By CARLO SCISSURA
A popular narrative in New York right now is one of hope: a classic New Yorker’s hope, with gritted teeth and determination, bold laughter in the face of uncertainty and a focus on our bright future that verges on fanaticism.
Any New Yorker who wants to see positive signs in the tea leaves, and I certainly count myself a member of that tribe, should be mortified by the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) contingent that continues to dominate our city politics, doing nothing short of putting our recovery at deep risk.
New York is facing a lot of obstacles: a still-bubbling pandemic, a lack of aid from the federal government, a city and state that are both truly out of money and a 16% unemployment rate, the highest since the Great Depression.
The last thing we need is our own leaders and neighbors making this worse by dismissing private investment in our city.
The past few months, we’ve seen NIMBY activists and the people who represent them in city government stop two projects that would have brought infrastructure investment, affordable housing, public space and tens of thousands of jobs — not just in construction, but permanent, upwardly-mobile jobs in new innovation districts — to bear for our city.
The rezoning of Industry City, which would have brought 20,000 jobs for people of diverse skill levels to a majority-minority area, was laid to rest just this week. The alternative, as-of-right use is essentially an industrial distribution center. It will never stimulate a vibrant local economy in the same way the just-canceled plan would have through an active streetscape and parks to create a walkable, exciting Sunset Park.
This is a deep economic blow to the local businesses and community that has survived so much throughout the pandemic.
But it’s just the most recent example of our city’s tendency to trip over ourselves, however. We need only look back a matter of weeks to see other versions of this same story play out.
In Long Island City, the “YourLIC" project, which would have brought 25,000 jobs to a formerly industrial patch of Queens, was dispatched when City Hall backed out.
This project was meticulously planned by a development team to be deeply responsive to community needs after activists dismantled Amazon’s bid, and the 40,000 jobs it would have brought, on the same site. The team was well aware of the site’s history and did everything it could to provide the antidote to that project, including deep economic analysis focusing on job creation specifically for the local neighborhood — a real community-led, community-centered economic development project.
Sadly, it seems we’ve entered a fact-free phase of activism here in New York, where jobs — any jobs — are equated with gentrification and opposed out of hand.
It is important and virtuous to fight hard for more and better employment opportunities for lower-income communities and communities of color in our city. But a hard “no” doesn’t achieve more and better; it only leaves our city with less for everyone.
As New York faces its greatest fiscal crisis since the 70s, and maybe ever, this kind of blanket opposition will leave us with less investment, fewer jobs and a slower economy that slows down quickest for those just getting by.
While activists dismiss billions of dollars in private investment in our city, we need them to come to the table with a proactive vision to get the nearly one in five unemployed New Yorkers back to work. The federal government isn’t coming to save us; the local government can’t. When private investment leaves our city, figuring it’s not worth it to fight the fights and lose, with no avenues left in which to operate, that’s when we go from an economically tough year to a true depression.
Would members of the building industry I represent benefit from these and other projects? You bet. But the boost would go far beyond one slice of the economy. Virtuous cycles help thousands of people. Vicious cycles hurt thousands.
While the failure to move these projects forward in their proposed forms is fresh in our minds, now is the time to unite to create a better New York for all and jumpstart our economy. It is critical that all stakeholders — communities, elected officials, developers, labor and the construction industry — come together to build the grand projects of tomorrow.
I will always believe in the future of our city, as a hub for creativity and the arts, for innovation and cross-cultural communication and for building the greatest development projects in the world. I just hope that others believe in it half as much as I do.
Scissura is president and CEO of the New York Building Congress.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-nyc-to-new-jobs-drop-dead-20200926-bjv36gej65atzjb7rycbrunhq4-story.html
