Prof Slams Mayor’s Plan, Stresses
Lifelong Commitment to Brooklyn
By Charles Maldonado
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
KINGS HIGHWAY – Brooklyn could be turned into a “park and ride community” by Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to institute congestion pricing for commuters entering Manhattan, said Tom Angotti, Hunter College professor of urban planning and a lifelong Brooklyn resident.
“Long Island commuters are going to come in, park on our streets and take the train in,” adding to the headaches of Brooklyn residents and workers face in already congested areas, he said at the Kings Highway Reformed Church on Thursday night.
“You all drive on the BQE. You know what it’s like in Downtown Brooklyn,” he told members of the Madison-Marine-Homecrest Association.
In his talk, he also sounded the alarm about new development that, he said, would drive real estate prices and rents up, out of range of middle-class and working-class residents.
“I was born in Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn now. I would like to stay in Brooklyn,” Angotti said.
On his main subject, congestion pricing, he said the proposed fee alone will not do enough to discourage driving.
“I’m not in favor of it when it’s done without a serious plan to reduce traffic,” he said, citing central London’s traffic reduction plan, which also uses congestion pricing. But London also took other measures to make it more difficult to drive, such as widening its sidewalks and reducing legal parking spaces.
“By charging people $8 when they’re already paying $25 to $50 to park, I don’t know how much traffic it’s going to stop.”
Angotti, a well-known critic of Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development and one of the chief designers of the alternative Unity Plan for the site, offered it as an example of how New York is not dealing with congestion the way it should.
“The Atlantic Yards has been touted as a transit-friendly development. Then why are they building 3,600 parking spaces?”
The basic premise of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan, that New York City will gain one million new residents by 2030, is also flawed, said Angotti, “There are a hundred different ways to predict population,” he said. He said Bloomberg’s plan uses what he called the “third-grade method”, assuming recent population growth rates will continue. “Any third-grader can do this.
Angotti criticized the what he called the “top down” method used to finalize and execute the plan.
“It was born in the Mayor’s Office. It was discussed in the Mayor’s Office. It was finalized in the Mayor’s Office,” he said. “How’s any of this going to be implemented unless community boards are involved, unless neighborhoods are involved?”
Driving Prices Up, Residents Out
Angotti also said that new development planned to accommodate the projected population growth will drive home and rental prices further up and drive low- and middle-income residents out, a subject of interest for the crowd of neighborhood residents who have seen rents and home prices skyrocket in the past few years.
Angotti said that the city was steadily losing public and Mitchell-Lama housing, and that rent controls had become “passé” and will soon “mean nothing for the protection of moderate-income working families who pay rent.”
Marine Park resident Antoinette Vasile, 58, said that she was concerned that rising real estate prices would force city employees, especially emergency workers, too far out to be readily effective in the case of a major catastrophe.
“When there’s a fire, who’s going to fight it?” she said. “Who’s going to save the CEO’s?”
Historic House Restored
Following Angotti’s speech, Stuart Mont, who owns and lives in the Historic Wyckoff Bennett House at Avenue P and East 22 Street in Homecrest spoke about how he acquired and restored the 18th Century home.
Wyckoff Bennett, a historic landmark house, housed Hessian soldiers, German mercenaries who fought on the British, during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. Mont moved into the home in 1983, even though it was willed to the National Historic Trust, because no one else wanted it.
“New York City said, ‘We don’t want it.’ Brooklyn College said, ‘We can’t handle it.’ Long Island Historical said, “No thank you.’ Brooklyn Museum said, ‘No.’”
When he purchased it, Mont said the house had all the original furniture and thousands of 18th century books and documents. It also had bad wiring and plumbing, which he had to replace.
Mont recently worked out a deal for the city to purchase the house from Mont and turn it into a museum. He worked out a deal whereby he and his wife Annette will be lifelong tenants and caretakers of the home.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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