Month: February 2009

February 28, 2009

Against all odds, the South End is
being rebuilt from the inside out

Oh boy, am I happy with what I saw this last Thusday. Sure, I was delighted by the recent opening of Eagle Court Apartments on Morton Avenue down the hill from my house. That renovation project transformed a notorious slum building that blighted our neighborhood into a prize residence. Great, but Eagle Court was just the beginning.

This past February 26 was the ribbon cutting for a beautiful, beautiful collection of homes that used to be a virtual hole in the ground. I have to say that the design, the feel, the materials used in the Jared Holt project are overall better than Eagle Court, which in itself was built well enough. There was plenty of talk at the event about Jared Holt serving as a template for further building projects not merely in the South End, but all across the City of Albany.

Steve Longo – His Moment Of Triumph

This ribbon cutting was the result of some twelve years of work by Albany Housing Authority (AHA) director Steve Longo and his staff. Mr. Longo was grinning happily all morning, as well he should have at this moment of triumph. All of us were present because of Mr. Longo’s successful hard work and dogged persistence in the face of what had looked like impossible odds.

Having closely watched this project unfold since the late 1990s, I can testify to that. Our elected officials had written off the surrounding neighborhood as not worth saving. Actually, by the late 1990s the (current) City administration had adopted a policy of witholding vital services such as police or infrastructure maintenance from all of the downtown neighborhoods. South End residents responded to this abuse by reluctantly leaving their community.

Somehow, Mr. Longo navigated the politics, and somehow he figured out where all the money needed to carry out the project was hiding. More impressively, he discovered that decent affordable housing was what the community desperately wanted and needed more than anything else. And he is perhaps the first City official to have understood that the economic health of the entire City depends upon the economic health of our downtown communities.

At one time this mostly empty lot between Third and Fourth Avenues was the heart of the South End, the location of one of Albany’s oldest and longest running businesses, the Jared Holt wax factory.

The first Jared Holt factory was located at 48 Hudson Street, one of the oldest buildings in the City. At the beginning of the 20th century the old factory on Hudson became the company headquarters while the manufacturing was moved to the South End. By the 1960s the South End plant was abandoned, the company sold and the Jared Holt waxes, most of which were used for finishing wood, eventually disappeared.

The factory building sat for decades undergoing demolition by neglect. Ten years ago in March of 1999 the building was wrecked by the City as part of a wave of demolitions throughout the South End that generated accusations that City officials were personally profiting from the slaughter. i don’t recall hearing more than a few peeps from preservationists about wrecking the Jared Holt factory, but I seem to recall that the neighbors at that point were relieved that it was gone.

The New Streetscape From Up Clinton Street

The demolition of the factory building may not have left a literal hole in the ground, but the empty block sure gave the impression of a sucking void. Indeed, it seemed to me that that the entire neighborhood was oriented around the factory but had lost it’s center. And in the last ten years, as nearby neighbors know all too well, the surrounding neighborhood fell deeper into ruin.

The impressive thing is that the project repairs the streetscape, which is no small thing. Suburbanites are genuinely puzzled by the concept of streetscape, living as they do surrounded by endless parking lots. Streetscape is all about orientation, a secure feeling down in your gut that you know exactly where you are. Suburbanites are by nature disoriented, that’s why they choose to occupy big unsustainable nowheres.

Those of us who live in the City readily understand that our quality of life is directly tied to the number of gaps between the houses in our immediate neighborhoods. Each demolition reduces that secure feeling and brings the neighborhood closer to becoming a parking lot. When the buildings being destroyed have served faithfully for 150 years or more, their loss to the neighbors is more than unsettling, it can be positively traumatic.

107 Broad Street

The most interesting of the new Jared Holt buildings is 107 Broad Street, which almost looks like an old country church. I loved the layout of the living space inside the tower portion of the building, I seriously felt like I wanted to move in right then and there. There seemed to be general agreement that this building ought to be reproduced elsewhere, i sure hope it doesn’t remain unique.

The materials, such as the carpets and windows, are of the highest quality. Darren Scott, who is Steve Longo’s long suffering assistant at AHA, told me that this was a conscious decision. The buildings are a showcase, he told me. More importantly, “we want these buildings to last,” he said.

Darren made a special point of telling me that they used real bricks and mortar for the facades, rather than the fake-o glue on brick that has become a standard siding on new construction everywhere. He didn’t have to explain. All of us are hyper aware of the row of highly visible poorly built buildings on South Pearl Street up from Madison, which for decades have sported peeling fake brick which looks horrible.

That row of houses on S. Pearl is a textbook example of stupid urban planning. At the end of the administration of evil old Mayor Erastus Corning, the City demolished a row of well constructed 150+ year old buildings after first allowing the eviction of the tenants, residents and shops. These lost architectural treasures were replaced by stick and cardboard crap that looks and feels like they wouldn’t stand up to a strong wind.

Clinton Street Facade

I did wonder about the gas filled windows that were chosen for the Jared Holt buildings. Yes, they are the highest quality, two panes of thermal glass filled with argon or some such noble gas. These wooden windows do look nice and have the lowest heat loss of any commercially available windows.

The problem comes when, say, some kid throws a rock through the window. The windows can’t be repaired at the local hardware store or glass shop, they have to be sent to the manufacturer. Two pieces of thermal glass and a bottle of fancy gas, not to mention labor and handling, is mighty expensive. Is this a good idea, especially in a low income neighborhood?

“We wanted to be historically accurate to fit in with the character of the neighborhood,” Darren told me, “and that precluded storm windows.” Plus, a good portion of the funding that Darren and Mr. Longo painstakingly cobbled together for this project depended on meeting standards of energy efficient construction. Thus the windows solved two problems but create a new one.

But really, that’s the only criticism of the Jared Holt project that I have. Everything else, as far as I can see, is golden.

Before The Speeches

Under the tent Steve Longo, almost giggling with happiness, acted as master of ceremonies for the politicians, starting with Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings. It’s been fascinating listening to The Mayor’s patter since the beginning of the year, which is now full of New Urbanist catch phrases. My absolutely favorite phrase from his speech that day was “the blight of suburbanization.” Yup, he really said that.

County Executive Mike Breslin made what I thought was the most remarkable speech of all the politicians present. Albany County, he told us, provides a variety of vital family support services, but in order for them to be effective families, especially children, “need a safe and secure place to come home to.” Thus the county works as best it can to cooperate with initiatives such as Jared Holt.

2nd ward Common Council member Carolyn McLaughlin, who represents the neighborhood, gave a rousing speech of which I remember not one word. This is not surprising, a week ago she announced that she planned to run for Common Council President, a Citywide post. That is, she plans to run if current president Shawn Morris quits the job to run for mayor, which as of this writing is still up in the air.

Later I asked Ms. McLaughlin why she was using a cane that day, I wondered if an injury that she had sustained years ago was acting up again. An injury, I should add, caused by a collapsing front stoop. She said no, she was recovering from knee replacement surgery and was doing fine.

“I’m sure you realize,” I said to her, “that if you want to win a Citywide race you’re going to have to climb every front stoop in Albany.” “That’s why I’m having the surgery now, so I can heal by spring. That way I can campaign come summer.” Ah.

By the way, that is the reason why First ward Common Council member Dominick Calsolaro is not running for mayor, or at least that’s what he says. Climbing stoops is how you get elected in this town, and Dominick’s aging baby boomer body is not up to the task. Also, he says he doesn’t have the cash to run a Citywide campaign against a well-heeled incumbent.

All that is nonsense. Dominick, paradoxically, is such an effective politician precisely because of his lack of ambition. If he had the “fire in the belly” he would find a way to overcome the lack of cash and deal with those horrible front steps that grind up candidate’s joints. Apparently Carolyn McLaughlin does not lack for ambition the way Dominick does, she is doing what is necessary to attain public office.

Luci McKnight Watched By Jerry Jennings

County legislator Luci McKnight was without question the best dressed of the speechifying officials. Her speech, oddly enough, was about her one contribution to the project… which was undeniably an obstruction. And yeah, she sure upset a lot of people at the time.

This was when the building site was first cleared and ready to go, the final approvals about to come through. But Luci did not trust the analysis of the soil on the site, she wanted more studies. “We’re going to have kids living there,” she told me at the time, “and kids play in the dirt. They’ll be the ones who get hurt if the site is contaminated.”

So Luci used her position to exercise home rule and hold up the project, refusing to release the county owned parcels of land that made up part of the site. Was she justified in doing this? Well, at this early point Republican George Pataki was still pretending to be governor and environmental oversight was at an all-time low in New York State. I think she was right to be suspicious.

Broad Street From A Window

But after sitting in all these meetings I’ve come to understand why all the officials involved with the project were ready to throw her off a rooftop. The process of securing government money is a delicate matter involving securing the building site, submitting plans and getting approvals all in the exact proper order. Any delay can cause the project to lose funding and thus fall apart.

Well, thankfully Luci did not mention in her speech that at this point, with the whole project teetering on the brink, she contacted… me. No, I don’t know much about environmental reports, at least not enough to be useful. But fortunately I have a friend named Dave Camp who had just retired (at age 41!) from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC.) He had spent the last 16 years writing and analyzing such reports, an expert with no agenda.

After over two hours on the phone reading Dave the environmental report and answering his questions, he concluded that the soil remediation being done on the site was “overkill, appropriate for a residential project. If they do everything they say they’ll do, removing the soil and digging in ‘hotspots,’ then this should be way more than satisfactory.”

I conveyed this to Luci, in detail, and she left me with a dire warning. “If anyone gets sick, it will be on your head, my friend.” Um, uh…

Based on my say so, Luci let the project go forward. And that, my friends, is my one useful contribution to Jared Holt.

Finally we had the ribbon cutting. Mayor Jennings generously shared his collection of ribbon cutting scissors with a crowd of cutters.

(click on photo for full size)

Starting left in the photo above, we have Mike Breslin looking about as relaxed as he ever gets, Steve Longo grinning, neighborhood resident Rose who would be moving into one of the apartments that day, His Majesty, Carolyn McLaughlin, Luci McKnight, the guy from the bank or Omni or something, and last but not least the guy who hands out money from the State.

Now, for comparison, I present a photo that Luci sent me, taken at almost the exact same moment from head on:

See? It’s all a matter of point of view. One person can look at the South End and see a wrecked landscape that ought to be turned into suburban parking lots. But some of us know better.

The South End has been here for centuries, long before we were born. Our job is to make sure our urban community is still here long after we all return to the dirt. That’s our obligation to the future.

 

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February 17, 2009

The damage Joe Bruno did to our region
is his lasting legacy

Perusing the Sunday newspapers a few weekends ago, I stumbled upon an interesting little detail buried inside an article buried in a back section.  It seems that construction of the the “Van Rensselaer Square Plaza,” a 250,000 square foot corporate retail horror being planted at the intersection of Routes 4 and 43 across the river in Rensselaer County, has been suspended indefinitely.  The article’s description of the site as it sits right now is almost lovely:

 

The plaza at the intersection with Route 43 has been partially built for months, and the only activity there now is the occasional melting of accumulated snow.

 

I went out to look at the site a little over a year ago as the developers were first beginning to destroy the property.  The eight years worth of lawsuits brought by nearby neighbors had finally been defeated a year and a half ago by the New York State Government, our politicians fighting against taxpayers using taxpayer money like they always do.  

After inspecting the site, I couldn’t bear to look at it or even think about it any more. So I was surprised to learn the other day that in March of 2008 the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) had put a stop work order on the construction. It seems that the “plaza” was doing a serious number on nearby storm water drainage, and the DEC wanted it fixed.

The developers, a hit and run outfit from Pennsylvania called BET Investments, didn’t get around to fixing the problems until August of last year.  That’s right about when the US corporate retail sector was beginning to fall apart, a condition which became official the following month.  So today we have a lovely suburban parking lot and no reason for it to be there.

Dirty Joe Bruno

This was supposed to be one of career criminal Joseph Bruno’s final monuments to himself.  The former lord high Republican State Senate majority leader spent eight years and millions of taxpayer dollars not only to beat back the outraged neighbors.  He also spent millions turning once sleepy back road Route 43 into a four to eight lane highway so as to accommodate the hit and run developers.

The apparent economic motivation for Bruno’s “plaza” and for several similar smaller sprawl boxes with parking lots adjacent to this property (also all on hold) was to catch the retail dollars of exurbanites who sprawl around West Sand Lake.  Right now these poor under served exurbanites drive by the site daily in their SUVs on their way to loot the City of Albany.  Right now they often have to drive to the other side of Albany to attend big shopping malls.

All this government investment to make shopping a little bit more convenient for maybe a few hundred exurbanites.  These people currently residing in eastern Rensselaer county chose, of their own free wills, to buy overpriced houses in a remote area, a place devoid of goods, services or public space. 

Personally, I don’t see why these exurban welfare queens are living off of my tax dollars.  I’m sick and tired of it.

Van Rennselaer Square Plaza

For a long time past the underlying assumption among politicians and planners has been that the exurbs, the cutting edge of suburbia, will be gaining population indefinitely.  But there’s one problem with this assumption.  It appears that local exurban expansion is grinding to a halt.

Planning boards of municipalities at the outer edge of the Capital District (with the obvious exception of Malta) are beginning to balk at giving automatic approvals to upscale overpriced residential boxes.  “Luxury homes” and “townhouses” jammed up against dedicated nature preserves and other natural areas.

Around the Capital District we are not seeing the same sort of visible and obvious collapse and abandonment of residential areas that is going on in the outer fringes of places like Atlanta and Las Vegas.  That is because our demographic region did not share in the phony “economic boom” of a few years ago.

Right now we are at the cusp of a major reversal.  Wealth is starting to withdraw from the outer suburbs and is starting to be redirected into City centers.  It is the beginning of a process which will end years from now with downtown Albany a pricey enclave of the wealthy while Colonie and Clifton Park will turn into one vast crumbling pavement.  

Here at the center of our region in downtown Albany we don’t have much phony economy to lose.  We had our collapse imposed upon us decades ago.  Our downtown urban community has been stripped bare of our wealth until all we have left is our infrastructure.  

The economic point needs to be repeated: suburban sprawl is only possible with massive government subsidies and vigorously pursued government sponsorship.  Cut off the constant stream of money and political support from the unsustainable suburbs and they will quickly become desolation.

The "Plaza" A Year Ago January 2008

Joseph Bruno was the government behind the ruination of the corner of Routes 4 and 43. This is what Bruno chose to do with all of his power, destroy his own personal Senate district by turning it into a vast automobile slum.  But his criminal career appears to be catching up with him, he’s been forced to retire.  Joe is no longer the king of sprawl.

Of course there’s Bruno’s other sprawl monument to himself, the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) chip manufacturing plant up in Malta.  Now that some Sheik from Abu Dhabi has been induced to pour some of his spare billions into this scheme it looks like the Luther Forest boondoggle is going to happen, although the plans for the “chip fab campus” have been downsized.  I wonder how many more promises will also be downsized in the coming months.

Apparently the Luther Forest money pit has legs of its own, it doesn’t need Joe Bruno to make sure the cash keeps rolling into politically connected pockets.  Someone worked very hard to rope in this billionaire sheik and keep the project going.  How nice that our “leaders” have found a way to make us dependent upon a middle eastern sheikdom.

Meanwhile, worldwide demand for AMD’s products continues to decline, and their stock continues to slide toward worthlessness.  If the Malta plant gets built, and AMD goes bankrupt or the Abu Dhabi sheik pulls out, then we will have one big abandoned plant and a lot of unemployed people where there weren’t any before.

So this is corporate socialism at work, eh?  New York State bankrupts itself giving money to a dying corporation, while at the same time effectively suppressing local home grown businesses so as to make room for the foreign corporations they imagine will flock to upstate New York and turn it into a paradise.  

Let me make an outlandish radical suggestion.  Instead of New York State giving all of our taxes to sleazy international corporations, why not plow our money back into our own communities?  If upstate has a solid productive economy then corporations will come hat in hand to us instead of the other way around. Or perhaps that idea is too outlandish for our current political leaders.

Too bad for the developers of “Van Rensellaer Plaza” that Joe Bruno couldn’t help them with the storm water runoff problem.  Last year, his control of the State was slipping from his sweaty grip and the federal secret police were reluctantly closing in on him.  If this delay of construction had happened just a year earlier, Bruno could have made a few phone calls and no doubt  doubt have made that DEC stop work order quietly go away.

So maybe the eight years of lawsuits by the neighbors of North Greenbush were worth the trouble.  Perhaps, in this case, the taxpayers have lost the battle against bad government (Joe Bruno) but won the war.  Like the folks at Save the Pine Bush (SPB) are fond of saying about their own often desperate litigation efforts, any delay of sprawl “development” is good.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile back here in the South End of Albany we don’t have any great big politicos like Joe Bruno pumping money into our community.  On the contrary, about nine or ten years ago Dirty Joe actually went out of his way to prevent a massive federal grant from being awarded for South End housing redevelopment, specifically a HOPE 6 grant from Housing and Urban Development (HUD.)

I’ve mentioned this before, the projects in my neighborhood that Bruno sabotaged are just getting going now.  Thanks a lot Joe, you scuzzball.  Good riddance to nasty rubbish, don’t come back.

Route 43, Dirty Joe’s Highway

When Bruno was compelled to give up his Senate seat last year, the local corporate media wailed and moaned about how he wouldn’t be around any longer to direct cash toward the Capital Region.  I say that Bruno was a political bottleneck that directed public money away from where it was needed to where it would do the most harm.  And it is becoming increasingly evident that Bruno was misdirecting some of that cash into his own pocket.

The corporate media’s slavish devotion to Bruno even after his indictment is puzzling.  The former Senate majority leader did not tolerate even light criticism from the media.  And woe to the media outfit that dared to lean on him.

For example, take Bruno’s lousy relationship with the Hearst Times Union. As the New York Times put it:“Mr. Bruno, who lives in Brunswick, northeast of Albany, has been critical of The Times Union and is known for singling out its reporters during news conferences.”

About a year and a half ago the Hearst editors threatened to create negative copy about Bruno if he didn’t start giving them money.   As Bruno spokesperson John E. McArdle put it, the Times Union made “an attempt to shake down the Senate and the senator and would be an attempt to extort both public and private money.”   

Or, as former Times Union Publisher Timothy O. White described such activities by his corporation in a courtroom deposition many years ago, “horsetrading.”  Bruno even formally requested that Albany County District Attorney David Soares investigate the Times Union.  

You’d think that after all this public abuse the Times Union editors would develop a generally negative attitude toward Bruno, but you would be mistaken.  Almost immediately after this exchange the Times Union became Joe Bruno’s leading defender.  Indeed, our Hearst Rag succeeded in aggressively turning a negative report about Bruno’s criminal activities into an attack routine against his political opponents.

Now, how can that be?  The short answer is that the Hearst Corporation has a strict policy of supporting Re-pubs against Democrats, a policy which the local editors can not ignore. Even with the recent sea change at the federal level this is still true.  

Bruno Reaches For Eliot Spitzer

At the time of the attempted shakedown by the Times Union, Bruno was publicly butting heads with then New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, a political battle that turned out to be a sideshow of a bigger more sinister political operation.

About six months later, as we all know, the Bush White House publicly smeared Spitzer by publicizing information about his private life they had discovered using the so-called “Patriot” Act.  (“Gee, Spitzer must be a terrorist.”) Apparently the ex-governor had gathered enough evidence to hold the Bush White House criminally culpable for the then looming sub prime mortgage crisis.  Clearly, the Republicans had to act.

In a well coordinated operation, the FBI, the Bush Justice Department and the New York Times destroyed Eliot Spitzer almost overnight.  We all remember the story.  What horrified me, and continues to horrify me about the whole thing was the sheep-like reaction of the public and our ready willingness to be so easily manipulated.

No one can say for sure, but it may be that both Bruno and some of the top executives at the Hearst Corporation were given advance warning about the imminent take down of Eliot Spitzer, right after the Times Union tried to shake down Bruno.  How else to explain the Times Union’s enthusiastic support of Bruno after that embarrassing clash?

Well, the Times Union editors obeyed their corporate masters and did not try to punish Bruno.  At all.  And the editors obediently relentlessly attacked Eliot Spitzer with a string of manufactured fleeting “scandals” right up until the white House made its move.  It looks to me like the Times Union was assigned the task of softening up Spitzer’s reputation in anticipation of the big smear.

I couldn’t help it.  I had to buy a copy of this pathetic magazine Success, which likes to put on its cover retirees who are starting second careers.  Since the magazine is “old media” they have a more than six month lag between writing their stories and actual publication.  Thus we have Dirty Joe featured on the cover of the issue that hit the newsstands a few days after he was indicted.

I present this cover as a public service, so that all of humankind may gaze upon Joe Bruno’s face, the very picture of success.

 

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