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Saving Independent Retail: Retail Diversity and Neighborhood Health

Testimony last updated September 18, 2009

Testimony to NYS Senate and NYS Assembly Standing Committees on Cities

During the past decade, locally owned retail businesses in neighborhoods all over New York City were on the losing end of the city’s strengthening economy. Prosperity turned into a threat as rising rents made it difficult for many of them to continue operating.

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City Point Tax-Exempt Bond Financing

Testimony last updated September 10, 2009

Testimony to the New York City Capital Resource Corporation
on $20 million stimulus bond financing for City Point retail complex

September 10, 2009

New York City is fortunate to be receiving tax-exempt bond financing under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the vital purpose of restarting stalled development projects. The issue is whether the City is driving a hard enough bargain and sufficiently advancing public objectives given its investment in providing this source of financing. In choosing Albee Development LLC to be a recipient of the bonds’ benefits, however, the New York City Capital Resource Corporation and other public authorities involved with City Point must recognize the need to make this project work as part of a vibrant and diverse mix of retailers in a shopping district that hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents depend on. In exchange for taxpayers’ support to make this project possible, the Capital Resource Corporation must make sure that Fulton Street continues to be a place where independent retailers can thrive.

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Coney Island Rezoning

Testimony last updated March 30, 2009

Testimony to Brooklyn Borough President on Coney Island Rezoning
March 30, 2009

I’m Vicki Weiner, Director of Planning & Preservation at the Pratt Center for Community Development. Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony today.  The Pratt Center is a university-based non-profit organization that works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by helping communities to plan for and realize their future.  For decades, Coney Island has been a haven for working class New Yorkers. A century ago, it was the first place that working people could reach, and afford, for a break from their daily grind in sweatshops. It has remained for decades a place that people of every walk of life can get to by subway, and yet feel they have gone to another world. As the City of New York proposes to redevelop Coney Island, it must ensure that Coney remains a place that creates opportunity for working New Yorkers. 

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Department of Buildings Challenge Procedures

Testimony last updated March 6, 2009

Testimony to the New York City Department of Buildings Against Proposed Rule 105-05 to Change the Procedures for Challenges

Brad Lander
Pratt Center Senior Fellow
March 6, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on NYC Department of Buildings Proposed Rule 105-03.  My name is Brad Lander.  I am a Senior Fellow and past director at the Pratt Center for Community Development, former executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, and a resident of South Park Slope, a neighborhood which saw an explosion of illegal construction in the period prior to the recent rezoning going into effect.

I have been both a not-for-profit affordable housing developer -- and so have been an applicant for permits from DOB on many occasions -- and a community planner and advocate, and so have worked with many community groups concerned that DOB was issuing permits for projects that did not comply with zoning, and frustrated by their inability to be heard.

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Kingsbridge Armory

Testimony last updated March 5, 2009

Testimony to IDA Board on Kingsbridge Armory

Joan Byron
Director, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative
March 5, 2009

The Pratt Center joins the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance in asking the IDA board not to vote for the package of tax deferrals and subsidies being requested by the Related Companies until Related enters into a binding agreement committing that the project will create the benefits to the community and to the city’s economy that justify the public investment this project is demanding. You are being asked to vote on $13 million in tax breaks, but there is much more on the line here.

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Tax-exempt bonds for Yankee Stadium

Testimony last updated January 15, 2009

Statement in Opposition to Additional Proposed Tax-Exempt Bonds for Yankee Stadium
Testimony to the New York City Industrial Development Agency

Joan Byron
Pratt Center for Community Development
January 15, 2009
The Pratt Center joins Good Jobs New York, and the South Bronx-based organizations testifying here today, in opposing the issuance of $371 million in new tax-exempt bonds to cover additional construction costs for Yankee Stadium.

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Downtown Brooklyn's Albee Square Mall

Testimony last updated December 8, 2008

Statement on the Proposed Financing of Albee Square Residential Development
Presented to the New York City Housing Development Corporation

Brad Lander & Paula Crespo
Pratt Center for Community Development
December 8, 2008

Thank you for the opportunity to present this statement regarding the proposed tax-exempt financing of the Albee Square residential development, proposed by Albee Residential Development LLC. We are long-time supporters of the New York City Housing Development Corporation. We appreciate your long-time practicing of prioritizing all-affordable, or mostly affordable, housing developments over 80/20 projects with scarce tax-exempt bonds. We have a number of concerns about the proposed financing, especially the extremely high, $1.9 million worth of tax-exempt bonds per low-income unit. This number is many times what we have seen you approve for past projects. We urge you to proceed with great caution, and not to approve this deal in its current form. In particular, we ask HDC:

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Willets Point Redevelopment

Testimony last updated October 17, 2008

Testimony to the New York City Council Regarding the Willets Point Redevelopment Plan

Brad Lander
Director, Pratt Center for Community Development
October 17, 2008

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the proposed Willets Point Redevelopment Plan. I am Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, an university-based non-profit organization that aims to create a more just, equitable and sustainable New York City, by assisting low and moderate income communities in planning for and realizing their futures. We are a member organization of and provide support to Queens for Affordable Housing, a coalition of more than a dozen Queens-based community groups that is working to ensure that new residential development in the borough creates housing that is truly affordable to a diverse mix of Queens residents.

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MTA Financing

Testimony last updated September 15, 2008

Testimony to the NYS Commission on MTA Financing

Brad Lander
Director, Pratt Center for Community Development
September 15, 2008

Chairman Ravitch, members of the commission, thank you for the opportunity to testify on this critical issue. As you know, robust public transit is the foundation of New York's economy, the single most important element in developing a sustainable region, and essential to providing opportunity to millions of people across lines of income, race, and neighborhood. You have a difficult task before you -- how to provide a sound fiscal future for a system that was neglected for over a decade, in a time of rising energy costs and economic uncertainty -- and one upon which millions of us depend. Thank you for your efforts.

We urge that you include the following steps in your report:

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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.

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