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.

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.

Columbia Renounces (Some) Eminent Domain

The Real Estate Observer reports today that Columbia University will not use eminent domain against residents of Harlem. Their new flexibility suggests that it is possible to propose large development projects without confiscating private property, such as in the NYC Economic Development Corporation's proposal to demolish the Duffield Street homes. The article, Columbia Renounces (Some) Eminent Domain (by Matthew Schuerman, July 12, 2007) states:

Columbia University announced today that it will not seek to take over people’s homes through eminent domain, a huge step in addressing one of the most controversial aspects of its expansion into West Harlem.

“Columbia University will not ask the state to invoke eminent domain to evict tenants living in these 132 residential units,” Robert Kasdin, the university’s senior executive vice president, said in a press release. The announcement came two days after the school presented its proposal to rezone 17 acres of West Harlem to make way for classroom buildings and research labs—and also two days after the community board unanimously approved an alternative plan that, among other items, strongly argued against eminent domain.

“I think that’s a great first step,” said Patricia Jones, the president of the West Harlem Development Corporation and a member of the local community board.

Hopefully the EDC will realize that the development boom in Downtown Brooklyn will continue without kicking people out of their homes.

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.