Hudson Yards still a public resource, committee tells MTA

That’s what the Hudson Yards Community Advisory Committee told the MTA last Thursday, in its official response to developers’ proposals for the Hudson Rail Yards. In its “open letter” to the MTA, the HYCAC charged that all five proposals envisioned the opposite of a healthy urban community: unimaginably dense development that lacks both public infrastructure and inclusive affordable housing.

Financing permanently affordable housing at Hudson Yards, the HYCAC way: • A mortgage subsidy program, as was used in the Mitchell Lama program • Battery Park City Authority excess revenues and unused bonding capacity • Union-supported financing • Pension fund financing • The city’s new Housing Opportunities Program (HOP) • Limited-equity co-ops

Committee members interviewed this week by Chelsea Now said that before any of the rail yards development proposals can move forward, the MTA and the Hudson Yards Development Corporation (HYDC) need to address these central issues, which emanate from the July 2007 Hudson Yards request for proposals. Meanwhile some members of the committee, including chairperson Anna Hayes Levin of Community Board 4, have already begun pressing some state officials to try to change the rules of the game, stressing that the last undeveloped swath in Manhattan could be developed through different, longer-term approaches that might ultimately benefit not only the community but the MTA as well.

A conglomeration of community board members, residents and local nonprofit groups like Save Chelsea and Housing Conservation Coordinators, HYCAC found much to like in the proposals. However, said HCC organizing director John Raskin on Monday, “as the plan currently stands, there are two or three big things that need to be fixed, and it is incumbent on our public officials to address them.”

HYCAC’s open letter grew out of its Dec. 10 community forum at the Hudson Guild, where more than 300 local residents evaluated proposals for development of the rail yards—which extend from 30th to 34th Streets and from 10th Avenue to the West Side Highway—from the Durst Corporation with Vornado, Bloomfield Properties, Extell Corporation, Related Companies with Goldman Sachs, and Tishman/Speyer with Morgan Stanley. Knowing that the MTA hopes to choose a developer by the spring, the committee acted quickly to ensure that nothing is built until the MTA, the city and the state act to address those central problems.

Monumental and intimidating

In its letter to MTA, HYCAC starts by pointing out that “the scale of the buildings is overwhelming.” While the MTA, hoping to promote extensive amounts of residential and commercial development, allowed in its RFP buildings with a floor area ratio (FAR) of as much as 11, the results from the developers’ proposals were far denser than that number suggests. “Excluding open space and streets, [the same way] as parks and streets are excluded elsewhere in the city,” the letter points out, “the effective density of these proposals is in the neighborhood of 25 FAR.”

Unprecedented anywhere in New York City, such density “far exceeds what can be considered good planning for the future of the city or the local community,” the committee said. “An environment dominated by monumental and intimidating buildings,” such as Durst’s 80-story home for Conde Nast or Brookfield’s proposed 100-story tower on Eighth Avenue, is seen by HYCAC as incompatible with a livable city.

While changing that density would require making changes to the design guidelines, committee members stressed that such change is an inherent part of the public review process: “Until the first crane starts digging for the first building, it’s not too late,” said Colin Casey, aide to State Senator Thomas Duane.

HYCAC’s statement did endorse many of the proposals’ design elements, especially Brookfield Properties’ plan to reintroduce the street grid onto the site. “Make real city blocks,” read one of the letter’s bullet points, instead of “creating private enclaves in the city, disconnected from the surroundings and out of step with the feel off Manhattan.” The committee also liked the way several of the developers broke up the required open space, to “help create a greater sense of inviting public space.”

Not surprisingly, HYCAC was also pleased with the fact that three of the four proposals would preserve the High Line, saying that any chosen plan should ensure that the historic train line should have “a consistent identity along its entire length, incorporating the basic design treatment from the southern sections.” They also liked developers’ across-the-board commitment to sustainability, and their commitment to ensuring good connections to Hudson River Park.

Forgetting the FDNY and NYPD

As crucial to HYCAC as density is the fact that the plan allocates no space for the community facilities and resources identified years ago in the environmental impact statement for the 2005 Hudson Yards rezoning, which assumed the presence of the failed New York Jets stadium proposal. As legally required for a City Quality Environmental Review, that EIS went carefully through the rezoning’s possible impact on police, fire, libraries, schools and daycare facilities, with the anticipated 9,000-plus new residences in the area by 2025.

“The review said, If you’re going to put all these new people, you need a school, you need a new fire station, and you need two power stations,” said HCC’s Raskin.

In 2005, the FDNY believed “it would need additional resources, including a new firehouse,” the NYPD continued to evaluate its staffing needs for the area, and for schools and daycare facilities the review saw “significant adverse impacts requiring mitigation.”

Yet the RFPs for the Western and Eastern Rail Yards—which add significance density and permanent residents to projects already under way in the Hudson Yards rezoning area—did not require developers to make room for that new firehouse or that publicly funded daycare center. Instead, said Raskin, “we got one school. That’s it!”

While the committee was pleased with the way the school was handled by the development proposals, HYCAC urged a far more thorough approach. “When the additional impacts of adding a substantial residential population on the Western Rail Yards are considered,” said the letter, “the infrastructure needs will be even greater than what was called for in the EIS.” In addition, said HYCAC, firehouses and power stations “represent a large yet hidden public cost of the project that must be provided for before development proceeds.”

Public land for the public

Another hidden cost, according to HYCAC, is that of letting developers get away with making fewer than 25 percent of their residential units affordable. While developers were required to make all rental housing part of New York State’s 80/20 program, they were not actually required to build rental housing. The resulting proposals range from 300 to 600 units for low-income families (out of 2,617 to 6,500 total residential units). This result, said HYCAC, is “simply not acceptable.”

The committee then included a list of ways that the state could finance permanent affordable housing at the site (see sidebar). An though the committee members were “agnostic about which one” would be best, said Raskin, they were united in their belief that with public land to use as a carrot, the state can go much further in creating the next generation of affordable housing. “While the MTA has a corporate responsibility to maximize the value it gets for the property, it is also a public entity; it is appropriate that the MTA’s drive for financial gain be tempered by standards of public responsibility that might not apply to a private owner,” said the statement.

Show us the money

The committee’s letter also echoed other concerns from the Dec. 10 Hudson Guild forum, such as a demand for strong labor protections for all jobs created both during and after construction. But perhaps its most controversial demand was that before the city chooses a development team, “the financial aspects of the plans must be made public.”

Members stressed that they were not requesting proprietary information, such as names of investors, but they said that without knowing how much each had offered to pay—and on what schedule—the community is missing information that is crucial.

“We want to know not just the amount, but the conditions upon which the offer is made,” said CB 4’s Levin. “How do they plan to finance this? Are they assuming X amount of income from X source? What kind of predictions are they making about business conditions five, 10, 20 years from now? How many will not go forward until other projects like the 7 train extension are complete?”

In particular, Levin questioned the current conventional wisdom that favors proposals with established “anchor tenants” such as Morgan Stanley or News Corporation. “Five years from now, such a move might no longer make sense for that company,” said Levin. “But by then, you’ve already committed vast city resources.”

She added that there are numerous options that could be pursued to address the MTA’s need for short-term cash, while allowing for a Hudson Yards plan that might be more consistent with a sustainable neighborhood: for example, relocating the Javits Convention Center to the rail yards so the MTA could sell its current site, too—including the valuable land under Javits, currently estimated to be worth $4 billion. She also questioned HYDC’s contention that the cost of the platforms over the rail yards, estimated at $2 billion, should drive its overall development strategy.

But HYCAC’s open letter explicitly worked within the current parameters for the project. Now, committee members are waiting to see how seriously the MTA will take their concerns.

In the governor’s court

For now, all agreed the next step belongs to the decision makers on the project, from HYDC to the MTA to, ultimately, Governor Eliot Spitzer.

“The MTA can lower the density,” said John Raskin. “It can require more affordable housing. It can show flexibility about other requirements. But it may do that only if someone else, like the governor, tells them to.”

Raskin admitted that such changes might also alter the 2008 budgets of the MTA, HYDC and the city, all of which anticipate revenue from the expected $5 billion–plus sale of the rail yards. “But you have to decide what’s more important: a livable neighborhood, or a quick cash infusion,” said Raskin.

When asked about the HYCAC letter on Tuesday, MTA press officer Aaron Donovan offered a short official response: “All correspondence we’ve received about the rail yards, including the open letter as well as the public comment cards [filled out by visitors to the MTA’s exhibit of the rival plans] are being reviewed by the selection committee as they evaluate the proposals.”

Meanwhile, HYCAC’s legislative members, like Duane and State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, are carefully looking over the committee’s letter, which they consider something akin to marching orders.

“It’s the document that tells us what the community wants,” said Duane aide Colin Casey. “It remains to be seen how we can be most helpful in making sure that what’s built at the Yards is an extension of our community, not some place apart.”