DownWithTyranny!: Maybe it would help if the real-estate barons fleecing us taxpayers were arrested, or better executed -- or at least STOPPED

DNAinfo.com caption: "Residents at 303 E. 83rd St. said the gate went up at least a year ago, locking off a space that once housed a playground."

by Ken

I noticed in an Washington Post e-promo this morning that celebrated right-wing blowhard and self-promoter George F. Will is fulminating for a change about lazy do-nothing union bums getting rich off taxpayer dollars. I didn't read the piece, and I'm certainly not going to offer a link. That sort of thing would just encourage the slimy turd. In any case, it's overwhelmingly likely that as usual he's got his facts mostly wrong, and that even his factoids have been twisted and tortured beyond recognition. As Ring Lardner might say, it's part of his charm.

I bring it up only for the contrast. Georgie and his fellow swine in the right-wing commentariat like few things better than beating up on unions, and why not? The less power already near-powerless unions have, the easier it is for the solons of the 1% to treat all workers as indentured servants. (Anti-union working people never make the connection because they've been mis-educated not to.) It was in this frame of mind that I took in a report today by DNAinfo News Editor Amy Zimmer, "Luxe High-Rise Owner Cited for Locking Community Out of Public Plaza," which begins:

UPPER EAST SIDE -- A barren patch of concrete that once contained a small playground and recreation space is now behind a locked gate despite city regulations requiring it be open to the public at all times.

The bedraggled lot, approximately 20 feet by 60 feet, is nestled next to the Camargue high-rise apartment tower — where rents start at $3,435 a month — and was created under an agreement with the city that required the building's owners to provide the community space in exchange for being allowed to rise taller than zoning allowed.

After an outcry from neighbors of the 303 E. 83rd St. building, the Department of Buildings has announced that it will issue a violation in the hopes of forcing the land to be returned to its rightful public use, a DOB spokeswoman said.

The DOB received a complaint Feb. 21, the spokeswoman confirmed.

"[The DOB team] didn't find a public space when they went out," the spokeswoman said. "The inspector had to do further research on what the requirement was."

Now the Camargue will have to go before an Environmental Control Board Hearing at which point they could face a fine, she said.

I imagine that most cities of any size or complexity have at least some sort of zoning regulations, and that among those regulations are provisions for tradeoffs, whereby developers may, say, exceed limitations with regard to building size, including number of floors, in exchange for incorporating public amenities like subway entrances or public plazas. Naturally this becomes incredibly complex, and here in NYC the complexity is wildly further complexified by different sets of rules that were in force when different plans were agreed on by the city and the developers in question.

Here's Amy Zimmer again:

The Camargue's plaza is one of the city's nearly 500 privately owned public spaces — locations across the city that fall into a confusing grey area between a park and a private property.

The spaces gained notoriety after the Occupy Wall Street movement camped out in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, a privately owned public space that spawned confusion about what rights the city had to eject protesters camping there.

The Upper East Side has 97 privately owned public spaces, 87 of which are associated with residential buildings, according to the Department of City Planning. These spaces account for a total of 51,000 square feet, or roughly 1.8 acres of open space.

Community Board 8 members said that several plazas in their open space-starved area were not staying open to the public as required.

While some buildings that took advantage of the rule to build higher in exchange for providing public space have since gone back on their word, they're still allowed to profit from their bigger buildings, said Elaine Walsh, Community Board 8's zoning and development co-chair.

She believes they should continue giving back to the community by being forced to maintain the open space.

The Camargue's plaza, built in 1977 and approved under 1961 guidelines, is required to be open and accessible to the public at all times under the terms of their agreement the Department of City Planning, DCP officials said.

As a "1961 plaza," it does not, however, need any signage, plantings or even seating, as newer plazas are required to do.

Now this business of "public spaces" is really incredibly complex. What exactly constitutes a public space? What are appropriate uses for these given-away public spaces? How much say should the city have in what use building owners make of the supposedly public spaces for which they received their (usually quite generous) zoning variances?

I did a really interesting Municipal Art Society walking tour around Midtown Manhattan with architectural historian Matt Postal (MAS is pressing the question of whether it isn't time to make major revisions to the city's zoning codes, including this issue of bartered-for-concessions public amenities), in which Matt really looked at these questions, and helped us understand that even a landlord with the best will in the world may have difficulty coming up with really beneficial -- and sustainable -- uses for the set-aside space.

As Amy Zimmer notes, the 1961 guidelines included hardly any specifications. In a NYT op-ed piece last October, "Meet Me at the Plaza," Harvard urban planning and design professor Jerold S. Kayden wrote:

Too many of [the city's privately owned public spaces] -- roughly 40 percent, according to a 2000 study I conducted with the Department of City Planning and the Municipal Art Society and that still holds today -- were and are practically useless, with austere designs, no amenities and little or no direct sunlight. Roughly half of the buildings surveyed had spaces that were illegally closed or otherwise privatized.

The poor quality of these plazas is not primarily the developers' fault; they merely followed the letter of an inadequate law. In the first 14 years, the zoning code offered a simple exchange: one square foot of vacant space at the base of a building for 10 square feet of bonus floor area to rent or sell. No mention was made of what to put in the space. The result was a proliferation of forbidding empty places throughout Manhattan.

The city finally amended the code in 1975, thereafter requiring that developers add amenities like benches and trees. But by then, the barn door had been open long enough to produce hundreds of useless spaces, dwarfing the number of good spaces in the inventory.

But a key factor here is that developers and owners who accept the city's swap-out largesse are frequently surprised at how much it costs to design and maintain these spaces, for which, after all, they've already gotten and continue to enjoy their end of the bargain, and it's shocking how many of them (and how quickly) give up any pretense of doing so. Still, even the 1961 regulations did set requirements for "public" spaces to be open to the, you know, public, and as this story once again illustrates, there seems to be virtually no will to enforce this part of the original agreement.

What ticks me off is that this doesn't even seem to be an issue. The developers got what they wanted, and continue to enjoy the benefits they got, and it doesn't seem to be on the radar of anyone in authority to hold them to their agreement. Here's Professor Kayden again:

The absence of anything specific in the zoning text, coupled with almost no monitoring of owner conduct, has benefited self-interested management. Having visited every privately owned public space in the city, I write from experience. Guards, sometimes accompanied by dogs, have from time to time stopped me from taking photographs or speaking into a handheld recorder.

Given the drama downtown, it's unlikely that this vagueness will last much longer. In fact, the Real Estate Board of New York is reportedly preparing to ask the city to endorse universally applicable rules prohibiting future Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space, along with the automatic right to close all spaces at night.

Such proposals raise important questions. Should owners be allowed to prohibit use by organized large groups, whether for political rallies or spontaneous gatherings? Are passive activities like quiet conversation or lunchtime eating to become the only approved conduct? Should all owners have the right to close their spaces at night?

But the events downtown should lead to more than a debate about how to regulate public conduct. If privately owned public spaces are to contribute meaningfully to city life, they need a champion, an independent steward or curator who actively promotes their use, not only by assuring that spaces are provided as legally promised but also by encouraging improvements, activities and public educational opportunities.

Poorly designed spaces orphaned by their owners and in need of upgrading could be "adopted" by organizations willing to renovate them. Lincoln Center did just that with the David Rubenstein Atrium, a formerly forlorn space between 62nd and 63rd Streets, creating a lively public arts hub. Owners could agree to provide spaces for temporary use by musicians, poets and painters, among others in need of places to present their work. Recognizing that some spaces are irredeemably deficient, owners willing to contribute money to a public space fund could opt out of the program. A Web site with maps, data and a place for members of the public to post their ideas and concerns is essential.

Owners, city officials, community groups and the public must act cooperatively, not coercively, if this is to happen. Even the Occupy Wall Street activists may want to consider that, no matter how inclusive their ambitions, their near-complete domination of Zuccotti Park raises questions about their use of space. Indeed, thanks to them, those questions are now begging to be answered.

The one thing here I have to wonder about is the professor's idea of a "cooperative" rather than "coercive" approach. It's been five months now since his NYT piece appeared, and my guess is that the amount of serious discussion of the serious issues, which he set out so well, that has taken place is a bit less than he seemed to expect. Approximately zero, I would guess.

I don't know the status of that Real Estate Board of New York City proposal he mentions ("ask[ing] the city to endorse universally applicable rules prohibiting future Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space, along with the automatic right to close all spaces at night), but it seems to me a lot likelier to come to pass than any voluntary cooperation on the part of the owners of those "public" spaces.

Me, I'm thinking that if you threw a few of these scuzzballs in the pokey, or better still lethally injected a few, that would get their attention. (Well, not so much the attention of those lethally injected, but rather of those they leave behind.)

RE. MY POST LAST NIGHT: DID YOU GUESS --

that the legendary cartoonist whose first New Yorker cartoon was --

"I forgot my skates."

was in fact, as revealed in New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's latest newsletter-blogpost, "Funny Little Things," the one and only Chas Addams?

As for Roz Chast, who tells the story of selling her first New Yorker cartoon in the "Funny Little Things" post, we already saw her latest-published contribution in my Tuesday-night post: