TransGas Bids for Westside MTA Site
by Peter Gelling
Despite numerous setbacks, President of TransGas Energy Adam Victor has still not given up his bid to build a 1,100 megawatt power plant at North 12th Street. His latest move strikes at the heart of his most powerful opposition.
It seems the sale of the West Side Rail Yards will have much farther reaching results than anyone anticipated. In fact, if Victor gets his way, this Upper West Side hole-in-the-ground might change the very future of the waterfront of
Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and his pet dream of holding the Olympics in New York City in 2012 has repeatedly stood in the way of Victor’s visionary power plant, a proposal that has received so much opposition that TransGas is now proposing to build it underground, complete with a park and artistic sculptures housing air vents.
Victor’s natural gas plant is competing with Doctoroff’s desire to hold beach volleyball and design an Olympic aquatic center at North 12th Street. As a result, Doctoroff and the Mayor himself, Michael Bloomberg, jumped on board with the local community in opposing the plant. The politicians favor a community proposal to rezone and reconstruct the North Brooklyn waterfront bringing additional open space and affordable housing to the area.
But Victor will not be undone and he has now entered the fray at the West Side Rail Yards, hoping Doctoroff will be forced to change his position. Doctoroff has fought every insurmountable obstacle to build his new Jets Stadium and Convention Center, the hallmark of his Olympic bid, at the Rail Yards. Now Doctoroff will have to compete with the seemingly bottomless pockets of TransGas.
As the MTA prepared to sell the Rail Yards to the Jets football organization over a year ago for the sum of $100 million, Cablevision, owner of Madison Square Garden, became a bit squeamish, fearing lost revenue. So Cablevision offered the MTA $600 million for the Rail Yards. MTA, an organization riddled with financial problems, was so impressed it decided to abandon the city and the Jets and open the sale of the property for bidding. Enter Adam Victor, the power plant pariah, who offered $700 million for the property with no plans for its development.
Victor told the press he wouldn’t object to building Doctoroff’s stadium and convention center, but he would want some favors in return, namely support for building his power plant at North 12th Street. Victor said that his most recent design would not impede Doctoroff from building his Olympic Aquatic Center. Victor has also offered to contribute $50 million for affordable housing in the area.
But the community remains skeptical of TransGas, claiming that a power plant is still a power plant, even when it is dressed up with a park and sculptures. Williamsburg and Greenpoint have long been burdened with a large number of pollutant industries in the community. There are 22 Toxic Release Inventories and 211 Right-To-Know facilities. A Mobil oil spill released 17 million gallons of oil into Greenpoint’s aquifers and there are also two superfund sites. As a result, North Brooklyn has one of the highest cancer rates and the third highest asthma rate in New York City.
But what could be the biggest blow to the North Brooklyn community is the intrusion of TransGas into a more than 10-year-old proposal to rezone and develop the Brooklyn waterfront for residential affordable housing. The TransGas facility would be built at the very juncture of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, at the very point where the two neighborhood plans for redevelopment meet.
This has added to a historic collaboration of different community groups and local politicians in the area that has transcended race and religion. The opposition to the power plant is one of the few aspects of the neighborhood that has united an otherwise divisive community.
The MTA has reported that it will close bidding on March 21st giving the City only a few weeks to decide what it can do to beat back, yet again, the persuasive Adam Victor.
A spokesperson for the Mayor said the administration remains confident that the stadium proposal would still succeed, despite the enormous sums of money offered by both Cablevision and TransGas.
$8 Million Firehouse to be built in Bushwick
By Rahul Chadha
There hasn’t been much change in the infrastructural needs of a New York City fire engine or ladder company in the last hundred years or so. Space to house equipment, offices, beds, lockers, a gym—all are universal themes in the arena of firehouse construction. So other than a modern-day design makeover, the allocation of more space for larger pieces of firefighting equipment and the integration of newer technologies, the plans for the Bushwick neighborhood’s Engine Company 277 and Ladder Company 112’s new 16,500 square foot firehouse don’t differ that much from those of firehouses built at the turn of the last century. “What’s in a firehouse is pretty standard once you know what the units for the firehouse are,” says John Spavins, a spokesman with the city’s Department of Design & Construction (DDC), the city agency that designed the new building.
Since 2003, when the two companies’ firehouse at 582 Knickerbocker Avenue was condemned, Engine 277 and Ladder 112 have been shoehorned into Engine Company 222’s house a few blocks away on Ralph Avenue. While an inconvenience to Bushwick residents, the relocation of the two companies was a necessary evil, says Captain Peter Gorman, President of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. “There are certain things that you can’t get around,” he says. “There are times when you have to relocate a company because of problems with the infrastructure.”
Gorman himself witnessed at least some of those problems firsthand. Years ago he worked at the Bushwick firehouse, and remembers it as an old and tiny building that didn’t have enough space to house the fire engine and the ladder truck side by side, instead stacking them with one always blocking the other from the exit. In some emergencies one truck would have to be moved before the other, adding precious seconds to response times.
Residents who remember the budget cuts that shuttered four firehouses in 2003 may be in sticker shock over the $8 million price tag for construction of the new building, which mirrors exactly the $8 million the Bloomberg administration was then looking to save by closing six firehouses, four of which were in Brooklyn.
At the news of the closures two years ago, the response was immediate, intense and deafening. Residents of affected neighborhoods rallied and protested, and a bipartisan coalition of 15 city and state politicians filed a legal action against the city government and the New York City Fire Department, decrying the closures as, “arbitrary and capricious because it came as the result of a preordained political decision,” according to a statement released by the office of Borough President Marty Markowitz in May of 2003. In the end, the legal action failed, and the buildings were emptied.
The history of the closures might leave some wondering what the justification of a multi-million dollar firehouse is worth in the face of such budgetary uncertainties. But as Gorman notes, there is a substantial difference in the funds allocated by the city for the operating expenses for government services, and the construction costs incurred in creating and maintaining those services. “I don’t think anyone’s not supporting this idea,” says Gorman. “This is not operating budget expense; this is a capital budget expense. Bushwick has a densely populated area, and—if anything—the area is more populated than before. In order to respond properly firehouses need to be dispersed throughout the city.”
Right now the firehouse is in its final design phase, says Spavins, the spokesman with DDC. The $8 million construction cost estimate is one covering construction with contingency costs factored in, but as Spavins notes, once the process is opened to bids from contractors, an architect may be called in to review the plans in an attempt to save some money.
Members of Community Board 4 are already on board with the plans. In January the DDC and FDNY presented the new plans to members of the board, and in short time the 46 members of the board voted unanimously in favor of the project. “We’re very encouraged about the plans for the new firehouse,” says Nadine Whitted, district manager of CB4, who remembers when Bushwick was a ripe target for arsonists and rows of houses burned down. “In our community two firehouses were slated to close. They were saved, the community rallied. We didn’t allow that to happen.”
However, Whitted stops short of expressing complete confidence that the firehouse will be built, given the neighborhood’s spotty history with firehouses. “We were nervous, and you know what? You stay a little nervous until you see a shovel in the ground,” she says. “But we need this firehouse.”
The Williamsburg Warriors
Dancing Against Rezoning
Drinking For Affordable Housing
by Alex Padalka
Who says Williamsburg hipsters only care about looks and parties? Well, maybe they do, but some care enough about where and how they party to learn the issues, organize meetings (albeit sometimes over drinks) and plan a defensive to the city's proposed rezoning. "Mixed neighborhoods make better dance parties," reads the Williamsburg Warriors' mission.
The Warriors are a new breed of community activism in this area, an entirely new animal compared to the long-established coalitions such as the North Brooklyn Alliance and the Greenpoint Williamsburg Association for Parks and Planning. While this neighborhood is already unique in the fact that its younger residents actually care to join the community's opposition to firehouse closings and massive power plants, there is a significant section of the populace that spends infinitely more time drinking and dancing than protesting and picketing, and only vaguely understands what exactly a community board does and why.
The city’s plan for the neighborhood as it stands now, however, threatens to infringe on this care-free lifestyle as much as on the working class housing. Those 40-story towers would indiscriminately block the light from old Polish homes and indie rocker lofts alike and force the whole bohemian shebang to search for yet another affordable enclave.
"I don't want to keep running from one cool place to another cool place," said Warriors co-founder Siri, playing with a button that said 'We Ain't No SoHo'. "I'm willing to fight, and I don't think I'm alone."
Realizing the threat, the Warriors did what they do best to fight back - they threw a rock show and invited all their friends to have a good time. The group’s name, incidentally, was by far not a result of long deliberation and committee meetings, according to co-founder Eve, but rather a pull-out-of-you-know-where thing.
At the heart of the Warriors' mission, however, is a deep commitment to keeping the character of the area and making sure its current residents still have a home when the developers have their say. Co-founders and band-mates Eve and Siri have been playing music, making clothes, bartending and throwing parties in Williamsburg for years, and they chose to do it here for a reason.
"I come from the Old South - so closed off to diversity, and the reason I fell in love with this neighborhood is because it is so open to diversity,” Eve said. The Warriors’ main goal is to “keep Williamsburg a mixed-use community, and a mixed culturally community,” she stressed. “Can you stop gentrification midstream? That’s what I want to do.”
With the proceeds from the January 20th rock show at Savalas, where Eve bartends, the girls have already bought a button maker and plan to make posters, t-shirts and buttons with a message to the rest of their neighbors. They’ve also set up a website where busy socialites can learn more about the city’s plan and the community’s response, and conveniently sign on to the massive letter-writing campaign to the city council.
The Warriors have come in at the last stages of the game, with just two months left before the historical city council vote. They are not alone to perk up in this important period, however - on February 27th they joined dozens of other “young people” at the Change You Want To See gallery for a planning meeting. Opened by community liaison and activist extraordinaire Philip DePaolo, the group was an impressive show of force from the so-called “creative industries”, most of which have come to know each other during the anti-war protests last year and actions around the Republican National Convention and the fateful elections.
Coming together again under one banner were over 30 groups ranging from alterna-activists Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, the Hungry March Band and Green Dragon to local business owners and representatives of civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel and more established organizations such as the North Brooklyn Alliance. In less than three hours, the group quickly divided the tasks for a focused campaign in support of the community’s alternative development plan, and judging from what they’ve pulled together at last summer’s NEO-CONey Island Block Party alone, there are bound to be some exciting and creative resistance actions in the weeks to come. If you haven’t yet, plug in and stay tuned, there is less than two months left.
Check out www.williamsburgwarriors.org for more information.
