[NYguy]

I'd say it's like one of those movies where the crazy and deranged person says, "I have to kill you because I love you", or "In order to save you, I have to kill you". Same thing.


http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...k-or-saving-it

They're either killing New York or saving it
Behold the masters of derailing projects in the city—and the playbook they use to drive developers crazy.


By Andrew J. Hawkins
July 27, 2015

The owners of the New York Mets planned to build a shopping mall in a parking area next to Citi Field. They expected resistance—there always is in New York—but not from the son of the architect who helped invent the shopping mall.

Unlike his father, Michael Gruen doesn't create shopping malls. He stops them.

In early July, a state judge sided with Mr. Gruen and ruled that the mall, Willets West, could not proceed because the parking lot it would replace was technically parkland.

"Parks are parks," said Mr. Gruen.

Ever since Jane Jacobs held a ceremony to celebrate killing Robert Moses' Lower Manhattan

Expressway in 1958, residents of varying stripes have gummed up the works for developers across the city. Depending on one's point of view, they are either saviors of old New York or NIMBY ("not in my backyard") cranks.

"Because they're noisy, communicate with one another and the press, vote in primaries and show up to poorly attended community-board meetings, they can bend the ears of local politicians and affect project outcomes," one developer said. "This should not be confused with healthy community dialogue or genuine community-based planning."

Real estate cheerleaders like Nikolai Fedek, founder and editor of YIMBY, argue that younger city dwellers do not share the vehemence held by older residents toward development. To him, NIMBYists are on the wane.

"They still have an impact on neighborhoods in Manhattan, like the West Village," Mr. Fedek said. "But as you look out in Brooklyn, you don't have as much reactionary NIMBYism as you do in Manhattan, and I think that's mostly because they're not so rich and they're not so white and they're not so useless.”

Roy Sloane's reputation as a fighter was cemented with a bottle of water. The president of the Cobble Hill Association in Brooklyn once proposed bottling Gowanus Canal water for government officials who wanted housing built along the polluted waterway.

"If you don't think it needs to be cleaned up, here's water from the Gowanus—go for it," said Mr. Sloane. "I try to use humor to deal with things." His allies talked him out of that one.

Mr. Sloane's organization is fighting Fortis Property Group's plan to build luxury residential towers, one of which would be 44 stories, on the site of the shuttered Long Island College Hospital. (Memorably, then-candidate Bill de Blasio got himself arrested in 2013 to protest the institution's closure and boost his mayoral campaign.)

The towers would loom over the neat, low-rise brownstones of the neighborhood, which decades ago was cleaved in two by a trench for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway—another project of Robert Moses—and has nonetheless become one of the borough's most desirable communities. The developer also proposed to build a school, create open space and add other amenities to satisfy residents' concerns. Still, the plan would be the "kiss of death" for the neighborhood, Mr. Sloane said.

Mr. Sloane's love for his community burns hot. He has lived in Cobble Hill for more than 40 years, but says he would decamp to his peach farm upstate if his favorite Middle Eastern grocery on Atlantic Avenue were to get priced out.

"If Sahadi's goes, I go," he said.

He uses an argument common among development foes: He doesn't consider himself “anti-development,” but he opposes the added density. He has no plans, however, to send bottles of toxic water to Fortis. Sources close to the developer say he has been more reasonable to deal with than they expected.

Still, the project is not likely to win over opponents. Just last week, a new legal challenge was initiated.

"This is going to be a decade-long battle—this is war!" one man shouted during a May presentation by Fortis, according to The Brooklyn Paper.

"Eighty percent of the people in this room are attorneys, and they will be up your ass every step of the way."

Ray Sloane, president of the Cobble Hill Association in Brooklyn, opposes the planned luxury residential development at the old Long Island City College site.




http://www.brooklyneagle.com/article...llege-hospital

Brooklyn judge finalizes sale of Long Island College Hospital


By Mary Frost
July 24, 2015

On Thursday, a Brooklyn judge signed an order finalizing the State University of New York’s (SUNY) sale of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) to developer Fortis Property Group.

The approval, after years of litigation and community opposition, clears the way for the development of the former hospital site in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The site includes roughly 20 properties bounded by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Atlantic Avenue, Clinton Street and Congress Street.