TEN (10) REASONS

TO OPPOSE

IKEA-RED HOOK



  • 275red1 Description: Opponents argue that Ikea-Red Hook is a bad idea not just for Red Hook, but for New York City. Here are some reasons for opposing other big projects as well as Ikea-Red Hook.

    Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a peninsula reaching into New York Harbor, with spectacular views of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. Red Hook has no highway, no subway, and narrow cobblestone streets. Opponents say it may be the least appropriate place in New York City for a big box store. For information about the lawsuit that concerned Red Hook residents and businesses brought on February 10, 2005, represented by attorney Antonia Bryson, see this blog.

    Here are ten reasons, not all of them included in the Ikea-Red Hook lawsuit, why the far-reaching consequences of Ikea-Red Hook will damage not only Red Hook, Brooklyn, but the City of New York.

    1. Ikea – Red Hook will create bad precedent for New York City’s future dealings with big box stores. It will encourage big boxes to pick inappropriate sites and to insist on building blank-walled warehouses, without sidewalk entrances, without show windows, and without any attempt to fit into New York City’s traditional neighborhoods and urban streets.

    2. It will introduce a gigantic suburban transplant into the street grid of Red Hook, Brooklyn. It will tilt the balance in Brooklyn away from New York City’s tradition of transit-oriented neighborhoods and towards suburban automobile-dependency. It will lead inevitably to the demand for additional expressways, with additional suburban sprawl, inside New York City.

    3. It will cause traffic to back up on the already-overburdened, and soon-to-be-rebuilt, Gowanus Expressway. It will so greatly increase traffic on local streets that it will imperil local businesses whose trucks need to use the streets as well as endangering local residents.

    4. It will create bad precedent for New York City’s future treatment of neighborhood planning, encouraging multinational corporations to come into New York City, create their own pressure groups, and use big spending to override community 197-a plans like the Red Hook 197-a plan that the City Planning Commission approved in 1996.

    5. It will blight the historic New York City waterfront with a mammoth billboard for Ikea, visible from the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan.

    6. It will raise real estate values in Red Hook from the modest level for manufacturing, with its high economic multiple, to the level for big retail, which adds little to the local economy, thus increasing demand for re-zoning from manufacturing to retail and driving out manufacturers who lease their space, plus manufacturing jobs. This is just when the Mayor is announcing the importance of manufacturing areas.

    7. It will send local income away from New York City to Ikea headquarters, instead of that income’s flowing through New York City’s banks, professional firms, service businesses and suppliers.

    8. It will deaden the creative synergy of New York’s manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and designers. It will substitute an out-of-town formula for local ingenuity.

    9. It will force local shopkeepers out of business, deaden local shopping streets, and destroy more jobs in local retail stores and distributorships than it creates.

    10. It will tear up cobblestone streets, bulldoze historic structures on the Erie Basin, and incapacitate the historic graving dock. ####

MCG, Why Ikea Red Hook Project Should be Rejected

IKEA-RED HOOK,

HIGH STREETS,

& THE ECONOMY


  • 275red1 [NOTE TO VISITORS: This section of BigCitiesBigBoxes.com is under re-construction.] THIS BLOG CELEBRATES THE VITALITY OF GREAT CITIES AND THEIR HIGH STREETS. IKEA-RED HOOK is a suburban-style big box store, now in litigation, proposed for the Brooklyn waterfront. The Red Hook site, however, is more than one mile from the nearest highway off-ramp. Red Hook has no subway, and it has narrow cobblestone streets. To reach the site, thousands of cars would have to navigate the already-congested Gowanus Expressway and then drive through Red Hook to the waterfront. This is the most inappropriate site in New York City for a big box store.

    All big boxes, including Ikea and Wal-Mart, say that they create jobs and increase tax revenues. These are claims we should not take on faith. I have looked at the evidence. So far as I can see now, the big boxes' promises are largely false: the costs of big boxes to the city, to other businesses and to the environment are huge. They claim to create jobs, but economists' studies show that they actually destroy jobs. I report that research in my Newsday op-ed Superstores Come With Too High a Price.

    There has never been a full public debate in New York City about whether we want to let in big box stores and, if so, what they should have to look like and how they should have to pay their employees. There is an urgent need for public discussion. For my reasons for opposing Ikea in Red Hook, see my Brooklyn Papers op-ed, Why Red Hook Ikea Project Should be Rejected. There are considerations in city planning, aesthetics, urbanism, law, historic preservation and economics to think that an Ikea store is not the right use for the Red Hook waterfront. Read Ten (10) Reasons to Oppose Ikea-Red Hook.

    This blog aims to paint the whole picture. I will be posting all of the court documents in the litigation.

    About me. I am a professional writer and speaker, a business owner and non-practicing lawyer, and I live in Manhattan. I have no personal economic interest in these issues in general or Red Hook in particular. As a citizen, however, I think that we need to constrain the big boxes, make them look like other New York City stores, locate near New York City public transit like other New York City stores, and behave like other New York City employers. Otherwise, I am concerned about what the big boxes will do to our lively New York City high streets and our urban way of life.

    Boilerplate. I am delighted if you want to refer to or even use short excerpts from this site, as long as you credit me and link back to this site. If you want to quote a larger chunk of my material, please send me an e-mail.

    Peace.

    MCG
    Mail to: MCG@BigCitiesBigBoxes.com

PRESS RELEASE

IKEA LAWSUIT

STARTS (2/10/05)


  • PRESS RELEASE

    CONTACT: Antonia Bryson, Esquire
    (212) 483-9120

    RED HOOK GROUP ALLEGES
    IKEA LAND GRAB ILLEGAL

    NEW YORK, February 10, 2005. A diverse group of Brooklyn residents and businesses seeking to promote the waterfront has filed suit in New York Supreme Court to stop Scandinavian retailer Ikea from building its proposed 22-acre tax-subsidized suburban-style superstore project on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

    According to attorney Antonia Bryson, when the New York City Planning Commission and City Council approved Ikea’s Red Hook superstore project in October 2004, they acted illegally, betraying the commitments they had made to the Red Hook community and to the City--commitments backed up by years of work and planning--to keep the site for maritime use.

    City planners have always considered the Red Hook waterfront a critical piece of New York City’s industrial infrastructure. Over a two-year period between 1992 and 1994, with help that the City Planning Department itself provided, people from all parts of the Red Hook community hammered out a plan for developing and re-populating their isolated Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood, which faces the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. The City Planning Commission ("CPC") sponsored, encouraged, and finally approved the Red Hook plan. As reported in The New York Times and other media, the Red Hook community’s plan was one of the first community plans in New York City under section 197-a of the 1989 New York City Charter, designed to give citizens a voice in development.

    The Red Hook community plan adopted the recommendations of the City Planning Department’s 1992 Waterfront Plan for the site on which Ikea wants to build. The site has unique maritime features, and the plan recommended that it remain zoned and dedicated to continued maritime activity. It also recommended that commercial activity and public waterfront access be fostered in another area of the peninsula nearby, where in fact a new Fairway is about to open.

    In 2001, however, after citizens in both New Rochelle, New York, and nearby Gowanus, Brooklyn, emphatically rejected Ikea’s efforts to build a New York-area superstore in their communities, Ikea next turned its attention to the remote Red Hook peninsula. Although it has no subway, no highway, and narrow cobblestone streets, the Red Hook waterfront will provide tax subsidies to a developer, because it is within a New York State Empire Zone. Such tax subsidies for Ikea are unfair, the petitioners allege, because they come at the expense of local Brooklyn shopping streets and New York City businesses. The City Planning Commission and City Council, however, jumped at this chance to turn the New York City waterfront and the Red Hook community over to Ikea. They examined no alternative uses for this waterfront site.

    The lawsuit asserts that the CPC and the Council exceeded their legal powers when they re-zoned the site to allow Ikea to build its gigantic big box store--probably the largest store in the city--with a 1400-car parking lot in a mall-like setting right on the water, destroying a number of historic structures in the process, including one of the few working graving docks in New York harbor, and vandalizing the City’s waterfront.

    The lawsuit asserts that in order to justify turning the site over to Ikea, the City Planning Commission and City Council used a manifestly faulty environmental review, and an Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS") that employed unrealistic assumptions and specious reasoning in order to minimize the project’s significant environmental impacts, both on the socioeconomic character of the neighborhood, and on traffic conditions in Red Hook and in greater Brooklyn.

    The lawsuit emphasizes that the huge suburban Ikea store will damage the waterfront, bring excessive traffic to Red Hook’s streets, produce gridlock on the major traffic corridors surrounding the neighborhood, including the already-overburdened Gowanus Expressway, and fail to produce any real economic development in Red Hook. The Ikea project will consume 22 acres of industrially-zoned waterfront land that recent trends show is in increasing demand, and that employment trends show will continue to be in demand. On January 19, 2005, in fact, Mayor Bloomberg announced that preserving industrially-zoned land in NewYork City is vitally important.

    Among the failures of the EIS with respect to traffic impacts, meanwhile, is the fact that on a typical Saturday there will be almost 2,000 vehicles driving to and from the Ikea store in the peak hour. The EIS the Commission and City Council relied on, however, contends that these automobiles can be squeezed down the funnel of Red Hook’s narrow streets to the waterfront with no disruption to any part of the neighborhood, including a large, heavily-used park and recreation area just across the street and the City’s new Passenger Ship Terminal being built nearby.

    The lawsuit seeks to annul and vacate the Environmental Impact Statement and the Planning Commission’s and City Council’s actions with respect to the Red Hook site, and to enjoin Ikea and the other defendants from beginning demolition or construction in connection with the project. Petitioners’ court submissions will be posted on the internet.

    ####

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October 10, 2005

Irwin Cohen Says Manufacturing Can Thrive in New York City

Amidst all the downmouth talk about how New York City must make do with low-paid service jobs because manufacturing is dead, the Center for the Urban Future has just published a wonderfully upbeat interview with Irwin Cohen, and Jonathan Bowles has generously given us permission to post the whole interview below. Irwin Cohen is the man who changed West Chelsea by developing the Chelsea Market in 1997, the former Nabisco factory where food manufacturers now carry on their high-energy entrepreneurial

New York City businesses. People have flocked to the Chelsea Market to shop for food even though it could not be less convenient or less like Wal-Mart. Cohen thinks the merchants at the Bronx Terminal Market can do the same thing--it's the New York way, and that the High Line is a terrific idea, because it brings activity to the neighborhood. He credits his financial backers, who are not just looking for a high-rent big-box tenant, but who rely on his business judgment to find local businesses that will make good. He says there is abundant opportunity for manufacturing in New York. Read it on the CUF. site, Q&A with Irwin Cohen: Learning From Chelsea Market's Success, or, with thanks to Jonathan Cohen, read it right here:

Q&A with Irwin Cohen: Learning From Chelsea Market's Success
By Jonathan Bowles

Few neighborhoods in New York have seen as dramatic a turnaround as the Western edge of Chelsea, with formerly bleak Tenth Avenue now attracting high-end condo development and restaurants being opened by A-list chefs like Mario Batali and Masaharu Morimoto. One of the earliest catalysts for the neighborhood’s growth was the 1997 opening of Chelsea Market, a block-long former Nabisco factory that Irwin Cohen redeveloped into a wholesale and retail center for an eclectic group of New York food manufacturers. The Center recently spoke with Cohen to get his thoughts about Chelsea Market’s success, the planned High Line development in Chelsea, the future of manufacturing in New York and whether the food vendors being displaced at the Bronx Terminal Market might provide the right foundation for another market-style development in that borough.

CUF: With the Chelsea Market, you proved that food manufacturing businesses can anchor a successful development. Could something similar be done with the food vendors at the Bronx Terminal Market?

IC: When I met the people from the Bronx Terminal Market, it got me very excited. Because the Bronx Terminal Market really is New York City. In New York, you can find a concentration of uses and if you get that concentration together you draw the public. That’s the beauty of a market.

CUF: So, you think it’s important for the vendors to remain together?

IC: Yes. These people at the Bronx Terminal Market should not be separated. New York City is one of the few cities in the entire United States that has such a huge number of similar businesses. Where else can you have a section called Madison Avenue with advertising agencies? Where else do you have a theater district? These are markets. The Bronx is a terrific place for this market. The fact that these wholesalers want to stay in the Bronx is the most exciting part of the whole plan, because everyone else wants to be in Manhattan. But if they’re willing to work in the Bronx, you can combine them with other uses to spur development there.

CUF: Should the city have tried to keep the vendors where they are?

IC: The evolution of the Bronx has made this a very valuable site, and there’s nothing wrong with these wholesalers moving someplace else where that would become a very valuable space. The Bronx Terminal Market, by having the central core of food manufacturers and distributors, can start a whole new community. And then you just bring in other allied businesses and you develop an intense area where people have to come to shop.

CUF: Is this why the Chelsea Market has worked so well?

IC: Think about the Chelsea Market. Nobody has to come here. It’s on the periphery of the neighborhood. It’s only one block from the Hudson River. The next thing you see is New Jersey. But why do people come here? Because we have a concentration of vendors. Every company is family owned. There are no chains. If you want to get that special birthday cake that Ruthie’s Cheesecake sells, you can’t get it anywhere in New York except here, because this is where it’s made. And if you want Amy’s Bread as it’s coming out of the oven, this is the only place to get it. You’re not going to get Amy’s bread from Gristedes. That’s why people come here. The concentration of each of our tenants doing something very special says to the public that this is the place to get the best food in Manhattan. Markets work.

CUF: And most of your tenants are manufacturing companies?

IC: Every one of our food suppliers is a manufacturer, starting with the flowers. They sell flowers at wholesale, but they’re making flower arrangements for parties and events and for corporations. Ruthie’s Cheesecakes sells their cheesecakes by mail, but she produces her cheesecakes for sale by the public and for mail order. Fat Witch Brownie manufacturers brownies and they’re shipped all over the United States.

CUF: Has Chelsea Market played a role in the neighborhood’s growth?

IC: It did change the neighborhood. When I came here, the history of the building: there were three murders in the basement. You couldn’t walk here. It was controlled by prostitutes 24 hours a day. I looked at it, and I said that my goal was to have an 8-year old child come here by public transportation, shop and go home and his or her parents would feel safe. And that’s how it worked out.

CUF: One of the many things happening in Chelsea is the redevelopment of the High Line railway into a public park. The High Line abuts your property. Do you think it’s going to be a good thing for the neighborhood?

IC: It doesn’t abut, it goes through our property. And it took away a very valuable piece of our property. But so what. While it did take away very important income from the [Chelsea Market] property, there’s much more to this city than just having income on a piece of property. This is going to bring people to the West Side. It’s going to open development of housing in the neighborhood. It’s going to be an attraction. You’re going to see changes in this part of the city that will be absolutely phenomenal. I’m in favor of it and I’m working very closely with the Friends of the High Line. We’re going to provide an entrance to the High Line right into the market.

CUF: Over the past year, there’s been a lot of focus on large-scale projects like the proposed West Side stadium for the Jets. But a lot of the positive changes already happening in Chelsea seem to be the result of small-scale, organic growth.

IC: These small, organic groups are really helping the city develop into great uses. We have the market people here, and then people open restaurants, and then some forward looking people saw this rail line, and instead of taking it down they said let’s develop it. These were just little seeds. And the small businesses came to this building. And to the buildings surrounding this one we suddenly have, with the help of the [Bloomberg] administration, made this into an area where residential will be developed. And as a result of the West Chelsea Redevelopment Zone, we’re going to have some of the most fantastic house designs in the whole world along Tenth Avenue. Who ever thought this could happen?

CUF: You believe the Bloomberg administration has been supportive of some of these small-scale projects?

IC: There have been administrations that only look to the very large developments, the sexy developments. But this is a business administration. They say “what can we do to spur business.” The West Side is a very good example. Instead of saying, “no we’re not interested in the High Line, and let’s take it down so that the 20 or 30 or 40 owners that abut the high-line don’t get upset,” this administration and the mayor supported the idea that the Friends of the High Line had. They said “let’s go ahead with the high line and let’s keep these property owners that abut the high line from using their property the way they want and let’s come up with a good, creative way that will help the entire city.” And that’s what’s happening. It would been very easy to take the High Line down, which I would have been happy with. I would have leased out 12,000 square feet of space and collected a lot of rent. But just think about what’s happening. And it’s this administration that’s spurred development. And it’s not being done with government money.

CUF: In addition to Chelsea Market, you’ve developed buildings in Long Island City for jewelry-making firms and other light manufacturers. Can manufacturing still succeed in New York?

IC: Absolutely. Where else do you have a diversity of people that we have in New York City where there’s any kind of labor you need?

CUF: Yet, so few people are developing this kind of space. Why aren’t other developers seeing the potential here?

IC: I don’t belong to a country club. And I don’t play golf and I don’t play tennis. But I have friends who belong to country clubs. And when they hang around with their buddies, they like to talk about these great developments in Manhattan, and the apartment house they just built. They like to talk about sexy deals. That’s what gets other people excited. But there is excitement in manufacturing. There’s a lot of manufacturing that can be in New York. Food works, just because the amount of food that’s consumed in New York is so great.

CUF: How do you get more developers interested in this kind of thing?

IC: I’m not interested in any other developers doing it. I can do it. Generally, developers look for rated tenants. Someone buys a piece of property. If you get Walmart as your tenant, or a good food chain, you’ll be able to get a mortgage and you’ll have a good investment. My investment partners have had the courage to say to me: “Irwin, take a piece of property and develop it, and see what the best use for that property. We’ll figure out how to finance it later on.” That’s why I’ve been able to do it. Other people immediately look at the property and ask “can we get a nationally-rated tenant in the space?”

CUF: I always hear that there’s a shortage of manufacturing space all over the city. Doesn’t this make it difficult to develop these types of buildings?

IC: Yes. But so what. You can always figure something out. I think that space does exist. I’ve driven around the Bronx for hours. It has lots of room. Staten Island has lots of room. There’s room left in Brooklyn. There’s plenty of space available in New York, just sitting there. For instance, the largest ground area of one building in NYC is the Kingsbridge armory. I don’t know what’s being done with it. Here’s a beautiful building that the federal government has put into mothballs. It could be developed.

####

October 10, 2005 in Manufacturing and other land uses |

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