Pratt Center
March 22, 2009
Pratt Center News - Winter 2009
In this Issue:
- A message from Advisory Board Chair Gary Hattem
- Coney Island for all
- COMMUTE speaks up for mass transit
- Nurturing new potential in old libraries
- Boosting Church Avenue
- Pratt-seeded workforce program continues expansion
- Political climate change
- Contribute to the Pratt Center
A message from Advisory Board Chair Gary Hattem
For the past six years, you've been accustomed to hearing from Brad Lander in this space. In March, Brad left his post as director of the Pratt Center for Community Development to run for City Council in Brooklyn, with a commitment to carry forward the work of nurturing neighborhoods directly into the halls of power. The Pratt Center is now getting close to identifying his successor, who will be only the third director in this organization's 46-year history.
The longevity of our leadership and staff speaks to the Pratt Center's unique role as a steward of New York City neighborhoods over the long term -- a commitment measured by neighborhoods' and residents' rising success over generations, and building on neighborhoods' cultural, economic, and architectural strengths instead of bulldozing or marginalizing them. Our new director will arrive in the midst of an economic crisis whose impact is being felt in every New York City neighborhood, and most of all in those that are home to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers.
Neighborhoods are increasingly at risk of being scarred with vacant real estate -- not just foreclosed homes and half-finished condos, but storefronts and other spaces for work, shopping, learning, and play. New York City's governing model for economic development, driven by mega real estate projects and an overreliance on the financial services sector, urgently needs to evolve into a viable community development strategy for a post-meltdown era. Pratt Center's partners among community development corporations, civic groups, and other community-based organizations are finding themselves facing mounting challenges, many of them familiar from an earlier era of neighborhood distress.
The next leader of the Pratt Center will be facing all these challenges head on, drawing on this organization's deep and historically grounded knowledge of what it takes to sustain a community during hard times. The center is already moving ahead on projects that build facilities that serve local needs, create new employment opportunities, and deliver quality of life improvements that will keep New York's neighborhoods moving forward through difficult times. The Pratt Center is working with NYSERDA and community development partners to turn a block of Bedford Stuyvesant into a model showcase of energy efficient housing, a project that will ultimately provide employment opportunities as well as badly needed relief for residents' energy bills. We're collaborating with community-based organizations and labor unions to identify ways to meet residents' retail services needs while supporting the creation of good jobs. One City/One Future, a collaboration with dozens of community-based and citywide advocacy organizations, outlines strategies for making economic development programs work to sustain neighborhoods and opportunity. And our advocacy and research on transportation equity is shaping the city and MTA's rollout of bus rapid transit as a cost-effective way to speed commutes between far-flung neighborhoods not connected to one another by subways.
Just as we did in past times of trouble -- beginning in the urban crisis of the 1960s and again amid the neighborhood disinvestment of the decades that followed -- the Pratt Center and its partners are playing a pivotal role as an incubator for effective strategies to sustain neighborhoods. They're offering not just hope, but pathways through which communities can thrive during these troubled times.
Equitable Development
Coney Island for all
A coalition of community, labor and housing organizations concerned with the future of Coney Island has joined in support of Coney Island for All: A Platform for Equitable Development, on which the Pratt Center for Community Development served as a key advisor. As a rezoning plan for Coney Island proceeds through the city's land use process, the platform outlines measures to ensure that new development in the beloved seaside area helps meet the area's deep needs for good jobs, affordable housing, retail services, preservation and expansion of the historic amusement area, and other community benefits.
The platform calls for, among other measures, responsible contractor and wage standards; training and hiring opportunities for residents in the area, where unemployment is at 13 percent; a commitment to making at least half of all new housing affordable to low, moderate and middle-income New Yorkers (with half of that in turn affordable to the typical Coney Island household); use of City-owned land for affordable housing; encouragement of small retail businesses and restrictions on chain stores; and investments in improving and expanding local infrastructure, including new schools and a full-service supermarket.
Sustainability and Environmental Justice
COMMUTE speaks up for mass transit
In March, COMMUTE (Communities United for Transportation Equity), a coalition of community groups coordinated by the Pratt Center, organized a protest in front of Senator Rubén Díaz Sr.'s office to condemn his refusal to support tolls on the East River Bridges. Senator Díaz and a handful of his colleagues reject any MTA financing plan that includes tolls; their position is a major obstacle to avoiding steep fare hikes and service cuts that will severely burden New York City's most vulnerable communities.
Led by South Bronx COMMUTE members Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, Nos Quedamos, the POINT CDC, and Sustainable South Bronx, dozens of community members and local constituents gathered in front of Senator Díaz's storefront office in the Bronx, holding signs that read "Transit Equity for All Communities," "Salve el Autobús," and "Fair Fares, We Must All Share." Protesters chanted, "Diaz, don't betray our trust/Our people ride the bus."
Anna Vincenty, assistant director of Nos Quedamos, called upon Senator Díaz and his colleagues who oppose the toll to reverse their position. "We believe that Senator Díaz--and Senators Espada and Hassell-Thompson-- can change their minds," she said, "and that when they truly think about what public transit means to the people here today and in their districts, they will make the right decision and get on board to support the best interests of their constituents."
Research by the Pratt Center indicates that 67 percent of households in Diaz's district have no access to a car and are dependent on mass transit. Yet Senator Díaz and others who oppose tolls do so in the name of the poor: In a letter sent this month to Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, Senator Diaz writes, "Low-income families cannot afford these surcharges and it is our duty as elected officials to protect the less fortunate members of our society."
"Albany has been missing in action on supporting mass transit, and that's what has led to the current crisis," says Elena Conte, COMMUTE organizer and the Pratt Center's organizer for public policy campaigns. "This protest was about hearing the 'less fortunate members of our society' speak for themselves. What the Senator's constituents--and other low-income communities throughout the city--cannot afford are the devastating service cuts and fare hike that will result because Albany prefers to do business as usual."
With support from the Pratt Center, COMMUTE organized itself in 2007 to fight for investment in transit that prioritizes the needs of underserved communities and low-income commuters through improved bus service and bus rapid transit. COMMUTE is a vital voice for transportation equity in New York City, and significantly contributed to the City's efforts around an extensive Bus Rapid Transit network.
Helping Communities Build
Nurturing new potential in old libraries
New York City's branch libraries play a vital role in the life of the city, acculturating new generations of immigrants, supplementing children's education beyond school walls, and offering new media to those who would not otherwise have access to technology. Yet even as they perpetually struggle to fund their collections and maintain aging facilities, many New York City libraries literally sit on an untapped resource: millions of square feet of valuable real estate that they are legally allowed to develop under the city's zoning code but lack the financing to construct.
With the objective of unleashing that resource, the Pratt Center is working with the Charles H. Revson Foundation to establish the Funders' Collaborative for the Living Libraries Project in partnership with New York City's three library systems. The Funders Collaborative will help the libraries reconstruct and redesign branches while simultaneously using the sites to bring another urgently needed resource to city neighborhoods: new affordable housing, to be built above the library facilities. Through financial analysis, architectural renderings, and collaborative planning the Pratt Center is turning a vision and opportunity into a practical, replicable model.
"Our city's branch libraries play a critical role in the development of healthy communities," says Julie Sandorf, president of the Revson Foundation. "They are our neighborhood 'civic squares', serving to acculturate new generations of immigrants, educating children beyond the school walls, sponsoring community meetings, cultural events, and the only place in communities where internet access is available to all, free of charge. Living Libraries' mixed-use approach to two critical resources -- branch libraries that need increased capacity to serve an ever growing number of patrons and affordable housing in a city that's land starved -- will serve as an urban model, demonstrating in a financially viable way the indispensible link between flourishing neighborhood libraries and thriving communities. It is a win-win for communities and our city."
Community Planning
Boosting Church Avenue
The Church Avenue Business Improvement District (BID) has retained the Pratt Center to conduct a retail market study and needs assessment, with the goal of making sure the already successful retail strip -- the shopping hub of Flatbush -- better serves a neighborhood where the poor and middle class live side by side.
The study, surveying the strip from Coney Island Avenue to Flatbush Avenue, will look at what shoppers and residents are buying on Church Avenue and also what they are buying elsewhere. The study will also examine Church Avenue's mix of retail and the quality of goods of and services offered. In addition, using a survey developed in partnership with the Pratt Center, the BID will ask merchants what challenges they face in striving to operate successful businesses on Church Avenue.
Residents' needs will be assessed through demographic analysis, information about the customer base and offerings of competing shopping districts, and extensive community outreach efforts. With the Pratt Center's help, the BID will survey local shoppers and residents about where they shop, what they buy, what they like about Church Avenue and what they think is missing or could be improved upon. Local store owners will also take surveys about what they sell, what difficulties they face as merchants and what physical improvements they'd like to see along the retail corridor.
Through this investigation, the Pratt Center expects to help the BID get answers to important questions. Does the selection of goods on Church Avenue meet neighborhood needs; are there too many or too few of certain types of retailers? Is the quality of grocery items and other goods sufficient? Can the addition of amenities, such as benches and sit-down restaurants, improve shoppers' experience? Can a strip of vacant storefronts be put to good use?
Also working on the project is Michael Berne of MJB Consulting, one of the nation's foremost experts in promoting diverse inner-city retail. Berne will be sizing up the data on the area's retail potential, including information on shoppers' incomes and buying habits; which other shopping districts currently compete with Church Avenue for business; and unmet needs in the area. Berne is based in New York City and has a special connection to Flatbush: his father grew up there and attended Erasmus Hall High School. "The area has obviously changed a lot since his time," says Berne, "but I plan on re-introducing him to the fascinating neighborhood that his 'old stomping grounds' has become."
At the Pratt Center, the project is headed by Director of Planning and Preservation Vicki Weiner. "Church Avenue is an important shopping area for the Flatbush community," says Weiner. "We're very pleased to have this opportunity to help the BID develop strategies to ensure it meets the neighborhood's needs."
Equitable Development
Pratt-seeded workforce program continues expansion
Through a growing City-run program, models and best practices recommended by the Pratt Center are helping connect workers in communities near major economic development projects to employment opportunities. Based on the Pratt Center's recommendations, the City Department of Small Business Services and the Economic Development Corporation launched the Targeted Hiring and Workforce Development Program in the spring of 2008, and are now continuing to expand the program.
Initially the City program incorporated these linkage programs into requests for proposals for development on City-owned property, including the reuse of the old Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. Now the program is being extended to projects already under development, including the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, as well as to developers who directly or indirectly lease their property from the city. An official description of the program highlights the Pratt Center's pivotal role and explains step by step how the Targeted Hiring and Workforce Development Program works, from setting targets for hiring to the evaluation of proposals to the incorporation of hiring requirements into leases with commercial tenants to ongoing support for tenants in meeting their training and hiring needs. It also outlines future plans, including expansion of the program to all EDC sales of land and follow-up research to evaluate outcomes from initial sites.
Helping Communities Build
Political climate change
Over the past year, the Pratt Center, the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, and the Supportive Housing Network of New York have hosted Managing Lean and Green, a monthly forum at which affordable housing managers learned how to make their housing portfolios more energy efficient, healthier, and more financially viable. The series included sessions on energy efficiency retrofits, water conservation, solar power, and more. As the culminating session of this series, held in February, the Pratt Center convened "Political Climate Change," a panel of experts who discussed how city, state, and federal initiatives to promote energy efficiency, through billions in new investment through existing and new programs, will affect prospects for related projects in New York.
The 140 people who attended the forum learned from Ariella Maron from the NYC Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability that building retrofits will be crucial to PlaNYC's five-part strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2017. David Hepinstall, Director of the Association for Energy Affordability, announced that the $5.25 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program in the federal stimulus package can be expected to translate to five times the current funding available to weatherize low-income housing in New York State. Michael Colgrove, the new New York City director for the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) also reported on expected budget increases for energy upgrades amounting to approximately $568 million for New York City and Westchester to be spent by 2015. NYSERDA expects to receive an additional $525 million statewide from the Regional Green House Gas Initiative. Some of these funds may support a far-reaching state policy blueprint described by Emmaia Gelman of the Center for Working Families; its Green Jobs/Green Homes initiatives proposes to retrofit one million homes -- one in eight of all homes in New York State -- and in the process create 40,000 green jobs over five years. Marcia Bystryn, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, moderated, encouraging participants to ensure that new funding succeeds in greening New York State.
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Support the Pratt Center
This year's economic crisis has touched us all, and New York City's neighborhoods are now facing severe challenges that require swift action and innovative thinking. For the last 45 years, the Pratt Center has proven to be an effective and articulate voice for change, and now, more than ever, our community partners are looking to the Pratt Center's thought-leadership and experience. With your support, we will continue to help neighborhoods make smart investments in housing, economic development, public transit, community facilities, and environmental sustainability.
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