Time Equities CEO Weighs In On Amity Plan
Time Equities head honcho Francis Greenburger has responded to blog posts on Brownstoner (last week), the Historic Districts Council Newsstand, Lost City, and Gowanus Lounge about all the hoo-ha surrounding the developer’s plans for 110 Amity Street. In the statement, which seems legit, Greenburger says Time Equities and its development partner Lucky Boy do not…
Time Equities head honcho Francis Greenburger has responded to blog posts on Brownstoner (last week), the Historic Districts Council Newsstand, Lost City, and Gowanus Lounge about all the hoo-ha surrounding the developer’s plans for 110 Amity Street. In the statement, which seems legit, Greenburger says Time Equities and its development partner Lucky Boy do not want to present a project that does not have community support and makes it sound like the mews design is toast: At this point, we will re-conceive the project in a traditional street wall approach and try to present a plan that is responsive to the input received at the most recent Landmark hearing. Last year the Real Deal interviewed Greenburger, and the following Q&A seems like it has bearing on the 110 Amity situation:
Q: How do you deal with antagonists?
A: It depends on what kind of antagonists they are. If they’re bullies, I’m extremely stubborn and I’ll fight them tooth and nail. If they’re crazy people, then I try to figure out how to work around them and not waste my time with them. If they are people who have a reasonable point of view that’s different than mine, I try to understand it and work with it.
Sounds refreshingly logical for a developer.
Amity Street Development Turned Back By LPC [HDCN]
The Closing: Francis Greenburger [TRD]
Sometimes They Hear You [Lost City]
Amity Street Developers Go Back to the Drawing Board [GL]
110 Amity Proposal Takes a Drubbing at LPC Hearing [Brownstoner]
Cobble Hill Association: 110 Amity Plan ‘Unacceptable’ [Brownstoner] GMAP
Opposition to 110 Amity Plans Grows [Brownstoner]
CB6 Tries to Avoid Amity Street Horror [Brownstoner]
Inset photo of Greenburger from TimeEquities.com.
No, can’t hear you. And I don’t believe you. Any actual proof of your statements?
Oh please, he just has to get the political wheels greased. Every major Landmarks vote is predetermined. If a developer does not have the juice to get the mayor to tell a deputy mayor to phone Landmarks then the project doesn’t have a chance. It’s all done the day before by phone. Can you hear me now?
Greenburger just nailed down the three types of Brooklynites. Not bad. At least he’s being direct.
Yeah, I often wonder if it’s been cost-effective in the end for Ratner to have shoved AY through without community input? I know work is progressing, but he’s losing at least five million a month alone on the Nets, and the market’s shaky while construction skyrockets. If he hadn’t been such a jerk, it might have been built by now.
Yeah, that’s what makes bullies and crazies the bullies and crazies they are. Because they can’t see themselves and their actions too clearly. Has any neighborhood association not had a bit of crazy bullying in them? I’ve never seen one that didn’t.
I’m sure members of the Cobble Hill assoc. could never conceive of themselves as bullies or crazies.
This is great.
What’s especially absurd about certain developers refusing to work with the community, is it’s actually not a new concept at all to do that. Commerce Bank in Park Slope on 5th Ave adjusted their design per community feedback. You see it a lot in other cities in the U.S., where there are almost never new developments that offend everyone in a community to such a degree. As a trend, this IS being done in other places. These are activist communities too – this is NOT about the kind of people who live in Brooklyn. Tell me the residents of Seattle for example are not activists. Of course they are. Hardcore.
Somehow there is this breed of Brooklyn NYC developer who are big bullies. Bullies with bad taste! It’s part of the developer culture here. It’s really backwards.
Perhaps developers are beginning to learn that it just isn’t cost effective to have the community against you.
Greenburger is a smart dude.