FSRG, there are a lot of government and social service agencies in MetroTech that by nature already need to be based in New York, a lot of vacant space, and a lot of it is for sublease from the financial institutions that were originally offered incentives to sign the leases. Here is MetroTech's tenant list:

http://www.metrotechbid.org/map.php.

I hope they find tenants for the vacant space as it is for the greater good of the city. I am not anti MetroTech.

I'm not going to repeat what I've been saying the whole time to respond to your critique because it is too nuanced, and you are just trying to pick at straws to debase my whole perspective, just like you are with FUREE. You gave two reasons why we should ignore FUREE's report: "it is being conducted by an organization with an obvious agenda, they based their findings soley on the anecdotes of 61 people." And I said why I think it is still valid for discussion. I also asked you to point out something in their report that is incorrect, and you didn't.

Also, FUREE didn't just base its findings on anecdotes, their findings were backed by years of research and experience working with business owners in the area.

I support figuring out a way to increase the success of as many types of businesses as possible in Downtown. I don't think I'm biased because I don't have a direct financial stake in Downtown Brooklyn. The BIDs, FUREE, developers, probably you, they are biased because they have something tangible to lose or gain based on what happens there, I just have an opinion.

With that said, I have to go to work, so when I don't respond to your attempts to debase my arguments, it's because I'm not at a computer, not because I don't have an answer.

Posted by: giselle_123 at August 1, 2008 3:22 PM in response to DoBro Redevelopment Not So Great for Everyone

JUNKMAN, regarding the four projects that Brownstoner mentioned in the post: For most of that property, it's the landlord's fault that it looked like such a wasteland because they didn't maintain their property, and a lot of those landlords are on the board of the BID and the Partnership. They are profiting handsomely, and have been this whole time because they've been charging among the highest retail rents in Brooklyn while doing nothing to maintain their property.

Tenants in the Fulton Mall pay at least as much and often more than tenants on Montague Street, Bedford Avenue, Smith Street, and Seventh Avenue, yet they do nothing to repair or maintain their property. Landlords can do this and still charge crazy rent because of all the foot traffic on Fulton Mall (there is some dollar amount attached to the number of pedestrians), and that foot traffic is drawn to the products their tenants are selling.

And now these landlords that have saved so much money by doing nothing to maintain their buildings are making tons of money by selling them, and presiding over or advocating the transactions in an official capacity. Meanwhile, the tenants who helped them make their millions while getting little in return are left to fend for themselves, and many are struggling. So while I agree with you that much of what is in Downtown Brooklyn needs either rebuilding or repair, I think there are other places for blame, and in the process of accurately placing blame, maybe we can come up with policies that create a better society, avoiding some of this blight and broken lives in the future.

Posted by: giselle_123 at August 1, 2008 2:40 PM in response to DoBro Redevelopment Not So Great for Everyone

DITTOBURG: Among some people, but I think there is a growing realization that financial institutions have the responsibility to only lend to people who can afford to pay the loans back, and at rates that are fair. Not everybody has the expertise to navigate language in a mortgage or to make the best financial decision, just like not everybody has the expertise to fix the engine in their car, perform a heart transplant, or defend themselves in a divorce. We should be able to trust these people, at least to some extent, which is why more regulation is being put into place on lending practices and the types of financial practices that are legal. Unfortunately, under the Bush Administration, such industries that could be considered commodities (financial, oil, healthcare, insurance ... i.e. essential things that everybody needs to have, not blue jeans or saltine crackers) have been less regulated, and they have enjoyed runaway profits since people have no choice but to pay the price (can only charge so much for blue jeans before most people stop buying them, but the price ceiling can go a lot higher for things like gasoline and mortgages). Since such a huge chunck of our GDP has gone to these industries at the expense of other industries vital to a diversified economy, which provides the greatest number of jobs, the whole economy is suffering based on these poor decisions. If a lower percentage of our income, or the income of corporations, were spent on various types of insurance, energy, and financial interest and fees, then we would have more money to support other sectors of the economy, and fewer companies would jump ship in search of cheaper operating costs overseas.

Recent press reports have also found that financial employees from the top down knew that what they were doing would cause disasterous affects in the long run, yet continued making irresponsible transactions to get the immediate profit. That's what I was saying about money having a crazy (craven) effect on people. In terms of development, these people on the board of the BIDs and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership stand to make loads of money from the decisions they are making. Are they going to give that up to help out a wig shop? But their decisions are enabled by public policy and public funds, so from a policy perspective, we have the responsibility to consider what is going to be best for the city's economy in the long run and what is going to benefit the greatest number of taxpayers. The answer is not always as simple as ask the person wearing the nicest suit because obviously they are the most financially successful and know best, as we have so unfortunately discovered in other economic realms. Sometimes the best approach is to ask everybody who holds a society together, and then to weigh the answers in an effort to please the most people and maximize the revenue coming into the city.

Also, we need to question the prudence of tearing down a vital sector of the economy in the hopes of keeping one that is trying its hardest to leave. Oftentimes, as is the case with former MetroTech tenants, they leave after a few years anyway, naturally, when they are offered a better bribe from a place like New Jersey, and then sublease their space to a company that was already going to stay or has to stay, like government agencies. Shouldn't we at least try to keep the vital economy here in the meantime? It's kind of like quitting a job before you get a new one, what's being done in Downtown Brooklyn. Huge gamble.

Posted by: giselle_123 at August 1, 2008 2:02 PM in response to DoBro Redevelopment Not So Great for Everyone

FSRG, first, please point out what in the report is untrue, rather than simply saying it can't be taken seriously. Have the 35 business owners not actually been displaced? Are they not a representative sample of the larger group of small business owners who had the unfortunate circumstance of renting a building that the landlord and/ or the city decided they want torn down? Because you seem to think these businesses all closed down because the market went away, when in reality most of them closed because they were kicked out of their building, on lots that in some cases have remained undeveloped more than a year later as the financial market and lack of residential and office demand to fill these towers has put a break on development. From my recollection, MetroTech was supposed to help us keep these jobs that went to New Jersey, but is mostly filled with government agencies that have to be here anyway, and City Point and Atlantic Yards still need to find their big office tenant to fill that space before they can get financing to build.

Nobody is saying don't build, not even FUREE at this point. They are suggesting that the city put a little more effort into helping out the small business owners that are there now, or have closed down DUE TO DISPLACEMENT not a poor business plan, by providing relocation assistance and rehabbing the ugly, boarded-up upper levels of all those buildings in the Fulton Mall, which repel the businesses and residents the city is trying to attract to Downtown Brooklyn anyway. You really think these potential residents and office tenants would rather see boards on the windows than a sign for a wig shop? Or that a $50,000 grant to help with moving, funded by tax dollars AND the developers pushing these businesses out, won't pay more dividends in the long run? Developers often promise this type of assistance when they announce their projects in order to damped public outcry, this type of program only holds them to it.

Consider the sales tax and other tax revenue all these businesses generate. Why not try to keep Downtown Brooklyn generating that kind of tax revenue, the fourth highest of any retail district in the city, WHILE increasing the tax revenue base by building new towers and attracting businesses that appeal to a different clientele. It seems like FUREE has made reasonable suggestions. Unwillingness to even ATTEMP to do both is just laziness, short-sightedness and lack of creativity.

Your effort to suppress FUREE's voice rather than at least taking what they are saying into consideration actually impedes progress. Remember when the standard thought on sub-prime mortgages was that it was the homeowner's own stupid fault they got into that mess? Now it's the cause of what could be the next depression. Apparently, these stupid ex-homeowners actually provide value to the economy, and ivy league educated, white collar corporate America doesn't always know what's best for this country, or at least doesn't always do it since lots and lots of money can have a crazy effect on people.

Posted by: giselle_123 at August 1, 2008 1:25 PM in response to DoBro Redevelopment Not So Great for Everyone

FSRG: Rather than addressing in-depth the issues in this report, which have a dramatic impact on peoples' lives, you are taking the low road by debasing this organization and this blog for writing about the report. Clever, and craven.

News flash: Most reports are conducted by people with an agenda. That doesn't necessarily make their findings untrue. In fact, they often look where other "non-biased" people are not looking because they have a better understanding of their constituency. That doesn't mean the report should be the sole source of policy-making, it means it should be taken into consideration. What about the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership's inflated statistics, speculation presented as fact, and puffery regularly funneled to the media? What's wrong with FUREE conducting surveys of small business owners and writing a report about their findings? Because the people at FUREE don't wear business suits? Because they would rather shop at these stores than H&M and CB1? Because they can't afford the hundreds of million-dollar piece of crap condos developers so desperately have to get rid of? Because they could be right that the city's little urban planning experiment might fail?

Guess what, if you look at successful urban planning across the city, usually some sort of compromise was involved. Because the measure of success in urban planning is the number of people who use what was put there, and obviously the more people something appeals to, the more people who will partake. Fulton Mall is already heavily used. FUREE is just asking that the urban planners try to keep some of these popular stores in the mall while shoehorning in their new ones. If the city tried to work in some of FUREE's ideas, and real market demand, not hoped-for market demand, maybe Downtown Brooklyn would be more successful. Instead, the city is ignoring the current market there, and playing with Downtown Brooklyn as if it were a petri dish. Will people move in? Some, but judging from sales and the inability to secure office tenants in even the existing buildings, not as many as the city had hoped, and not as many to support the high-rise infrastructure with real dollars, not subsidies.

And it's not like these business owners were even looking for handouts. They were paying their $150 per square foot rent, paying their taxes, providing products and services to people. Who are you to say a wig store or a religious supply store, that also sells incense as it is a religious supply, aren't as worthy of tax dollars as wealthy developers, corporations, and other chains that take our dollars off to some other city or country? Maybe your white mother doesn't wear a wig, unless she has some illness or treatment that causes the loss of hair, but A LOT of women of color do. And guess what, a lot of women of color live in Brooklyn! Near Downtown! You only think things are worthwhile that appeal to your own culture, and therefore you really shouldn't be opining on urban planning in a place like New York City, which caters to people of all different hair types, religions, styles of dress, choices of food, etc. If NYC only appealed to one culture, there wouldn't be enough people here to support the infrastructure built for 8.2 million people, and we would become like the decayed, vacant urban centers across America.

Posted by: giselle_123 at August 1, 2008 12:36 PM in response to DoBro Redevelopment Not So Great for Everyone