Post 34: Where we are now and persistent misconceptions

As always, with the exception of public figures, I use altered names to protect the individuals in this history.

A rezoning takes a long time, as does a law suit. During the wait, CWG supported many protests, town halls, a movie screening, a zoning panel, petitions and lots of tabling in the community. Most important, it supported two city council campaigns to get Chris Marte, who early on supported and promoted the CWG plan, elected. In the first campaign he came very close -- just a few votes -- to unseating the incumbent Margaret Chin. In the second campaign, he beat out the many contenders, winning the election on a platform that featured passing the CWG plan as a whole. 

Before concluding this brief chronicle of the CWG, this might be a good moment to describe the group and how it operates. When CWG was cobbling together a rezoning plan, there were many conflicting interests that could not be decided without a vote. After the plan was agreed upon, the group turned to implementation. This contained little or no controversy or difference of opinion since the interest was all one -- to get the city to accept and implement the plan. From the second reconstruction of the group, it has moved forward by consensus. That is, members suggest ideas and the group deliberates until the best strategy or tactic emerges that will promote the plan. 

The group has also expanded its membership since the pause, bringing in a variety of progressive groups.

It may seem odd that the Coalition law suit made a big deal of the loss of light and air that the waterfront towers would induce, rather than their raising of real estate values in the surrounding areas that would likely result in broad gentrification and displacement. The reason for this focus on issues that are tangential to the problem that CWG was created to address is actually quite simple. The existing buildings were constructed in a Large Scale Residential District, a legal designation which includes a guarantee of light and air to the tenants. These guarantees are the only legal requirements that the tenants could use to file its law suit. In the case of the Coalition law suit this was a case of the local tenants using the law to protect not only themselves, but their neighbors in adjacent neighborhoods. It was really about displacement, not light and air. But the law allows few hooks to grab onto, and these were the only ones on offer. 

When Downtown Independent Democrats discussed joining, they held a meeting which Chinatown property owners attended and spoke. To my surprise they were still worried about landmarking in the CWG plan, although there is no landmarking in the plan, no landmarking recommendations, and nothing in the plan is addressed to the Landmarks Preservation Commission and all of the plan is addressed to DCP and possibly HPD and DHCR. 

This is typical of community activism. Nobody reads anything, everyone gets their information from hearsay which they further distort with their confirmation bias. In eight years not one of the property owners has yet read the plan, judging by what they say about it. Nevertheless, they are willing to misrepresent it as if they knew something about it. Long ago I promised them that I would do all I could to keep landmarking out of the plan, and I made good on that promise. 

To make things worse, one of the property owners tried to undermine the credibility of CGW by saying that not only were the property owners against the plan, but CCBA even left CWG. He failed to mention that CCBA had stopped attending CWG in 2010 long before it began crafting a plan, and knew nothing about CWG plan except what the property owners told them. In other words, CCBA left CWG because the property owners asked them to leave. Yet the property owner presented CCBA's leaving as an independent action. 

Such is the duplicity of community activism. People don't read, don't know what the hell they are talking about, and yet they will say anything regardless of truth to get what they think they want, not knowing the issues at all. I understand knee-jerk reactions, but community activism turns every knee-jerk response into a crusade that will not cease until everything before it has been destroyed, including themselves. 

I've already mentioned the failure of CB2 to protect its piece of Chinatown. Had they had just a little more interest and diligence, they might have prevented the worst aspects of the SoHo/NoHo rezoning. 

Final comment: Zoning cannot prevent gentrification and displacement. If it curtails development so the local landlord can't sell out to a developer who will evict the tenants, then the landlord has all the more pressure to harass tenants to eviction and bring in high-rent gentrifiers since that's their only means of making money. Zoning can slow the process, but not prevent it.