

6. Closing the streets makes a great space.
And I have a bridge you may be interested in. Renderings can make any space look great, and Mr. Olin’s renderings are always spectacular. But look closely, beyond the colors. Look at what you don’t see. This is not a configuration of streets and blocks that an urban designer or an architect or the public could love; it’s a developer’s dream.

Demapping Planning

2006-02-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

At the recent Brooklyn Borough Atlantic Yards Committee’s meeting, Winston Von Engel from City Planning was asked what the department’s position on demapping streets is. His initial reply: "I don't think there's one policy for demapping or mapping streets". Spectacularly unhelpful. And then, according to Norman Oder in the TimesRatnerReport, Von Engel continued:

"In Downtown Brooklyn, we demapped streets to create more rational building sites, more rational blocks, because the leftover remnants were not lending themselves to be building on. But in other cases, we've mapped streets back and we appreciate the life that streets bring. There is no one set policy."

OK, both happen. But that doesn’t mean that there is no policy. In fact there is a policy, and we know what it is: agree to demap streets only if doing so supports sound urban design principles. City Planning’s public silence in the wake of the planning failure at Atlantic Yards is uncharacteristically deferential to the developer, at the expense of the public realm. Was Von Engel’s statement that the city has supported demapping streets in Downtown Brooklyn a reference to the changes in the Downtown Brooklyn plan in which "several street map changes are proposed to create larger, more viable development sites, to improve traffic flow and to provide landscaped street medians. These actions include closing some low-volume streets and extending and widening some other streets", or the 2003 demapping of portions of Pearl and Adams Streets to expand the Brooklyn Marriott Hotel? There the 1,025 square feet at the end of Pearl was already a dead-end, used only for on-street parking. And the 3,395 square foot sliver of Adams was a non-traffic remnant of a 1940’s street widening. These actions are in no way similar to the proposed demapping of approximately 70,000 square feet of Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt.

Pacific is far from a low-volume street, or a short dead end street. And the blocks on either side are already very large, approximately 200 feet wide and 1000 feet long, certainly not irrational for building sites. Demapping this section of Pacific would form an enormous superblock of perhaps 470,000 sf, over 10 acres. In many ways, the issues here are similar to the issues at the former World Trade Center superblock. The Chair of the City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning, Amanda Burden, recently addressed those streets and blocks in an open letter to the LMDC:

“It is critical to the successful integration of the site with the rest of Lower Manhattan that Dey and Cortland Streets be extended as real streets between Church and Greenwich. These streets must be designed to accommodate both vehicular and pedestrian use. The public realm in New York is primarily composed of streets and sidewalks. As such, Dey and Cortlandt provide key opportunities to expand the amount of open space and accessibility into the site. Furthermore, these streets will ensure that the typical block size along Church Street remains the same as the blocks to the north and south. In New York, with few exceptions, larger block sizes…are provided only for our most significant public buildings such as Grand Central Station” .

But we clearly understood Von Engel’s remarks when he alluded to the support of the project by his boss’s boss. It’s unfortunate that this support is clouding a true discussion of the real urban design issues at stake.

How Big Is It?

2006-02-04T16:34:00.000-05:00

We’re not sure why it took us so long to realize we could just post the numbers. Then maybe we can give this FAR thing a rest. So get out your calculators and the Draft Scope, and check my figures:

The Draft Scope proposes a project of 9,132,000 sf (P.2, Table 1), and indicates that the site is 22 acres (958,320 sf.) (P.1). Therefore, the proposed FAR (roughly: building area divided by site area) would appear to be 9,132,000 / 958,320, for an FAR of 9.5. That's extremely dense, but wait, there’s more. In a previous post, we calculated the total area of the streets taken by the project to be 133,000 sf. So the proposed FAR on the existing blocks (streets or no streets, the total building density on the land can in fact be compared to other areas) is 9,132,000 / (958,320 – 133,000), for an FAR of 11. Sit down, there’s still more. Because the arena (which appears to occupy about 85,000 sf of site area) will be built at a much lower FAR (lets say, conservatively, 2) the air rights over the arena will be used on the rest of the site. What would the resulting density be on the rest of the site? Subtracting 2 times the arena building area from the total building area, and dividing by the remaining site area (total site area less the arena facility footprint), (9,132,000 – (2 x 85,000) / 825,320 – 85,000 = 8,962,000 / 740,000 ), the FAR for the non-arena area of the existing site is, conservatively, over 12. So that’s the genius of the scheme: you can argue for an FAR of 9.5 (knowing it will get knocked down), but it really amounts to an FAR of over 12 on the 740,000 sf (17 acres) of non-arena site.

Let’s put this in perspective. On the World Trade Center site, current plans call for about 8 million square feet of office space, and perhaps 500,000 sf of other program above grade, on 16 acres. It also happens to include the world's tallest building. That’s an FAR of 8,500,000 / 16 x 43,560 = 12.2. To our knowledge, there are no blocks in Brooklyn that would allow for an FAR of over 12. Currently only about a dozen blocks in our borough, 10% of the new Downtown Brooklyn plan at the very center, would allow for an FAR of over 10.

Does it matter? Let’s remember, the FAR is the best overall indication of demand on services, from utilities to transportation to emergency services to schools for residents. When do we get to see a revised project proposal that is not off-the-charts too big for its location in Brownstone Brooklyn, so that we can move on?

(Some assumptions are required here, especially concerning the footprint of the arena. Table 1 of the Draft Scope indicates that the arena size is 850,000 sf (?!). That is equivalent to 42 floors of a 20,000 sf floor plate. Is that a typo, or does it refer to the entire arena block, including the commercial development? We assume it’s the block, and that the footprint of the arena is 85,000 sf).

Real FAR

2006-01-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

At the public meeting on Thursday, we discussed this Floor Area Ratio (FAR) thing again. The FAR is the ratio of built area to site area. It’s important because it’s the accepted measure of building density on a site in the city. While open space, building setbacks, and height limitations constrain building configurations, FAR is the way we understand how much building can be on the site. And depending on the use of the building (residential, commercial, etc.), FAR also becomes a pretty good indication of the number of people that will be there, and their impact on traffic, services, utilities, and so on.

The public assembly use of the arena makes its impact not really measurable by an FAR, since the impact of crowds is out of proportion to the typical use of built areas. However, because the proposed project includes an arena on the site, the air rights for density will be transferred to the rest of the site, making the non-arena components much denser than they would be without the arena. This in itself is a reason to limit the averaged FAR on the site, as a whole, to something reasonable, since the non-arena areas will be much denser than the average.

What is an appropriate FAR for the site? We’ve discussed in previous posts that the ratio of built area to site area is relative to the pattern of streets and blocks. An FAR figure for a superblock is not comparable to an FAR for a typical Brooklyn block, because a superblock uses the street for part of the site area. The chart below compares the two blocks at the eastern end of the site - each nominally 200’ x 1000’, on either side of a 70’ (property line to property line) street - with a superblock occupying the same total area. Dimensions would need to be verified for the entire site to make a definitive comparison.

Built Area (sf) ....Superblock FAR ......Brooklyn-block FAR
470,000 ................1.00 ........................1.17
940,000 ................2.00 ........................2.35
1,410,000 .............3.00 .........................3.52
1,880,000 .............4.00 ........................4.70
2,350,000 .............5.00 ........................5.87
2,820,000 .............6.00 ........................7.05

So when we hear that the proposed FAR on the site with demapped streets will be say, 6.00, we will understand that to be equivalent to a Brooklyn-block 7.05, which is significantly more dense. And conversely, if we can understand a density equivalent to an existing-street-pattern FAR of 6, we should be looking for a superblock calculation of about 5. We’re not developers, it’s not a position to negotiate from, nor will we be asked to negotiate this position, it’s just the facts. The Extell proposal proves that a 6.0 FAR with streets retained is economically feasible.

Why a real 6.0? This is substantially more dense than current zoning. The current Zoning Map shows three different zones on the site: R6B (FAR = 2.0), for the North side of Dean between 5th and Carlton (and most of Prospect Heights), R7A (FAR = 4.0) for the Flatbush and Vanderbilt corridors, and M1-1 (FAR = 1.0) for the remainder of the site. But downtown Brooklyn has recently been rezoned much denser, with some limited areas at 10 and even 12 FAR, surrounded by 6.02 FAR areas.

For the Atlantic Yards site, 6.02 appears to be the intent of the Downtown Brooklyn Development Plan. On their web site, City Planning explains the Downtown Plan: “Rezone Southern Flatbush Avenue Area to C6-2…Increasing the residential FAR from 3.44 to 6.02 would encourage new residential development….and support development surrounding Atlantic Terminal”. While the Atlantic Yards site is not in Downtown Brooklyn, the Downtown Brooklyn Development Plan was developed with an understanding of the surrounding neighborhoods. The Downtown Brooklyn Development Plan went through the ULURP process, was recommended for approval by the Borough President and Community Board 2, was approved by the City Planning Commmission, and was adopted by City Council on June 28, 2004 (with a modification establishing building height limits). We have to believe these people did their homework.

Posting Comments

2006-01-25T19:51:00.000-05:00

Sorry Readers, I haven't been seeing many of your comments - a problem of learning on the project. I think I've posted them all now.

The Role of the Architect II

2006-01-22T14:02:00.000-05:00

Looking towards the site, north on Carlton Avenue from Bergen Street

The previous post discussed the advantages of having a star architect working on the project. But there are also disadvantages. While he is more likely to be successful in influencing the developer-provided project direction, he may also be less likely to listen to the ideas, input, and concerns of others. An architect with major commissions around the world may not have the time or interest to learn much about the unique site conditions of each one, preferring instead to explore common themes of interest across all of them. And while our site can benefit from lessons learned in other locations, that benefit may come at the expense of the genius loci here.

Take, for example, Gehry’s claim that “there is a constituency of people that live there who fantasize this Brooklyn as brownstones and Court Street and Carroll Gardens and all that, which isn’t on this site." A troubling comment - people who live here are fantasizing about the nature of their neighborhood - from someone who doesn’t live nearby. Court Street and Carroll Gardens? What’s that about? Is this his idea, or someone else’s? Several of the buildings on the site, slated for early demolition, are in fact indistinguishable from buildings on Court Street and Carroll Gardens and all that. It would not be difficult to take a stroll around and see that the site is surrounded by areas that are not only contiguous brownstone neighborhoods - similar to Court Street and Carroll Gardens and all that - but more so. See for yourself. And at the same time it’s more diverse and needs to be connected at the site, not separated. We need our streets. We don’t need private “public” open space that requires a private security force to protect. This is not Grand Avenue in Los Angeles.

Take also Mr. Gehry’s claim that citizens’ groups “should back off when somebody knows what they’re doing”. What does that mean? If you “know" what you’re doing, you have nothing to learn, so you don’t have to listen? I know he’s said all the right things as well: reach out to the community, wanting to meet, wanting to connect, etc. We all could have said some things better. But in the end the architect has a unique role: it’s not what you say, it’s what you do that counts.

The Role of the Architect

2006-01-16T22:31:00.000-05:00

Let’s tackle the difficult question: what do we think about Frank Gehry doing this project in our neighborhood? Our typical answer: Gehry is known to be a great architect, but there are real problems with this project. It’s too big, it’s too dense, the crowds will be unmanageable, people driving will take our spaces first, traffic is going to be even worse, the megablocks will detract from our streets, not enough public space, and it’s all private not public, why can’t we have a great pedestrian environment? We understand that the density is driven by the arena – the arena loses money so the real estate has to make it back. (Where’s a big media company when we need it?) Marty Markowitz wanted the team, and the deal made sense to the developers if they could make their profit on the real estate. How to sell it? Let’s get Frank! So here we are.

How much responsibility does the architect bear for the problems? Has Gehry’s predilection for hard street fronts determined the closing of streets? What can we say about his association with a plan that everyone knows is far too dense for the site?

Let’s start by acknowledging that an architect’s mission is different from that of a developer. People say different things about their intentions, but let’s be clear about the players’ respective roles. Architects want to make successful architecture; development teams require their projects to be profitable. And while it may be a good business plan for developers to try to gain popular approval for their projects, a good business plan is only a means to an end: the financial success of the project. In the pairing of developer and architect, let’s also keep in mind the primary relationship: the architect works for the developer, which despite the rhetoric is not a partnership. For better or worse, architects have virtually no say in the program, which includes total built area, area for different components, site limits, amount of parking, etc. These are critical items for determining the financial success of the project; in some projects an architect can weigh in, but they are always finally determined by the developer.

Given this relationship, it does help that Gehry is on the job. He will be more able to push for influencing the program and it’s disposition on the site than anyone else could in that role. From the public’s perspective there is a real advantage to having a star architect working on a project; a renowned architect has more clout to influence the program. Well-known architects can pick and choose commissions, and if a client proposes a direction that is not of interest, they can always decline to participate. Lesser known architects work at the behest of the client, knowing that satisfied clients will give them more work. A star architect plays to a different audience: his place in history. It behooves him to do the right thing, or to not do it at all.

Parking

2006-01-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

Anonymous responded to a previous post: “Parking for 4000 cars is the same as about 19 miles of roadway”. We're not sure if this was in support or in opposition to providing venue parking, which we oppose, but let’s consider this a bit more.

A typical parking spot is roughly 20’ long, so 4,000 spots, lined up end to end, would be 80,000 feet long. Since one mile is 5,280 feet, 4,000 spots is, in fact, equivalent to over 15 miles of cars, lined up end to end, without cross-streets or gaps. If these cars were all to arrive at the same time, or to leave at the same time, this does mean a line of cars stretching from the site to the Goethals Bridge , or to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, assuming no gaps and no other traffic in this single lane.

Why New Jersey? Neil Best, writing in NYNewsday, documents the efforts of Brett Yormark to develop the New Jersey fan base for the Nets, with the hope that they will stick with the team after it makes the move to Brooklyn. In the report on the estimated fiscal impact of the project, commissioned by the developer and prepared by Andrew Zimbalist, it is assumed that 30 percent (2,681) of current fans of the Nets who reside in New Jersey will attend games in Brooklyn. In addition, 5,802 current fans from outside NJ will attend games in Brooklyn. However, in a comprehensive analysis of this report, Jung Kim and Gustav Peebles find the projection of outside support for a Brooklyn team severely flawed and overly optimistic. The arena’s economic model depends on New Jersey fans coming to Brooklyn. But if New Jersey fans come to Brooklyn, they will drive. Are we providing venue parking to validate a flawed economic model?

In a recent article by Nicholas Confessore in the Times, FCR claims to recognize that traffic is a “challenge”. They hope to rely “largely on remote parking for sports events”. In this article, the developer wants us to believe that since basketball games start at 7:30, the traffic generated by the games will not conflict with existing traffic patterns. But this view of rush hour is contradicted by their own consultant “Gridlock Sam” in the Daily News this week, where he ominously warns: “Friday's evening rush hour may be affected by the Nets' 7:30 p.m. matchup against Orlando”.

And ultimately, the developer’s claim in the Times that “traffic has to work for us, too” because the success of the residential units will be “directly tied to the quality of life” rings hollow. The fact is, the most congested areas of the city are not necessarily lacking for tenants. If there is any correlation between rental prices and traffic, it would just as likely run the other way, ie. the more traffic, the higher the rental price. Economically “successful” projects are not necessarily successful quality of life models, witness Metrotech and the Atlantic Center mall. This is something difficult for developers to be responsive to: quality of life is not just an economic measure.

Learning From Los Angeles

2006-01-07T15:43:00.000-05:00

Tom McGeveran wrote this week, in The New York Observer's The Real Estate, that this blog is more sober than others on Atlantic Yards. Thanks, I think. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reference some less polite sources….

In 1990, Mike Davis (aka “The Friedrich Engels of Los Angeles”) observed of the new developments in downtown L.A.:

“The American city, as many critics have recognized, is being systematically turned inside out – or, rather, outside in. The valorized spaces of the new megastructures and supermalls are concentrated in the center, street frontage is denuded, public activity is sorted into strictly functional compartments, and circulation is internalized in corridors under the gaze of private police” ….“De facto disinvestment in traditional public space and recreation has supported the shift of fiscal resources to corporate-defined redevelopment priorities. A pliant city government – in this case ironically professing to represent a bi-racial coalition of liberal whites and Blacks – has collaborated in the massive privatization of public space …. Yet most current, giddy discussions of the “postmodern” scene in Los Angeles neglect entirely these overbearing aspects of counter-urbanizations and counter-insurgency. A triumphal gloss – “urban renaissance,” “city of the future,” and so on – is laid over the brutalization of inner-city neighborhoods ….even as the walls have come down in Eastern Europe, they are being erected all over Los Angeles.” (From City of Quartz, p. 225)

So, 15 years later, after a period in which Prospect Heights has witnessed its own renaissance, how has the "urban renaissance" of downtown Los Angeles progressed? This week, John Pomfret wrote in the Washington Post about downtown Los Angeles:

“More pets than children live downtown, and no schools serve the area. Because much of downtown was rebuilt at the height of the automobile age, at some intersections it’s impossible to walk across the street. At night, the area is desolate and its nightlife is more like a dusk life. The kitchen at the swankiest restaurant, Pinot, closes at 9. It is impossible to hail a cab because the police department refuses to allow random stops, but even if it did, most Los Angeles cabbies would not take short fares. Local redevelopment boards have hired their own security services and trash collection services because city services are stretched too thin.”

What are the lessons that Los Angeles has to offer us about urbanism? Fuggedaboutit!

Street Logic

2006-01-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Earlier posts discussed how increasing the site area, by taking the streets, enabled the project to game the system. This post illustrates how the overall project claims open space and Floor Area Ratios (FAR) in a manner inconsistent with the intent of these measures in New York.

Compare two hypothetical projects, we’ll call them Scheme A and Scheme B, both built on two-block sites. The diagrams above show two different methods of calculating the open space and the FAR; the actual configuration of the massing on the site is immaterial here. Scheme A does not take the street between the blocks, Scheme B does. Scheme A builds on half of both blocks, leaving open 2-half blocks, or space equivalent to one city block. Scheme B builds on half of both blocks and also on half of the street, leaving the same space open on the blocks as Scheme A. But since Scheme B counts half the street as open space as well, even though it has a larger built foot-print than Scheme A, it claims more open space. And we’ve lost our street.

With similar Orwellian logic, Scheme B claims the same Floor Area Ratio as Scheme A, even though it builds more. The Floor Area Ratio is a measure of building density, useful in urban planning discussions and policy decision making. It is calculated by dividing the total area of floors in a project by the total site area. But like all measures, it is only significant as a standard when used to compare projects in similar contexts. In Brooklyn, the FAR measures density relative to the existing pattern of streets and blocks. If Scheme A builds to an FAR of 6 (ie. the total floor area is six times the site area), Scheme B claims the same “FAR” while building more floor area, due to the larger site claimed.

And another thing: other than this calculated slight of hand, there is no good reason to take Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt. In a recent interview found today on Norman Oder’s TimesRatnerReport, Gehry expressed his anxiety about the planning so far: “…how do you make buildings that fit, how do you make a new skyline, how do you develop a scale at the ground level, how do you create the opportunities…” One place to start could be by respecting the existing streets. The street is not some other architect’s mistake, waiting for Forest City Ratner to correct; it is the deep structure of urban form. This is not about replicating 19th Century architecture, but about learning from the large scaled mistakes of 20th Century interventions.

Demolition II

2005-12-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

Open Windows: another building on the site in the process of becoming a threat to public safety.

An earlier post suggested that some of the buildings that will soon be demolished by Forest City Ratner may in fact be in relatively good repair. While some of them look fine from the outside, apparently we have to accept the developers’ statement - that their engineering report requires that the buildings be demolished immediately since they pose a threat to public safety - since no independent engineer is permitted to see the interiors.

Severe structural damage is said to have been caused by recent water infiltration. This is relatively unusual in New York; there are several well-known buildings in all neighborhoods that have stood empty for decades, and have managed to maintain their structural integrity. Property owners know that severe structural damage caused by water infiltration is an indication of willful neglect. While due process, as required by the State’s Environmental Impact Statement process, mandates that no work be done on the project during the impact assessment phase, work required for public safety trumps due process. So the forces of nature have been enlisted to expedite work on the project and push along the project’s schedule. The fact that these buildings have been allowed to deteriorate to the point of requiring demolition is a matter of expediency for the developer.

So where is the public input process in all of this? Isn’t it conceivable that a possible mitigation action, coming out of the Environment Impact Statement process, could be to explore ways to integrate the project into the surrounding neighborhoods? Couldn’t one strategy to do this be to maintain some of the existing character and scale of the significant buildings on the site, and adaptively reuse them in the project? Causing the buildings on the site to be demolished limits the options available to the design team. What’s the point of public input if there are no options to the developers’ first plans?

Private Public Space

2005-12-20T22:41:00.000-05:00

The trouble with trying to imagine interior public space as circulation space without a street is that it is impossible for it to be successful.

If the interior of the block is not well used for circulation, these walkways become empty and dangerous places. It’s a model that was tried by the New York City Housing Authority in the 1960's, which now fences in the walkways (Above: Wyckoff Gardens).

On the other hand, if the project is “successful”, and the interior of the block is well used for circulation, these areas actively draw people off the surrounding streets, weakening the activity on them. This is the Metrotech model. For a retailing street, this demeans the viability of the surrounding retail establishments. For a residential street, it detracts from our connections to the wider communities, and diminishes our sense of security.

This anti-urban pattern is at odds with the vision we have of Brooklyn. We envision great pedestrian streets here, which tie together different communities and provide for the full range of circulation modes. While this vision can accommodate a range of scales of built form, the continuity of the street grid is an absolute necessity.

Demolition

2005-12-18T14:31:00.000-05:00

Forest City Ratner is planning to demolish six buildings, beginning this Tuesday: 620 and 622 Pacific Street, 461, 463 and 585 Dean Street, and 608-620 Atlantic Avenue (The Underberg Building). According to a report in the Times by Nicholas Confessore, there is some damage to the interiors, including, “tin-ceiling panels, drywall, even a broken-down piano”.

But from all appearances on the exterior many of these buildings are not in bad shape. 461 and 463 Dean Street, for example (above), are fine examples of period housing and contribute to the urban fabric. Is FCR grouping solid buildings with some damaged ones in order to expedite the clearing of the site and circumvent due process? They should be maintained in place while the Environmental Impact Statement process is underway.

Site Selection

2005-12-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

In a previous post we discussed why the arena will not be able to provide parking under Blocks 1119 and 1127. Security experts agree that parking areas should no longer be located below sports and entertainment facilities, and that buffer areas should be provided for pedestrian-only circulation at sport venues (See link). In fact, according to a recent Sports Illustrated article, the NFL and MLB prohibit parked vehicles within 100 feet of stadiums for security reasons.

On this site, since all of Block 1121 and most of Block 1120 will continue to house the LIRR train yard just below grade, the only available area of any consequence for underground venue parking is the Phase II Block 1129. This block, at below-grade levels, is also the only site available for Phase II residential/office parking. Is it possible to excavate deep enough to provide both residential/office and venue parking below Block 1129? Depending on the elevation of rock, this could easily add a hundred million dollars to the construction budget, a very conservative estimate. More likely: look for parking garages to spring up further east on Atlantic Avenue.

There really are only two options: either move the arena to a different site, or invest in rapid transit and don’t provide associated venue parking. If Madison Square Gardens is the model, no directly associated venue parking is required. If a MLB stadium, or Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands is the model, build the arena someplace else, where people can drive to it.

Open Space II

2005-12-15T22:03:00.000-05:00

As an exercise, let’s work the numbers the other way. Assume that the project really could make a significant public open space. If that space were to occupy an area the size of a city block – say 200’ x 1,000’ – it would equal 200,000 sf, or 4.6 acres. At the city’s standard of 2.5 acres per 1,000 residents, this open space would support a population of 1,840. At an average of 2 people per unit, this equates to 920 residential units. By way of comparison, the current scope calls for 7,300 units.

Open Space

2005-12-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

An earlier post looked at the project's strategy of taking streets to "improve" the Floor Area Ratio. A similar point should be made relative to open space. For the planned residential development, active open space is critical, and Brooklyn currently has a shortage. Have you seen the AYSO schedules for the Parade Grounds on a spring or fall weekend?

The Draft Scope proposes 7 acres of “Publicly Accessible Open Space”. Sound good? One acre is 43,560 square feet. Seven acres is 304,920 square feet. But existing open space in the form of public streets and sidewalks would be taken by the project: Pacific between Carlton and Vanderbilt (approx.1000 ft.), Pacific between Sixth and Flatbush (approx. 700 ft), and Sixth Avenue between Flatbush and Atlantic (approx. 200 ft.), for a total street length of about 1,900 ft. If the width of a street - property line to property line - is approximately 70’, the total street area that would be demapped and delivered to the project is about 133,000 square feet: over 3 acres. So almost half of what the project is “providing” in open space is space that was already supposed to be open in perpetuity, according to the city plan.

The City’s CEQR Technical Manual provides guidance for open space requirements for projects. 1.5 acres of City Parkland per 1,000 residents is the median community district ratio, although the citywide average is 3.5 acres per 1,000 residents. While not a regulatory standard (unfortunately), “For planning purposes, the city seeks to attain a planning goal of 2.5 acres per 1,000 residents”. This 2.5 acres is relative to the city's existing pattern of streets and blocks, where the streets provide additional open space that is not counted in the ratio. If we didn't have streets, the requirement for open space would be much greater, so we can't count the street area when comparing the amount of open space required by a project to the city standard that assumes 70' wide streets every 200 feet. (In addition, “.15 acres of passive open space per 1,000 workers represents a reasonable amount of open space resources for that population”). (P.3D-13)

So let’s do the math. The project's scope calls for 7,300 residential units. 7,300 units at an average of 2 people (?) per unit is 14,600 residents. The requirement for 14.6 thousand people at 2.5 acres per thousand = 36.5 acres of open space, according to the city’s standard. But rather than the required 36.5 acres of open space, not even counting the requirements for the arena or the office space, the developer is proposing to add 4 acres, not counting our currently open streets. For the proposed scope of this project, that’s a 10% solution.

Towers in the Park

2005-12-08T23:17:00.000-05:00

We know of several examples of breaking the grid to place towers in a park. Gowanus Housing comes to mind. Set in the middle of Brownstone Brooklyn, Warren Street and Butler Streets were discontinued in the name of progress and increased density, and a site plan was developed with paths and fountains. Irrespective of the architecture, does the relative scale and site configuration determine success or failure?

Venue Parking and Security

2005-12-07T21:28:00.000-05:00

Ultimately, venue parking - as currently proposed - won’t happen. Perhaps it is in the plan as a negotiating item to be dropped later, in a show of compromise. Or is it possible that the developer really doesn’t yet understand that public parking under the arena can’t happen as proposed? The Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan was moved to be further away from the street. We’re checking back-packs at subway stations. Does anyone really believe, post 9-11, that we’ll allow unchecked passenger vehicles to drive under an arena filled with 20,000 fans at events carried live on national TV?

Could the vehicles be checked first? Proper checking takes time. Even a minor delay for arriving vehicles would result in total grid lock on the streets. Let’s drop the charade and talk about real options.

Not Cars, But Bikes

2005-12-04T19:23:00.000-05:00

Wanting to distribute some good ideas, besides critiques of the bad. The Atlantic Yards site is ideally suited to be a significant bicycle hub. It’s located just off several bike paths, a close ride to Prospect Park, and near the Long Island Railroad and virtually all subway lines going into Manhattan. The project should provide for a bicycle concession to serve bike commuters and recreational bicyclists: lockers, showers, and bicycle rental and repair. A facility like this recently opened: the New Millennium Park Bicycle Station in Chicago.

Emergency Services

2005-12-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

The intersection of 6th Avenue and Dean Street, looking southeast. The 78th Police Precinct is on the right, the firehouse for Engine 219/Ladder 105 is just to the left. 6th Avenue is typically congested already. Arena venue parking and truck access are both proposed to be added immediately adjacent to this intersection, on the north side.

This comment on a previous post got me thinking:
Your previous observation on the traffic implications of the proposed curb cuts should spark some sort of inquiry given the implications for the adjacent emergency services. Do you know whether it's specifically in the draft EIS?

Good question. Task 5 of the Draft Scope of Analysis for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) (Community Facilities and Services, P.20) states:
“The ability of the fire department to provide fire protective services for a new project usually does not warrant a detailed assessment….Generally, a detailed assessment of fire protective services is included only if a proposed project would affect the physical operations of, or access to and from, a station house; and…. Generally, a detailed assessment of police protective services is included only if a proposed project would affect the physical operations of, or access to and from, a precinct house. Based on these thresholds and the proposed project program, detailed analyses will be conduced for public schools, libraries, health care facilities, and day care centers.”

There is no mention of traffic relative to emergency services in Task 12 (Traffic and Parking/Transit and Pedestrians). The bottom line? It seems that fire houses and precinct houses are specifically excluded from the analysis, even though their physical operations and access would certainly be affected!

Urban Development

2005-12-01T19:55:00.000-05:00

Dean Street at 6th Avenue, looking north. These buildings are slated for demolition to make room for the arena.

South Elliott Place at South Portland Avenue, looking south. This development by Forest City Ratner, not slated for demolition, sits directly north of the proposed arena and closer to mass transit.

Vehicular Traffic

2005-11-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) executed on February 18, 2005 between Forest City Ratner and the City and State includes an exhibit indicating proposed locations for entrances and exits for parking garages and arena/office loading. Since the project proposes to close streets on the interior, many of these access points are proposed to be located on streets surrounding the project site. Arena/office loading is proposed on Dean Street, between Flatbush and 6th Avenue; venue parking entrances and exits are proposed on 6th Avenue, between Dean Street and Atlantic.

Have the designers visited the site? Dean Street should not be treated as the rear of the project. It’s a residential street, it’s a major easterly bike path for the Brooklyn/Manhattan route, and it’s a bus route. Both the 78th Police Precinct and the firehouse for Engine 219/Ladder 105 are located at the intersection of Dean and 6th Avenue. How will they respond to emergencies when this intersection becomes grid locked?

At the AIA presentation, there was an interesting discussion about new traffic modeling software; Stuckey suggested that the only purpose of studying traffic was to find ways to alleviate known problems. But in fact, the purpose of modeling software is to aid the design team in avoiding problems in the first place. It would provide the opportunity to study alternate scenarios, such as no venue parking.

The Stoop

2005-11-28T22:48:00.000-05:00

Gehry spoke about the tradition of the stoop in Brooklyn, and how he hoped to use long steps to provide transitions. But the thing about stoops: they’re all about the street. The stoop mediates between the public street and the private space behind the building line. The street connects, it’s a cultural resource. One project should not take it away; it can’t easily be undone.

Circulation

2005-11-26T23:04:00.000-05:00

At the AIA presentation last week, the project’s landscape architect Laurie Olin spoke about how people move through the open space, and about how the design could mitigate blind corners so that people could see the space as they move through it. He presented an image of red lines on the site plan, and proposed that these represented paths of circulation. But the lines appear to have been drawn without any reference to the origins and destinations of the pedestrians. Other than dog walkers and joggers, people don’t just meander about without a destination in mind, as the red lines seemed to indicate. These paths are meaningless without reference to what people are walking to and from. It has been suggested by Matthew Schuerman in the New York Observer (see article here) that Olin’s drawing exercise was in order to allay City Planning Director Amanda Burden’s concerns about losing Pacific Street and the making of a superblock. But this response is a gross misunderstanding of the problem of towers in a park. No amount of open views in the interior of a superblock will make the ground plane function like a watched public street. A real street functions not only for access to adjacent built form but connects and integrates the immediate area into the circulation systems of adjacent areas.

It is a mark of incredible hubris for a developer to take away a public street and call it project open space. And ultimately, it is disingenuous to suggest that the street should be taken to make a better place. Why does the developer want to take the street? The developer needs to take the street in order to keep the gross square feet he is proposing within a defendable limit. Stuckey stated that the proposed density is equivalent to that proposed in the new zoning plans for downtown Brooklyn (see the Downtown Brooklyn Plan here), But the project’s proposed Floor Area Ratio (FAR), is based upon using the taken street areas in the calculation of the project area. The intention of an FAR calculation is to limit density on private property relative to the site, with the circulation in public rights of way already factored in. Even if one were to believe that the place-making qualities of closing the street made it a good idea, the area of the street should not be used in the FAR calculation when compared to Downtown Brooklyn projects that don’t count the streets. You can’t have your cake and eat it too: calling it a public right of way for proving to City Planning that it is really equivalent to a watched street, and project open space for lowering the FAR.

NIMBY

2005-11-26T12:28:00.000-05:00

Critics of development are sometimes accused of having a knee-jerk reaction to proposed projects, characterized as Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY). Required public services are often not desirable neighbors. Many people understand the need for homeless shelters, half-way houses, Department of Sanitation transfer stations, and the like, but don’t want them in their neighborhoods. And it is often suggested that this NIMBY attitude extends to all manner of projects, regardless of the merits. Alexandra Lange, in New York Magazine, wrote: “On one level, this is simply the mother of all NIMBY (not in my backyard) battles—since Gehry’s stadium and its accompanying towers will literally be built in some Brooklynites’ backyards. And Brooklyn’s potent, sometimes cloying nostalgia for the way things were—dese and dose, egg creams and spaldeens—can fuel a knee-jerk rage at any change at all.” See the full article here. In the same article, Gehry is quoted as suggesting that citizens’ groups “should back off when somebody knows what they’re doing”.

But to dismiss the concerns of the community as merely nostalgic and self-serving is to misunderstand the unique perspective that locals have. We know our streets better than others do, and care for our streets in a way that transcends our artistic values. Others may want great work and not care about our streets, we want great work only if we can still have our streets. Has this stopped us from getting great architecture? Maybe it’s the price we pay for having a great city.

The Proposed Site Plan by Frank Gehry

2005-11-25T20:22:00.000-05:00

Pacific Street would be closed between Vanderbilt and Carlton and between 6th Avenue and Flatbush. 5th Avenue would be closed between Flatbush and Atlantic.

Pacific Street between Vanderbilt and Underhill looking east

2005-11-25T16:02:00.000-05:00

Pacific Street would be closed at the end of this block.