Archive for February 15th, 2019
genuine gravity
All your base belong to us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pretty much every time my phone rang yesterday, it was someone asking me what I thought of Amazon pulling out of the Long Island City arrangement they had made with the Mayor, Governor, and the NYC EDC. As you may have noticed, I’ve been rather “silent” (well, silent for me) on this particular subject, with one longish NP post, a Greenpointers interview, and a singular radio interview being my only statements about it. In all statements, the message which I was trying to impart was that the fact of Amazon was less disturbing than the idea that the executive branches of both State and City had finally managed to figure out a way past the various checks and balances which had been inserted into the City Planning process since the era when Austin Tobin or Robert Moses could do whatever they wanted to with zero local community input. Apparently, this is what ended up being the Achilles heel of the Amazon deal, as LIC collectively rose up and said “NO.”
That’s the most important takeaway here, in my mind. The sleeping giant has finally awoken. Queens is mad as hell and isn’t going to let the City or the State do what it wants here anymore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The BQX also died with the Amazon deal yesterday since its moribund carcass has only sparked back to life due to the arrangement, and while the Sunnyside Yards project is still on the horizon, the people running the show for that one are – I guarantee you – in a panic. I predict an executive level bloodbath at the NYC EDC in the next year, who have a less than stellar recent track record as it is (Staten Island Ferris Wheel, anyone?) and angry bosses in the Real Estate Industrial Complex who are going to want to know how this happened. They were expecting to reap a windfall over in the REBNY camp, and have already begun to bemoan their situation and call LIC “overbuilt” with a “glut of rentals.” The bosses won’t or can’t go after the Mayor or Governor, and beyond some petty shots at Jimmy Van Bramer and Michael Gianaris, they’re going to need somebody to blame this on.
Doom and gloom for the powers that be.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Winners and losers, that’s how the media will frame it, as if the world of politic and policy is some sort of sport. It’s not, and it’s a toxic POV which first emerged back in the 1980’s when punditry shows like the McLaughlin Report first appeared. There are no winners in this story other than that the activist community, there are only losers. The Amazon deal and the collapse of same will prove to be a divisive force in the LIC community and body politic for quite a while, I predict. There’s going to be all sorts of “high politique” going on which we, the public, will never be privy to.
As I often say when pronouncing such grim statements – It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is.
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