Guy Lotus Blog: State Historic Preservation Office Never Contacted About Underground Railroad Houses

Here's a posting on Guy Lotus Blog dated today, but based on news that came out a few months ago. The NYC Economic Development Corporation hired a firm called AKRF to study the connections between Duffield Street and the Underground Railroad. AKRF reported back that there was insufficient evidence at this time of Underground Railroad activity, in part because of a NY State Historic Preservation Office determination. But according to State Historic Preservation Office Never Contacted About Underground Railroad Houses:

The New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) had never made a determination on the eligibility of the Duffield Street Houses to the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of historic properties. Not only has the agency not issued an official determination (according to their records), but agency staff was never consulted about the possibility of the buildings being eligible nor did it seem that the agency was ever consulted about the larger Downtown Brooklyn Plan…

“This is a major omission on the part of the City and their consultants. The basis of the Research Report is that these buildings should not be protected because they are not eligible for any kind of historic recognition - a point that the majority of the peer reviewers disputed. That the government agency who is tasked to make this exact determination was not even consulted seems negligent at best,” said Simeon Bankoff, Executive Director of the Historic Districts Council.

Failure to inspect basements

Some people get punished for failing to make inspections; others get paid not to make inspections.

There can be dire consequences when the city fails its job to do environmental inspections, and Bloomberg acted quickly yesterday to relieve three senior fire officials of their posts. Their failure to inspect the Deutsche Bank basement appears to be one of the factors leading to the recent death of two fire fighters.

This is in stark contrast to AKRF, which wrote an environmental review of the Duffield Street homes. After working for more than two years and receiving a reported $500,000, AKRF failed to send an archeologist inspect the basements of the Duffield and Gold Street properties.

The consequence for this shoddy inspection process is a continuing stream of contracts with the city and state. AKRF led the environmental review of the World Trade Center, the Columbia University expansion into Harlem and the Atlantic Yards.

Courier-Life: Mayor offers new plan, but street demolition is still on

The Courier-Life publications ran a story in its various papers about Bloomberg's plan to commemorate Brooklyn Abolitionism while destroying the Duffield Abolitionist homes. The article reports:

“Extensive research into the history of the houses on Duffield and Gold Streets failed to produce evidence that directly connected Underground Railroad activity to the houses,” said EDC spokesperson Janel Patterson.

The NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) hired AKRF to do the environmental review (which includes cultural resources) and a follow-up study of the Underground Railroad connections at the Duffield Street properties. Even though AKRF has an archeologist on staff, the "extensive research" cited by Janel Petterson did not include an archeologist. The "extensive research" also chose to ignore the advice of their Peer Reviewers. The Peer Reviewers of this "extensive research" came to the conclusion that these properties should be preserved for further research, and the EDC published their findings here.

There is no dispute that the area was home to a great deal of Abolitionist activity at a time when New York was strongly pro-slavery. The EDC has failed to disprove that there was no Underground Railroad activity on Duffield, so they are very careful in their language.

AKRF was also the company that led the environmental review process at the World Trade Center, an area which includes the deadly fire at the Deutsche Bank building.

Brooklyn Star: Duffield hard to ignore

The Downtown Brooklyn Star wrote an opinion piece, which does not seem to be online. The piece was probably written after Bloomberg announced a new panel to commemorate Brooklyn Abolitionist history, and before it was revealed that Bloomberg had issued an RFP for the destruction of the Duffield Abolitionist homes.

Nevertheless, the Star sums up its position in the title "Homes on Duffield & Gold Will Be Hard for Panel to Ignore" (published 8/16/07, page 9):

It seems very unlikely this latest panel [will] come back in favor of condemning Duffield and Gold Streets. Thanks to the AKRF debacle, [the Bloomberg] administration has already lost too much credibility.

Whether Bloomberg has realized it or not, many in New York City and beyond recognize the importance of the Duffield Abolitionist homes.

Infrastructure breakdown- who profits?

Today the subways were a mess, but this isn't a surprise. At least we're not Minneapolis, or at least it's not the ConEd explosion or a mine collapse.

While New York City is suffering from an ailing electrical and sewer infrastructure, we are on a building boom. Somehow, it's the priority to build endless luxury highrises and not fix potholes. How is this done?

For all of the megaprojects going up, one firm is responsible for most of the environmental studies: AKRF. This blog focuses on the Duffield Street homes, and we are committed to examining the credibility of AKRF's historical analysis.

You may ask, Who cares if AKRF screws up a historical analysis? The problem is that "historical resources" fall under the scope of environmental analysis, just like air pollution and waste water. So if AKRF lacks credibility in its historical analysis of Duffield, this raises questions about its traffic analysis.

And guess what? AKRF has been challenged in these other areas as well. So in honor of today's subway delays, here is a roundup of the links of shame:

• Consulting Firm Counts Both Developer and State As Clients on Atlantic Yards
• Columbia, ESDC-AKRF'd Up
• Revolving door: consultants AKRF and Habib worked for Ratner, then ESDC
• Time to call for a Probe into AKRF
• Manhattanville catch up
• Neutrality in Expansion at Columbia Is Questioned
• EDC Document Undermined by Local Reporter's Poetry
• Affidavit of Brian Ketcham -against- NYC Planning Commission, NYC Department of City Planning, IKEA, etc.
• Big in Yonkers
• Columbia's Lion Eyes
• AKRF lets client get off the hook for environmental clean-up
• Polluted lot next to Pepsi Site raises alarm
  
• And from AKRF's own website, the firm has been chosen to work on the World Trade Center Memorial and the IKEA Red Hook historic inventory
  

In Red Hook, AKRF helped IKEA in their plans to destroy the historic graving dock. So instead of finding creative new uses for a potentially important historical attraction, IKEA will build... a parking lot. What a surprise.

Is AKRF coming out of the shadows?

Yesterday The Observer published an article on AKRF, "The Enviro-Consultants Everyone Calls."

AKRF now employs a staff of 240 in five locations along the Eastern Seaboard and evaluates, by its own estimates, the majority of public projects in New York City and a number of the private ones as well.

AKRF has become so ubiquitous that this low-key firm, headquartered on Park Avenue South, is no longer as invisible as it would like to be. In May, a handful of City Council members attacked the firm at a public session when it failed to find evidence that a downtown Brooklyn street was once on the Underground Railroad. In June, a state judge suggested that AKRF had a conflict of interest because it was working simultaneously for both Columbia University and the state agency overseeing the school’s expansion into West Harlem.

AKRF was chosen by the NYC Economic Development Corporation without competitive bid to analyze the historical claims of Abolitionist and Underground Railroad activity in Downtown Brooklyn. Our public authorities may give AKRF a free pass, but hopefully the citizens will not.

Newly Released Evidence of Buildings Communicating

AKRF had to do some dances to try to disprove that the Duffield Street Abolitionist homes never sheltered escaped slaves. Nobody denies that well-known Abolitionists lived there, and one neighborhood reporter, Walt Whitman, wrote about an escaped slave coming to his home in Leaves of Grass.

For some reason, AKRF found it problematic that the buildings communicated- which in this case means that there were underground tunnels connecting them. Various sources, including NoLandGrab.org report that the 2007 AKRF report published an 1855 map of Duffield, but left out the key to the map. Even though AKRF spent 2 1/2 years researching the Duffield Street history, they failed to hire an architect to study the site, even though they have one on staff.

Despite AKRF's denials, it certainly looks to me that the basement of 227 Duffield used to have a passageway connecting it to 225 Duffield. I have posted images and a video that show that most of the basement was constructed with stone, except for a small portion on the front part of the northern wall.

For photos, click here.

For the video, click here.

AKRF works boths sides of the fence again

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports on the potential conflict of interest of AKRF, which wrote a historical analysis of the Abolitionist homes on Duffield Street:

Consulting firm AKRF worked for Forest City Ratner on the Atlantic Yards project before being hired by the state to perform the environmental assessment of the same project, according to documents.

Atlantic Yards opponents are calling the arrangement a conflict of interest, noting that the environmental assessment is a critical part of the public review process, when the project’s potential impacts on neighborhoods are assessed and the public is given the opportunity to voice concerns. Allee King Rosen & Fleming Inc, as AKRF was called when it was one of the first firms specializing in environmental assessments in the 1980s, is still among only a handful in the city capable of conducting full-scale reviews of projects in-house. The city and state hire AKRF for the bulk of their large development projects — including the Downtown Brooklyn rezoning and Brooklyn Bridge Park — but the firm also counts developers as clients.

“It’s reasonable to wonder if AKRF would jeopardize future contracts with [Ratner] if it were to find significant problems with [Ratner’s] flagship project,” said Jim Vogel of the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods.

The AtlanticYardsReport.com then asks the ESDC what the policy is regarding conflict of interest and disclosure:

It remains in question, however, whether the disclosure is sufficient to have confidence that AKRF's work would be in the public interest or in the interest of its former client.

I had asked the ESDC what its policy is; in other words, how "limited" must work be and what's a sufficient time gap? After all, Philip Habib & Associates was a subcontractor for AKRF on the environmental review and apparently did more work for Forest City Ratner; Habib was listed as a consultant in the developer's May 2005 bid for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard.

It's also odd that the ESDC didn't see fit to issue any statement to me, given that I asked more than once for comment and gave the agency sufficient lead time.

Given that AKRF has a record of playing fast and loose with neutrality, this is just one more reason to question their impartiality on Duffield Street. Their recent report found that there was insufficient historical evidence at this time to prevent the Duffield Street Abolitionist homes from being destroyed in order to build a parking lot.

Michael Bloomberg, Surrealist

One of the great powers of art is to make the viewer question assumptions. Surrealists are specialists at shaking up reality, and undermining the assumptions of objectivity.

What a great description of Michael Bloomberg! Under his administration, firms like AKRF have undermined assumptions about objectivity, as in the recent installation where a judge ruled that AKRF lacked neutrality in the Columbia expansion.

Bloomberg has been working hard to upend the assumptions of the bourgeoisie. For instance, some people think that government should serve the people. Wrong! The Bloombergian art movement shows that by recycling consultants for private interests and public entities, the old-fashioned distinctions between the two are obliterated. A wonderful example of Bloomberg’s artistry is that Jim Stuckey is now the Art Commissioner [editors note: this is not a joke]. His most recent job was working as the spokesperson for Forest City Ratner.

The coup de grace of the Bloombergian revolutionary movement is in his ability to turn historical assumptions on their heads. He has expounded upon the need for turning Downtown Brooklyn into a creative center, and his means of doing this is by turning Abolitionist homes into parking lots. What a bold stroke! Would that Marcel Duchamp or Andy Warhol had the ability overturn conventions!

We can only guess what the next step in Bloomberg’s creative oeuvre. He has been an entrepreneur, a subway rider, mayor, and an artist. Maybe underwater dance choreography? The possibilities are endless.

AKRF takes some heat

The New York City Economic Development Corporation/AKRF probably didn't expect much of a fight on Duffield Street, since the businesses and homes they want to destroy don't have deep pockets.

But this story is different in Harlem, where Columbia University/ESDC/AKRF want to destroy several businesses, including one that does buy the proverbial ink by the gallon.

Meet Nick Sprayregen, "real estate investor, king of the Tuck-It-Away storage empire, and newly minted newspaper owner." He is featured in a Village Voice article, "Big in Yonkers— Columbia foe buys house organ, ponders playing it."

Sprayregen vows to drag Columbia all the way to U.S. Supreme Court, and says he's got the money to do it. With the help of civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, he won a Freedom of Information case against the state on June 27. At issue are 117 documents that the Empire State Development Corporation, the public entity that would condemn his properties, has refused to hand over. The ESDC is appealing, so Sprayregen still has nada.

But he did succeed in revealing, by means of the judge's order, that the school and the state are perhaps overly close on this one. At the outset, Columbia hired the AKRF consulting firm to advise it in dealings with the state. As part of those dealings, the state is conducting a study of the neighborhood, known colloquially as the blight study—a task for which it called in the same firm, AKRF.

The judge in Sprayregen's suit took a dim view of the ESDC's official stance on the relationship, that a "Chinese wall" existed between AKRF's work for Columbia and its work for the public. AKRF referred questions to the ESDC, where a spokesperson declined to comment on why the agency won't release the paperwork. Columbia's spokesperson, La-Verna Fountain, says the school did nothing wrong, since it hired AKRF first. Who is Columbia to tell anyone, including the state, how to conduct their business?

It's great the our public authorities are encouraging economic development. But they are supposed to serve the public, not the other way around. Unfortunately, the ESDC and the EDC have almost no public accountability, and firms like AKRF seem shameless in exploiting the situation.

Albee Darned: Brooklyn's Albee Square

Forgotten New York has a great photo essay about Downtown Brooklyn. The page is titled "Albee Darned" (cute, huh?) and among many observations, it has this to say about Duffield Street:

The Duffield Street Houses, 182, 184, 186 and 188, just north of St. Boniface [pictured above], have been designated NYC landmarks since 2001. When Metrotech was constructed along part of Johnson Street (Tech Place) from 1989-1995 the houses were moved here. They were built by Johnson Street's namesake Samuel Johnson in the early 1800s.

However: it strikes your webmaster as somewhat odd that 225, 231, 235, 223, 227 and 233 Duffield (see above), which have been on Duffield all along and are purported to have more history behind them, have not been so designated.

The site continues:

A group of buildings at 225, 231, 235, 223, 227 and 233 Duffield (shown at left) are believed to date to the Civil War era and are further believed by their owners to be former homes of abolitionists, if not stops on the Underground Railroad, as was the nearby 1846 First Free Congregational Church, later the African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church on Bridge Street south of Johnson Street in MetroTech Center.

The city has plans to seize the houses via eminent domain, demolish most of the houses on this stretch of Duffield and replace them mostly with parking spaces, and further develop 500 new hotel rooms, 1,000 units of mixed income housing, more than 500,000 square feet of retail space and at least 125,000 square feet of new office space in the area.

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) appears to be washing its hands of involvement with three endangered Duffield Street houses which are linked to the Underground Railroad and the anti-slavery movement in mid-19th century Brooklyn.

In a May 28th letter to Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, LPC Commissioner Robert Tierney said, “Given the dramatic changes that will occur to the streetscape of Duffield Street, I believe the commemoration of the important role Brooklyn has played in the history of abolitionism will be better served by the program of memorialization referenced by EDC (the city’s Economic Development Corporation) and the City Council than by preserving the three buildings.” [Brooklyn Graphic]

We've seen the LPC's reluctance to get involved with altered yet historic buildings before.

The city hired consulting firm AKRF, which has conveniently failed to find any reason to preserve the houses.

A new city report has again cast doubt on claims by residents of Duffield Street that their Downtown Brooklyn houses were part of the Underground Railroad.

A city-hired consulting firm revealed this week that there is no conclusive evidence that seven houses on Duffield and Gold streets were part of the fabled fugitive slave network.

“It [the Duffield houses] ... does not have a significant association with a national figure of the Underground Railroad and his/her Underground Railroad activity,” the report concluded.

The report by AKRF, a consulting firm that researches historic claims, also refuted residents’ contention that the buildings were connected to known abolitionists.

“Of course they’re going to say that,” said Joy Chatel, the owner of 227 Duffield St. “They’re trying to whitewash the truth — that my house was part of the Underground Railroad, and that it was owned by known abolitionists.” [Brooklyn Paper]

There is a firm called AKRF which has 25 years experience in squelching opposition to big development projects. They recently undertook their longest venture in historical analysis: Two and a half years devoted to trying to deny the claims that Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn was part of the Underground Railroad of the Civil War era. They failed spectacularly. Abolitionists who walked the streets of Downtown Brooklyn would be proud. [Underground Railroad Safe Houses]

Oh, and here's a gratuitous additional photo from the Forgotten New York page:

Round up of press criticism of public authorities & AKRF

Another week, another scandal. The Empire State Development Corporation (the state agency, which is not the same as the NYC Economic Development Corporation, which is in charge of destroying the Duffield Street homes) got in trouble again for the "practice of favoring political over economic criteria" and for conflicts of interest with firm like our friends AKRF.

The recent revelations were released in a report by A. T. Kearny, and were covered by:

• Atlantic Yards Report: Revamping Empire State Development: stop playing politics, says report
• Reuters: Start revamp of NY economic arm with its name: study
• The NY Sun: Study Calls for Big Changes At Empire State Development
• Develop Don't Destroy: Report: Stop Playing Politics With ESDC
• NoLandGrab.org: Revamping Empire State Development: stop playing politics, says report
  

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods released a related statement: AKRF-ESDC-FCRC Connections Raise Questions About Objectivity of "Atlantic Yards" Environmental Review. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle followed up with an article: Consulting Firm Counts Both Developer and State As Clients on Atlantic Yards.

All of this raises questions of the credibility of the public authorities to use eminent domain for public purposes. The EDC admits that Duffield Street was home to Abolitionists, and it offers vague benefits of their proposed parking lot. The ESDC has been caught playing politics with their friends AKRF, and it looks like the same thing is happening on Duffield Street.

Yet more questions about AKRF

Doubt about AKRF's impartiality have come up yet again. In Revolving door: consultants AKRF and Habib worked for Ratner, then ESDC, Norman Oder reports:

In a critique issued in May of the city's similar environmental review process, Hope Cohen of the Manhattan Institute wrote:
The revolving door between powerful government and highly paid private-sector CEQR jobs means that no one wants to go on record blowing the whistle. As one developer explained, “Ninety percent of EASs are done by a small circle of firms where you’re buying the ability to influence the bureaucrats—whom they hire. A guy works for the city, then goes to work for AKRF [a leading consulting firm for environmental review], and you can’t get out of the circle.”

Does it ever seem that our governmental public planning people seem out of touch? They may seem to ignore the realities of the 21st century, but they are very much in touch with who will hire them next.

Columbia, ESDC-AKRF'd Up

The Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog recently wrote about the recent judicial ruling that questions the independence of AKRF and the ESDC in working with Columbia University:

In what may become a watershed decision, Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich ruled that the Empire State Development Corporation must hand over confidential documents and correspondence to opponents of the Columbia expansion plan....

Now we have commented previously about the serious weaknesses in the city's land use review process, and in particular the worthiness of the so-called environmental consulting work that is done on behalf of developers. The good folks at the Manhattan Institute, no knee-jerk opponents of development, have cogently alerted us to the unhealthy collaboration between developers, their environmental consultants, and the review agencies that are supposed to do the proper due diligence of the data that is submitted on behalf of development projects....

In some ways ESDC, Columbia and AKRF have done us all a favor and, through their blatant disregard for any semblance of pretense, clearly demonstrated the phony nature of the UURP process in this city. Now the only thing that needs to be done here is for the consultants to be recused; and for the entire ULURP process to be suspended until a clearer understanding of the interrelationships between the parties is fully revealed.

The Columbia Spectator published a related article: Judge Orders Expansion Documents Released: Ruling Questions Objectivity of Consultants Who Work for Both State and Columbia.

Many of these issues are at play in the Downtown Brooklyn redevelopment. In Brooklyn, a city authority, the EDC, wants to destroy a potentially important cultural resource for the area, the Duffield Street homes. And in order to get the research results they want, they hire AKRF.

AKRF's Neutrality in Expansion at Columbia Is Questioned

“A.K.R.F., presumably, seeks to succeed in securing an outcome that its client, Columbia, would favor.”

This was the determination of Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich of State Supreme Court regarding the use of eminent domain in West Harlem.

The judge found that otherwise confidential documents should be available to certain critics of Columbia’s expansion plans because of the appearance of collusion between the state and Columbia.

The New York Times in "Neutrality in Expansion at Columbia Is Questioned" by (June 30, 2007 by Anemona Hartocollis) writes:

The main issue was the state’s hiring last year of a consultant, Allee King Rosen & Fleming Inc., or A.K.R.F., that was already working on the expansion project for Columbia, the judge noted.

In a ruling dated June 27 but released yesterday, Justice Kornreich ordered the state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, to release 117 documents... to the West Harlem Business Group, a group of property owners who are resisting Columbia’s expansion.

A.K.R.F. is the state’s lead consultant on what is called a neighborhood condition study. The study is being done to determine whether the state would be justified in using its power of eminent domain to condemn property sought by Columbia for its expansion....

“The easiest way to put it is you can’t serve two masters, and that’s what’s going on here,” [Norman Siegel, a lawyer for some of the property owners] said. “The government has the power to condemn my clients’ property. But the process should be neutral and objective, and when you find out the government has retained Columbia’s consultant, it can’t be neutral anymore. It’s biased.”

Robert Hornsby, a spokesman for Columbia, said, “We weren’t involved at all with E.S.D.C.’s independent decision to hire outside consultants.”

Similar questions are being raised the the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) plan to confiscate and demolish the private homes and businesses in Downtown Brooklyn. The EDC hired AKRF without a competitive bid, and AKRF returned a report that concluded that there was insufficient proof that the mid-19th century homes should be preserved bedause of connections with the Underground Railroad. AKRF reached this determination without using their staff archeologist and despite the calls for the preservation of the properties by the Peer Reviewers of their own document.

When questioned by the City Council on why they hired the EDC without looking at other companies, the EDC responded that AKRF has decades of experience writing similar reports. Justice Kornreich has shed some light on AKRF's related experience.

Unlike the city's Downtown Brooklyn rezoning, the Columbia expansion utilizes a state-wide authority, the ESDC. Apparently, AKRF's reputation is known far and wide.