This week brought news that Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty are handing over Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village to creditors to avoid bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal lists the estimated value of the properties at $1.8 billion, just three and a half years after the $5.4 billion deal to purchase the site in 2006, and lists a few of the investors facing losses, ranging from the California Public Employee’s Retirement System to the Church of England. The New York Times explains why this is “a big black eye…but it’s not the end for Tishman” and investigates what this all means for the tenants. And the Post takes a look at who is thinking about buying the property now.

In waterfront news, $8.9 million in grants is being awarded by New York’s Department of State to waterfront revitalization projects in New York City. The Waterfront Alliance summarizes what projects will receiving funding — including the installation of MWA Eco-Docks, the implementation of the Bronx’s Shoelace Park Master Plan, Brooklyn Navy Yard improvements, climate change education programs, $1.5 million for the Randall’s Island Living Shoreline, two Jamaica Bay projects, and a seed farm and tree nursery at Freshkills — and points out that the announcement is also noteworthy for demonstrating “a major commitment to urban waterfront access” by the State. Check out the complete list with more details on MWA’s Waterwire.

The Make a Difference in Two Days lovers out there will appreciate this DIY intervention in Astoria that helps pedestrians cross a filthy pool of water that has submerged a heavily-trafficked sidewalk. An artist who goes by “Posterchild” constructed the “Astoria Scum River Bridge” out of an old work bench found on a curb as a gift to the neighborhood and was recently awarded a commendation from the office of Councilman Peter F. Vallone, Jr. (which came with a promise to help get the leaking pipe fixed).

Downtown Brooklyn residents: plan ahead. In 2019 your stretch of the BQE will be closing for a complete reconstruction. While it’s a bit early to start planning alternate routes, this announcement gives us occasion to think about the challenges of tackling significant infrastructure reconstruction projects in the middle of densely populated and highly-traveled neighborhoods. Streetsblog attended the stakeholder advisory council meeting for the project where the discussion often focused on how to balance neighborhood quality of life with the need to address the existing hazardous roadway conditions.

Outside of New York, high-speed rail is the hot transportation topic of the week now that details have been released about where the $8 billion of stimulus money allotted for HSR is headed. Much of the money is going to California, Florida and Illinois, with the Northeast receiving just $485 million to upgrade 7 major corridors in the region. The Infrastructurist points us to a post by Robert Puentes at the Brookings Institute that explains why prioritizing the Tampa-Orlando route makes sense and how this program is “nothing short of a sea change for how Washington thinks about infrastructure investments.” Meanwhile Wired digests it all in their feature about the history and future of “superfast bullet trains” in the U.S.

Finally we send you off into the weekend with a little toe-tapping video we’re calling “Me and Julio Down by the PS1 Pavilion” (aka SO-IL’s winning entry for the 2010 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program):

SO-IL PS1 Pole Dance from SO-IL on Vimeo.

(Side note: Also on SO-IL’s Vimeo page you can see two quick clips of their installations for the League’s 2007 Beaux Arts Ball, Smoke and Mirrors.)

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Image: Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village by Flickr user Carly Hoskins.

This week, Museum of the Phantom City designers Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder talked about unbuilt city visions and app inspiration with us. We now have word that Irene’s appearance on Morning Edition with Soterios Johnson is set for Monday morning, October 26. So tune in and get your phantom on with NPR, or look out next week for more info from us about our Halloween-day meet-up in Bryant Park with Brett and Irene.

Also of interest to Omni-followers, Design Observer introduces us to Partly Sunny, a design showcase at RISD (the Rhode Island School of Design) highlighting initiatives that are addressing the challenges posed by climate change. The 36 featured projects include a number of urban infrastructure and transit initiatives, including GoLoco, the ride-sharing service developed by Zipcar founder Robin Chase, along with other topics familiar to the Omnibus reader, from urban agriculture to improved water system management. RISD’s Charlie Cannon writes: “To be sure, few of these projects were expressly conceived to combat global warming — but each illustrates how comprehensive thinking can produce near-term results as well as the long-term environmental improvements needed to address the unfolding challenges of climate change.” He adds: “The projects surveyed in Partly Sunny suggest that we need not wait for federal intervention or for the invention of new technologies to make demonstrable steps forward. Nor can we afford to.” Also, My Heart’s in Accra has a nice write-up of Mapping Main Street, the collaborative documentary project of James Burns, Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann, and Omnibus collaborator Jesse Shapins.

In legal news, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which include Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty, have been wrongfully charging market rents on thousands of apartments while receiving special tax breaks from the city. The ruling could have enormous implications for landlords and tenants of rent-controlled apartments across the city who have raised rents in a similar fashion, particularly as a lower court now decides whether tenants are entitled to back rent and damages.

The New York Times has started a new editorial series called Failed State, calling attention to the ways that Albany has made New York State, as they say, “a national embarrassment [and] a swamp of intrigue and corruption.” The map-obsessed among us will notice that in addition to ethics reform, campaign finance laws, concealed budget information, and pension investment mismanagement, specific mention is made of the strange (some might say ridiculous) way that district map borders are drawn – namely that the lawmakers draw the lines themselves. If the state heeds the Times‘ call for an independent commission to serve as a fair mapmaker, you can bet there will be an Omnibus feature about it.

We leave you with a short video, found via Wooster Collective, of the multimedia duo SWEATSHOPPE’s experimentation with “video painting.” It’s pretty much as cool as it sounds:

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Photo © 2008 Partly Sunny, courtesy of RISD.

Does that sound impossible? Politically unpalatable and financially unsound? Like it will take too long and is just too hard?

Well, we have an example of exactly that kind of accretive process in one of the city’s most beloved places, Grand Central Terminal. Why does it work so well? Listen to Vishaan tell it like it is. First, he reflects on some design details of the spectacular Main Concourse. Next, he wanders down Park Avenue and shares some of the history of how private sector competition led to a major public amenity and transformed the entire metropolitan region. Then he explores the terminal’s tentacular North-end Access and reflects further on how the terminal has transformed urban and regional economies. Finally, as he delves into the food court, he ponders lessons to be learned from Grand Central that could be applied to Moynihan Station.

Main Concourse

Lesson #1: Design matters. Beyond the obvious grandeur of its public spaces, Grand Central relies on a sophisticated layering of uses that has influenced the design of airports and train stations around the world.

Video running time: 3:22

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“It’s more than just the building. It’s about how hundreds of thousands of people move around a region.”Park Avenue and Midtown East

Lesson #2: The building is only part of a larger exercise in citymaking. Grand Central catalyzed the development of some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Running time: 4:27. Right-click here to download mp3.

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All great train stations… have tentacles that reach out into the city. There’s not just a front door. North-end Access

Lesson #3: Plan for phases. Grand Central wasn’t built in a day, and part of what makes it work can be found in the less than glamorous network of pedestrian access passageways. Running time: 2:41. Right-click here to download mp3.

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Train stations still have an openness about them. … as hubs [they] speak to the nature of the city that’s around them.

Lessons for Moynihan
Station

Lesson #4: Think big. If we could make a commuter terminal this nice – and one that’s had such wide-ranging urban and metropolitan ramifications – imagine what we could do with a major inter-city regional rail hub? Running time: 4:36. Right-click here to download mp3.

Six weeks ago on the Omnibus, we listened to Bob Yaro reflect on the destruction of the original Penn Station and imagine a new future for Midtown West. Perhaps realizing that future will require looking carefully into the city’s past. -C.S.

We are seeking information about the archival image of Park Avenue under construction posted above. If you know the source of the photograph, please email us.

Mehta – whose 2004 book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found set the bar for place-based, narrative non-fiction about urban space and society, and whose forthcoming book about New York and its immigrants is sure to set it even higher – opened the event by invoking a personal memory: after migrating from India to Jackson Heights in 1977, Coney Island was the first leisure outing his family undertook. The image of the Mehta family aboard the Cyclone introduced an important theme to the discussion: the historical openness, accessibility and affordability of Coney Island’s amusements for working class New Yorkers, especially lower- and middle-income immigrants. Mehta was quick to add, however, “Nostalgia is not a sufficient reason to stop change in a city defined by constant change.” Nonetheless, the images that supported each of the presentations took cues from a history of sideshow freaks and the teeming masses along the boardwalk from Coney Island’s heyday – over a century ago.

The first speaker was Amanda Burden, Chair of the City Planning Commission and the Director of the Department of City Planning. She, too, led off with Coney’s legacy of open-air amusements but swiftly contextualized the area under review as a neighborhood of approximately 50,000 people, characterized by vast tracts of public housing (one in six live in NYCHA projects), a population with twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the city and which lacks basic services and retail. Preservation of the amusement district, Burden said, would require some City control of land and year-round entertainment, but the success of any comprehensive plan could only be measured in terms of increased opportunities for housing and jobs.

Burden left the details of the City’s plan to be explained by Purnima Kapur, the Brooklyn director of City Planning. Kapur presented an overview of a five-year process, including intensive community visioning sessions and historical analysis of sixty years of speculative land acquisition and the gradual shrinking of the amusement district from 27 acres to the three acres that remain. City Planning divides the neighborhood into three distinct zones: Coney East, or the amusement zone, between the KeySpan baseball stadium and the Aquarium; Coney North, to the north of Surf Avenue; and Coney West, to the west of the stadium. To revitalize the amusements, Kapur made a strong case for mapping a city-owned park – in perpetuity – in Coney East. To encourage infill retail development, the current maximum retail floorplate of 2500 square feet would be maintained, but restaurants and shops (largely prohibited under the current amusement land use designation) would be encouraged. Hotel development would be confined to Surf Avenue frontage, and new street linkages would be mapped between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk.

Dan Jennings spoke for Thor Equities, a real estate development firm famed for its malls across the country, which has been acquiring land in Coney East since the mid-1990s. Jennings sounded similar notes of year-round entertainments, expanded retail opportunities and rejuvenating the local economy. The major differences between the city’s plan and the developers’ plan lay in the necessity of mapping the amusement district as city-owned parkland and the size of appropriate retail floorplates: Thor wants it increased to 10,000 square feet. Jennings reminded the audience that this is not equivalent to big-box retail, citing the fact that retailers such as CostCo explore real estate with 30,000 square feet as a minimum. The video Jennings presented conjured a vision of mixed-use in Coney Island that was equal parts Las Vegas and Mall of America, where hotel guests, daytrippers to indoor rides and retail shoppers from South Brooklyn rubbed shoulders.

The Municipal Art Society (MAS) presented a third vision of Coney Island’s future. A long-time planning and preservation advocacy organization, MAS – represented by Melissa Baldock, the Kress/RFR Fellow for Historic Preservation and Public Policy – shared the results of its economic feasibility study and its large-scale community visioning process that included a far-reaching online call for ideas. She argued for the largest possible amusement area that would include both preserved icons such as the Cyclone and new ones, along the lines of the London Eye. Because land prices deter amusement development, Baldock said, the City must control the land where amusements are to flourish.

After these three visions were articulated, the presenters shared the stage with Charles Bendit of Taconic Investments, Dick Zigun of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush of El Diario/La Prensa, and Ahsanullah “Bobby” Khan of the Coney Island Avenue Project.

Taconic’s holdings are in Coney North and Coney West, areas slated for residential and hotel development. Bendit was quick to remind the audience that Taconic’s proposals have caused no controversy; his only recommendation to the City’s land use plan was to use Inclusionary Zoning to encourage affordable middle-income housing, arguing convincingly that this bracket is underserved by the market and the supply of low-income housing in the neighborhood is sufficient, if poorly serviced.

Zigun, whose most passionate recommendations were for landmarks designation for Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, referred to Taconic as the “good developer” and repeatedly asked Thor Equities to sell their land to the City and leave Coney Island alone. But his contribution was notable for articulating the different scales at which the Coney Island site must be considered: from its position in the immediate neighborhood and New York City, to its significance to the US as a whole. Zigun, producer of the Mermaid Parade and other quintessential Coney Island programs, invoked the national legacy of Coney Island. Kapur talked about Coney Island in the context of New York City. Jennings expressed the commercial demands of the site in terms of the South Brooklyn retail landscape. And Mehta had opened the program in the context of working-class Brooklyn and Queens.

Vourvoulias-Bush and Khan spoke to the immigrant experience and the needs of the working class. Vourvoulias-Bush discussed these priorities in terms of access to open-air, affordable family fun. Khan, whose organization primarily works on behalf of the South Asian Muslim community of the area, expressed shock at the relative lack of discussion of general economic development for the area and, specifically, workforce development for the chronically unemployed residents of the neighborhood.

The atmosphere was tense, but nothing compared to the passions that are sure to fly during the public hearing on Wednesday. I recommend attending. You can find more information about the hearing here.

Panelists:
Purnima Kapur, Brooklyn Director of City Planning; Dan Jennings, Thor Equities; Melissa Baldock, The Municipal Arts Society; Charles Bendit, Taconic Investments; Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, El Diario/La Prensa; Dick Zigun, Coney Island Circus Sideshow; Ahsanullah “Bobby” Khan, Coney Island Avenue Project.

Convened by: Suketu Mehta, NYU School of Journalism


As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Talking to New Yorkers is easy. New Yorkers have opinions. And often, they’re ready to share. When the topic is neighborhoods – those places where buildings, family, identity, money and politics intersect – people have, well, a lot to say. Why, then, is community engagement so tricky? Many attempts to formalize a process of soliciting the advice and identifying the priorities of residents result in frustration and misinterpretation if not outright mutual incomprehensibility and protest. Sometimes it takes artists – unaffiliated with the institutional agendas that drive development projects and often cleave communities into warring factions of stakeholders – to rise above the fray and invite disputing voices into dialogue.

The Civilians is a theater company whose creative process begins with broad-based, face-to-face investigation into real life. They pound the pavement, interview experts and passersby on the topic at hand – current and past Civilians’ productions range from a play about the Evangelical Christian community of Colorado Springs to one about climate change – then they perform monologues culled and collated from interview tapes, and mash the material up with music and dance. For the past year, the Civilians have been looking at all aspects and viewpoints on the Atlantic Yards development proposal as an inroad to broader urban issues of home and neighborhood change in New York City. In December, they transformed their research and interpretations into the multi-disciplinary performance project, Brooklyn at Eye Level. In this piece, two members of the Civilians’ creative team share with us their singular process and offer us a quick peek at the performance. This just might contain lessons for a new paradigm of how to engage and really hear each other.

–Cassim Shepard
Project Director,
Urban Omnibus

For watchdog blogging on Atlantic Yards, going back four years, check out Atlantic Yards Report.

To stay up to date on the Civilians’ process and productions, check out their site.

I’d normally be tempted to dismiss this as the height of San Francisco foolishness (and it is), but at this moment I’m also in awe of the neighborhood’s guts—especially juxtaposed with New York Magazine’s “Freakoutonomics” package this week, about the impact of the economy on this city’s stores and restaurants. The next few years, if not mere months, are no doubt going to remake New York’s retail landscape. But if this cycle is going to be one of “creative destruction,” then it’s potentially an opportunity to get a do-over with what Adam Greenfield calls the “repeating module of doom”– the Duane Reade/bank/DunkinDonuts rhythm that’s taken over the streetscape, making it a less interesting, less dynamic place.

I don’t mean merely to suggest that we should fight American Apparel. (I live across the street from one. It’s always empty.) But I do have a heightened appreciation for the brazenness of that patch of American city’s belief in its ability to influence its environment. I’ve always thought that part of being a New Yorker was a reverence for the physical manifestation of economic forces. But right now those forces are feeble. New game in the city.

Andrew Blum is a contributing editor at Wired and Metropolis magazines, and a contributing editor at Urban Omnibus. He lives in Brooklyn.