Bogus Draft EIS

All of our arguments for changing ULURP and removing the choice of consultants from the self-serving hands of developers are magnified by the failure of usual suspect AKRP to do any kind of decent analysis in the Gateway DEIS.

It is hard to put aside their snide and factually unsupported observations about the economic significance of the Bronx Terminal Market merchants. The telling quote:

Although there are some restaurants and retailers of African foods who use the BTM, it was not their only source.

What possibly useful methodology could have led to this observation? Did the truth seekers at AKRF bother to interview the actual customers who utilize the BTM? Did they talk to the leaders of the Bodega Association, Latino Restaurant Association and various Hispanic Chambers of Commerce?

The answer: of course not. To make matters worse, these liars for hire actually said that a similar line of market products could be found with New Jersey wholesalers. Is this supposed to be an argument against the economic significance of the Terminal Market in New York? Ironically, EDC has constantly mentioned that the Gateway project is needed in part because it will stop people from the Bronx from shopping in Westchester. Yet they are perfectly content with letting the Terminal Market’s wholesale business flee across state lines.

The analysis concludes with the observation that there is 472,500 sq. ft. of ground floor industrial space in the Bronx and that, therefore, “the BTM businesses do not have a unique or substantial economic value to the city or regional area and can be relocated without any great difficulty.” This conclusion is mind boggling. Where is the space? What about the current market synergy? Etc… etc… etc…

The AKRF folks are simply rationalizing their job which is to make a great deal of money by minimizing impacts and conducting dishonest research. It is firms like this that undermine the legitimacy of the entire ULURP process and the city would be better off without their self-serving palaver.

Vendors Redux

With all of the Bronx Terminal Market discussion yesterday we didn’t have a change to comment on the vendor legislation that the mayor signed into law. Basically, no longer will proof of citizenship be a requirement for holding a vending license.

We do have a number of philosophic issues with the whole approach to immigration in the city which goes against the idea that people should be in compliance with the laws of the country that they apparently want to so much be a part of. Somehow, this sentiment is labeled anti-immigrant.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Alliance represents thousands of immigrant business owners so we understand the importance of new immigrants to the economic foundation of this city. However, this doesn’t mean that we believe in encouraging people to come into this country illegally. In addition, the porousness of our borders does create security issues in an age of terror.

Real Issue for the Alliance

Our main problem, however, is not with the just signed legislation but with the direction that the groups who were behind it want the city to take. As Gerson’s NY Sun story points out, the advocates feel that the current law is now enough:

It's a positive step forward, but the main problem is there's sill a limit on licenses and permits," the director of the Street Vendor Project at the nonprofit Urban Justice Center, Sean Basinski, said.

Of course there is another bill pending at the Council that would do just that – increase the number of vending licenses issued. If these advocates had their way the streets of every commercial strip would be clogged with vendors draining business away from tax-paying, rent-paying owners. There is a limit to a market and the 200,000 small businesses that pay over 4 billion dollars a year in taxes, not to mention fines and violations, deserve protection from their government.

Letter: Wal-Mart Won't Stem Leakage

An interesting letter, appearing in the Staten Island Advance, makes the point that people will continue going to Wal-Mart in New Jersey even if one is built on Staten Island. As we have argued previously, the letter’s author mentions that the lower New Jersey sales tax, as well as cheaper gas, would motivate her to continue crossing state lines:

I think a larger issue for Staten Island (and the city) is the issue of us traveling to New Jersey to save on sales tax. It is worth it for me to pay the toll, shop at Wal-Mart, shop at one of the Jersey malls and not have to pay sales tax (being able to get gas while I am there for a lot less is a subject for another letter). Why shouldn't I, as a savvy consumer who is concerned about the biggest bang I can get for my buck, go where my hard-earned bucks go further?

Even if Wal-Mart came here, I'd still go to Jersey for my big shopping trips. It is not that much farther than it is to either place where Wal-Mart is supposedly coming to, it's just a matter of which bridge I choose to take.

The author has no problems with Wal-Mart – a position we obviously disagree with – but her greater point is well taken and should be examined by politicians and economic development officials who use “stemming leakage” as a reason for why we need the box store on Staten Island.

Bronx Terminal Market / EDC Disgrace

The New York City Economic Development Corporation has, at the insistence of Judge Kahn, responded to the alternative sites proposed by Professor Fainstein by essentially telling the BTM merchant to drop dead. In mind boggling fashion, ignoring all of the public attention focused on the need to preserve the market, EDC “senior counsel” Terri Feinstein Sasanow, has simply reiterated the original position of the city: “Here’s a few dollars to get out of town. Take it or leave it.”

What’s incredible here is that the city has not seen it necessary to find a solution for the BTM in the face of a corrupt deal that is the closest thing possible to the theft of city property. The Sasanow letter is dripping with an arrogant disregard for fairness and an equally arrogant disregard for the truth.

Sasanow says that “EDC will not consider construction of a new market” and erroneously argues that unlike with the Fulton Fish Market, “the city is not the landlords of the tenants at the BTM and has no obligation to provide relocation for them.” But Terri the city is indeed the landlord and in its landlord capacity brokered the deal that brought Related into the market.

Moral Obligation as Well

Aside from legal obligations, however, there is a moral obligation of a city that has housed this market for over 80 years and, in that period of time, through malfeasance and nonfeasance, has allowed the property to be despoiled. Adding insult to injury, the city has seen fit to elevate the despoiler Buntzman to the status of co-developer of the Gateway project.

Minority Business Take a Hike

Nowhere in the Sasanow letter is there an acknowledgement that the city’s commitment to the Gateway Center, with all of the sweetheart grease possible, should create an equal commitment to those mostly minority businesses that are the linchpin of a new immigrant food distribution network. Maybe, as the mayor’s political commercials suggest, the city will create an investment fund for all those small businesses that Bloomberg’s New York has no use for as it cedes its property to cronies of Deputy Mayor Doctoroff.

As the letter goes on to state, EDC is unwilling to do anything outside of its typically bogus incentive programs that are open to any knucklehead looking to build in the city. So here’s the picture: Friends of the deputy mayor get a whole package of extraordinary emoluments that end up with the city finally – after years – getting around $2 a square foot while those being displaced are thrown into the assigned risk pool of deadbeats and skells.

Conerstone?

There is a constant reference to the Cornerstone Group as the city’s relocation expert. Still? Doesn’t our “senior counsel” realize that these dopey consultants had labored long and hard Xeroxing advertisements from the local newspapers and passed off this effort as relocation (of course she does, she just doesn’t give a damn)?

Challenge to the Bronx

The EDC Letter is the ultimate gauntlet. As Sasanow concludes, “If you and your clients want EDC’s help, you and they must be ready to be realistic about what EDC can and will do.” She misspeaks here because there is no logical connection between the “can” and the “will.” Because without any political will there is no way that this controversy can be resolved.

It now becomes incumbent on Chairman Rivera and the Bronx delegation to act. This Gateway scandal needs to be confronted head on if the merchants are to receive a fair deal. The political leverage belongs to the City Council if and when they choose to use it. Make no mistake about it. If Gateway itself is threatened watch how fast ‘can” and will” are made to fit comfortably in the same sentence.

Gateway Draft EIS: BJ’s and Liars Exposed

This is addressed to Adolfo Carrion, Joel Rivera and Maria del Carmen Arroyo. All of you have unquestionably affirmed that Gateway would not contain a BJ’s. Well if there is no BJ’s in this project, what food use is? We ask because on page 10 of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) we have a nice discussion of a “food store capture rate.”

If, as we suspect, BJ’s is the food use then, as usual, Related’s DEIS on indirect displacement of local food stores deserves the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. What tickled us is the “detailed competition analysis” done by Related’s consultants, an analysis that concludes that the BJ’s (we assume) “would not have the potential to adversely affect competitive stores in the trade area.”

What’s really cute here, and without further detail it’s hard to get a grip on what these schemers are talking about, is this “finding:” “The analysis concluded that within the Primary Trade Area [defined as the entire borough of the Bronx and Manhattan north of 116th Street] and the 3 mile trade area the proposed project would increase the food capture rate by only 1.9 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points, respectively…”

Just what the hell are these idiots talking about? By hiding the assertion in jargon they want to gloss over the fact that a BJ’s will be the largest food store in the Bronx and will generate over $60 million a year in food business. Do these consultants think that no supermarkets will close or lose significant business?

In an impact study on Pathmark in East Harlem – a store that was 1/3 the size of BJ’s – the consultants did admit that some stores might close (which they did). In other situations the building of large regional chains have led to the closing of between 3-5 neighborhood supermarkets. But according to Related, BJ’s won’t have this impact.

Time to Stand Up

Related hopes that a rising tide will lift the BJ’s boat, that all of the political support for and momentum for the project will allow BJ’s to sneak through. The Bronx Council delegation has already made its position known on BJ’s and it’s time to reaffirm it.

In addition, the UFCW, RWDSU and Central Labor Council need to come together to reaffirm their opposition to this project. With Wal-Mart poised on two sites in Staten Island it is not the time to be sitting back while the merchant of shame’s little brother is given carte blanche. All of those Bronx pols who told us flat out “No BJ’s” need to stand up and tell Related that the box store is a deal killer.

Bronx Terminal Project to be Certified Today

Alexandra Ochoa, in today’s Hoy, confirms that the Related Companies’ application to redevelop the Bronx Terminal Market will be certified today much to the chagrin of community leaders. These leaders of various South Bronx community-based organizations feel like this is a done deal that is being fast-tracked to circumvent true community input.

Though the Department of City Planning’s spokeswoman Rachaele Raynoff says that there will be plenty of opportunities for public input in the next 7 months, the track record so far doesn’t inspire too much optimism. First we have the deal to bring in Related which was done in secret, without any competitive bidding and involves, without public oversight, the swapping of city-owned land. Second, the scoping hearing for Gateway's Environmental Impact Statement was only attended by 5 community members outside the Community Board. Third, we have the fact that, as Ochoa points out, very few people in the South Bronx know the details of the Gateway project despite the fact that Related has promised a Community Benefits Agreement and has had this project in the works for years. And then there’s the question of why the project is being quickly certified in the summer when the Community Board is in recess and will, as a result, only have about a week to consider the application when they return in September.

Again, we call on the Related Companies to withdraw their application until the fate of the current Terminal Market tenants is negotiated and the community is brought to the table for a concrete benefits discussion.

Symbolic Use of Politics

Over three decades ago, Murray Edelman wrote a seminal work on government entitled, the Symbolic Use of Politics. In the book he pointed out how elected officials often were able to bestow symbolic rewards on the many in order to effectively mask the dissemination of tangible benefits to the few.

Examples of symbolic politics abound and now, thanks to Frank Lombardi's Daily News article today, we can see one more. It seems that Rob Walsh, Commissioner of Small Business Services, is giving out, with much fanfare, 15 awards to small business representatives who have “demonstrated excellence” in fostering the sector. Walsh points out that small businesses (some 200,000 strong) account for 50% of the city’s workforce and generate $4.5 billion in tax revenue.

Thanks Commissioner for pointing that out. What is, however, left unsaid is that extent to which city policy has been consistently anti-small business, a fact we have alluded to elsewhere. So in our view, the city should keep the awards and figure out how to craft an actual economic development strategy that tangibly aids the majority of these small businesses. The symbolic awards are really of no more value than Marie Antoinette’s cake.

Applauding Critics

In today’s Times, Charles Bagli begins to focus some attention on the mayor’s development strategy outside of Manhattan. In particular, Bagli points out that now, with all of the hoopla over the West Side and the Olympics finally behind us, many urban planners and local development officials are:

hoping that the Bloomberg administration will bring to other projects the same kind of energy and focus that it displayed on the West Side.

This observation seems to us to be the classic double edged sword. Certainly, energy and focus were present in large doses on the West Side - some would say to the point of obsession - but at the same time the failure of the project in spite of all these considerable resources speaks to a certain problem with the mayor’s economic development strategy.

Put simply, the administration’s vaunted focus is often to the exclusion of local communities and all too often ignores existing small industrial and retail businesses. In fact, Bagli cites Jonathan Bowles whose analysis of the mayor’s strategy, while generally positive, highlighted just this point. Certainly, the merchants in the Bronx Terminal Market or the business in Willets point are aware of how this strategy operates.

We wish that Bagli would have emphasized this point more because its significance is far reaching and points to the mayor’s tendency to look for major top-down economic development projects whose local impacts get lost in the glitz and glamour of the big picture.

Bagli did, however, make another related point that does being to get at this larger criticism. Later in the article he cites Bowles who states that the mayor’s waterfront development “appeared determined to eliminate the blue-collar maritime jobs on nearby piers.”

Trickle Down Economics

Expanding on this observation, Bagli highlights the criticism of Michael Sorkin, director of urban design at CUNY. The money quote:

"To me, the administration's economic development program is distorted in favor of a trickle-down theory of benefits from development."

This is the point that makes the most sense to us. Top-down development, often driven by cronyism, is not being subjected to a fair cost/benefit analysis. In other cases, no one is even bothering to examine the actual benefits as related to the level of a project’s public subsidization.

Stealing from the Little Guy

Yesterday in her Daily News column E.R. Shipp underscored the ideological confusion that is eminent domain. As she pointed out, the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision created a number of unusual bedfellows. In this case, Norman Siegel and West Side activist Tom Demott agreeing with Justice Clarence Thomas.

Both Siegel and Demott have been taking on Columbia and fighting the university’s expansion into the Manhattanville neighborhood. Demott’s organization, The West Harlem Business group, is trying to hold onto private properties that Columbia would like the State to seize. As Shipp points out, the Court’s decision forecloses a legal challenge but, citing Justice Stevens:

"We emphasize that nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further restrictions on its exercise of the takings power”

As we have pointed out, Siegal envisions a right-left coalition demanding the protection of property rights. The strongest remarks, however, are reserved for columnist Shipp who, while we have disagreed with her strongly in the past on issues like the East Harlem Pathmark, nails this issue:

As polite as I have been here, my neighbor has it right. This is rape and pillage of the little person. It's time for legislators to do something about this.

Next stop, Willets Point.

Staten Island Wal-Mart Update

As we have mentioned earlier, the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation (SIEDC) is enamored with the idea of Wal-Mart though it claims no official position has been agreed on. We find this a bit intriguing considering that they are peddling a survey that supposedly shows that the two stores Staten Islanders want most are Wal-Mart and Target.

Karen O’Shea in the Staten Island Advance brings up this point and quotes Alliance member Matthew Lipsky:

Matthew Lipsky, a member of the anti-Wal-Mart group Neighborhood Retail Alliance, believes the SIEDC customer service survey results are suspect. Lipsky said when he first reached out to the SIEDC to discuss Wal-Mart several months ago, a staffer there gave a general, favorable impression of the store coming to Staten Island.

"They should make that public," Lipsky said during a recent interview. "They are an economic development agency, and if they think this is going to be an economic boon they should say so and present some evidence to support their claims."

Unmentioned in the story is the fact that the survey SIEDC is touting so far has only received approximately 200 responses. Once again why is this economic development agency promoting a faulty, pro-Wal-Mart survey if it has no official position? Why, at a press conference, claim Staten Islanders want Wal-Mart when your results are statistically unreliable?

O’Shea has another interesting story about last weekend’s petition drive spearheaded by local Union officials. These unions, including UFCW local 342, are attempting to get as many signatures as against Wal-Mart coming to the Island. According to our sources, they have received over 2000 signatures and that is only counting half of the stores who participated in the weekend drive.

Olympic Post-Mortem

Jim Rutenberg does an excellent job at capturing some of the essential ingredients of the city's failed Olympic bid. For us, the key point is the failure to develop a real grassroots support for the games. Dan Doctoroff, the chief promoter of the bid, exemplifying Thorsten Veblen’s analysis of “trained incapacity” simply did not know how to do this, even if he could have understood its necessity. As a result the support for the bid had more of an Astroturf than a grassroots quality.

As Rutenberg mentions:

Polls show that the West Side stadium was a considerable drain on public support for both the Olympics and Mr. Bloomberg. The blasé reaction back home to the loss made it clear that whatever support the bid may have won among the city's elites, the populace had not caught City Hall's Olympic fever.

This Doctoroff style of bypassing all but the most elite extends beyond the Olympics. With projects like the Bronx Terminal Market the process is being fast tracked to such an extent that the community is essentially shut out. No one in the South Bronx knows what’s going or has been consulted and, in Doctoroff’s view, such knowledge would be unnecessary. The vision of his billionaire friend Steve Ross is perfectly suitable and the community will of course love this top-down imposed project just as New Yorkers supposedly should have been enamored with the opportunity for the Olympics. In the Doctoroff school of development, there is no need for community input because he already knows what's best for it.

Though Bloomberg claims he wants Deputy Dan back if he should win a second term we believe that the man behind the Olympic failure and BTM boondoggle needs to be tossed aside. We need a Deputy Mayor for Economic Development whose first priority isn’t cramming grandiose projects down peoples’ throats and enriching his friends but working with communities, small businesses and developers to truly enhance the city’s economic potential.

Bronx Terminal Market, Full Speed Ahead

With a whole host of questions still unanswered it seems that City Planning, unmindful of past haste and missteps, is prepared to certify the Gateway application as early as this Monday (As Crain’s Insider reports today). This means that, with the newly truncated ULURP procedures, the project could be send to what is essentially a lame duck City Council some time in December.

Which does, of course, lead us to wonder if the full-speed-ahead mode has a purpose that transcends the normal desire of a developer to get a project moving. It’s always great to speculate but, speculation aside, unanswered questions about this deal leave the development extremely vulnerable if it is given the kind of media attention that its unseemliness deserves. The rushed nature of the process is designed to prevent this type of scrutiny because the more the deal lies exposed to sunlight the more rapid will be the decomposition.

Swap of House of D

Which brings us to the Velodrome-House of Detention swap that, at first glance, would seem to have been obviated by the Olympic decision. Not so! As Frank Lombardi points out today, the city is still planning the swap even though, as the testimony by Andy Alper at the City Council highlights, the city has never even bothered to appraise this property.

We especially like the statement by EDC’s Michael Sherman who, more and more, takes on the appearance of a recorded announcement (That’s right Michael, keep repeating the 5,000 job mantra so that no one pays attention to the give away of city property). Sherman’s take:

… the city is working to make the site available to Related so they can build this important new economic development project for the Bronx

That is extremely well put – “make the site available” – and exemplifies the nature of this no-bid favoritism. Where is the even handedness that is supposed to go into the making of public policy here? Since when does the investment banker mentality transcend the hard work commitment of local small businesses. The answer: Since Deputy Mayor Doctoroff took over with the goal of cleaning out minority entrepreneurs to make way for his kind of people.

Fate of the Merchants in the Bronx’s Hands

With all of these machinations it is now clear that the fate of the BTM merchants is in the hands of Bronx political leaders who, through their control of the Council’s land use review, are the only ones with the leverage to force EDC to find suitable space with the needed financial assistance. The pols are saying all the right things and we’re hopeful that they will be able to deliver here.

127th Street Colossus (Wal-Mart in the Wings?)

On Tuesday, the Economic Development Corporation has scheduled a public scoping meeting for a mega-development between 125th Street and 127th Street in East Harlem. The meeting will be held at the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center, 1680 Lexington Avenue @ East 106th Street, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

The project is for 3 million square feet of mixed-use development, including 700,000 square feet of commercial space and around 1500 units of housing. Community concerns over density are already being expressed. As we’ve been reminded, Community Boards 10 and 11 have recently adopted zoning guidelines that call for significantly less dense building and lower height restrictions.

In addition, the project is proposing around 1,010 parking spaces which means that there will be a significant impact on the Harlem River Drive corridor that the State DOT is still trying to mitigate because of significant congestion. It is also imperative that the EIS take into consideration all of the Washburn Wire project impacts although, contrary to some published reports, no tenants have yet been finalized for the site.

Wal-Mart in the Wings?

This is, of course, the site that has been rumored for a proposed Wal-Mart. The scoping meeting should be used to emphasize the level of opposition that any box store will generate, particularly if it’s Wal-Mart or BJ’s.

BJ’s Out, Merchants In?

We met with Council member Maria del Carmen Arroyo who, gracious as always, pledged that she was going to bring EDC to the table to insure that the Bronx Terminal Market merchants found a home together. She also advocated that the businesses should be owners of any new facility to be built. In addition, she told us that she felt that Professor Fainstein’s analysis of alternative sites for the market should be a basis for any negotiation.

Once again, Arroyo reiterated her belief that there would be no BJ’s in the BTM site. When pressed, she told us that she believed that this issue would be settled with a written memorandum of understanding. We will continue to monitor this issue and, of course, push for such an MOU.

Gateway Project to be Certified Monday?

With the regularly scheduled meeting of the City Planning Commission slated for next Monday (7/12/05), it is looking more and more likely that the agency will move to certify the land use application at that time. This means that Related, confident of political support, will not bother to spend a great deal of time wooing the good folks at Community Board #4.

Given the ULURP time clock, and given the fact that CB#4 like most boards is in recess for the summer, there is absolutely no time for any meaningful community review of this massive 1,000,000 sq. ft. redevelopment of the Bronx Terminal Market site. Put simply, the local planning board normally has 60 days to review a land use application. In this case that means that the ULURP clock runs out on board 4 on September 11th (which is exquisite timing).

Further, this means that the board has only the one week after Labor Day to review this enormous application. Related, which spent the better part of a year wining and dining CB#10 for its proposed BJ’s project, now has taken a different tack. The new strategy: we’re going to fix this at the top and the hell with the local community.

What about the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)?

Remember that last week Jesse Masyr, Related’s skillful advocate, had told the City Council that a CBA would be negotiated before the land use application was forwarded to the legislature for disposition. When is all of the difficult negotiating going to occur? Who will be the negotiating partners? Who is going to be monitoring compliance with the terms of the CBA?

In our conversations with ACORN and the other folks who were instrumental in the Atlantic Yards CBA, it is abundantly clear that a CBA needs to be carefully negotiated before a land use review begins. From our discussions with community members and members of the community board only one thing is clear: no one from Related has begun discussing any aspect of a CBA with any reputable representative of the impacted area.

Wal-Mart Eyes New York City

In a story that got lost during the 4th of July holiday, the Daily News reported on Friday that Wal-Mart is continuing to eye the city, with a company-commissioned survey demonstrating New York City's overall support for the mega-retailer:

According to a Wal-Mart commissioned survey, 62.3% of New Yorkers want the discount chain here. The greatest support is in Queens, with 68% of residents wanting a Wal-Mart - even though unions, local businesses and elected officials beat back a planned Wal-Mart in Rego Park this year.

In Brooklyn, supporters number 67% - in the Bronx it's 66% and Staten Island weighs in with the least support - 62%.

The first and most obvious problem with this survey is that it was paid for by Wal-Mart and therefore is incredibly biased. We do not the methodology for this poll including the number of respondents and what types of questions were asked. The response to a question like “Do you support Wal-Mart coming to New York City considering that it will bring hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue” will be drastically different than “Do you support Wal-Mart, a company that has broken child labor laws, is being sued for discriminating against women, depends on overseas, sweatshop labor and will increase traffic and crime in your neighborhood?” Considering the high percentage of support, we guess that the types of questions conformed more to the former.

But no matter the question types, we agree that there is support for Wal-Mart in the 5 boroughs. However, there are two major caveats. The first is that though there may be generic support for a theoretical Wal-Mart located in New York City once a specific site is picked the whole dynamic changes. As is true all over the country, but is especially true here, the site defines the fight. A Queens resident, for example, may say he likes Wal-Mart but his enthusiasm will markedly drop if asked, “Do you support a Wal-Mart being build in or near your neighborhood.”

Since New York City’s geography and urban nature will require Wal-Mart to build near residential neighborhoods, we predict that the support its polls demonstrate will drop once specific locations are announced. Already in Staten Island, opposition is percolating especially in the South Shore neighborhoods near the proposed Richmond Valley site.

Also, a lot of support for Wal-Mart in New York City is based on a lack of information. Many people are unaware of Wal-Mart’s business practices, cost to taxpayers and potential negative impacts vis-à-vis traffic, the environment and small business. It is up to the various members of the Wal-Mart Free NYC coalition and other groups to make sure New Yorkers know that there are high costs to Wal-Mart's sometimes lower prices. This campaign is still in its incipient stages but once it takes off people in NYC will not be as amenable to the entrance of Wal-Mart.

Small Business Afterthought

In all the hoopla of economic renaissance, small business is treated as a tag line in the mayor’s self promotion. We weren’t paying that much attention but we did hear something about the mayor creating a small business investment fund. You’ll notice that all the other breathless announcements were about events already in progress. For small business, after four years, all we get are promises? How lame is that.

More importantly, this fund and similar measures mask the reality of the Bloomberg first term which has been the most anti-small business in 20 years. Here is the reality:

1) Hiked commercial real estate tax (June 2002) – Resulted in 20% + rent increase for all neighborhood stores

2) Garbage rate hike (September 2003) – Increased the cost of disposing “wet” garbage and led to a doubling and even tripling of disposal for all area food stores

3) Cigarette tax (May 2002) – An 1800% tax increase, the largest in city history, has taken over $250 million a year from the coffers of local bodegas, green grocers and newsstands. Local retailers have lost 60% of their sales to the internet and to the black market of street sales. Despite this devastating loss, the mayor characterizes it as a “minor economic issue.”

4) Bodega safety (July 2003) – When a rash of murders targeting bodega owners hit the city the local media was having a field day. In response to the uproar, and after being chided for his cigarette tax, the mayor went to the Bronx and announced “Operacion Tienda Segura” (Operation Safe Store). The NYPD, in response, set up a security camera pilot program for ten stores. Now two years later, with the police reporting a great success with the pilot, no follow up has yet to be seen out of the mayor’s office (Maybe if Ferrer gets closer we’ll start to see more stores put in the program).

5) Mega development – In all of the large scale development small business has been given short shrift. The kicking out of the Bronx Terminal Market merchants and the Willets Point businesses head the list. Less well know, was Deputy Doctoroff’s 2002 decision to award the Bradhurst development to his friend and Related Companies President Steve Ross over local entrepreneurs Mauricio and Matthew Fernandez.

If the mayor wants to do more for small business he can do the honorable thing: get a new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.

Mayor’s Economic Development Commercials

The mayor’s recently released campaign commercials are long on sizzle but short on substance. What’s missing in all of the advertisements is, of course, an appreciation of the notion of cost-benefit and the need to preserve and nurture existing local businesses. As the Bowles report has emphasized, the mayor’s top-down approach may yield an edifice explosion but more attention needs to be paid to what will be lost in the building mania.

Hail Brittania

Well it’s finally over and London gets the Olympic nod. The best take, pre-announcement, is from Mike Lupica in today’s Daily News. Lupica’s observation “that it will take years” before we will be able to unravel the hidden agenda of Deputy Dan, is right on the mark.

All of this leaves a number of unanswered questions concerning two of the city’s development projects. The velodrome/House of Detention swap at the Bronx Terminal Market is, of course, first on the list. Will the proposed swap effect the certification and land use application for this controversial project? It’s hard to predict but we do know that skepticism over the scheme is beginning to build in the Southwest Bronx.

In Willets Point we are sure that the development plans will go forward in spite of the Olympic decision. With the accelerant gone, however, the eminent domain scheme should meet a bit more resistance from local elected officials. In order to prevent the confiscation of their property, the WPBA is going to need political allies all over the city. This will be their major challenge.

Residents Worry About Eminent Domain

The people of Murphysboro, Illinois are worried about the impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent eminent domain decision even though it looks like a local proposed Wal-Mart supercenter will not need it. The fear in this case, as resident Chris Mueller explains, is about the aftermath:

Mueller lives on Lake Road in Jackson County, not far from the site where the new Wal-Mart Supercenter is set to move in. While eminent domain won't come into play with the construction of the store, it is the aftermath that concerns him.

With the store, he said, will surely come increased traffic and the need to widen Country Club Road. And the way eminent domain works, the government will have an easy time taking the private property with compensation in order to widen the road.

"I feel very confident that eminent domain will affect my neighborhood," Mueller said.

Not only do people have to worry about big boxes directly taking their property but the improvements needed to accomodate them may result in the invoking of eminent domain as well.

An associate professor interviewed for the article mentions that the State Supreme Court has been more respectful of private property but that is hasn’t yet defined exactly what constitutes “public purpose” vis-à-vis economic development:

"I think that the Illinois Supreme Court has shown greater concern for private property rights," she said. "Does that mean your property can never be taken for economic development? No. We don't know the exact boundaries of what it could be."