Bloomberg smoking gun, media fails to report on it

Remember how we were all told that the Bloomberg sugar "portion cap" exempted the Big Gulp because the Health Department had no jurisdiction over FSE's (gorcieries, bodegas, 7-Elevens, convenience stores)? All lies. 

The Appellate Division's decision against Bloomberg's sugar "portion cap" addresses a complex web of intriguiging policy issues indicative of the Bloomberg administration. If a legilsative body, the City Council in this case, fails in its mandate to write effective laws, can a mayoral administration usurp its function for the welfare of the public? Under what conditions?

It turns out that the cap was much more than an administrative remedy for an ineffective legislature. The big news in the decision -- which has not been adequately reported in the media -- lies in the cap's favoritism. The mayor and the Board of Health claims that they have no jurisdiction over FSE's (groceries, 7-Eleven's, bodegas). But the decision explains that this is simply not true:

With regard to the exemption of certain FSE’s (i.e., grocerymarkets, 7-11s, bodegas, etc.), the DOHMH does not deny that the exemption has no relationship to health-related concerns. Still, the agency argues that it was not based on impermissible reasons, but on the agency’s allegedly reasonable view that such FSEs cannot be regulated by the Agency under the MOU signed with the state’s Department of Agriculture. However, the Board’s claim that the MOU tied its hands is belied by the fact that the agency [the Board of Health] has previously used its regulatory authority to promulgate city-wide health rules that regulate all FSEs (see e.g. 24 RCNY HealthCode 181.07) [city-wide regulation of common eating and drinking utensils]; 24 RCNY Health Code 71.05) [city-wide prohibition on the sale of “any food . . . which is adulterated or misbranded”]). Moreover, the MOU envisions “cooperative efforts between the two agencies [to] assure comprehensive food protection” and to avoid gaps in food surveillance.” Yet, the agency offers no evidence of any prior attempt to coordinate witht he Department of Agriculture on the Portion Cap Rule. The failure to obtain such expansion resulted in a ban that includes exceptions which necessarily favor some businesses and products at the expenses of others. Accordingly, the selective restrictions enacted by the Board of Health reveal that the health of the residents of New YorkCity was not its sole concern. If it were, the “Soda Ban” would apply to all public and private enterprises in New York City. By enacting a compromise measure — one that tempered its strong health concerns with its unstated but real worries about commercial well-being, as well as political considerations — the Board necessarily took into account its own non-health policy considerations. Judged by its deeds rather than by its explanations, the Board of Health's jurisdictional rationale evaporates.

Judge Renwick writing for a unanimous decision of all four Appellate judges, my emphases

What's important here is not just that the mayor could have extended the cap to delis, bodegas, groceries and 7-Elevens. It's that the mayor and the Board of Health lied about it to the public. 

The mayor purposely exempted FSE's exactly at the moment when 7-Eleven began its entry into New York. No wonder he lied.  

There's further evidence of malfeasance. The court found that the Department of Health didn't bother to include research in its cap policy, instead accepting a policy draft from the mayor's office itself without any research background. The research is easily available and pursuasive, but the Board didn't bother with it. The policy was a ukase from on high, handed from one office and accepted by another without demur or even window dressing. It shows excesive administrative control and a lack of agency independence, responsibility and accountability. Agencies are supposed to have and use specific expertise, not just hand over orders from above. Otherwise the agency has no justification for its existence or its expenses. 

Legislative bodies respond to constituencies as well as research, so popularity might be an obstacle to writing sound law. That's a justification for an administration, or certainly for a regulatory agency, to step in, where its expertise is wiser than popular opinion. But to step in without providing the evidence of the greater wisdom is hubris. You'd think Bloomberg would have been more careful. 

The answer to the questions at the top -- when can an administration overreach for the benefit of the public? -- has its answer. Checks and balances of government serve a purpose. Overreaching allows abuse of authority and cronyism. 

The court found that the Health Department overreached as a regulative agency on other grounds as well. One ground seems ambiguous: They found that sugar is not inherently dangerous, but only in large quantities, so regulating it depends on behavior, not flat out substance banning. That seems to argue on both sides: how else can the regulatory agency control the substance without overreaching into behavioral social policies that belong to the legislature? If the legislature is ineffectual, why not overreach? Is the slippery slope there too steep?

This seems to me to trade on a false dichotomy. Behavior is not the only means of controlling sugar. The soft drink industry can be burdened with the regulation, not the consumer. Problem is, the city has no jurisdiction over corn syrup production or use. 

In all organizations ruled by law, there are sectors that are protected from change, others that are easily pushed. By definition, those are the disempowered. Here it is the low-income consumer. Monsanto and Pepsi et al. should be burdened, not the consumer. In our society labor and consumers are mere pawns. Corporations and their products control our politics, our imagery, our information, our visibility. The bigger they are, the more control.

The future of government policy-making and the danger of giant global capital mobility

Walmart threatened to leave DC if their mayor signs the council's living wage bill. 

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/09/living-wage-mandate-in-d-c-sends-walmart-running/

Chain store influencing public policy -- when does a chain store become too big to displease? It's the neoliberal dreamstate -- government of, by and for the corporate person. In the piece, Marion Barry called it "a stick-up." 

Walmart argues that raising the minimum wage will drive employers away, causing unemployment. But raising wages also boosts demand, creating more employment. Card and Kreuger's classic survey showed that minimum wage raises actually increased employment. Even more interesting, Neumark and Wascher showed disemployment effects only in large fast food stores, with a rise in employment among small restaurants.  

You can see what's going on. The large corporations disinvest because they are more mobile. They can leave a state with higher wages for a state with lower wages. Small owners are not as mobile, so they are stuck with the higher wages, but eventually reap the benefits of greater demand! 

And you can see where this is going. Walmart has already stated that it will disinvest, regardless of greater demand. After all, Walmart depends on low-wage bargain hunters. If wages rise significantly, the higher demand might not be good for their bottom-end offerings. Walmart has an interest not only in low wages to keep their pricing down, but also to maintain its low-income market demand. They promote themselves as offering low prices, but actually they are in the business of creating low incomes to feed their own market. And its model doesn't move upward as it grows. It grows by spreading the bottom. It's an impoverishment model. Their corporate goal is to vastly increase the bottom.

The DC living wage might have been a test case to see the efffects of demand vs employment cost-cutting, but by stating its intention to leave, Walmart shows up front that it will bias the results. So if employment declines, everyone can blame it on Walmart's political ploy.

Capital mobility is another reason to be wary of the neoliberal giant global corporation. Small businesses have to take the pain. Ironically, they also reap the benefit. 

But what's more shocking than the impoverishment model that Walmart is admitting to here, is Walmart's threat to public policy-making. When will corporations become so big that we can't say 'no' to them ever again? Think of the consequences for food (Monsanto), the environment, fracking -- it's not just about wages. It's the entire fabric of life. 

Yet another chain store scam

Chains like McDonalds and Walgreen's have replaced their employees' paycheck with a prepaid ATM/debit card, generating fees that eat up the already close-to-minimum-wages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-replace-paychecks-bank-fees-hurt-workers.html?pagewanted=2&hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all


Chain stores screw their employees again. This time it's a collusion with banks. It's as if the corporate headquarters have no conception at all of a low wage or ATM/Credit card abuse. Just disgusting.

How doth the little crocodile...

NO711 attended Thursday's Seward Park co-op meeting with the 7-Eleven corporation described in the Lo-down. It was a friendly meeting. 

The co-op has had bad luck with previous commercial tenants. After a long internal dispute, the co-op agreed that a 7-Eleven was the fix they needed to support the co-op financially, though not without qualms about the character of the store. 

Residents expressed concerns about 7-Eleven offerings. The regional manager committed, as a "local-friendly neighbor," to selling just about whatever the locals might want -- lox, kimchee, you name it, 7-Eleven will stock it for you. But when a couple of residents asked if the 7-Eleven would refrain from selling pizza so as not to threaten the local pizza places (there's a really excellent one right there on Grand), the friendly mask was drawn aside. Even after the co-op offered to promote 7-Eleven in the media as a local hero if it took pizza out of its offerings, the manager refused without hesitation. These smart and savvy co-op residents had cornered the corporate spokesperson in a checkmate. The meeting was really an opportunity for 7-Eleven to expand its offerings and compete better in the local market. I don't see this as friendly at all, but actually dangerous. 

I'd suggest that the co-op residents not ask 7-Eleven to expand its offerings, but limit itself to its basic services. Otherwise the 7-Eleven is going to take the profit margin out of really unique and wonderful stores like the Pickle Guys, and meat off the table of their employees. If 7-Eleven starts selling pickles successfully, you may never again see the full variety of dills, or pickled garlic, peppers and tomatoes. 

Someone else in the audience asked whether 7-Eleven will kill local bodegas. The regional manager's response: 7-Eleven will help convert any bodega into a 7-Eleven if the owner feels the competition is too stiff. 

I hope the residents didn't accept this explanation. Many bodegas -- probably most -- are too small to convert to a 7-Eleven. Even more obvious, if a 7-Eleven opens directly across the street from a bodega, the corporation is not about to allow a conversion. Two 7-Elevens on opposite sides of one street? As the spokespersons said last night several times, they choose their locations based on data analysis. Despite the friendly PR presentation last night, they're there to compete, not be friends. It's a business. 

After the presentation, the real estate rep confirmed to me that the corporation guarantees the rent of the store. That's great for the co-op but it's exaclty the kind of monopolistic ploy that encourages landlords to raise commercial rents beyond the capacity of the old, ethnic stores and local services. The corporation can blame it on the landlords, but the incentive to evict comes straight from the corporation. 

When asked whether the corporation cares about a community that doesn't want a 7-Eleven, the real estate rep explained that they choose their locations based on foot traffic. NO711 had to point out that foot traffic is not always local. If there's a nightlife strip nearby, the foot traffic will be largely non local, and no local voting-by-their-feet will make a lick of difference in the profit margin. In other words, 7-Eleven's business model cares about access to consumers, not community sentiments. 

None of this is surprising. It's a business. But it's not just a business. It's powerful, monopolistic, unstoppable and non local. It's the neoliberal future around your corner. It's an omnivorous shark that cannot rest, its drive and motive, inaccessible and remote.

I was surprised at a couple of residents complaining about bodega pricing. Shopping at a bodega is an art, folks. They're all distinct as each bodega identifies its local market. One sells ice-cream sandwiches to the local kids $.50 @, a better buy you cannot find anywhere in the city. Another will fix you an egg-and-bacon sandwich folded into a roll for $2.50 -- you can't beat that either. But the chips will all be list-price. It takes a bit of a flaneur to appreciate the side-ways of a great city. 

[As an addendum: I asked them whether they will employ part-timers (of course you'd expect that they hire part-timers, and in fact they advertise lots of part-time jobs on their website and elsewhere, but I felt compelled to confirm) and at what ratio to full-timers. He said there would, of course, be part-timers but he didn't have any ratio stats. I asked if that's because it's up to the franchisee. He said yes.]

The 11th Street Block Association will probably have to invite 7-Eleven to such a meeting eventually, but the situation will be quite different. 7-Eleven on A is not dependent on local consuming as it is on Grand. Here the store will be playing to the barflies, not the locals. 

Restrict access?

Saw this comment on EV Grieve about a street cart become a new store that everyone likes:

This is how it starts. The cart moves inside, the store becomes two, then three, and eventually an evil franchise that must be stamped out -- a symbol of "corporatocracy". Meanwhile, somewhere else, the process begins again, and is cheered.

EXACTLY!!! Just think, if we had a zoning law restricting chain stores (usually defined as 12 stores or more), then NYer's could enjoy places like this without watching them turn into huge global corporate human smuggling operations. 

We *can* improve the world if we speak out and take action. Resist corporatocracy, restrict global corprorate capital's access to our our streets. Join NO711! Join Occupy! (Yes, it's still active -- headed to a meeting tonight about coordinating all the local neighborhood Occupations in the city and all the Occupy policy groups.)

Sustainability

Even if restaurants do provide many more jobs than a 7-Eleven, are restaurants as sustainable as 7-Elevens? That's exactly the question that leads right to the heart, goal and purpose of NO711.

Because they can get higher rents from chain stores, banks and bars, landlords raise their commercial rents on small businesses as soon as their leases come due and drive out those small local-serving businesses in order to open up space for higher-renting bars, banks and chains.

As the highest rent-payer, chains take the highest-density foot traffic locations, clustering to increase that foot traffic. Increasingly, chains are invading less dense neighborhoods. As long as there's no regulatory restriction on chain stores, there's no reason to believe this trend will not continue. Landords in less dense neighborhoods speculate on that trend by raising rents even leaving stores vacant until a chain takes it, as the Pratt Center has observed.

Small storefronts increased rents by as much as 600% in 2006 to make way for bars and chain stores in the EV. Commercial rent increases and upscaling are not static levels. They respond to speculations on itself -- a recursive function that spirals upwards to the highest bidder creating a context in which only the highest bidder can survive. CBGB's was lost to Varvatos, a chain store. Veselka, an independent restaurant, opened on the Bowery after Varvatos opened and has already failed. This is no coincidence.

(As it happens, the restaurant I mentioned a couple of posts back has been around for decades. It has a full liquor license as most successful restaurants have. It is also nowhere near any chain stores.)

Another CB question for NO711

Here's another question from CB3: on what grounds could the community board deny a chain store?

This is really complex and tough. If it's done quantitatively -- say, no more that one Duane Reade in a half mile radius -- that doesn't prevent a Duane Reade from opening where the locals really don't want it, and may prevent one where the locals do want it. If it's done by local preference, well, the community board is inviting a fight between locals with differing preferences, or making determinations on it's own caprice, which invites law suits from the rejected applicants.

But a special zoning, which is what the CB is considering, seems to me to be worse. If it defines the number of chain stores in particular areas it will freeze those areas based on current circumstances. In five years that plan will be obsolete. Few documents are as depressing as old urban plans. 

Last CB issue: helping the rent-taker

A committee member also said there are too many empty storefronts in the East Village; we can't afford to deny opportunities.

Whether storefronts are empty is a problem for landlords almost exclusively. Are landlords hurting in the East Village? If they lowered the commercial rents, the stores would be filled. That implies the landlords are holding out for high-rent chain stores because they are not hurting. So if they knew chain stores, banks and bars were not available, they'd have to lower their rents, or keep them empty indefinitely. Is there something wrong with empty storefronts? I remember the empty storefronts in the '70's and '80's. I had no problem with it.

That CB3 is worried about filling stores for landlords is troubling to me. Why should the community board serve a group that isn't hurting, is a negligible percent of the community and most of whom don't live here at all. Maybe I didn't understand their comments about emptiness.

Impending change in Chinatown

Grieve posted the news yesterday that 11 buildings on the Bowery from Canal Street to Houston Street (83-5, 88, 103-5, 219-21, 262, 276-82-84) have just been bought by the owner of Dr. Jays, hip-hop clothing stores. With the exception of 276-84 at the corner of Houston, most of these parcels are not ideal candidates for demolition and redevelopment but the likely replacement of Chinese local-serving retail in 83, 85, 88, 103 and 105 — many of the leases are coming due – will carve out a piece of the Chinatown community.

If new commerce succeeds, it spreads. That's bad news for Chinatown, even though this portfolio was never Chinese-owned. Those four buildings are also residential, so watch out for evictions. The current hotel residents in 88 may be threatened as well. The building is overbuilt, so it's unlikely to be demolished, but it could be renovated and turned into an upscale hotel like the St. Mark's for those seeking the "authentic New York experience."

The Chinatown Working Group, Chinatown's community planning initiative, with over 50 lcoal tenant, labor and social service orgainzations participating, has been meeting on the future of Chinatown, hiring Pratt as their planning consultant. This troubling real estate/retail transaction should be right at the top of the discussion: here's the future, what can Chinatown planning do about it? 

Face the new EV

EV Grieve has been following the piecemeal clearance of all the commerce on 14th Street for some yet unknown development. Locals expect a huge high rise like the ones we saw south of Houston (The Ludlow, Blue, THOR, SVA), so I thought I'd show what is allowed there --

Photo: DCP

except maybe all glass and steel and ground floor storefronts. You can imagine which stores.

The strip from Avenue A to 1st Avenue is zoned for mixed use commercial and residential space with an 80 ft height cap and a maximum floor area ratio of 4, about the size of an Old Law 6-story tenement. It's similar to the EV/LES 2008 rezoning but without any affordable housing provision (beyond the 421a tax incentive which keeps it affordable only for about 25 years).

Will the developer get a variance to build higher? The Board of Standards and Appeals doesn't give out variances like candy -- the developer has to show some rationale. Otherwise the city wouldn't have spent millions on rezoning 120 neighbrohoods under Bloomberg. 

From shopping mall to political transformation

The protest in Turkey, like Occupy Wall Street, began with middle class discontent. OWS was ostensibly about money in politics, welfare for banks too big to fail and income inequality, but the pocketbook issues were student debt and unemployment. Critics thought these were spoiled, over-educated, middle-class kids, but we learned that they were economically and socially not the EV gentrifiers. When Penley tried to bring OWS to Tompkins Square Park, EV newbies howled and screamed: not in our backyard (here, also see the negative comments on Grieve's post.)

In Istanbul the protest started as a defense of a local green space from another shopping mall. It almost sounds like a bourgeois NIMBY story from Greenwich Village protesting NYU. Police repression fanned the flames into a much broader anti-government repression movement. But the central issue is still community self-determination. From RT: 

"...respect must come back to the political approach and implementation… That has to do with the way people feel fed up with the interference, micromanagement of their lifestyles." -- Istanbul-based political columnist Yavuz Baydar 

De-romanticising mom and pop

One response to Yglesias' post The Tragic Inelasticity of Bar Supply points to the great virtue of the growth model: 

It's not just bar owners and land-owners that make good money if a sport-bar becomes popular. Workers benefit to. People will probably leave bigger tips if the drinks are more expensive. And if an entrepeneur wants to keep his bar high-profile he will need to invest in hiring the best workers possible. (They might have to offer better pay then a generic fast-food chain: if you pay good money for your drink, you expect good service) Those workers will spend their extra money on all kind's of stuff which will benefit the economy.

but another posted the inevitable response: 

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - Yogi Berra

My favorite responses to Yglesias' post: 

Learn to love chains? The chains that tend to pay as little as possible, use the cheapest products possible and charge the maximum price possible in order to increase margins and make their shareholders happy rather than the customers? No thanks!

and

Why learn to love chains? Why not just encourage more lovable local dives to start up? Aren't we better served by true small, personal businesses than big corporate impersonal monopolies?

This is a bit unfair to chains, since small businesses have to keep costs down too, including labor costs. But the old-style mom and pop bore that burden entirely on themselves and their kids. However, increasingly small businesses are not mom and pops -- they are small entrepreneurs starting up, hiring employees and even managers to handle the day-to-day.

There are still true mom and pops in the LES: shoe repair, printing/copying, bike repair, a couple of bakeries and butchers, locksmiths, a drugstore here and there, hardware, an exterminator (he keeps a tank full of a hissing Madagascar cockroaches). Most of those cannot be replaced with on-line services. It would be shame to see them replaced with chains.

"NO 7-Eleven: resist chains and corporate control" is winning!

7-Eleven Corp has delayed the opening of the 7-Eleven store on 11th Street & Avenue A from May 13 to November 13. That's a half year delay @ $35,000 per month.

Meanwhile NO 7-Eleven is ramping up its resistance. We're planning a demonstration in early June at the 7-Eleven doubledecker "superstore" on 5th Avenue & 23rd Street just across from the Flat Iron Building. Details soon.

An anonymous comment on EV Grieve resonated with me:

If a storefront or piece of land has been vacant because the owner is greedy ... CB 3 support them by approving a bar or lounge or a hotel or luxury housing.

Filling empty stores benefits primarily the landlord. The neighborhood is not desperate for commerce -- we've already got more chain stores than any other neighborhood in the city and a 7-Eleven provides the minimal jobs per square foot. 

So, 7-Eleven Corp and CB3, just leave it there empty. We can deal with that. The landlord? Kushner can think of it as a goodwill gesture to the community. He can afford it. 

NO 7-Eleven city-wide petition on line!

NO 7-Eleven: resist chains and corporate control has a city-wide petition on line. Take a look at the great comments along with the signatures. 

To the New York City Planning Commission and City Council: Allow community self-determination to resist chain stores.

To: 

The New York City Planning Commission and City Council 

There are over 7,200 chain stores in New York City with more opening every year. 7-Eleven Corp alone is planning to open 100 new stores in Manhattan by 2015. Chain stores raise commercial rents, crowd out our commercial variety, our choices our mom-and-pops and our diversity. They efface our neighborhood character, erase our ethnic roots, erode our community relationships. They leverage wages down and, once cornering their market, leverage prices up. I call on the City Planning Commission and the City Council to amend the city's zoning text to require that no corporate formula store or bank open a new location without approval from the local community board. Such a zoning amendment will not only allow communities to restrict the number and location of chain stores, but also allow community boards to negotiate legally binding stipulations on all elements of chain store character from signage and closing hours to wage scale.

Allow community self-determination on chain stores, franchises and banks.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-new-york-city-planning-commission-and-city-council-allow-community-self-determination-to-resist-chain-stores?utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

The city is your backyard

Bob Holman mentioned yesterday that "NO 7-Eleven" is not a NIMBY issue, unless our backyard is the entire city.

I've been thinking about how NO 7-Eleven is distinct from gentrifying or gentrified neighborhood groups. It's not just that it's a city-wide effort, not just that it's calling for community say in land use for all communities. I think it goes way deeper. Chain stores are an invasion from an inaccessible source. I think that's why I'm puzzled by critics who welcome chains on the ground that it's an expression of the free market. There's nothing "free" about corporate control from afar. 7-Eleven, Walmart, Walgreens, McDonalds -- the whole lot of them -- are the Persians at the Athenian walls, the body snatchers and Big Brother all in one.

We're New Yorkers -- an immigrant, diverse, crazyquilt of communities. We're not the corporate overlords from remote locations and they're not us.

Corporate control from afar

Back in the 18th century, Henry Rutgers, a New York City landowner, contracted to have a house built on one of his lots. He specified that there be no rear house; the lot not covered by the main house should remain a yard. Rear houses couldn't be rented to people of "quality." A rear house would attract riff-raff, and Rutgers thought it more important to keep up the neighborhood than extract a bit more profit from the lot. After all, it was his land, his neighborhood.

A century later, the first apartment buildings, called tenements, were constructed in New York, all in impoverished immigrant neighborhoods. The very first drawings of these show rear tenements. It's a clear indication that the landowner has lost any faith in the neighborhood as a place where he or his associates might consider living. The purpose of the land is no longer use, but exchange, constructed not to live in but to make money from. It's the concurrence of the commodification of space and control of land use from afar. The two are inseparable.

As demand increased at the bottom of the housing market, the quality of the living space declined, to the extent that mid century tenements were unlivable, unhealthy breeding grounds of plagues of cholera and epidemics of tuberculosis. Interior rooms had no windows and multiple families might occupy a mere 300 sq ft space in a mere three tiny rooms.

Eventually government stepped in, but only after the Draft Riots, a working-class, immigrant near revolution with the riots lasting four full days. But the exploitation of housing space continues as fewer and larger landlords buy up more lots in the city, applying their legal resources to evict and harass tenants throughout their properties. As these giant corporate landlords increase their holdings, there will be less accountability and more harassment.

Similarly with city commerce. New York has seen steady increases in chain store proliferation. They limit consumer choices, limit job and entrepreneurial opportunities; they increase commercial rents because they can pay higher rents than any local service or mom and pop. The consequence was particularly evident in Hurricane Sandy when all of downtown lost electricity. The small bodegas and independent pizza shops and small restaurants and bars were all open almost immediately, sometimes giving away perishables. All the chain stores were closed and remained closed until five days later electricity was restored.

Locality is not the solution to all the woes of the world, but corporate control from afar threatens us with increasing disempowerment, loss of choice and identity and undermines community self-determination. Regaining community self-determination is the underlying motive of our group "NO 7-Eleven: resist chains and corporate control."

NO711's zoning amendment is better than a special zoning!

The NO711 zoning amendment -- to require all chains including banks go to the local community board for approval before opening -- would not only give the community board a chance to deny a chain where the community doesn't want it, but it also gives the community board leverage to negotiate with a chain store as they do with bars for their liquor approval. Stipluations could include wage scale, aesthetics, range of merchandise -- just about anything could be put on the table. It would give far-reaching power to the CB, a radical idea, but a necessary one if NYC is not to be given over entirely to corporatocracy.

So if McDonald's wanted to open two stores within a couple of blocks in a neighborhood where you have to walk a mile for a supermarket, a dry cleaner, a bike shop or ten miles to a credit union, or where there's a community center that's been waiting for an avaiable space but can't quite meet the chain-store-rent, the community board would be able to consider denying yet another McDonald's. But if Fresh & Co wanted to open on Delancey Street where the community welcomed it, the community board could still negotiate the signage, the hours, maybe even the payscale.

A special zoning that restricts chain stores (like the one CB3 is contemplating) doesn't allow for negotiations. It just says, x many is too many. Not only does that exclude any negotiation, it's also too inflexible. Times change. In ten years, any number chosen today is likely to be either too many or too few. One of the most depressing facts about urban planning documents is how quickly they become out of date, irrelevant or constraining.

But our zoning proposal can never be out of date -- it's maximally flexible. All it really says is, the community board can have a say -- any say, for or against -- if it wants. It wouldn't have to say anything. To paraphrase John Rawls, it's a piece of perfect procedural planning, a thing of urban planning beauty. 

NO 7-Eleven, a grassroots movement resisting the spread of chains and franchises, is holding a neighborhood-wide meeting this Wednesday. Their goal is to require that all corporate clone stores, including banks, be required to obtain approval before opening a new location so the community can have a say in the number and location of corporate chains and franchises. Details below. Please spread the word.

MEETING

NO 7-ELEVEN

Limit corporate clone stores

before they limit our food, our commerce, our labor, our streets and our New York City character

7-Eleven is opening a new location on the corner of 11th Street and Ave. A in June. 7-Eleven already opened 32 locations in Manhattan and has an additional 100 stores on the way! If you are as concerned about protecting the East Village and future of the city, please attend

Next 'No 7-Eleven' Meeting

Wednesday April 24

6:30-8:00pm

93  St. Marks Place

(Btwn 1st and Ave. A)

Web: www.no7eleven.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/no7eleven

Twitter: www.twitter.com/no7elevennyc

Sunday in the Park with NO 7-ELEVEN

We're going to chalk up the park at the Tompkins Square Park nonbandshell at 2pm and then take our chalk and our Community Wheel of Fortune to the corner of Avenue A and 11th Street, the site of the threatened 7-Eleven, and chalk up the street and talk to the passers-by who don't yet know what's coming to their neighborhood. Join us for some good old anti-corporate-anti-suburbanization-and-anti-Pringle-ization-of-our-souls-and-our-streets fun! 

Here's a video journalism piece CUNY TV did on us (NO 7-Eleven starts @ 12:45) --

http://219tvmagazine.journalism.cuny.edu/2013/04/10/march2013/

(Wissecracks about my apartment will be punished.)