[HK-Online] Hell's Kitchen Online - Unified Bulk - 4/2/00

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Hell's Kitchen Online                                4/2/00
http://hellskitchen.net "All the News the Times Won't Print"
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IN THIS ISSUE ...

Unified Bulk (UBP) - Citywide Zoning Proposal

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UNIFIED BULK OR UNIFIED BUNK?

As the public is tearing apart Joe Rose's latest scheme, it appears that 
city community boards are falling into any one of several categories:

a) those that either don't understand it, or believe what they are told, or 
think it doesn't impact their neighborhoods or don't wish to expend the 
effort -- and are simply rubber-stamping it, or

b) those - like Bronx CB#8 and Staten Island CB#1 - who we hear have 
adopted all or part of the Manhattan Neighborhood Council resolution (see 
below) calling for more time, or

c) those - like Manhattan's CB#2 that actually broke into committees, 
examined it in detail, and instead of approving or disapproving the plan, 
simply cite what is good or bad, or

d) those - like Manhattan's CB#4 that give it a cursory review and (under 
possible pressure from City Planning), propose approving the plan "because 
it's good politics."

    CB4 is expected to vote on the measure this Wednesday at its
    regular monthly meeting; the Public Hearing starts at 6 pm.,
    Hudson Guild/Fulton Center, 119 Ninth Ave. between 17th/18th Streets.

But the UBP has a variety of inherent flaws and could be dangerous in a 
variety of ways. Observers are speaking out, expressing caution about 
approving the plan without sufficient review. A former public official 
stated that the plan must be examined in detail for its potential 
"unintended consequences."

City Planning Commissioner Joe Rose (and some others) are saying that the 
Real Estate industry hates the plan (is it true, or is it a ploy?) and 
therefore, we must pass this proposal as soon as possible to prevent any 
more buildings getting their foundations in under the old code.

But while Rose's attitude was 'trust me' to CB4, CB7, the Manhattan Borough 
Board and the NYC Bar Association, he and City Planning did everything 
possible to prevent the public from gaining a full understanding of the 
plan. They refused to put the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the 
city's web site, they refused to release models of potential build-outs, 
and the scoping session notice arrived over the Christmas holidays, so, of 
course, very few people knew about it.

But after his Big Box Retail plan of a few years ago and his Theater 
Subdistrict Plan of 1998, few find Joe Rose's credibility intact. While it 
would be very easy to knee-jerk into a "developers hate it, so we must love 
it" rationale, more responsible questions should be asked:

a) can anyone even describe its provisions well enough to vote yes?

b) are the consequences understood well enough to lend support?

c) if developers might get a multi-year phase-in of the new regulations 
(which is reportedly on the table), then what's the rush?

Some people are asking (see below), "where's the meat?" Maybe a more 
appropriate question would be, "would you buy a used car from Joe Rose?"

For more illumination, read below:

- A memo from Alvin Berk
- Manhattan Neighborhood Council calls for delay
- NY Observer on City Planning's Joe Rose

More info on the Unified Bulk Plan is available at
http://www.hellskitchen.net/develop/unifiedbulk or
http://www.tenant.net/land/zoning/unifiedbulk/

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MEMO FROM ALVIN BERK
(Alvin Berk is Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 14, but is writing as an 
individual as his community board has not yet voted on the Unified Bulk 
Proposal.)

[T]he dimensions and implications of the [Unified Bulk] proposal are so 
huge that no one but Joe Rose can honestly say he understands enough of it 
to endorse or reject it on substantive grounds. This leaves only two 
alternatives: accept Unified Bulk on faith, or demand a longer review period.

Of these, only the second makes sense.

God -- or the devil -- is in the details, and the current mayor-council 
speaker/staff form of city government means that most of the rest of us 
will have no voice in writing or interpreting the specific DCP rules that 
implement the proposal.

In 1961, we had a Board of Estimate to spread the analytic load, the 
interpretive power, and the implementation responsibility. Now all we have 
is a mayor and a speaker/staff-controlled city council. Unified Bulk will 
be negotiated -- or litigated- -- between the two ends of City Hall. The 
rest of us won't have a voice. If we accept Unified Bulk now, we're buying 
a pig in a poke. It's too much, too soon.

As to a design review panel, which may have been inserted as a red herring 
to distract attention from the proposal's more fundamental features, it 
inherently dilutes the influence of local and borough boards and hence, 
alters the balances built into ULURP. Aesthetic and design reviews 
"professionalize" the contextual and character-of-the-community judgments 
that lay community boards now make. When experts say a building is 
architecturally worthy, what weight will be given to a negative finding by 
a lay board? Even if a community board is listened to, Unified Bulk makes 
it only one of two voices.

Finally, with expert panelists drawn from the architectural community, 
considerations of professional courtesy will be almost impossible to avoid. 
Consider the incentives: either panelists will be paid, or not. If paid, 
payment will be sufficient reason to want to please whoever appoints them; 
if unpaid, their bias still must be towards the developers on whom they 
must depend for future work. In either case, a design panel must lean 
toward granting special permits, not denying them.

The important thing is to know what we're reacting to. We don't yet. We 
need more time to know if the fleshed-out proposal will be good or not. Joe 
Rose's desire to leave his mark before his franchise expires is admirable, 
but it's his problem, not ours. We'll be living with any new zoning text 
for 30 or 40 years. Let's get it right. Vote "No" for now.

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MANHATTAN NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL SAYS "STOP & THINK"

The Manhattan Neighborhood Council is a borough-wide, non-partisan congress 
of delegates from more than 150 civic, community and business 
organizations. The following resolution was passed at MNC’s March 18, 2000 
meeting:

Whereas, the NYC Department of City Planning has proposed amendments to the 
Zoning Resolution and Zoning Map, collectively entitled the Unified Bulk 
Program, and

Whereas, community boards and community groups were not active participants 
in the development of the proposal and have not had an opportunity to 
adequately discuss its provisions, and

Whereas, there may be both positive and negative elements to the proposed 
amendments as well as potential unintended consequences; the lengthy and 
complex proposals will be difficult to analyze and arrive at informed 
conclusions absent specific "before and after" build scenarios, models and 
sufficient time for study and debate, and

Whereas, there are concerns that a portion of the proposal known as the 
“Design Special Permit” raises many unanswered questions and may undermine 
the integrity of the review process, and

Whereas, zoning reform is certainly desirable, but it should not be done 
under pressures of any arbitrary timetables, and

Whereas, any "take it or leave it" approach may have the effect of playing 
some neighborhoods off against other neighborhoods and force citizens into 
a reactive rather than participatory mode.

Therefore, be it resolved that the Manhattan Neighborhood Council calls 
upon the Mayor and the City Planning Commission to extend the review 
process for the Unified Bulk Program beyond the charter-mandated review 
schedule until community boards, community groups and all who may be 
interested have the time to analyze and properly consider the impacts and 
implications of such a massive change to the New York City Zoning Resolution.

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MIGHTY JOE ROSE: THIRD GENERATION BUILDER BATTLES SKYSCRAPER ELITE
NY Observer, April 3, 2000
by Andrew Rice

For a man with an ambition to reshape New York’s skyline, Joe Rose has 
spent a prodigious amount of his time lately tending to grassroots. Several 
evenings a week, New York’s young Planning Commission chairman slips into 
the back seat of a dark city-issued Crown Victoria, on his way to another 
classroom or community center, where he explains, once more, why he wants 
to "drive a stake through the heart" of New York City’s zoning code.

Sometimes, as he did before a community board in Harlem two weeks ago, he 
will lower his voice conspiratorially and confide something to his 
audience. "As you can well imagine," he said, "there are people who don’t 
want these regulations adopted, and they have a lot of power."

Mr. Rose should know. He has known some of his adversaries since he was a 
boy. Some of them may even be related to him.

An heir to two New York real estate dynasties—his father, Daniel, is 
chairman of Rose Associates, one of the city’s premier development firms; 
his father-in-law, Marshall Rose (no blood relation) is president of the 
Georgetown Group—Mr. Rose has lately emerged as an unlikely scourge of the 
one thing developers hold most dear: tall buildings.

The proposals have stirred up some deep-seated emotions, even among the 
normally taciturn real estate community. "I hate it, I resent it," said one 
prominent developer.

If Mr. Rose seems an unlikely foil to the city’s development interests, 
those who have watched his tenure closely say it is a battle that has been 
brewing since he was appointed to the office, with the real estate 
community’s backing, more than six years ago.

"He’s gone out of his way, further than he’s had to, to show that he has no 
allegiance to the developers," said one prominent developer who is 
generally supportive but who, like most industry figures contacted for this 
story, did not want to be quoted by name for fear of running afoul of Mr. 
Rose and the Giuliani administration. "They expected a more sympathetic 
understanding of their developments than they’ve received."

"That’s preposterous," Mr. Rose said. "I do not know of a case where one 
can make that assertion legitimately."

By all accounts, Mr. Rose follows his own political compass. He can, at 
times, be loftily dismissive of those who question him.

"Joe starts off very self-assured," said Councilman Walter McCaffrey, who 
chairs the council’s subcommittee on land use. "Sometimes being 
self-assured is a good thing in life. Other times when it’s not the best 
way, you have to realize someone’s not sharing the same concept."

Take, for instance, Mr. Rose’s visit to Community Board 5 last month. Mr. 
Rose once chaired the board before he was appointed to the Planning 
Commission, and the board has shown its appreciation by maligning several 
of his most cherished proposals.

"It’s a pleasure to be back," Mr. Rose began, "despite the fact that you 
have continually, and repeatedly, and totally unreasonably, rejected so 
many of the good initiatives that we have issued forth, all of which have 
been done largely for the benefit of Community Board 5. It’s the same thing 
with my family, I get the same treatment, so I’m used to it."

In response to the audience’s derisive laughter and catcalls, Mr. Rose 
flashed that million-dollar smile and threw his arms open wide: "This is 
like a homecoming!" he shouted.

Kevin Finnegan, who until recently co-chaired the board’s land-use 
committee, said he and many others had entered the room inclined to support 
the proposal. But they changed their minds. "People walked out shaking 
their heads," he said.

Mr. Rose has been making his share of opponents lately. In order to become 
law, his zoning proposal must first be evaluated by the community boards 
and borough presidents, then passed by the Planning Commission and approved 
by the City Council. Hence his tireless road show through the backwaters of 
city government.

In its present form, the proposal has achieved the rare feat of uniting the 
civic types at the Municipal Arts Society with the developer types at the 
Real Estate Board of New York. Both sides, for different reasons, say they 
have grave reservations about the proposal.

Not that anyone, on the record, disagrees with Mr. Rose’s diagnosis of the 
problem: that the current zoning code, drafted in 1961, is aesthetically 
outdated, mind-boggling in its complexity and vulnerable to "Talmudic 
massaging" by a cadre of zoning lawyers. Mr. Rose wants to overhaul the 
urban renewal-era regulations that encourage developers to build tall, 
skinny towers in the middle of windswept concrete plazas, and close 
loopholes that allow buildings like the infamous Trump World Tower, next 
door to the United Nations, to rise to enormously incongruous heights. In 
their place, he’d like to see ironclad height restrictions in residential 
areas, and a push to construct buildings whose lower stories are flush with 
the sidewalk, forming a so-called "streetwall."

The release in December of 536 pages of zoning revisions sent people all 
over town scurrying to their lawyers. They found a lot to object to. 
Architects are scared that the regulations will curtail their freedom of 
design, pointing out that the buildings everyone loves—like the Century, 
the Majestic and the San Remo on Central Park West—could not be built under 
the proposed regulations. Developers, for their part, think the regulations 
will cut into the value of their future holdings by forcing them to put 
more apartments closer to street level (no more view one-upmanship). And 
many simply think that building shorter buildings is, well, not New York.

"The last thing you want to have happen to Manhattan is height limits," 
said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board. "What do you think 
about when you think of Manhattan? You think about the wonderful skyline, 
and it is my belief—and I think that most people believe—that tall, slender 
buildings are much more attractive than fat, squatty ones."

Yet even those who question the proposals themselves give Mr. Rose credit 
for trying. "I think [the proposal] will be looked upon very positively, 
and I think his legacy in terms of a record, it’s going to be largely this 
proposal," said architect Mark Ginsberg.

Mention the word "legacy" around Mr. Rose, though, and he recoils. "We’ve 
been studying and addressing the issues for a very long time," he said. 
Yet, with the end of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration either a year 
or two away, depending on this November’s election, it is likely this will 
be the last, and most ambitious, major initiative Mr. Rose launches as 
Planning Commission chairman.

At this point, Mr. Rose, 40, will soon be the longest-serving Planning 
Commission chair in the city’s history. It is a tenure that, some observers 
say, is thin on accomplishment.

"His administration, as long as it’s been, has not been marked by major 
planning initiatives," said Richard Anderson of the New York Building Congress.

One associate, who has worked closely with Mr. Rose since he’s been in 
charge of the Planning Commission, offered a more blunt appraisal: "For a 
member of a prominent real estate family, it’s amazing: He never saw a 
development he didn’t want to make more complicated, more difficult and 
less likely to get done."

Mr. Rose cites a number of successful initiatives that have occurred on his 
watch: the Columbus Circle redevelopment, the purging of porn shops, the 
revival of Lower Manhattan. "These were all things that were symbols of how 
it was impossible to get things done," he said.

Where’s the Meat?

Mr. Rose was virtually born to the job. The Rose family’s real estate roots 
in the city run deep. Brothers Samuel and David Rose began building 
apartments in the Bronx in the 1920’s. Under a second generation of 
Roses—brothers Frederick, Daniel and Elihu—the family consolidated its 
holdings in Manhattan and developed new ones in other cities.

The third generation—Joe Rose’s gang— is less uniformly involved in the 
family business, although cousins Adam and Amy are key executives. Mr. Rose 
himself has never shown much interest in the private side of development. 
Today, he says, he scrupulously avoids discussing business with the family, 
in order to avoid possible conflicts of interest.

Mr. Rose draws more directly on a second family trait: a bent toward public 
service. (His father, Daniel, is well known for his philanthropy.) "We were 
all raised with a strong sense that we both had the opportunity and 
responsibility to be in service," said his cousin, Jonathan F.P. Rose, who 
runs a firm in Katonah, N.Y., that develops affordable housing. (He was the 
only member of the Rose family to respond to requests for comment.)

Joe Rose himself said that his upbringing helps him to see development 
issues more clearly.

"It cuts both ways," he said. "Sometimes you need to be sensitive to real 
problems, but also, you need to be able to tell when you’re being sold a 
line.… A lot of developers come in telling you in government all sorts of 
different things, and most people in government are not going to know 
whether the guy is telling the truth or not."

Mr. Rose grew up on Park Avenue and studied city planning and international 
relations at Yale and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (he 
has yet to write his dissertation). After college, Mr. Rose served as an 
aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and was appointed to Community 
Board 5.

Lola Finkelstein, now the board chair, served with Mr. Rose. She remembers 
him as a "Kennedyesque" figure. "He was handsome, and, at the time, the way 
he wore his hair, it was always flopping on his forehead," she said. He 
used to show up at meetings, then held in a dingy church basement, dressed 
in black tie for social engagements. "It was always speculated about: ‘What 
is Joe’s ultimate or next goal?’" she said.

In 1988, Mr. Rose decided to run for the State Senate. With his father at 
his side, Mr. Rose shook hands outside of subways all over the district. He 
spent $600,000 on the race. In its final days, however, the incumbent, 
Manfred Ohrenstein, circulated fliers questioning whether Mr. Rose’s family 
ties would make him too sympathetic to landlords. Mr. Rose lost.

Recently, rumors around City Hall have had him eyeing a run for 
comptroller, but Mr. Rose flatly denies any such interest. "What I always 
wanted was to be chairman of the city Planning Commission," he said.

How his tenure in the job is remembered will depend, to a large extent, on 
how skillfully he shepherds his zoning overhaul through the political 
process. The development lobby is already vowing to make trouble if Mr. 
Rose doesn’t water it down.

"In the form that it’s currently in, there’s no way we’ll support it," Mr. 
Spinola said. "The council will hear that very firmly, the Mayor will hear 
it, and everyone else will hear it."

"When chairman Rose unveiled this thing, it sounded like the biggest thing 
in terms of the city’s approach to physical development in two 
generations," Mr. Anderson said. Now, "most people are just shaking their 
heads a little bit and saying, ‘Where’s the meat here?’"

"My job is not to win everything I take on," Mr. Rose said. "If you win 
everything, you’re not trying hard enough, you’re not taking enough risks."

But what might the city look like if he does win? Well, Mr. Rose said, 
there will be no more buildings like the Madison Belvedere, a 50-story 
tower set in a residential plaza, that is now rising above 29th Street near 
Madison Square.

"Take a look—and I say this with a smile—take a look at the Madison 
Belvedere, take a long look at it," he urged Community Board 5 last month.

The reason Mr. Rose was smiling? The Madison Belvedere is being built by 
his father.