Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

for a fraction of this ambitious design, conversations about financing emerged, such as a conversation be- tween Pace University President, Steven Friedman, and Port Authority Directory, Patrick Foy, at the "Re- silience II" Summit, convened at Pace University's Lower Manhattan campus on October 20, 2014, to re- flect on the second anniversary of the hurricane. Fried- man brought up efforts "to build a wall around Lower Manhattan and to recreate marshlands" and asked Foy "who was responsible" for maintaining Lower Manhat- tan's resilience. Foy's response included the usual list of federal, state, and local levels working in partner- ship, but he also added: "I think the private sector will play a significant role in post-Sandy resilience projects. Governments at all levels, and that includes the fed- eral government, are fiscally stretched. And there is no reason to believe that is going to change any time soon." Foy argued that building resilience infrastruc- ture requires finance—bonding—and finance requires investors and investors need profit. Creating a bermed shoreline may protect Lower Manhattan from storm surges and rising sea-levels, Foy noted, but "the chal- lenge with resiliency capital revenue projects is: where does the recurring source of revenue come from to pay the debt service?" 3 Affordable housing and low-income commu- nities were not part of Foy's answer to that question. Instead, he explained, investors want projects that create profitable real estate, and municipalities need the tax income that would come from this to pay the bonding required for expensive resilience infrastruc- ture investments like the Big U. As a result, he ex- plained, cities like New York, are increasingly depen- dent on public-private partnerships for infrastructure development, needing to plan projects that are profit- able for their private partners. Foy stated—likely with Bloomberg's "Seaport City" in mind—that the "exten- sion of Manhattan's coast by 250-500 feet will provide significant opportunities for real estate development. A significant increase in property taxes could pay a sig- nificant portion of the capital part of it." Ultimately Seaport City—and its bond financ- ing—never came to pass. Yet, several such public-pri- vate projects did succeed during the Bloomberg Ad- ministration, the most notable being Brooklyn Bridge Park, another project that combines green amenities and public waterfront access along with substantial resilience infrastructure. Unlike the LES, however, the neighborhood near the Brooklyn Bridge waterfront is wealthy and white. rough agreements between the City and the State economic development corporation, a nonprofit maintains the infrastructure through pri- vate funds derived from a public-private deal to build housing within the park. Gould and Lewis describe in detail the controversies involved in this resilience park mega-project. Like the LES, Brooklyn Heights residents resisted the kind of deal Foy was describing: building market-rate housing along the shore to sup- port, in this case, the ongoing maintenance of the park. But unlike the LES, the building of such projects would "hypergentrify" an already wealthy neighborhood. In the end, a set amount of market-rate housing has been built and funds from these projects maintain the park. While Brooklyn Heights' affluent homeowners fought to maintain their river views, the LES's low-in- come tenants were fighting to maintain the communi- ty itself. And while well-connected Brooklyn Heights neighborhood organizations actively joined forces with a development corporation, it appears that LES's longstanding community groups were not in a position to do so, and/or actively resisted this. As noted, these groups had formed powerful coalitions to oppose the gentrifying plans of the Lower Manhattan Develop- ment Corporation and to protect their communities following 9/11. Now, they focused on protecting the neighborhood from both gentrification and floods. As a result, the usual development corpora- tion actors—major actors in nearly every other New York City development project over the last 50 years— have been entirely missing from the public conversa- tion about the ESCR project. Indeed, as of this writ- ing, while government funds have been committed to building the park, it remains unclear how the park will be maintained. A report to determine the "steward- ship" of the park was funded but as of December 2018 had not yet been released. Given the controversies over maintaining the Brooklyn Bridge Park, funding the maintenance of the ESCR park, not to mention the construction and maintenance of the rest of the Big U, remained a major issue. Five years aer the Big U award, the question remained as to whether it would be built, either in its original form or at all. OneNYC and the Big U repu- diated Bloomberg's explicit "luxury city" deal-making, instead emphasizing equitable distribution of invest- ment, relying on public funds, and celebrating com- munity participation in design. Yet, for reasons that remain opaque, the project has stalled. With valuable 3 Interview between Friedman and Foy: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TIZa2-wwptw&t=1391s 52

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