From City Hall News "Chinatown pushes back against Mayor's reelection"

photo - city hall news



Chris Bragg of City Hall News
Sept. 18th 09

Closing of Park Row, Chatham Square development create backlash for Bloomberg

When he ran for re-election in 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had few bigger boosters than Eddie Chiu.

Chiu, head of the 109-year-old Lin Sing Association social club in Chinatown, allowed Bloomberg to use the group’s six-story headquarters on Mott Street as his Chinatown campaign office—and the mayor proceeded to take upwards of 80 percent of the vote in the neighborhood, winning the overwhelming support of Chiu and other small business owners.

But four years later, Chiu said his feelings have changed dramatically.

Far from allowing the mayor to use his office, Chiu is now refusing to endorse Bloomberg, despite numerous entreaties from his campaign. In fact, he recently allowed an anti-Bloomberg group to hold a press conference at the group’s headquarters blasting the mayor.

“It’s very different from when he was running for a second term, to where he is now,” Chiu said. “A lot of people in Chinatown have had a change of heart. I think they’ll vote for Thompson.”

Bill Thompson has been trying to take advantage of the unrest, making several campaign stops in the neighborhood and holding a press conference at Park Row in late June to receive the endorsement of the Civic Center Residents Coalition. The population flexed its political muscles recently by electing Margaret Chin to the Council and unseating incumbent Alan Gerson.

A bike lane on Grand Street that further narrowed the already tight street is a major concern, but Park Row appears to be the main point of contention for Chinatown voters. The thoroughfare once connected Chinatown with the rest of Lower Manhattan, but was shut down after 9/11 because of concerns about an attack on 1 Police Plaza.

Eight years later, the street remains closed.

Residents say that this has crippled both the economy and the quality of life in Chinatown, choking it from the rest of Manhattan, with traffic often clogging neighborhood streets.

Late last year, the Economic Development Corporation, the Department of Transportation and the Police Department proposed a fix to alleviate the traffic flow problems: a $50 million plan to redevelop Chatham Square, a complicated seven-way intersection south of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Most Chinatown business and civic leaders, however, have objected to the plan since it would essentially make the closing of Park Row permanent.

They also say it was developed without hearing concerns from affected residents.

“We’ve made offers and proposed many alternatives,” said Jeanie Chen, of the Civic Center Residents Coalition, a group that advocates for the reopening of Park Row. “But the mayor’s office wants to do this without community input.”

Bloomberg appears aware of the unrest. In late June, he held a private dinner with 10 leading members of the Chinese business community and members of the Chinese press. Following the meeting, the Chinese press declared that the mayor had indicated he was open to reopening of Park Row.

But when reporters then followed up with the mayor’s office after the meeting, it denied that the mayor had made any such promise.

The Bloomberg campaign did not respond to a request for comments on this or other issues related to Chinatown, or about his standing in the neighborhood.

Justin Yu, head of the powerful Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association business group, attended the dinner. A Bloomberg ally, Yu said that the mayor had promised to delay the start of the Chatham Square development—it had been scheduled to begin in July—and had not specifically promised to advocate for Park Row’s reopening.

Yu, who is considered so influential locally that some people call him the mayor of Chinatown, said that though he opposed the Chatham Square proposal, he would continue to support Bloomberg because of the mayor’s record on education and crime.

“Nobody satisfies people 100 percent of the time,” Yu explained.

Others contend that Yu has divided loyalties because his daughter, Pauleen Yu, is the Chinatown liaison for Bloomberg’s community affairs unit.

And they say the mere fact that Bloomberg is speaking only to the Chinatown elite, rather than seeking input from the community at large, represents the mayor’s attitude towards its residents.

“It’s indicative of a selective, colonial mentality,” said Jan Lee, a Chinatown small business owner and opponent of Bloomberg’s proposal. “In colonial situations, government has chosen to speak only to a select few leaders. They stay away from the masses.”

Others in the community wonder if the unrest with Bloomberg is as deep as some of the rhetoric suggests. During the 2005 campaign, they note, Bloomberg made a concession to the community by allowing bus traffic to again begin traveling down Park Row.

But Lee said that while Thompson has been campaigning often in the neighborhood, Bloomberg had not yet held an appearance.

“He can’t walk down Mott Street anymore,” Lee said. “We will no longer welcome him with open arms. And he knows that.”

--
ABOVE: Bill Thompson has been nurturing support among a Chinatown community unhappy with the mayor’s record, gaining support from local leaders like Jan Lee, a small business owner and executive vice president of the Civic Center Residents Coalition

Downtown Express covers the Chatham Square reconstruction delay

Volume 22, Number 05 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | June 12 - 18, 2009

Chinatown happy as traffic plan is stalled for now

By Julie Shapiro

The city will not begin reconstructing Chatham Square this summer, after the unpopular plan drew months of criticism from the community and elected officials.

The city insisted this week that the delay does not mean the $50 million project is shelved, but officials would not say when the work would start. Several Downtown politicians and community leaders said that the project is unlikely to move forward anytime soon.

“I don’t think they’re going to do anything anymore,” said Justin Yu, chairperson of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Yu met with D.O.T. Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and other high-level D.O.T. staff last week to discuss the Chatham Square plan. “Definitely she said they would reconsider it, review it,” Yu said of Sadik-Khan.

Yu is one of many Chinatown leaders who oppose the city’s proposal for the complicated seven-way intersection. The city wants to realign the streets that feed Chatham Square, connecting East Broadway to Worth St. and the Bowery to St. James Place. The plan would cut Park Row out of the intersection, essentially making permanent the post-9/11 decision to close part of the street to protect One Police Plaza.

Chinatown advocates spoke out against the city’s plan immediately when the city began pushing it late last year. The advocates were concerned that the city’s traffic and pedestrian improvements would be outweighed by the negative impact of the three-year construction on local businesses. When the city decided to move ahead with the reconfiguration anyway, residents and business owners banded together, holding rallies and gathering petition signatures.

“I guess D.O.T. got the message,” Yu said.

This week, the city acknowledged the delay in the project, but denied that anything beside the schedule had changed.

“The project is not suspended or shelved,” said Scott Gastel, D.O.T. spokesperson. “We are working on some timing and coordination issues,” he added in an e-mailed statement.

Gastel would not say when construction contracts would go out to bid or when work would begin.

The city previously said it was essential for construction to begin this summer, so that the intersection would be able to handle an increased flow of cars during Brooklyn Bridge work starting next year. Gastel would not say how the Chatham Square delay would impact the bridge work.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said in a statement that the reason D.O.T. is delaying the start of Chatham Square work is to coordinate it with the Brooklyn Bridge rehabilitation.

“I am pleased that the city has finally heeded our call to slow down this project,” Silver said in the statement. “Undertaking any major construction project in this area at this time would have a devastating effect on dozens of small businesses who are struggling during these difficult economic times.”

Since the bulldozers won’t be arriving in Chatham Square anytime soon, Councilmember Alan Gerson said the community now has time to work with D.O.T. on a plan that makes everyone happy.

“It’s a wonderful victory for the community,” said Gerson, who protested the Chatham Square plan last month with Comptroller Bill Thompson. “This gives us a chance to regroup.”

Jan Lee, a Chinatown activist and owner of an antiques store, also was glad the project is on hold, but said it’s important to remain vigilant. Lee heard from a city official that D.O.T. is only delaying the project to avoid widespread protests during election season.

If Mayor Mike Bloomberg gets re-elected in November, “this project starts the day after,” Lee said, based on what the city official told him.

Lee hopes the delay will give the Civic Center Residents Coalition time to build support for their alternate plan, which would leave the intersection largely as is, reducing the project’s scope, cost and duration. The plan, endorsed by Community Board 3, would add a new one-lane road directly connecting St. James Place to East Broadway but would leave Park Row in its central position, in the hope that it will one day reopen.

In a seven-page letter to C.B. 3 last month, Luis Sanchez, D.O.T.’s Lower Manhattan borough commissioner, said the community alternative plan would provide some relief to the traffic that snarls the intersection, but wouldn’t work as well as the city’s plan. Sanchez also said the city’s plan improves pedestrian safety and expands plaza space, while the community’s plan doesn’t.

C.B. 3’s Chatham Square Task Force, which relied on the expertise of traffic consultant Brian Ketcham, also recommended that the city add a second eastbound lane to Worth St.

In his May 1 letter, Sanchez agreed that widening Worth St. would improve traffic flow, and he said the city’s original plan included that. The city also wanted to add a third southbound lane to Bowery.

But the problem is that widening the streets would cut into park space that has both state and city protections, Sanchez wrote. In late 2007, D.O.T. asked elected officials if they would support removing some park space for traffic improvements, and they did not support it, Sanchez said.

Now, redesigning the intersection would require another five to seven months of work, Sanchez wrote.

“It is simply too late to consider such a fundamental change to the design,” he wrote, although his letter was written over a month before the city delayed the project indefinitely.

Gerson said Chatham Square’s current work delay gives the city more than enough time to get approval to remove a small amount of park space and redesign the intersection. Gerson supports demapping the park areas — which are basically concrete-topped plaza spaces — and he expects that it would take no more than a few months to do so, especially since the city is adding more park space in the design.

Silver, who has a large say on whether the park space is demapped, has not seen any specific proposals and has not taken a position, said Caryn Adams, Silver’s spokesperson. In general, D.O.T. should work with the community to reach a consensus for Chatham Square, Silver said in a statement.

Some Chinatown residents would prefer to leave the intersection as is.

Steven Wong, chairperson of the Lin Zexu Foundation, is concerned the construction will hurt his Chatham Square translation business, and he does not want the work to disrupt the central plaza that features a statue of Lin Zexu, a 19th-century Chinese scholar and official.

Before any work starts, Wong wants to see a detailed study of how the plan will improve pedestrian safety, so people “can walk across the street without fear of getting run over by cars,” Wong said.

Julie@DowntownExpress.com
COMMENTS:
Chris Connolly June 11th, 2009 at 7:06 PM

Congratulations to the Chinatown community's effort in beating back the onslaught of the bully boys at DOT and their handlers in Transportation Alternatives and their lackeys on Streetsblog. No one wanted this stupid proposal except DOT commish Sadik-Khan, the chief bully, and her little hipster friends from Brooklyn who control the show at DOT nowadays. Congrats also to the community board for standing by the neighborhood residents and businesses in beating back this assault. You put Sadik-Khan in her place! Let her go back to Times Square and cater to the needs of the tourists there. She and her minions are not welcome downtown.

smallbusinessadvocate June 12th, 2009 at 12:20 AM

in Dec. of 2008 people who did not live in Chinatown, didn't own businesses in Chinatown, and never attended the numerous meetings with the D.O.T. on this subject decided - after seeing the D.O.T. produced drawings of the proposed Chatham Square reconstruction for less than a week to have a "call to arms" for NYC to go against the Chinatown community with a blog posting entitled : "Oppo Expected to Improvements for Chatham Square, Park Row by Brad Aaron on December 1, 2008" justifying the "call to arms" with nothing more than "Unfortunately, the proposal -- a joint project of Parks, City Planning, Design and Construction, and DOT -- is likely to draw opposition from those who consider auto traffic key to Chinatown's prosperity. As always, turnout by livable streets advocates is key.". It is SO sad that this kind of impulse to REACT against communities who are trying to cope with plans that THEY had to fight to get released for review without the AID of a professional engineer. Pedestrian safety was and always has been paramount to the Chinatown community as well as economic viability. ANY time that new comers to NYC decide to have a "call to arms" against the communities of NYC, acting like soldiers of the D.O.T. who have drunk deep of the "green" koolaid, we must rise up against them and remind the public officials , as was done with Chatham Square in this instance, that WE ARE NEW YORK, not these reactionary newbies.

Thompson said to City Hall in Dec. 2008 "Chatham Square must be delayed"

PR08-12-183

December 16, 2008
Contact: Press Office

(212) 669-3747

THOMPSON TO CITY: CHATHAM SQUARE PROPOSAL MUST BE DELAYED

New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. is expressing deep concerns about the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Chatham Square / Park Row Improvement Program.

In a letter to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan – which can be viewed at www.comptroller.nyc.gov – Thompson criticized the agency for moving forward with the plan despite overwhelming community opposition from Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods.

“It’s clear that Chatham Square – with its long crossings and poor pedestrian sight lines – must be rethought, and that he congested traffic on Park Row must be improved,” Thompson said.. “But process matters, and the City has not engaged in sufficient dialogue with community members. As it stands now, neighborhood representatives feel left out of the process.”

Thompson also expressed concern that Community Board 3 is scheduled to vote on the plan tonight, after one hardly-publicized hearing on December 2, 2008.

“As a result, a plan that would completely tear down and redesign a large area of Chinatown may be approved within the span of two weeks,” Thompson added. “Clearly, community members have not been given enough time to respond to the plan nor even comprehend it, as specific details have been perfunctory at best.”

In the letter, Thompson emphasized that DOT cannot guarantee that local small businesses will be supported during the project’s construction phase as a fatal flaw. He also cited DOT’s lack of a specific timeline for the project as problematic, and stressed that the plan does not make clear when, exactly, Park Row will be opened.

“These and other questions must be answered before this ill-conceived plan moves forward,” Thompson said. “For the sake of community members, local businesses, and our City government’s responsibility to operate fairly and transparently, I strongly urge you to delay this proposal and being to address the community’s significant needs and concerns.”

Breaking News - Chatham Square Reconstruction put on hold for at least a year.

A CCRC tipster reports today that the D.O.T. Commish had a meeting with the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association board of directors Wednesday to announce that the Chatham Square reconstruction will be delayed for a year. It was noted that no media were invited to attend this meeting.
The D.O.T. stated at the meeting that the reason for the delay was that the D.O.T. had not yet sent out the bids to contractors for the reconstruction, even though at numerous public presentations they claimed bids went out in January of 2009. CCRC was told that the contract review process would be finalized in June of 09, with construction started on the first phase of the project, the water main replacement, in July 09.
Sources tell CCRC that no government contracts have been signed for Chatham Square so it is unlikely that the water main project will start, much less the total reconstruction and reconfiguration.
It is no mistake that the bids were never sent out to contractors because this is, after all a Mayoral election year. Mayor Bloomberg floated many balloons in the area during the last several years trying to access the popularity of such a major undertaking designed to permanently close Park Row. He tried unsuccessfully to strong arm the Chinatown community into swallowing a thinly veiled ploy to keep Park Row from reopening to appease the NYPD Commish.
Continued bad press, protests, press conferences, and exposure on the Park Row and Chatham Square issues finally kept the construction bids from ever seeing the light of day.
It's clear that they Mayor was hedging his bets on whether the pressure would last, why else would he hold up the bidding process? Knowing the project would be met with thousands of protesters as the bulldozers moved into Chatham Square he sensed his ever dwindling popularity slipping further into the abyss.
Perhaps it was seeing his rival, Comptroller Thompson, at the LMDC headquarters supporting CCRC in their plea for the LMDC board to stop all funding for Chatham Square that was the final straw. Public Advocate candidate Norman Siegel would prove a formidable force if elected and seeing him supporting Chinatown on this issue probably didn't sit well either.
The only SURE way to keep the D.O.T.'s plans for Chatham Square from moving forward is to vote Mayor Bloomberg OUT OF OFFICE.
CCRC will continue to lobby the LMDC for an opportunity to present the community alternative plans for Chatham Square.
The year long delay will be an opportunity for the rest of NYC and City Council, and D.O.T. to examine the merits of the community plan.

UPDATE: This blog posting has been listed on numerous community blogs throughout lower Manhattan, including www.curbed.com (which receives 2 million hits per month).