Community Forum for Extell's Riverside Center

Coalition: Express Your Concerns about Extell's Riverside Center Mega-Development

ALERT

  The Extell/Carlyle Group Proposed Mega-development Riverside Center

 
W. 59th to W. 61st Street - West End Avenue to Riverside Boulevard

 

EXPRESS YOUR CONCERNS ABOUT THIS MEGA-DEVELOPMENT

AT FOUR IMPORTANT PUBLIC HEARINGS TO BE HELD BY COMMUNITY BOARD 7.

 

• If you are concerned about 2,500 new luxury residential units in Riverside Center's Five Towers, come to the Public Hearings.
• If you are concerned about 1,800 parking spaces in Riverside Center and the appalling increase in traffic , come to the Public Hearings.
• If you are concerned about the devastating impact this mega-development will have on our infrastructure, come to the Public Hearings.

 

DO NOT REMAIN SILENT!

This mega-development will affect all of us who live on the Upper West Side.

YOUR VOICE MUST BE HEARD.

YOUR PRESENCE IS CRUCIAL AT THE FOUR COMMUNITY BOARD MEETINGS.

 

 

Thurs. June 3, 6:30-9:00 PM, - American Bible Society, 1865 Broadway (61st St.) Extell presents its plan. Opportunity  to ask questions.

Tues. June 15, 6:30 PM, at PS 191, 210 W. 61st St. (Amsterdam Ave.). Public Speak-out.

Tues. June 29, 6:30 PM  (site to be selected) Public  Speak-out continued.

Tues. July 6, 6:30 PM, Full Community Board 7 (CB7) meeting , Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 W. 83rd St.  Public can speak. CB7 votes. CB7 makes recommendations.

 

Please check www.nyc.gov/mcb7 for updates and documents.

Please post this flyer in your building and share with your friends

Coalition for a Livable West Side - Po Box 230078 - New York, NY 10023 - 212-580-9319

Extell's Riverside Center Certified by City Planning

As was anticipated, City Planning certified Extell's Riverside Center mega-project. Certification is not approval -- it is the start of the formal process towards approval, modification or denial, as explained here.

Although there are many grounds to object to the project as currently laid out (just scan through this blog), one issue that has come to prominence recently is parking. As noted earlier, NYPIRG and the Straphanger's Campaign have come out strongly on this point. Streetsblog.org has a good post laying out the parking issue, as well as a brief review of the meeting itself.

UPDATE:

The process rolls along. Here is the notice of the SEIS, with a link to the statement itself.

Riverside Center Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement

On May 21, 2010, the New York City Department of City Planning, on behalf of the City Planning Commission as lead agency, issued a Notice of Completion for a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Draft SEIS) for the Riverside Center project.

The Coalition's Alternative to Extell's Riverside Center Proposal

The Coalition for a Livable West Side has now made available their alternative to Extell's Riverside Center development plans.

Craig Whitaker made a formal presentation of those plans on behalf of the Coalition at a recent community meeting. The full presentation has lots of pictures, diagrams, facts and logic and is well worth reading. You can get a copy here:  Download The Coalition for a Livable West Side's Alternative Plan Final Version.

Here is the summary of the plan, taken from the title page:

The plan has astute analysis about parking, parking entrances, views of the river, angles for light entering the park, and breaking the land into separate parcels to enable flexibility for building and use.

For example, here is the page about parking entrances.

 
I hope City Planning will take this alternative proposal seriously.

Extell, Carlyle Group Sue AG Cuomo

There is an amazing development in the saga of Extell's Rushmore development in Riverside South and the buyers who exercised a clause in their contracts to back out of the deal. The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Here's a way to think about what happened. Suppose you and I made a deal. Suppose I was the one who wrote the contract that spelled out the terms of the deal. We both had every opportunity to review the contract before signing. Then we signed it.

Now let's imagine that I liked the deal I made with you so much that I made similar deals with dozens of other people, and I signed exactly the same contract each time.

Some time passes, and you and the dozens of other people like you exercise one of the plainly written terms of the contract and backed out -- as was your right, according to the contract we both signed. We all agree that the contract says what it says, and according to the undisputed language of the contract, you and the others all have the right to back out. Fine, no problem.

Here comes the twist: suppose that I then claim that the contract doesn't say what I meant it to say. I don't dispute the language and what it means; I assert that I meant it to say something else, and that YOU should be bound by what I NOW say I MEANT it to say, ignoring what the words of the contract IN FACT SAY!! How would you feel? How would you respond? Would you think I was an honorable person? Would you recommend me to any of your friends?

Now let's suppose that instead being little old me, I'm two giant, powerful organizations. Let's suppose I'm a partnership of a multi-billion-dollar developer and one of the world's largest and best-known private equity firms. I've got loads of staff people and a fancy law firm whose business it is to make the long gobbledy-gook contract be as much in my favor as possible. I've even filed the contract with the state AG and updated it a few times. In other words, all the power, brains and money are on my side. I've shoved the contract under your nose and said, in effect, if you want to do business with me, sign here. I'm not negotiating terms. Here it is, take it or leave it.

Time passes, and you exercise your right to back out, according to the terms of the contract I and my powerful partners and powerful lawyers wrote and reviewed. Instead of saying "you're right, that's what the contract says, here's your deposit back, have a nice life," I say: "no way! I MEANT something ELSE -- didn't you KNOW?? Contracts mean WHAT I SAY I MEANT when I wrote them! I didn't really mean what's in the contract that I wrote -- that was a "typo."

Again, how would you feel?

Here's the reality: Extell and the Carlyle did pretty much what I speculate above that I might have done, in the contracts they had buyers sign for the Rushmore condo in the Riverside South development. A number of buyers, who quite sensibly relied on the documents meaning what the words in the documents plainly say, exercised their right to back out of the commitment to buy at the Rushmore. Extell refused to give them their deposits back. The matter went to AG Cuomo, who ruled in favor of the buyers. I have written about this before.

Now there's a new development; the WSJ article about it is worth reading in its entirety. Here's another angle on the same situation. According to the Journal,

"Real-estate developers [Extell Development Co. and Carlyle Realty Partners] are suing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in federal court, alleging that his office violated the U.S. Constitution when ordering a refund of $16 million to 41 condo owners at a West Side building.

...

"This case is challenging something that has been an accepted mechanism in New York state for decades," said Jay Neveloff, an attorney at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. He said he couldn't recall another time when the attorney general's role has been challenged on constitutional grounds.

...

"Attorney Richard C. Cohen, who represented a group of Rushmore buyers, argued that his clients relied on the 2008 date. He said Extell changed its tune after the attorney general ruled against the developer. "Extell, having agreed in the offering plan to abide by an attorney general ruling on down payments, now claims that process is unconstitutional," he said.

Extell, supported every step of the way by the Carlyle Group, appears to have a challenging time abiding by agreements that they have made and/or that clearly bind them.

Straphanger’s Campaign, NYPIRG Nix Extell’s Riverside Center Parking Plans

In a letter to Borough President Stringer, the Straphanger’s Campaign and NYPIRG have urged a massive reduction – to zero!! -- in Extell’s plans for parking at the proposed Riverside Center. The full letter can be downloaded here.

The letter marshals the facts and logic against the proposed 1,800 spaces for the massive complex. Their conclusion is simple:

…no persuasive argument has been made for why Riverside Center should add any additional parking to the current commercial supply.

They point out the facts of the local parking supply that make this proposed increase massive and unnecessary. They also go into the side-effects of providing more parking, things that affect all of us:

It is well-documented that parking supply is directly related to the level of driving. Expanding the supply of available parking spaces only induces more travel by private automobile and discourages walking. At the same time, increased car use exacts a host of indirect costs that are especially damaging to a dense urban environment like New York City.

The letter makes a fascinating point, consistent with that of every community group, that the whole design of the project is sadly out of date – so out of date that it actually violates current City Planning policies:

As our awareness of the local and global harms produced by auto dependence grows, the current parking request for Riverside Center is a throwback to a 1960’s Tower in the Park design prized in a suburban and automotive-centric era of planning. Well-served as it is by public transit and within walking distance of many destinations, Riverside Center should be designed as a transit-oriented and Active Neighborhood which minimizes car trips and offers its residents and the surrounding community amenities that enrich rather than degrade the urban environment.

I’m really glad other groups are beginning to pay attention to the mis-guided hubris of the Extell/Carlyle Group’s plans for this prime real estate. The whole letter is worth reading.

Community Groups Present Alternatives to Extell's Riverside Center Plans

During a recent community meeting, several community groups presented compelling alternatives to Extell's plans for the last undeveloped portion of Riverside South, which they call Riverside Center.

The meeting was organized by the 10WEA Riverside Center committee and run by that committee's chair, Anne Weisberg. It was well-attended. Here is a picture of Mel Wymore (on the left) and Ms. Weisberg during Ms. Wymore's summary of the project and CB7's involvement. Mel presented the "core principals" of CB7's position on the project and other information.

Ethel Sheffer of CB7 presented information about the project, in particular the ULURP approval process. CB7 itself has done extensive analysis of the proposal and presented alternatives in the past.

The Coalition for a Livable West Side's consultant, Craig Whitaker, made a well-presented and well-reasoned analysis of the Extell plans and an alternative. His plans are similar in principle to ones he has presented in the past, but with a lot more detail and compelling facts and arguments. He reminded everyone of the power of getting the streets "mapped," and how the project can be controlled by more fine-grained zoning. Here is Craig answering a question from the audience.

Paul Elston, head of the RSPC, showed everyone a very detailed alternative that incorporates the highway and Con Ed's IRT Powerhouse. It sounds expensive to put the highway underground, for example, but once you realize the work is already partly done and how the potential profits from the project make the expense look small, it's not so daunting.

Finally, two distinguished architects (Paul Willen and Dan Gutman) presented a fine-tuning of the Extell plan that definitely makes it better. (Paul Willen is shown presenting below.)

NYC Councilwoman Gale Brewer attended part of the meeting and addressed a couple of issues; thanks, Ms. Brewer.

The Olive Freud, the head of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development also spoke after the main presentations.

One of the fascinating things about the meeting is that every single group and person who spoke endorsed CB7's "core principles" about the project. The community is truly united about what needs to change.