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The Battle for Gotham

Page 44

by Roberta Brandes Gratz


  14 Forest City Ratner is the corporate name.

  15 Michael Shapiro’s book The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together details this sorry chapter of Moses history. Moses wanted O’Malley to build in far-out, less accessible Brooklyn. O’Malley pleaded for this site and finally left town, a major crush for the borough.

  16 The influx of white residents should not be interpreted as a necessary ingredient for neighborhood stability.

  17 Charles V. Bagli, “Residents Guarding Their Homes Against the Bulldozer,” New York Times, January 23, 2004.

  18 Sam Goldsmith, “City: Ward’s Bakery Is Not a Landmark,” Brooklyn Paper, March 7, 2007.

  19 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

  20 First coined by architect Carl Olifant.

  21 Chris Smith, “Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood.”

  22 Also a Ratner project in downtown Brooklyn.

  23 Nicolai Ouroussoff, “What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn?” New York Times, March 21, 2008.

  24 Truck deliveries, garbage removal, building infrastructure, parking.

  25 Community-impact packages, offering benefits to the area, are put forth while the basic plan remains unchanged.

  26 The New York State Court of Appeals ruled in December 2009 that the state could not use eminent domain on behalf of Columbia’s expansion plan. The blight designation was “mere sophistry” about a neighborhood already undergoing organic rejuvenation, the court found. “Even a cursory examination of the study reveals the idiocy of considering things like unpainted block walls or loose awning supports as evidence of a blighted neighborhood,” the opinion noted. The state hired the same consultant as Columbia for its determination of blight. Also, both city and state agencies, the court found, erroneously claimed a public purpose for the rezoning that paved the way for Columbia to annex the area for an obviously private development. The clear message that no civic purpose was being served by the use of eminent domain could influence future attempts to use this power to condemn and take over private property.

  27 I am indebted to Dr. Tom Angotti and his Hunter College research team for their excellent, thorough Willets Point Land Use Study, April 2006. Much of the statistical information included here is drawn from that study that included a door-to-door survey of the site. Research assistants included Diana Marcela Perez and Joan April Suwalsky.

  28 PUKAR stands for Partners for Urban Knowledge and Research.

  29 Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, “Taking the Slum Out of ‘Slumdog,’” New York Times, February 21, 2009.

  30 The idea that Jane might advocate for a six-story building to be built adjacent to my twenty-one-story apartment house or elsewhere in my neighborhood of twenty- to thirty-story buildings is ludicrous.

  EPILOGUE

  1 That long-standing saga is detailed in both of my earlier books.

  2 A smaller sanctuary.

  3 We had three early benefactors: the late Joy Ungerleider Mayerson, who had led the rejuvenation of the Jewish Museum uptown; Joan K. Davidson, then head of the J. M. Kaplan Fund; and the late Brook Astor, head of the Astor Foundation. Davidson and Astor were the most reliable funders of new, innovative New York City cultural projects, the venture capitalists of NYC philanthropy. Many of today’s organizations were nurtured by them. Mayerson was passionately committed to Jewish and cultural programs.

  4 Years after she began this job, Jill joined in partnership with Walter Sedvic. Together, they have been leaders of the now popular techniques of green preservation.

  5 Our owner’s rep, architect Diane Kaese, and project manager, Terry Higgins, were immensely helpful.

  6 Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

  7 The EPA has noted that demolition and construction debris constitutes around a third of all waste generated in this country, and has projected that more than 27 percent of existing buildings will be replaced between 2000 and 2030. In New York City, 60 percent of the waste stream is demolition and construction debris.

  8 Bryan Walsh, “Greening This Old House: Saving Money and the Planet by Upgrading Older Homes.”

  9 For a fuller discussion of this issue, see my chapter “Jane Jacobs: Environmental Preservationist, Preservation Environmentalist,” in What We See.

  10 Malkin is president of Wien & Malkin, supervisor of the building on behalf of the owners, the Malkin family and the Helmsley estate.

  11 Public policy often works against doing the right thing. In New York State, for example, state grants are available to low-income property owners for window replacement but not window repair, weatherization, or storm-window installation.

  12 Remarks delivered at Michigan Historic Preservation Network, Grand Rapids, May 15, 2009.

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  Index

  Abrams, Charles

  Ad hoc

  Adaptations

  Age of Mass Transit

  Agglomeration

  Agriculture

  sustainable

  urban

  AIA Guide to New York (White and Willensky)

  Alioto, Joseph

  Allen, Woody

  Alphabet City

  Alternatives

  Ameliorations

  Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers

  Astor Hotel

  Astoria

  Atlantic Arts Building

  Atlantic Center

  Atlantic Terminal

  Atlantic Yards

  blight and

  fighting

  Jacobs and

  Authentic urban process

  Automobile capacity

  Automobile industry

  Automobiles

  tide against

  Avery, Milton

  Back to City Conference

  Back-to-the-City Movement

  Bagli, Charles V.

  Balanced transportation system

  Baltimore

  highways for

  Banana Kelly

  Barwick, Kent

  Battery Park

  Battery Park City

  Bautista, Eddie

  Bay Ridge, dislocation impacts of

  Beame, Abraham

  Bedford-Stuyvesant

  Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration

  Bel Geddes, Norman

  Benepe, Barry

  Benstock, Marcy

  Berman, Marshall

  Bicycles

  “Big Apple” campaign

  Big box retail

  Big Clog

  Big Dig

  Big projects

  Bleecker Street

  Blight

  Blockbusting

  Bloomberg, Michael

  affordable housing and

  on buildings/energy consumption

  Jacobs letter to

  Third Water Tunnel and

  transit and

  Tweed Courthouse and

  Board of Education

  Board of Estimate

  Bobst Library (NYU)

  Bollinger, Lee 290

  Boston

  Big Dig and

  transit in

  Boulevards

  Brandes, Larry

  Brandes, Paula

  Brennan, Peter

  Breslin, Jimmy

  Breuer, Marcel

  Broadway

  Brokaw Mansions

  Bronx

  burning of

  gardens in

  industry in

  water-filtration plant in

  Yankee Stadium and


  Bronx River

  Bronx River Alliance

  Bronx River Greenway

  Brooklyn

  clearance and

  density of

  gardens in

  parks in

  problems in

  restoration and

  Brooklyn Bridge

  Brooklyn Dodgers

  Brooklyn Food Conference

  Brooklyn Heights

  Brooklyn Navy Yard

  Brooklyn Queens Expressway

  Brownmiller, Susan

  Brownstone Movement

  Brownstones

  Buckley, James

  Buffalo

  Building codes

  Bunshaft, Gordon

  Burden, Carter

  Burke, Deborah

  Butzel, Albert

  Byron, Joan

  Campbell, Clive (DJ Kool Herc)

  Canal Street

  Car-dependency

  Carey, Hugh

  Carnegie Hall

  Caro, Robert

  Cross Bronx Expressway and

  on deferred maintenance

  on Interstate Highway System

  on Moses

  urban development and

  on World’s Fair/automobile industry

  Carson, Rachel

  Carter, Jimmy

  Carter, Majora

  Casinos

  Cast Iron

  Catalysts

  Center for an Urban Future

  Central Park

  Moses and

  Central Park West

  Central Savings Bank

  Change

  bottom-up

  cataclysmic

  inappropriate

  incremental

  positive

  preservation and

  small steps for

  urban

  Changing the subject

  Charney, Jordan

  Chicago

  Childs, David

  Chinatown

  Chrysler Building

  Church of the Most Holy Crucifix

  Churchill, Winston

  Cincotta, Gale

  Citi Field

  CitiCorp

  Cities Back from the Edge (Gratz)

  Citizen activists

  Citizen-based efforts

  City Hall

  fighting

  preservation and

  West Side and

  City Planning Commission

  Civic protest movements

  Clearance

  Moses and

  Co-op City

  Coliseum

  Coliseum Square

 

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