Will an Armory deal be good for the community?

Previous community benefits agreements struck in the Bronx are either examples of responsible growth or failures of government to stick up for constituents — depending on who’s talking.

By N. Clark Judd
njudd@riverdalepress.com

The Related Companies, the Bronx borough president and community leaders agree: if Related gets to turn the now-city-owned Kingsbridge Armory into a nearly 600,000-square-foot mall, the developer will sign a binding contract agreeing to concessions for the community.

But when people start talking about what should go into that contract, consensus becomes harder to find. The contract, called a community benefits agreement, would be following the pattern of similar deals modeled after the development of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. But two previous such contracts struck in the Bronx are either examples of responsible development or failures of government to stick up for its constituents — depending on who’s talking.

When Adolfo Carrión Jr. was Bronx borough president and Assemblyman Jose Rivera was chairman of the Bronx’s Democratic political machine, the two officials spearheaded a deal for the new Yankee Stadium that was supposed to bring billions over a 40-year span in grant money, equipment for sports teams and Yankees tickets to borough residents. The Yankees were also to tear down their old stadium and put in parkland to replace the acres lost to their new stadium. That part of the deal is well behind schedule, though scaffolding has recently appeared around the old stadium, indicating it may be torn down soon.

The Yankees deal was struck in 2006, but the fund didn’t make its first payout in 2008, giving money to several Little League teams for sports equipment. The fund was expected to give out $800,000 in grants to local non-profits last year and is expected to do so again this year. Community leaders like Community Board 4 District Manager Jose Rodriguez say they hear the Yankees fund is still giving out money, but they’re not exactly sure who’s getting it.

More information isn’t readily available.

The former fund administrator, Michael Drezin, was fired last year and has sued, alleging fund board chairman Serafin Mariel breached his fiscal responsibility to the fund by storing its money in the bank he founded.

Mr. Mariel did not respond to repeated calls seeking information about what’s being done with the money, but a spokesman for current Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., John DeSio, said his boss believes the fund is being administered properly and will keep tabs on it.

Many residents don’t believe the deal has lived up to its billing.

“We have no benefits to speak of,” Joyce Hogi, who lives near Yankee Stadium, said at a public hearing Mr. Diaz held at Lehman College on July 27. “The community was not involved. We get no breaks.”

As for the promised parks, said Ms. Hogi, “We lost parks, and we still don’t have any replacement parks.”

Throughout 2008, the Yankees fund was castigated in news reports for its delay in beginning payouts, and a park advocates organization issued a report criticizing the city and the sports team for delays in the construction of other Bronx parks promised as part of the Yankees deal.

For another recent largescale development, the Gateway Center, the Bronx was scheduled to get $3 million over five years for job training and placement. Related, working on that job too, was replacing a public market with a mall.

The agreement only held Related to “good-faith efforts” or “commercially reasonable” measures to work with unions and meet job training and job placement guidelines, which wasn’t enough for Susan Mendoza, who was then executive director of Bronx Independent Living Services.

She says that when representatives from Related and the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation went into a room to go over a late draft of the benefits agreement, people like her — picked to represent Bronx residents in negotiations — were left outside.

“We weren’t in that meeting with the developers,” said Ms. Mendoza. “And then they all came out, you know, smiling and backslapping and this kind of stuff, and it was a done deal! It was a done deal. That community benefits agreement, the first one that was created, has no teeth in it.”

She refused to sign the deal. In the end, only the presidents of Mount Hope Housing Corporation, Hostos Community College, and the New Bronx Chamber of Commerce signed the agreement on behalf of the Bronx.

The Chamber of Commerce president, Leonard Caro, says Related has followed through on its commitments even if the agreement it signed left it room to renege. The other parties were unavailable for comment.

“In the beginning, there were tree plantings that we needed to do, we succeeded in that,” he said. “There were a number of garbage cans that needed to be replaced, in the buildings surrounding that.

“We were able to fulfill as many things as the committee had been involved with,” he later added.

Mr. Caro said that according to quarterly reports filed by the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, 4,000 Bronx residents have been interviewed for jobs and about 800 qualified applicants are now at work at the Gateway Center. Between 1,500 and 2,000 will be hired through the Gateway project, he said, though he admitted they would largely work retail jobs. They pay enough to get started in the work world, he said, if not enough to support a family.

Among the mall’s other benefits are 2,000 discounted membership cards to a BJ’s Wholesale Club (a big-box discount retail store) at Gateway that will go to local residents, Mr. Caro said.

But the Gateway deal, too, is mired in controversy. Its former fund administrator, Angel Cruz, was also fired. In April, he sued, court records show, alleging that some of the $3 million for job training may have been spent on salaries for BOEDC staff instead. He reportedly later withdrew his suit. Mr. Diaz has ordered a full accounting of BOEDC’s activities but said through a spokesman that he believed the suit was frivolous.

However, Mr. Diaz is not sure that benefits agreements in the Bronx have worked as they should.

“I’ve always maintained that maybe we could have done a little bit better in the past with the other community benefits agreements,” he said, adding that his public hearing on the Armory project stretched three and a half hours to accommodate everyone who wanted to tell him what they thought of the redevelopment proposal. Unlike two public hearings held by Community Board 7 where dozens of people could not get in to speak because the meeting rooms were filled to capacity, he said, “no one got locked out in this hearing. Everyone was heard.”

The City Council will likely exercise its right to weigh in on the project as well. It could even veto the entire effort. But City Councilman Oliver Koppell, who represents Riverdale and whose district ends on the Armory’s northern border at West 195th Street, has said he’s not certain the council can legally even consider the substance of a community benefits agreement as it weighs a land use issue, much less act as party to one.

Mr. Diaz has until August 24 to make his recommendations to the City Planning Commission about what to do on the project.

This is part of the August 6, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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