Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

As we all know, Tishman-Speyer Properties has bought ST/PCV at a price of $482K per apartment, the approximate retail value of a one BR unit. There appears to be a scenario that makes the new owners’ acquisition a profitable venture even without the creation of a coop, by the gtadual transfer of the rent-controlled/stabilized apartments into market rate rentals as the old tenancy turns over with the passage of time, thereby not only obviating the need for a coop conversion but also for further construction on the property.

Concerns about ST/PCV’s protection against developers are not new, and some time ago the Historic Districts Council was asked to assess the situation . In a November 12, 2001 letter to the ST Tenants Association (TA) and CB6. copies to ESRA, the HDC stated that the ST complex deserves preservation and protection. It proposed a three-pronged approach, to be pursued concurrently: designation of the entire site as an individual landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (as in Harlem River Houses); identification as a Special Planned. Community Preservation District (SPCPD) by the City Planning Commission, and downzoning, also by the CPC, i.e., reducing the FAR [this would inhibit reckless construction].

Last week we discussed protection via a NYS/ Federal Dept of Interior designation to the NYS Register and the Federal Resister of Historic Places, which is available to ST/PCV if the owner agrees. As to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation, pursued by Assembly member Sylvia Friedman, do not hold your breath – but it is not dead. Note that three East Side projects have been granted landmark status – the City and Suburban Homes Company Estates, the First Houses, and the Harlem River Houses Potential downzoning is a Garry Papush project, along with the thought that the threat of any new construction in SP/PCV can be countered with a move to reduce rents due to reduction of landlord services. This is not likely, since the City Planning Commission does not do spot zoning, but who knows…

Let us look at the least discussed suggestion, having ST/PCV identified by the City Planning Commission as a Special Planned Community Preservation District (SPCPD), an approach that the Tenants Association should pursue.

The Planning Resolution authorizing SPCPD dates back to 1974, and its intent is clear:

To protect and preserve the Special Districts as superior examples of town planning or large scale development; to preserve and protect the character and integrity of these unique communities which, by their existing site plan, balance between buildings and open space, harmonious scale of development, related commercial uses, open space arrangement, and landscaping, add to the quality of urban life; to preserve and protect the variety of neighborhoods..that contribute greatly to the livability of the City; to maintain and protect the environmental quality; to guide the future development within the “Special Districts” that is consistent with the existing character quality and amenity of the SD. Amen, say no more, doesn’t this seem written with ST/PCV in mind? (Ref: Article X: Special Purpose Districts, Chapter 3: SPCPD, Sect 103-00, 7/16/1974.)

SPCPD has been used extensively in the five boroughs to preserve neighborhood design (deliberate as well as fortuitous), and against destruction through greed. Among the recipients of the designation are Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Coney Island, Bay Ridge , and closer to home, Battery Park City, the Clinton District, the Garment District, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center District, Little Italy, and, guess what, Union Square.

In the case of Union Square, it mandates ground floor for retail, off street locations for subway entrances, continuity of street walls, physical appearance, with ratio bonus for subway improvements (that’s why we can scream when Zeckendorf Towers cuts off the escalator service to 14th Street Lexington line, for which they are responsible).

Another hopeful note, on 10/23 the chief local leaders, led by Christina C. Quinn and Dan Garodnick, sent a letter to Tishman-Speyer, expressing the tenants’ fears about the future affordability of NYC’s middle class housing, beyond rent control, and the hope that T-S will continue to work with the ST/PCV tenants, discussing their plans and exploring the options of affordability. It was also signed by US Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, NY Comptroller Wm C. Taylor, Public Advocate Betsy Gottbaum, BPs Scott Stringer and Marty Markowitz (Bklyn), US Congressmmbers Caroline Maloney, Jerold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, NYS Senators Thomas K. Duane and Liz Kruger, NYS Assembly members Sylvia Friedman, Jonathan Bing and NYCC Member Rosie Mendez. AG Eliot Spitzer is not of the group - he has expressed reservations, not because of the $21K contribuion from Tishman -Speyer over the years, small pickings unworthy of comment, but becaus he trusts T-S to do the right thing, and because of an alternative plan he has to put a COLA approach of cost of living indexing the $2K maximum rent permissible under the rent control/ stabilization laws (wow!)

A most impressive display of near unity, but I am still betting on the potential of the designations.

Wally Dobelis thanks Jack Taylor, Susan Steinberg, Gary Papush, Dan Garodnick & Sandra Levine for their contributions. This community service column has a word limit, you can find a version in his blog, sometimes longer, by googling Looking Ahead & Wally Dobelis.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

ST/PCV are now part of the empire of Tishman –Speyer Properties, at a price of $5.4B for 11.232 units, or $482K per apartment, the approximate market value of a one BR unit. Assume the scenario that such apartments are currently renting at $1,100/mo rent controlled, or at $2,400/mo market rate. Further, if sold as a condo to a market rate tenant at $300K, the new owner might pay nearly the same: $1,500/mo mortgage at 6%, plus $1,000/mo maintenance (interest to CALPERS or whoever finances Tishman, building maintenance, taxes, profit/loss on controlled units). The windfall capital gains may also entice some rent-controlled tenants, as money towards a retirement home. Rent-controlled tenants are safe (the law is good until 2011); Tishman can only decontrol an apartment upon the death of the occupant, with some tight succession rules. No doubt the renters’ incomes will be watched, since family income over the $175K max can move apartments into market rate area, as does a regulated rent when increased over $2K/mo, but that’s nothing new. Affordable NYC housing will continue to dwindle. The 1994 and 1997 laws that established the $2k/mo support limit may need a COLA, since rents have risen 64% in the 12 years (verify).

Most endangered are the open spaces, 260,000 sq. ft., or 6 ½ acres of landscaping and fresh air, never again to be duplicated in this tight city. ST/PCV was sneered at by urbanist purists, led by Lewis Mumford (in the New Yorker, 1948) and Jane Jacobs, because of the pedestrian construction of 110 residential buildings of 11-13 stories (although providentially kept far below the permitted FAR limits). Mumford considered it a police state product because of the eminent domain and condemnation proceedings in the dilapidated Gashouse District by Mayor LaGuardia, with Robert Morris, that put the 80-acre land package together. Now, with the passage of time, it has gained charm, particularly in the current-day context of tight spacing. Per Paul Goldberger: “this space really works…the curving walks, play areas, lawns and benches…the towers …are given variety by placement, grouping and landscaping,” as quoted by he Historic Districts Council, in a November 12, 2001 letter to the ST Tenants Association (TA) and CB6. copies to ESRA, This HDC report, signed by Simeon Bankoff, stated that the complex deserves preservation and protection. It proposed a three-pronged approach, to be pursued concurrently: designation of the entire site as an individual landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (as in Harlem River Houses); identification as a Special Planned. Community Preservation District (SPCPD) by the City Planning Commission, and downzoning, also by the CPC, i.e., reducing the FAR [this would inhibit reckless construction].

Pursuing this, the TA engaged Sandra Levine, a historian of architectural preservation, to work toward the designation. The effort succeeded at the NY State Office of Parks, Public Recreation and Historic Preservation, which declared ST eligible for the nominations to the New York State Register and the National Register of Historic Places. The NYSOPPRHD administers the Fed Register Act of 1966 and the NYS Act of 1980.

Under this designation the property owners, whose agreement is a prerequisite, are not hampered from implementing modifications and changes, unless public funds are involved, in which case hearings are held . Note that the public funds use for rebuilding the Union Square North Pavilion into a restaurant gave legal standing to the USCC protest. It is not expected that Stuyvesant Town will have a public road or such put through it. Nevertheless, Metropolitan Life, which invested $50M into ST/PCV in the 1990s, refused to accept the nomination. Currently the TA is considering the opening of negotiations with the Speyers about the .nominations to the State and National Registers, a worthwhile cause for both parties .

A listing on the New York State Register and on the National Register is actually an honorific, commemorating the significance and national importance of the structures and their locations. It would benefit Tishman-Speyer Properties in establishing the value of ST/PCV as quality residential property, and establish the bona fides of the developer, quoted in the NYTimes, that “there will be no sudden or dramatic shifts in the community’s makeup, character or charm.” Further, the designee can receive a 20% FIT credit for rehabilitation, such as the current extensive pavement and roadway work, and local and state credits for historic preservation.

As to the proposed NYC Landmarks Commission’s designation of ST as an individual landmark, Assemblywoman Sylvia Friedman, who originated the idea years ago, as chair of the CB6 Parks, Recreation and Landmarks Committee, has been pursuing it, as is Gary Papush, the current chair. The endangerment for the trees and the ambiance in 260,000 sq. ft open space, made up of the Stuyvesant Oval and the 15 playgrounds and athletics fields, the unique characteristics that raise ST/PCV way above other private housing developments nationally, was pointed out by Councilman David Garodnick, who spearheaded the TA’s effort to bid for the property. Note that three East Side projects have been granted landmark status – the City and suburban Homes Company Estates, the First Houses, and the Harlem River Houses.

Wally Dobelis thanks Jack Taylor, Susan Steinberg, Gary Papush & Sandra Levine for their contributions. Forgive the terseness; this unpaid community service column has a max of 825 words (you can find a version in the blog, sometimes longer, by googling Looking Ahead & Wally Dobelis), therefore the probability of re-zoning, and of the Special Planned Community Preservation District designation will be covered next week.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis


Shiya Ribowsky, the Cantor of Brotherhood Synagogue and former Director of Special Projects of the NYC Medical Examiner’s Office, has written of his experiences as a medicolegal examiner (MLI) in a 262-page memoir, Dead Center: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Largest Medical Examiner’s Office, with Tom Schachtman (Regan/ Harper/Collins, new York 2006, $26.95)

For starters, this is the book for the fans of Law and Order, or any serious crime show. The author, a MLI for 15 years, describes police and ME’s office routine in professional detail. Thus, the time of death determination, an essential element in investigating actual or potential murder, takes into account rigor mortis, the chemical and physiological process of tightening the body, as well as algor mortis, its temperature of death, and livor mortis, its lividity or color (the blood in the capillaries turns darker in time).

You will learn that nails do not grow after death, and other physiological facts, such as the explanation of the terminal bradycardia that accounts for the deaths of people in the bathroom. The traces of residue of gunpowder familiar from many murder mysteries are detailed into “fouling” (soot) and “stippling” (embers), and and you may shiver at the matter-of-factly details of a full autopsy, the opening of the chest with tools not unlike those in a body shop.

The interaction of police, EMS and the ME’s office is intricate. When a body is found, the securing of the scene of death is the function of the uniformed precinct police. A suspected murder brings on the CSU, Crime Scene Unit, and nobody may touch the scene until they complete photographing and measuring. The first to touch the body should be the ME’s person, but there are the Emergency Medical Service people who have some functional authority to “declare,” that is to certify death. Add the homicide detectives assigned by the Borough office to manage the case, and you have the elements that have heightened the suspense in hundreds of TV dramas.

This story brings back the recent history of the New York City’s Medical Examiner’s Office, with the replacement of Dr. Michael Baden and his successor Dr. Elliot Gross by Mayor Koch, and the 1989 arrival of Dr. Charles Hirsh, the innovator of the MLI office, introducing PAs, Physicians’ Assistants, into its training program.

You might wonder how a cantor, with rabbis in the family background, an observant Orthodox Jew, member of a religion that does not allow the autopsy of the deceased (it bows to demands of the secular state, but requires attendance of rabbis, and the collection of every drop of blood, to have the body complete for the eventual day of judgment) came to be a ME. It is the story of a youngster with thirst for knowledge that exceeded the traditional Jeshiva immersion into the Talmud and its commentaries, with a limited exposure to the secular world. The author was in Yeshivas through his high school years, supplementing the schools’ curricula with outside readings, particularly the masters of science fiction, leading him into subjects that expanded his knowledge of science. To enroll in a secular college, with his parents’ approval, he had to spend two summers preparing for NYS Regents exams. After that, his interest in medicine took him into formal PA training, a 24 to 28 month abbreviated medical school, that enables the graduate to diagnose and treat, and assist in surgery. The practitioners are much in demand in hospitals, clinics and MD’s offices, performing the majority of medical functions at a fraction of the MD’s pay. After working in elder and neonatal baby care clinics while attending law school courses, moving into the ME’s office was a natural progression. There the youthful analytical PA succeeded, as chief investigator and Director of Special Projects - which brings us to the mass murder of 9/11/2001, the subject of the last half of the book, a virtual handbook of post-disaster organization.

The horrifying deaths of nearly 2,500 New Yorkers put the OCME to unprecedented tasks, with the DSP at the forefront, developing new techniques. The recording of postmortem (remains) and antemortem (descriptions of victims and items they wore or carried, from relatives, friends and employers) investigations and the critical crosschecking of some 60,000 documents, over 20 per victim, required new computer techniques, developed on the spot. Remnant recovery at the “Pile,” their cold storage, victim identification by new DNA protocols, victims’ property recording and crosschecking were the daunting new tasks. Mortician and ME volunteers rallied by DMORT (Disater Mortuary Operational Response Team, organized by FEMA) came from all states. A small town in NM collected donations to pay for their ME’s four-month stay in NYC; a British computer expert, in the US for a conference, stayed for two years to adapt his Dataease system for the demands of post-disaster work. After May 2002, when the last of the death ID documents were issued, most of the key participants moved out of the NYC OCME, physically and mentally exhausted, or unable to spend the rest of their careers facing the 9/11 scene and memories. Although humorous at times, this book is a stark reminder that we are a target, and must remain prepared for the worst.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

This week I heard the President express his dismay and shock that Representative Mark Foley had used his high office to lure Congressional pageboys.

Curiously, this came right after my own experience of dismay and shock, hearing a broadcast about US marines searching for a insurrectionist bomber. When they did not find him, they took a neighbor and killed him, after faking a scene suggesting that the man was rigging an attack. It was disclosed by a Navy man who objected but was not listened to, and when asked why he par-ticipated, replied that he wanted to be part of the team. Now he is going to jail, and so are the Marines.

This case of cowboy or vigilante justice brought up the hint of another nightmare situation with some comparable aspects, that of a government that wanted revenge for innocent 9/11 victims, and not being able to find the guilty, settled for attacking the neighbor, with a majority of Con-gress people agreeing, wanting to be part of the revenge and willing to believe in the rightfulness of their cause.

We can certainly argue about the details of this analogy, but, unmistakably, my sweet America has changed; I the not-so-distant past we have been the country of right and justice, the country that takes care of the oppressed and the poor, and opens the world for democracy. We have de-scended to the level of the angry and wrong-headed people who want to destroy us. There is no doubt that the road to here has been paved with good intentions: part of what has led us here has been that we stand by a small democratic nation in a sea of dictators and wants to keep its free-dom, Israel. We have attempted to preserve balance and stability in a region that could at one point have fallen to communism, and has instead fallen to radical Islam in some parts, to person-ality cults in others. But the more we have done, the more we have sullied our own name; and as we have gradually lost the popularity contest, we have in turn become the class bully. And thus we may be on the road of losing our soul. Religious and conservative prophets of doom are pre-dicting the end of democracy, the dying of the ever-secularizing Western civilization and a Sec-ond Coming, or rapture. Whether or not that is in the book, we are doomed as a culture unless we step back and rethink this atmosphere of hatreds, and what it does to us, inhabitants of Planet Earth. Talking to people rather than issuing edicts and sanctions is absolutely needed.

[Check the facts here - she was defending Hastert until a few days ago.]
Coming back to Foley, note that a Congressperson of Ohio, Deborah Pryce, fourth-ranking Re-publican in the House, has aggressively proclaimed that anyone who protected Foley must re-sign, including Speaker Hastert. She has returned the $5K received from Foley’s PAC. This is very principled on the surface, and interesting, because Pryce’s is one of the vulnerable 30-35 House seats targeted by the Democrats; she is being mightily challenged in her home district of Columbus, OH by a local politician named Mary-Jo Kilroy. Now the Kilroy campaign, clean and Iraq/budget/taxes oriented, has started asking some heavy leading questions, in particular, whether Pryce, as a House leader, knew the secrets of Foley, who was her friend and campaign manager for the influential House Republican Committee chair. Pryce is vulnerable as she has also received monies from Abramoff and the likes; until this year, she often had more money than she needed in what used to be a “safe” district and thus was able to grow her influence. Pryce has never been a leader on issues, but rather has voted along party lines and focused in-stead on the money side of the political game. The next question may be whether Foley was pro-tected not only to squelch potential scandals for the midterm election but also because of his im-portant role as a campaign fund raiser for the Republican House organization. The prospect of ethical problems for the party leadership is formidable, given its recent tendency to seek refuge in the high principles of conservatism and “family values.”

The influence of money on politics is no longer a question, and it hits both sides of the aisle: one may fairly speculate that Democratic leaders Clinton and Spitzer have probably compromised some of their positions to gain their formidable $30M battle funds. The question here is not whether money has bought influence, but whether an internal influence-peddler like Foley could either have bought his own protection or have been protected for his value to the party. In the face of accusations such as those that have been brought against him, such protection would clearly be an unacceptable overreach in the eternal grasping for political money.

If this Congressional election subject interests you, please visit my Looking Ahead website online (http://dobelisfile.blogspot.com, or just search for “Wally Dobelis” on Google) for a fur-ther discussion of Foley, Pryce, and Hastert; last week I launched a post-primary review of the Democratic strategy to recovering the support of the middle of Americans, “using the soft touch.” You can also see the unedited version of last week’s piece Brian Kavanagh, which con-tains some very strong arguments that he is a New Yorker and not a carpet bagger.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Sylvia Friedman will run in the November election as a Working Families party candidate for the NYS Assembly, 74th District, even though she lost the September 12th Democratic Primary to Brian Kavanagh. He had 5055 votes, against Sylvia’s 4681, Ester Yang’s 934 and Juan Pagan’s 792. Now she, the current incumbent, will be on the ballot as the candidate of the new party that has become the putative balance tipper in tight elections, as the Liberals were in the past. She has held the Assembly office since February 2006, having been successful in getting the nomination of the Democratic County Committee in its not-too-well-attended convention on January 29. She drew 57% of the votes, over the then recently resigned incumbent Steve Sanders’s chief of staff Steve Kaufman after Donald Tobias dropped out, and won in the February 28 special election.

Brian Kavanagh, who moved to East 29th Street from the West Side two years ago, and lost in the primary against Rosie Mendez for the City Douncil District #2 seat in 2005, after Margarita Lopez’s term expired, did not participate in the DCC contest. He had just spent $100K in the 2005 race, contributed largely by friends and political associates on the West Side, where he was chief of staff for CCM Gale Brewer of District 6, originally of former BP Ruth Messenger’s political establishment, and is in good standing with BP Stringer. He has City Hall credits from working in the Koch and Dinkins administrations on homeless and housing problems, and community credits for volunteering with the Nativity Mission on Forsythe Street while in high school and later. A scholarship grad of Princeton and a honors scholar at of NYU Law School, at age 39 he was an obvious comer, needing territory. Ater the CC2 experience, AD74 was the obvious choice, and he raised another $120K, while looking for endorsements.

Of the four Democratic clubsin the 74th AD, three endorsed Friedman, the Lower East Side CODAs, smarting over Kavanagh’s clash with Mendez, the GSIDs, Friedman’s home club, also the Eleanor Roosevelts, although their DLs split at the County level. Only the Tilden membership, still remembering fights of 10+ years ago when they had district sharing problems with the GSIDs, endorsed Kavanagh. He also tapped into a campaign management/ PR firm, Knickerbocker SKD, with a young political genius, Micah “The Slasher” Lasher (that’s how the blogs have it) who has been winning elections, most recently Yvette Clarke’s Congressional Primary in Brooklyn’s 11th CD.

Meanwhile Sylvia Friedman, age 67, was busy making her future in the Assembly. A 40 year veteran in the 74th AD area (Delancey to Tudor City), the retired school teacher and social worker had all imaginable neighborhood credits, as the GSID DL, elected member of the Democratic State Committee, leader of the Reform Caucus in the NY County Committee, where they took Sheldon Silver to task (not to his liking although he dutifully endorsed her), head of the Homeless Shelter program at Friends, member of Community Board #6, where she chaired the Homeless and other committees, leader in the Lower East Side Call For Justice group and candidate, in 1993, for CC#2 seat, losing to Antonio Pagan.

Very individualistic, Friedman had some problems. For one, she had beaten Steve Sanders’s hand-picked candidate for his replacement. Then, Kavanag’s campaign discovered that she had missed two Assembly votes, while attending to her fund-raising. It did not matter that the issues were sure Democratic winners, Medicaid and cigarette taxes, won at 137 to 2 and 138 to 7, they looked good on the flashy literature his campaign mailed out almost daily. So did the NY Times endorsement, which expressed regrets that Friedman, despite early promises, had become part of the system, and the one from Sanders, much respected in the ST/PCV community.

Questions have been asked about the newcomer Kavanagh’s involvement in local issues. Newbies are common in NYS; note that such illustrious performers as Clinton, Kennedy and Buckley were all initially tagged as carpetbaggers. Kavanagh’s enthusiastic campaign manager Jesse Dixon (whose day job is on staff of a NYC lawmaker) protests, citing the candidate’s local residence below 16th Street prior to moving to 29th Street (not confirmed), and work with CCMs Garodnick and Glick on the ST/PCV tenant ownership proposal. The impression is, though, that Kavanagh is a very private individual, in contrast to his godfather Sanders, who virtually went sleepless during the East Side landlords’ push to coop apartment buildings in the early 1980s, calling tenant meetings in lobbies and auditoriums and extemporaneously speaking for hours, explaining housing laws and offering tenant strategies.

This is where the issues stand. Friedman will run on the Wprking Families ticket, not much afraid that a split vote will lose the Democratic seat, since the 74th AD balance is hugely against the GOP (my ED at Primary closing time had over a hundred Democratic vs. one GOP vote); Republican candidate Frank Scala, a ST/PCV resident and activist, reports that Juan Pagan hass endorsed him, and Esther Yang has some leanings in his direction. Fence mendings in all directions are indicated. My best regards to Steve Kaufman, who taught me the ropes 20 years ago, when I was haunting City Council meetings , speaking out against the proposed Police Academy move.

Moving a lot more West, this column has been watching the Democrats’ campaigns to wrest potentially vulnerable Congressional districts away from their Republican incumbent, the numbers ranging from 20 to 35 (the magic number is 15).

An interesting prototypical campaign is in the Ohio 15th CD, with Deborah Pryce, a lawyer, holding the seat for GOP since 1993. The contender is Betty Jo Kilroy, is a Franklin County commissioner. This district encompasses Columbus and its suburbs, and Ohio State University, the one succesful area in a state that has lost its industries, replaced by low pay service jobs - WalMartr instead of GM is the chief employer - and plagued by scandals in the GOP government, in power for a decade and a half. Now Bob Ney (18th CD) was found to be an Abramoff accomplice; Gov. Bob Taft of the sacred name let his coin dealer buddy Tom Noe make a failed investment of $50M of state monies in supposed rarities, accepting golf outings and other favors. The traditionally Republican voters are seething, but wil they go for a black GOP reform governor candidate rather than vote Democratic?

A recent public debate of the 15th CD contenders, led by the editors of the Columbus Dispatch, showed the attack points,responses and vulnerabilities of the opponents, with clues to wooing the middle. Iraq was key.

Pryce defended Bush on the conduct of war, while expressing regrets about the faulty intelligence that led to its inception (“if we knew then, there would have been no vote to go to war”), while Kildoy accused her and the Republican Congress of abrogating their oversight role. Pryce considered Iraq key in fighting terror, while Kilroy pressed the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. She also linked the incumbent to the attempted privatization Of Social Security and the national deficit, while Pryce pirouetted away by distancing herself and expressing embarrassment for the budget results, then counterattacked Kilroy as a potential tax raiser, when the challenger indicated intent to revoke the new estate tax cuts and the income tax reductions for the rich. One can see the local priorities - in NY the contender would have played up the pressure on local property taxes resulting from the fed cuts.

Kilroy has a one-point advantage, tenuous, but is suffering from lack of funds. If you feel sympathetic and want to help, e-mail wally@ix.netcom.com for details, or visit my blog (you will find it by searching Wally Dobelis & Looking Ahead) for more, or go to www.kilroyforcongress.com.