| | | | | |  | | By Janaki Chadha | | | | | 
Last-mile warehouses are “popping up all over the city, with no public review process, no environmental review process,” said Kevin Garcia. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo | As a proposal to help advance the city’s carbon reduction goals makes its way through the public review process, environmental activists say the plan leaves out an important source of emissions: last-mile warehouses. A coalition of environmental groups argues the proliferation of these facilities — which receive and distribute packages ordered online — creates truck traffic, air pollution and greenhouse gasses, and should be regulated by the city. The Adams administration proposal, the first of three “City of Yes” zoning amendments, would make a series of land use changes to facilitate clean energy and climate action, and remove barriers that officials say inhibit the city’s decarbonization efforts. Last-mile warehouses are “popping up all over the city, with no public review process, no environmental review process,” said Kevin Garcia, transportation planner for the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. He noted neighborhoods that have been overburdened by the facilities, like Hunts Point and Sunset Park, also have higher air pollution levels. The coalition is pushing for zoning rules that would require new last-mile facilities to go through a review process and obtain a special permit from the city. “By omitting a zoning text amendment around last-mile warehouse siting and operations in the ‘City of Yes’, the city will overlook a profound health disparity impacting New Yorkers of color and low-income New Yorkers,” Garcia said at a public hearing on the city’s zoning proposal last week. In response to testimony on last-mile facilities at the hearing, Department of City Planning director Dan Garodnick said his agency and the city “recognize the issues that are arising” and are working to “understand and think about solutions here.” “Even though these facilities play an important role in our economy, that shouldn’t come at the expense of specific communities around the city,” Garodnick said. “Certainly, the fact that it is not in this proposal, one that is specific to existing zoning rules and ways to eliminate obstacles, does not mean that we are not concerned.” Welcome to POLITICO New York Real Estate and Infrastructure. Please send tips, ideas, releases and corrections to jchadha@politico.com.
| | |  Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at the World Trade Center Site, July 27, 2023. | Don Pollard/Office of Gov. Kathy Hochul | 5 WORLD TRADE MOVES FORWARD — POLITICO’s Janaki Chadha: A massive residential tower that will bring 1,200 new apartments to one of the last undeveloped World Trade Center sites won a key approval on Thursday following negotiations to add more affordable housing to the project. The previously stalled plan for 5 World Trade Center will move forward with a third of the units, or 400 new homes, set aside for low- and middle-income households, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced at a press conference in lower Manhattan. The Public Authorities Control Board approved the project during a meeting in Albany earlier Thursday. The five-member panel — which includes representatives from the state Legislature — had postponed the vote in June amid concerns from local elected officials that the plan lacked income-restricted housing. ADAMS CRACKS DOWN ON SIDEWALK SHEDS — POLITICO’s Janaki Chadha: Mayor Eric Adams wants to eliminate hundreds of miles of construction sheds that have long darkened city sidewalks — calling them “as resilient as the rats.” He rolled out a plan on Monday to overhaul city rules governing the scaffolding and impose penalties as high as $6,000 a month on owners who leave sheds up for far longer than it takes to actually repair a building facade. The city will additionally work to make necessary sheds more visually appealing and replace them with safety netting where possible. “While sidewalk sheds were created to protect New Yorkers, they now have become unsafe constructions,” Adams said at a press conference in Chelsea with officials including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “All too often they stay up, but no repair is happening. We use the sheds as a form of pushing the repairs off years after years. Property owners are not required to pay a penny in fines.” WATCHDOG SAYS ESD ‘VULNERABLE TO CORRUPTION’ — Crain’s Nick Garber: “When the board of the Empire State Development Authority advanced a major plan last year to reshape the blocks around Penn Station, it provided policymakers with a giant question mark for the cost of the transformative project: “N/A.” “But the state signed off on the project anyway after it was shepherded through by ESD, a public authority that serves as New York state’s economic development arm. Although much of that Penn plan is now in doubt for economic reasons, the saga served as proof of ESD’s biggest flaws: It lacks transparency, is ‘vulnerable to corruption’ and tends to serve as an extension of the governor’s office, according to a new report by good-government watchdog Reinvent Albany.” TIP ME: You can always send tips, ideas, releases, promotions, criticisms and corrections to jchadha@politico.com.
| | |  Residential apartment buildings are seen on July 26, 2022, in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | INSURERS DENY COVERAGE FOR SUBSIDIZED HOUSING — Gothamist’s David Brand: “New York law prevents landlords from discriminating against low-income tenants with rental assistance vouchers, but those same measures don’t apply to insurance companies that routinely refuse to cover buildings that house subsidized tenants. Dozens of insurance carriers doing business in New York explicitly ask about, and decline to cover, buildings where low-income tenants pay for apartments with housing vouchers, according to a Gothamist review of applications, denials and interviews with insurance brokers, landlords and government regulators.” HOW SPECULATORS PREY ON HOMEOWNERS — The City’s George Joseph and Samantha Maldonado: “For tens of thousands of Black and Latino families, buying a small family home has been the key to establishing an affordable foothold in New York City. And as gentrification revved up real estate prices in minority neighborhoods, homeownership finally unlocked the opportunity to pass down generational wealth. But in an increasingly unequal city, many of these life-changing asset transfers are slipping by as homeowners pass away without wills, leaving valuable property untended and ripe for exploitation. “In a wide-ranging investigation, THE CITY exposed how rings of speculators prey on and profit off of these murky situations. They target neighborhoods where property values have skyrocketed. And they pick out homes that legally belong to a patchwork of heirs — some of them elderly, some of them out-of-state — who have no inkling of the market value of the fractional shares they’ve inherited.” WHOPPING OVERTIME PAY — Crain’s Caroline Spivack: “New data on overtime pay at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority highlights how you don’t have to be a top executive at the agency to earn a whopping paycheck, despite vows from MTA honchos to crack down on the high costs of extra pay for employees. A report from Albany think tank Empire Center shows that 1,133 employees more than doubled their pay with overtime in 2022—some collecting a higher salary than top transit officials or Gov. Kathy Hochul, who oversees the MTA.”
| | — City buildings commissioner Jimmy Oddo said there’s “no evidence” of further danger from this week’s crane collapse. — Daniel Tietz, who stepped down last week as head of the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, is joining Frank Carone’s consulting firm. — Midtown is the city’s hottest neighborhood — literally. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
