The LMDC issued a draft report for comment last week, putatively an outline of how the remaining $735 million in Community Development Block Grants will be disbursed. With over $4 billion in requests remaining, the majority of requests will go unfunded. The document does not detail if the $4 billion figure represents all requests, only eligible projects, or priorities — the funnel that comprises the decision making process. Nor does it detail how the money will be specifically allocated, in the form who gets how much for what.
Five priorities are named, but no hierarchy is specified:
Broader Lower Manhattan recovery and revitalization projects
What is one to do with this information? Very little, it seems, since that last item is very likely a sap to everyone who isn’t working on the Memorial or the Freedom Center. Yet we are asked to submit comments in the next week to provide the vaunted public feedback before a formal Partial Action Plan (PAP) is released.
I admittedly skimmed it, once it became clear that no hard numbers were in evidence. Much of the document is given over to a retrospective of the work to date, both the planning and community participation as well as actual programs, which are presented in a maddeningly obtuse chart. It doesn’t say specifically that the ‘planned’ items will receive funding in this round (one item — $50 million for affordable housing — was requested in a previous PAP, but is still pending). Using that yardstick, it looks like the rest of the money is going to the Memorial and related areas, with another chunk to the JFK rail link.
The feeling one gets from the vague but still determinedly self-congratulatory document is that is was deployed to head off criticism sure to come from community groups who have been steadily making requests through the first nine PAP’s only to end up empty-handed.
If this was designed to accomplish anything else, one would expect their nifty chart and careful accounting of feedback across the range of items developed in the original planning framework to be accompanied by numbers — number of requests, comments, amounts allocated, and performance metrics available to date. The obliquity that pervades the writing does nothing to reassure this isn’t simply a bureaucratic whitewash. Witness this lovely bit of unreconciled commentary, under the “What the Public Said” portion of the Planning section:
Early on in the planning process, there was far-ranging discussion about the program for the World Trade Center site, particularly in terms of the amount of commercial office space and other uses included in the initial six concept plans. Participants in the Listening to the City events expressed concerns about the site being overdeveloped while members of the LMDC Advisory Councils focused on the need to restore the retail that was destroyed with an emphasis on street-level retail that serves residential needs.
If I were trying to be glib, I’d say this section could be better written as “It was clear from public meetings that there were concerns about excessive development on the WTC site, but the Advisory Committee pretty much ignored that and focused on insuring their was plenty of retail, even as it was unpopular.” I’m sure I could go back and look for a precisely crafted sentence that explains that public feedback was encouraged, but not necessarily incorporated, but seems hardly necessary, since evidence of this abounds.
Reviewing the extant PAP’s provides a general level of detail, but does not correlate to the chart in this new document in any way. The one item that can be precisely calculated is that $47 million (not including $15 million allocated for oversight for the infrastructure grants, which are the largest single line item to date, at $750 million) has been spent so far on administration (about 2.5% of total grants to date).
Even with my limited command of the information, I could cobble together a decent breakdown, so, aside from bureaucratic stasis and poor document design, it is hard to imagine why the LMDC wouldn’t. Perhaps this is Achilles Heel of all conspiracy mongering: mistaking incompetence for malice.
But if you can find something to object in this largely vacant update, be sure to get your comments in by the end of the month. Perhaps one could note that more information would be helpful, but given this is likely the final PAP, a promise to make the process more transparent or inclusive would ring a little hollow. I’ve already tried the commenting route, and I’d have to say I was disappointed at the results. So my questions about what this will do to the status of the performing arts building, given that the Memorial foundation recently announced is not providing any funds in the near terms, and why the affordable housing initiative is still pending, even as the rental housing grants (which I have heard anecdotally are being uneven distributed, in a seemingly random and arbitrary process, along with the expected misrepresentation on the part of brokers about which apartments qualify) — which amount to some five times the affordable portion — have been disbursed.
Of course, the big question — how long will 7 WTC have to sit empty before we start rethinking, if not the Freedom Tower itself, then the current planning for three additional office blocks — is conveniently outside the purview of this round. And is likely to stay there.
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That’s the Way the Money Goes.
The LMDC issued a draft report for comment last week, putatively an outline of how the remaining $735 million in Community Development Block Grants will be disbursed. With over $4 billion in requests remaining, the majority of requests will go unfunded. The document does not detail if the $4 billion figure represents all requests, only eligible projects, or priorities — the funnel that comprises the decision making process. Nor does it detail how the money will be specifically allocated, in the form who gets how much for what.
Five priorities are named, but no hierarchy is specified:- Memorial complex
- WTC site (including public infrastructure)
- Planned high-impact, large-scale, off-site initiatives
- Long Island/JFK Rail Link
- Broader Lower Manhattan recovery and revitalization projects
What is one to do with this information? Very little, it seems, since that last item is very likely a sap to everyone who isn’t working on the Memorial or the Freedom Center. Yet we are asked to submit comments in the next week to provide the vaunted public feedback before a formal Partial Action Plan (PAP) is released. I admittedly skimmed it, once it became clear that no hard numbers were in evidence. Much of the document is given over to a retrospective of the work to date, both the planning and community participation as well as actual programs, which are presented in a maddeningly obtuse chart. It doesn’t say specifically that the ‘planned’ items will receive funding in this round (one item — $50 million for affordable housing — was requested in a previous PAP, but is still pending). Using that yardstick, it looks like the rest of the money is going to the Memorial and related areas, with another chunk to the JFK rail link. The feeling one gets from the vague but still determinedly self-congratulatory document is that is was deployed to head off criticism sure to come from community groups who have been steadily making requests through the first nine PAP’s only to end up empty-handed. If this was designed to accomplish anything else, one would expect their nifty chart and careful accounting of feedback across the range of items developed in the original planning framework to be accompanied by numbers — number of requests, comments, amounts allocated, and performance metrics available to date. The obliquity that pervades the writing does nothing to reassure this isn’t simply a bureaucratic whitewash. Witness this lovely bit of unreconciled commentary, under the “What the Public Said” portion of the Planning section: If I were trying to be glib, I’d say this section could be better written as “It was clear from public meetings that there were concerns about excessive development on the WTC site, but the Advisory Committee pretty much ignored that and focused on insuring their was plenty of retail, even as it was unpopular.” I’m sure I could go back and look for a precisely crafted sentence that explains that public feedback was encouraged, but not necessarily incorporated, but seems hardly necessary, since evidence of this abounds. Reviewing the extant PAP’s provides a general level of detail, but does not correlate to the chart in this new document in any way. The one item that can be precisely calculated is that $47 million (not including $15 million allocated for oversight for the infrastructure grants, which are the largest single line item to date, at $750 million) has been spent so far on administration (about 2.5% of total grants to date). Even with my limited command of the information, I could cobble together a decent breakdown, so, aside from bureaucratic stasis and poor document design, it is hard to imagine why the LMDC wouldn’t. Perhaps this is Achilles Heel of all conspiracy mongering: mistaking incompetence for malice. But if you can find something to object in this largely vacant update, be sure to get your comments in by the end of the month. Perhaps one could note that more information would be helpful, but given this is likely the final PAP, a promise to make the process more transparent or inclusive would ring a little hollow. I’ve already tried the commenting route, and I’d have to say I was disappointed at the results. So my questions about what this will do to the status of the performing arts building, given that the Memorial foundation recently announced is not providing any funds in the near terms, and why the affordable housing initiative is still pending, even as the rental housing grants (which I have heard anecdotally are being uneven distributed, in a seemingly random and arbitrary process, along with the expected misrepresentation on the part of brokers about which apartments qualify) — which amount to some five times the affordable portion — have been disbursed. Of course, the big question — how long will 7 WTC have to sit empty before we start rethinking, if not the Freedom Tower itself, then the current planning for three additional office blocks — is conveniently outside the purview of this round. And is likely to stay there.