The contracts underlying the rezonings suggest that both the affordable housing nonprofits and Brooklyn Councilmember Crystal Hudson could have acted earlier to ensure that the key information came out.
A dedicated task force and newly selected facilitator will be empowered to hold the city and private developers accountable to more than 50 “points of agreement” drafted to secure final support for the Gowanus transformation plan, which included a pledge to fund nearby NYCHA repairs.
The developer’s failed promise to build a glass-enclosed public plaza in front of the Barclay’s Center is a bad sign for its other pledges to the community yet to be fulfilled: Most importantly, the 877 units of affordable housing still unbuilt, advocates and officials say.
In 2009, the new Yankee Stadium opened, replacing what used to be a park. Since the Yankees were getting public land, the city said they needed to give back something. How did that go? Journalism students at CUNY Lehman college investigate.
One big problem with Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs), experts say, is that they’re not laws, but rather private contracts between a developer and community groups. And if those groups aren’t around to hold a developer accountable—or the developer isn’t around and there’s no successor clause—there’s little anyone else can do to enforce an agreement.
“In the city’s hands for almost three decades, the vacant, landmarked Kingsbridge Armory—the world’s largest, built in 1917 for the National Guard—is still empty, despite a deal seemingly sealed in 2012.”
Once a seemingly promising structure to ensure that real estate groups don’t run roughshod over local neighborhoods in development deals—and still a common practice in other cities—CBAs are now disdained by many New York City community groups and developers alike. The mechanism’s demise is a lesson, development experts say, in both the strength and limitations of demanding concessions in exchange for neighborhood-changing construction projects.
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