Hunts Point Rezoning

Testimony last updated June 17, 2008

Testimony to the City Council Committee on Zoning and Franchises Special Hunts Point District, Bronx (C080248ZMX)

Joan Byron
Director, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative
Pratt Center for Community Development
June 17, 2008

My name is Joan Byron; I am the Director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative of the Pratt Center for Community and Environmental Development. The Pratt Center works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers, by empowering communities to plan for and realize their futures. We are especially proud to have supported the work of Hunts Point and other South Bronx organizations since the early 1990s in the many battles they have fought for environmental justice; Hunts Point bears more than its share of the burdens of the infrastructure and land uses that make New York City's density and vitality possible, to the daily cost of the people who live, work, and breathe in the shadow of highways, electric power plants, sewage treatment and sludge pelletization facilities, and dozens of waste transfer stations and waste handling facilities.

The Hunts Point Vision Plan -- common ground between residents and industry

South Bronx organizations have long understood that they need not only to oppose proposals that are environmentally unsustainable and unjust, but often to work with their sometime opponents to find solutions that support a clean, healthy environment and a vibrant economy. They welcomed New York City EDC and the collaborative process that led to the South Bronx Vision Plan, and willingly grappled with the issues that often pit residents and industry against each other. The Vision Plan illustrates the many points of conflict, but also maps a remarkable area of common ground, and identifies solutions that allow residents and industry to share this 700-acre peninsula, with all of its remarkable assets and challenges.

A key area of agreement among stakeholders has been the need to use zoning to protect residents against the impacts of industry, and at the same time to support the growth of manufacturing and of the food sector, which city policy has concentrated in Hunts Point since it established the produce market in the 1960s, followed by the development of the Co-Operative market, and the opening of the new Fulton Fish Market in 2002. By the 1990s, the viability of the food sector, as well as the many genuine manufacturing uses that thrive in Hunts Point, came under threat as private waste transfer stations proliferated in the M-zones where they were allowed as-of-right. The invasion of the waste industry brought vermin and odors, along with heavy truck traffic that competed for limited street space and access, as well as polluting the air and endangering residents.

Residents and industry came together to propose zoning changes that would curtail waste-related uses, support the food industry, and establish a buffer of high-performing industry between the residential (R-6) core, and the heavy industry areas to the south and along the waterfront. The creation of a special zoning district, along with provisions for truck restrictions, and the creation of greenways and waterfront parks, became the heart of the Hunts Point Vision Plan, formally adopted in 2004.

The proposed rezoning, including the creation of a Special Hunts Point District, was expected to embody the recommendations on which the Vision Plan participants reached consensus. Most of its provisions fairly reflect that consensus. However, the proposal to allow large-scale retail uses as-of-right, without the special permit requirements that apply in other M-1 districts, was not part of the Vision Plan, and is a matter of great concern. Though the City Planning Commission has scaled back the area in which big-box retail would be allowed as of right, allowing it anywhere in Hunts Point grossly contravenes the letter and spirit of the Vision Plan, and undermines the plan's goals of supporting industry while ensuring a safe and livable environment.

The modifications made by City Planning on May 21, 2008 would still allow big-box, non-food retail, AS OF RIGHT in a very significant area of Hunts Point. The language of the modified proposal obscures its impacts by equating uses that would serve the local community (Use Group 3A, libraries, museums, or non-commercial art galleries, Use Group 4A, clubs, community centers, and non-commercial recreational uses, and Use Group 6A, food stores without limitation as to floor area), and which would be allowed throughout the proposed M1-2 district, with retail intended to serve a much wider area, and which in its nature draws high volumes of car and truck traffic (Use Group 10A, carpet, rug, and floor covering stores, clothing and accessory stores, department, dry goods, furniture, electronics, and variety stores), which would be allowed, without limit as to size and without a special permit, in portions of the M-1-2 district within 500 feet of Garrison Avenue.

Our office has analyzed the affected area and noted that:

• This provision would apply to all or parts of 21 blocks between Leggett Avenue and the Bronx River. The total lot area on these blocks that falls outside of the existing Residential zone and within 500 feet of Garrison Avenue, where retail uses over 10,000 square feet would be allowed as of right is approximately 1,588,000 square feet.
• The proposed zoning would provide for a Floor Area Ratio of 2.0 for these retail uses, so the rezoning would create a potential of over 3 million square feet of retail. At 1 space per 300 square feet of retail space, a total of 10,000 new parking spaces would be required if all of the retail were built.

Allowing large-scale retail would undermine Hunts Point's Industries

While it is unlikely that the total amount of new retail allowed by the zoning would all be built at once, retail users can pay a higher price for land than manufacturing or community uses, and retail uses will gradually -- or rapidly -- displace industrial users from the 1000-foot-wide corridor along Garrison Avenue. The rezoning will basically remove 1.6 million square feet of land from the pool of land available for manufacturing. It will increase the economic pressure on existing manufacturing uses, and will raise the barriers to new manufacturing firms seeking to locate on the peninsula. This directly contravenes one of the most important goals of the Hunts Point Vision Plan, the preservation and strengthening of manufacturing, particularly the food sector, in Hunts Point. It will undermine the intent of the present Industrial Business Zone, and thwart the intent of the local and citywide stakeholders who framed the Hunts Point Vision Plan to institutionalize the protection the IBZ offers.

Traffic

We also have extremely serious concerns about the traffic that would be generated by big box retail uses in Hunts Point. If all of the retail allowed by the proposal were to be built, that 3 million square feet of retail would generate more car and truck trips per day than all of Hunts Point's current land uses combined -- conservatively, 3 million square feet of big box retail would draw 30,000 to 40,000 new car trips per day, in addition to hundreds of new truck trips to supply the stores. Even only half of the newly-permitted new retail is built, tens of thousands of additional cars and trucks would be competing with the industrial users the rezoning is intended to support, further undermining their efficiency and competitiveness. For comparison, the Gateway Center complex will have about 1.3 million square feet of retail; in a location much better-served by transit than Hunts Point, that project includes 3,000 parking spaces.

Hunts Point is a peninsula, with a limited number of streets connecting it to the rest of the Bronx and the city, and space on those streets is a precious commodity, whose use has been painstakingly negotiated among local stakeholders for over a decade. Parties with conflicting priorities -- parents who want safe routes for their children to walk to school, and industry, the food sector in particular, whose lifeblood is the efficient movement of truck traffic -- have worked hard to find solutions everyone can live with. In 2000, New York City DOT adopted the truck route plan originally advocated by Mothers on the Move -- a key feature of which was the elimination of most of Garrison Avenue as a truck route. Every resident of Hunts Point has to cross Garrison Avenue to reach the #6 train at Hunts Point Avenue, as does every worker who rides the #6 train to work. The proposal to allow as-of-right large retail would make Garrison a big box strip, with massive volumes of traffic, gigantic parking lots with numerous curb cuts interrupting sidewalks and bikeways.

Impact on Greenways, Waterfront Access, Bike and Pedestrian Safety

I would also like to represent both the Pratt Center, and the Bronx River Alliance, in stating that the big box proposal will undermine the Bronx River and South Bronx Greenways, both of which are integral parts of the Hunts Point Vision Plan. The Greenway Plans have been crafted, with input from all stakeholders, to help Hunts Point's residents and industries to co-exist. In addition to the bike lanes already implemented by NYC DOT on Garrison Avenue, the Greenway Plans comprise a network of on-street and separated pathways, designed to allow safe and comfortable walking and biking to, from, and within the Hunts Point peninsula, connecting residents and workers to new waterfront parks at Barretto Point, Farragut Street / Hunts Point Landing, Lafayette Avenue / Hunts Point River Side Park, and the Edgewater Road Concrete Plant Park, scheduled to open later this summer. To date, over $25 million in capital funding has been committed for the construction of the South Bronx Greenway, and over $120 million to the Bronx River Greenway.

Like the other elements of the Hunts Point Vision Plan, the Hunts Point portions of the Bronx River and South Bronx Greenways represent an indispensable element of a complex package of solutions.

We urge this committee and the City Council to insist that non-food retail uses over 10,000 square feet not be allowed within the M1-2 district without a special permit. This would be consistent with the regulations governing M1-2 districts elsewhere in the City, where the public interest is served by restricting the ability of big-box retail to displace manufacturing companies and the living-wage jobs they provide. It would also be consistent with the Hunts Point Vision Plan, and the consensus that plan represents.

NOTE: This testimony was prepared by the Pratt Center for Community Development. It does not necessarily reflect the official position of Pratt Institute.