RPA Center for Urban Innovation

Zoning Laws Grow Up

2012-01-19T15:03:42Z

Julie Iovine writes for the Wall Street Journal about "activist" zoning in the Bloomberg administration: "It not only shapes the blocks and writes the skyline, but also aims to curb obesity by offering incentives for fresh-food markets in low-income neighborhoods; buck up the mom-and-pop store; and promote an astonishing range of other quality-of-life benefits."

Regional Plan Association senior fellow and Center for Urban Innovation director Julia Vitullo-Martin observes that, "Zoning has always concerned itself, for better or worse, with social matters, such as banishing noxious uses. What's different now is that the planning commission is moving from zoning that's negative on social issues to being positive, like mandating green markets and bike rooms."

Crain's Reports that Business is Looking Down for Construction Companies

2012-01-01T16:15:28Z

Geoffrey Decker reports for Crain's that the unionized construction industry faces continued uncertainty as nonunion contractors erode its position--the subject of RPA-CUI's Construction Labor Costs in New York City: A Moment of Opportunity.

The concerns continue even after settlement of 23 construction labor contracts in 2011. Some union deals in the last round of talks yielded significant concessions, Decker reports, but "new contracts with the carpenters' union and concrete workers increased wages and offered concessions only on buildings that were no higher than 20 stories." Industry experts, including RPA-CUI's Hope Cohen, think "the most significant development may be the decision of the Building Trades Employers' Association, a large general contracting group and chief negotiator, to opt out of a plan that required its contractors work exclusively with unions."

City & State Looks at New York's Sky-High Construction Costs

2011-12-19T16:36:23Z

Jon Lentz reports for City & State on what the $1.5 billion pricetag for Dubai's Burj Khalifa would--or wouldn't--build in New York. Could New York City's construction costs, which are among the highest in the nation, discourage investment and push developers to build elsewhere? "That's the big fear: Have we reached the threshold, or when will we reach the threshold, that people will chose not to build here and build somewhere else instead?" said Hope Cohen, the associate director of the Regional Plan Association's Center for Urban Innovation. "And that goes directly to a question of New York's competitiveness, within the nation and also globally."

Happy Birthday, NYC Zoning Resolution! You've Made It 50 Years. Now Change. (RPA Spotlight)

2011-12-06T14:16:52Z

Since New York invented zoning in 1916, it has overhauled its code exactly once, in 1961. Perhaps it's time to do so again.

Last month, City Planning Director Amanda Burden opened the discussion by sponsoring a 50th birthday conference for the 1961 revision that regulates building bulk, density, land use and parking, and forms the basis for the current 3,500-page zoning code. Called Zoning the City, the gathering looked at how to update the code to position New York as a more competitive, sustainable, equitable and beautiful city on the world stage.

]]> Several speakers urged opening up the city to much greater densities near transit nodes -- including dramatic steps such as tripling allowable densities in midtown or developing a land bridge that would connect Battery Park with Governors Island.

Citizens Housing & Planning Council offered more immediately feasible ideas, based on the council's own Making Room project that commissioned five teams to design new housing types, unbound from a wide array of city and state regulations -- including all four kinds of zoning rules. CHPC argues that the existing rules drive costs up and severely limit housing options in a socially varied world.

How to produce more parks and open space was a major theme at Zoning the City. Speakers pointed repeatedly to the success of the High Line as both a magnificent park and a generator of development and economic activity. Urban planner Alex Garvin argued that zoning should be recast to focus on the public realm -- on a park, street or plaza, rather than on the building lots surrounding it. Advocate for the homeless Rosanne Haggerty stressed the importance of looking at neighborhoods holistically, so as to spend public resources on "the right things" rather than on prisons, hospitals and shelters.

Perhaps most strikingly, Harvard professor Jerold Kayden, developer Jonathan Rose, architect Robert Stern, and Real Estate Board of New York chairperson Mary Ann Tighe, among others, advocated overhauling New York's prescriptive approach to regulating use, which essentially dictates what is allowed rather than what is forbidden.

 And what of parking, the third rail of the zoning code? City Planning continues to hone a set of much-anticipated changes to the code's parking rules. Possible revisions include easing minimum parking requirements outside Manhattan. The agency stayed largely mum at Zoning the City, but it seemed possible that the city may soon release a new set of parking proposals.

Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Steel unveiled a new set of "green zoning" proposals that would eliminate regulations that now block green construction, energy-efficient retrofits and installation of solar panels and green roofs. To be released for public review shortly, these proposals will likely focus on the shape, size and placement of buildings -- for example, by allowing limited new structures on rooftops.

In sponsoring the conference, Burden recognized that New York can and should lead zoning innovation for a new century, as cities throughout the U.S. grapple with similar issues of complexity and limited flexibility. Harriet Tregoning, Washington, D.C.'s planning director who is working on overhauling the U.S. capital's permanent regulatory structures, observed at the conference: "Every 50 years or so, you should re-examine your zoning code. New York is right on schedule."

The Center Cannot Hold -- Enough People (City & State)

2011-12-05T18:11:50Z

Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have accepted the defeat of his proposed football stadium and convention center on the far West Side of Manhattan, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"Why don't we build an addition to the Javits Center?" he said in a recent interview. "That is what the convention business needs--a very big, flexible space. And, as a matter of fact, if we could get somebody who would pay for the whole thing in return for maybe using it 13 Sundays in the fall, wouldn't that be a great thing for New York City?"

]]> The mayor's tongue may have been firmly in his cheek, but there is no question many of the state's powerful business and political interests are fed up with the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the 675,000 square-foot boxy pyramid-shaped convention space adjacent to the Hudson Yards development site. Too small, too hard to get to, too expensive to renovate.

For an example of a convention center done right, Bloomberg says look no further than Chicago, with its 6 million-square-foot McCormick Place convention center.

"You could fit the Javits Center inside the McCormick center and they'd still have plenty of room for conventions," the mayor groused. "We are hopelessly behind."

The desire for a new convention center permeates the top levels of New York's city and state government. Robert Steel, Bloomberg's deputy mayor for economic development, is said to be interested in building a new space. So is Pat Foye, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent pick to head the Port Authority, which has taken charge of the Moynihan Station project to turn the post office near the Javits Center into a train station.

"It could be a good legacy project for Cuomo--a massive construction project like a convention center would create tens of thousands of short-term construction jobs," said one labor operative.

Javits was headed toward an overhaul before the Great Recession derailed that plan. In 2008 then Gov. David Paterson, citing the rising costs of construction, downgraded Javits' $1.7 billion expansion to a mere $465 million renovation project.

But business leaders, tourism experts and city officials have serious doubts the renovation will make Javits any more palatable to those large-scale marquee events that the city wants to attract, like the trade shows that fill convention centers in Chicago and Las Vegas.

At a recent meeting of New York City's regional economic development council, the Regional Plan Association made the case for selling and demolishing Javits and splitting the city's convention space between two locations. Hope Cohen, a director at RPA, said such a plan would generate about $4 billion to redevelop Moynihan Station as compact Manhattan convention space and build a much larger convention center elsewhere, like Willets Point in Queens.

"Recognize the different functionalities, and separate them," Cohen said. "This would capture not only high-end conferences that we might be already getting in New York but, more importantly, the conferences that we're not getting in New York because we have no such facility...like the three-day conventions for the [American Medical Association] or the Lung Association that have been going to other cities."

But without enough money to build, many believe the plan won't get much further than the drawing table.

"I think it's over and done with," Bloomberg said. "We've built a lot of the things around there. The space is now dedicated to office buildings. It's going to be built over the rail yards."

Still, the temptation remains.

"The McCormick center in Chicago is an enormous percentage of Chicago's business," Bloomberg mused, "and if we had that, a lot of that business would come here."

The Center Cannot Hold -- Enough People

Where's the Money? Infrastructure Finance Conference with Panelist Hope Cohen

2011-12-01T14:22:15Z

Forum to examine the current model for financing transportation projects in New York State and develop a new paradigm for funding these projects.

8am-1pm, Friday, December 2, 2011 @ McGraw-Hill Conference Center

Program description: http://www.navigatingopportunities.com/money/program.php

To build a 21st Century New York City, Bloomberg Must Totally Rethink the Way Zoning Works

2011-11-27T14:51:52Z

At a conference this month celebrating the 1961 Zoning Resolution, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel announced the city's 50th birthday gift to its 3,500-page zoning code: a set of "green zoning" proposals that would encourage energy-efficient construction, retrofits and installation of solar panels and green roofs.

Green is good. But the idea whose time has truly come after half a century is performance zoning rather than regulating on the basis of outdated categories.

]]> The city's current zoning code divides the city into residential, commercial and industrial areas -- and lists all the uses permissible in each type of district. The list of "retail or service establishments" allowed in commercial zones begins with antique stores and ends with "watch or clock stores or repair shops" -- mentioning millinery shops, photographic studios, record stores, telegraphic offices and typewriter stores along the way.

It's hopelessly outdated. In zoning world, computer stores -- let alone mobile phone stores -- don't exist. (The closest the code gets is to recognize "depositories for storage of office records, microfilm or computer tapes, or for data processing" among the types of large retail establishments.)

By prescribing exactly what uses are allowed, zoning essentially outlaws uses not yet named or thought of. Without intending to, this suppresses innovation and economic evolution.

At the very least, uses should be ruled out of a district rather than having to be ruled in. For example, permissible retail or service establishments could be defined as stores other than those selling and repairing firearms.

But we must think bigger, finally doing a gut rehab of the code that orients it around the kind of city we want rather than the types of buildings that go in it.

Mixing together a variety of uses -- residential, business, entertainment, education, worship, retail, light manufacturing and more -- is one of the delights of city life. Urbanist Jane Jacobs identified diversity of uses as crucial to a city's vitality and economy. Over the past decade, Chairwoman Amanda Burden and her City Planning staff have developed many zoning tools to advance the city's economy and environment, but surely Burden's greatest contribution as planning director has been to recognize the importance of mixed use and encourage it.

Performance zoning would eliminate use labels altogether, replacing them with the realization that an establishment's impact on its neighbors -- noise, pollution, traffic -- is what really matters.

One example: Right now, zoning regulations allow a Y to be built virtually anywhere "as of right" -- no special approvals needed. Whether Mens' or Womens', Christian or Hebrew, a Y is a nonprofit community center.

On the other hand, every Equinox Fitness Club must have a special permit from the city's Board of Standards & Appeals to open in commercial or industrial districts -- and must renew it every 10 years. The rules ban "adult physical culture establishments" such as Equinox from residential districts entirely. The distinction makes no sense. Similarly, university business schools are allowed in areas zoned for two- and three-family houses, but "business colleges" must get a permit.

There are thousands of other examples of how byzantine, arbitrary and maddening our code is.

It's also anti-competitive. Perhaps most important for the city is to build on its strengths as an intellectual and creative capital. Overhauling use zoning would allow entrepreneurs and dress designers -- along with accountants and artists -- to work at home. Today, work activities are absent from all residential use lists.

New York all but invented zoning with its original 1916 code. Fifty years ago, it mapped out the 20th century city. It's time to reinvent zoning again.

Cohen is New York director for the Regional Plan Association.

To build a 21st Century New York City, Bloomberg Must Totally Rethink the Way Zoning Works

RPA Presents Ideas for Development in Jamaica (Queens Chronicle)

2011-11-23T18:10:15Z

Expanding bus service between Jamaica and Flushing, extending the Air Train route to make traveling to the Resorts World Casino easier, adding hotels, office space and retail -- these are just some of the ideas the Regional Plan Association envisions as possibilities for the future of Jamaica.

]]> The RPA, an independent urban research and advocacy group, presented its ideas to the Greater Jamaica Development Corp., an organization dedicated to increasing commerce in the downtown area, at the group's semi-annual meeting on Nov. 10.

The GJDC is in the process of doing some strategizing regarding the area and hoped the RPA could let members know if they're on the right track -- what Jamaica's strengths are and the possible options for development and enhancement of the economic region, according to Andrew Manshel, executive vice president of the development group.

"They wanted a fresh perspective from an outsider, to spark conversations as they move forward," said Hope Cohen, the RPA's New York regional director, who made the presentation. "These are just ideas. Whether they will do anything with them remains to be seen."

The suggestions represent a broader perspective on how downtown Jamaica, one of three regional business districts in the borough, can make investments to ensure the area thrives while protecting the existing character of neighboring communities.

More than 700,000 residents live in Southeast Queens, according to the RPA, and Jamaica has many strengths and tremendous potential for expansion, especially if the area takes advantage of both impending and possible development projects.

Jamaica's downtown is a central hub providing access to the borough's two major airports and connecting commuters to multiple modes of transportation including buses, trains and the Long Island Rail Road. It is also less than four miles from the newly opened and highly successful Resorts World Casino in South Ozone Park, where hotels and a convention center are planned.

In order to capitalize on the JFK International Airport Terminal 10 (AirTrain terminal) project, the RPA supports developing a nearby hotel and meeting space, office space, residential buildings and retail including restaurants and other amenities, endorsing a plan the GJDC has been proposing for many years, Cohen said.

The group also suggests taking advantage of the various cultures that already exist in the area and nearby communities, including people from Latin America, the Caribbean, West Indies and South Asia, as well as the Chinese and Korean communities in Flushing, to attract international tourists with specialized visitor and business services.

"We need a language institute to prepare our kids to get these jobs," Edith Thomas, chairwoman of Community Board 12's Economic Development Committee, said at the group's Nov. 16 meeting as she reported on the RPA-GJDC forum. "Because if they can speak the language, there is no reason why they can't be hired."

The RPA sees several potentially related areas for growth including the hospitality industry, translation services, customized touring, pharmaceuticals, air freight and industrial uses and transportation uses.

The organization suggests expanding the Q25 or Q44 route into a direct, rapid bus service between Flushing and Jamaica to bring Chinese- and Korean-speaking employees to the downtown area. Another plan is to extend the AirTrain one-half mile from the Howard Beach terminal to access the Resorts World Casino directly from the main area of JFK and Terminal 10.

Another RPA idea is to take advantage of NextGen, an upgrading of air-traffic-control systems to satellite-based technology, planned for JFK and LaGuardia airports in 2018, by starting to train people now for work in that industry including software development, testing and manufacturing and simulator design and construction.

There will also be new opportunities for expansion, according to the RPA, after the East Side Access project, set to begin in 2018, is completed, connecting the LIRR to and from Grand Central terminal in Manhattan. It will increase LIRR service, trains and capacity, possibly drawing more commuters into the Jamaica transportation nexus.

"There is a wonderful synergy going on here, if you're able to take advantage of it," Thomas said, later adding, "While all these people are making their money, don't sit back here and think the only thing we can do is ask for a job, because we are going to be left out. We have to prepare."

Further, the RPA suggests making Jamaica a more centralized area by attracting a manufacturing incubator serving a business such as a food, cosmetics or pharmaceuticals manufacturer to the site of the former Wonder Bread bakery, which closed last year.

"We are seeking to energize people," Cohen said. "To give them a new way of looking at things."

RPA Presents Ideas for Development in Jamaica

"Ugly" Safety Measures Kill Public Spaces (NPR)

2011-10-24T19:34:59Z

In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., Julia Vitullo-Martin complains, law enforcement and city planners have installed jersey barriers, concrete planters and other "ugly measures that evoke fear rather than safety." In her op-ed for USA Today she calls it "militarized urbanism."

]]> NEAL CONAN, host: And now the opinion page. The architectural adaptation that distinguishes the American city post-9/11 is the proliferation of Jersey barriers, the unlovely concrete walls used to redirect traffic, block off streets and protect buildings, part of what Julia Vitullo-Martin described as militarized urbanism. In a recent op-ed in USA Today, she argued that while we want our cities to be safe, we don't want to sacrifice beauty, energy and street life in the process.

How has your city changed since 9/11? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. You can find a link to her op-ed there too.

Julia Vitullo-Martin is director of Center for Urban Development at the Regional Planning Association. She joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you today on TALK OF THE NATION.

JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN: Thank you for having me.

CONAN: And are we talking largely about a downtown phenomenon, where something might credibly present itself as a target?

VITULLO-MARTIN: We're frequently talking about downtown and central city phenomenon, in the sense that those are the locations that are most likely to have the kind of large, attractive, iconic buildings that are thought to be the most ready and available objects of terrorism. But we aren't exclusively talking about downtowns. This phenomenon of militarized urbanism, which really refers to the tendency of all sorts of property owners - not just the federal government, but all sorts of public and private property owners - to try to secure their space, and sometimes space they don't own, through these militaristic devices like Jersey barriers, and bollards, and closing streets and closing off formerly public areas.

CONAN: Bollards are those big concrete planters, basically, that are also used to protect buildings, presumably, from would-be car bombs.

VITULLO-MARTIN: That's right.

CONAN: And those big planters, too, and chain-link fences. Here in Washington, D.C., for example, part of Pennsylvania Avenue, the part in front of the White House has been closed off.

VITULLO-MARTIN: That's right.

CONAN: And some people would say, well, wait a minute, eliminating traffic from there, suddenly it's a pedestrian plaza.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, it is and isn't a pedestrian plaza. Pedestrians are frequently closed off, as well, from the White House. I mean, that's happened to me several times when I've been in Washington. And it's not just the White House and the Capitol that are subject to militarized urbanism - all sorts of neighborhoods in Washington and in other cities, almost any place that an important dignitary or, you know, would-be dignitary, goes to and secures some kind of police protection.

CONAN: So architects, obviously, and city planners do have to take into account security. You quote in your piece a well-known architect says, we can never forget 9/11. It's going to be part of everything we do from now on.

VITULLO-MARTIN: That's right. And even though my piece attacks militarized urbanism - and I think we all should be extremely wary of permitting further invasions of security into our cities - 9/11 did have the effect of getting architects and developers and owners to really think about how to secure their buildings when they're putting the buildings up in the first place. And how to make those buildings as safe as possible, so that ugly devices aren't needed afterwards.

CONAN: And give us an example. We've been talking about chain-link fences and Jersey barriers as examples of things that are not very - a good response to this. But give us an example of something that did work.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, for example, the - what used to be called the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero on downtown New York, One World Trade Center, which is now nearing completion. That building was redesigned to make it as safe as possible. And some of the things that were done, such as increasing the width of the emergency staircases and changing the air distribution systems so that it would be much less vulnerable to attack, improved the building and make it safer and are very unobtrusive.

Now, on the other hand, there is a problem at One World Trade that I don't think has been solved yet, and that is that the NYPD insisted upon a concrete barrier of 185 feet at the base of the building, and that was to be covered with a very attractive glass, and that glass proved very difficult to manufacture. So the architect has to go back to the drawing board on that one. But the point is, the architect and the owner are thinking about these things now and not later.

CONAN: We're talking with Julia Vitullo-Martin, the author of "Militarized Urbanism Chokes U.S. Cities" in USA Today. We'd like to hear how 9/11 changed your city, especially your downtown. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. We should also point out, in your piece you argued that, in fact, a lot of the predictions after 9/11 did not come true.

VITULLO-MARTIN: That's right. After 9/11, many prominent commentators, maybe even most prominent commentators, urged people to leave cities and leave New York in particular, and also urged that we call a halt to the building of very large or iconic buildings because these would attract terrorism. And in fact, just the opposite has happened. Americans have poured into their cities, and we've seen increases in population in New York, in L.A., in Houston, in Chicago, and that's great. And of course, owners and developers have continued to build large buildings. One World Trade Center, when it's completed at 1,776 feet, will be the largest building in America.

CONAN: And it will be pretty much rented out too.

VITULLO-MARTIN: And it will be pretty much rented out. And by the way, it's a great comfort in all of this that, yes, it will be rented out, so the market is responding very well. And 30 percent of it is going to be rented to Conde Nast, and you know, the publisher of Vogue, et cetera. And Conde Nast was a very important force in rejuvenating Times Square, which is where it is right now. And more important to our subject, Conde Nast is going to be visited, as it always has been, by immensely important and probably rather touchy people who will expect to be very well treated. So that means that the owners and managers of One World Trade Center will have to be thinking right now about security that works and that is also unobtrusive and polite.

CONAN: Yet those are new buildings and, as you say, they can be designed with security in mind. There are things - if you own the World - the Empire State Building, obviously the other iconic skyscraper in Manhattan, you're going to have to do some things - can you retrofit your building?

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, you know, that's really an interesting question, and interesting that you bring up the Empire State Building. I was just in there yesterday. It is such a wonderful building. It's actually just as open to the public as it's ever been. So you know, you have to go through security to go to the upper floors, but you can walk to that magnificent lobby. You can go from one entrance to the next. And you know, to the naked eye, it looks like 9/11 never happened.

CONAN: We're talking with Julia Vitullo-Martin about militarized urbanism and the design of our centers and the proliferation of Jersey barriers to protect buildings and redirect traffic. What's happened in your city? 800-989-8255. Let's go to Mike. Mike's on the line from Ypsilanti in Michigan.

MIKE: Hello.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

MIKE: I'm wondering what you think about sue-veillance(ph) and surveillance, closed circuit, as architecture and how you consider that possibly as architecture.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, we have a whole lot less surveillance in this country than they have in European cities and in Asian and Middle Eastern cities. So that's point number one. Point number two, surveillance in London, for example, I think has been quite a good thing because it has enabled them to put up new buildings and still give - for example, on the waterfront, on the Thames, and still give tremendous public access because there - what we think of in America as very aggressive use of CCTV and all sorts of surveillance technology, unobtrusive for the most part, that has allowed them to permit public access onto private property without being worried about increases in crime.

CONAN: So you're talking about Canary Wharf, for example.

VITULLO-MARTIN: You know, I wasn't talking about Canary Wharf. I was really talking about South Bank, but Canary Wharf is a very nice example as well. You know, you can walk all over Canary Wharf. Yeah.

CONAN: Mike?

MIKE: Yes.

CONAN: Does surveillance bother you?

MIKE: No. There's actually the new movement of what's called sue-veillance which is open-source closed circuit. I'm picking my kids up. I apologize.

CONAN: That's all right. You don't have to apologize for picking your kids up. We're all in favor of that.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call. We'll let you deal with your immediate situation there. Julia Vitullo-Martin is our guest, and she is director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Regional Plan Association. She joins us from our bureau in New York on the opinion page this week. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION coming to you from NPR News. And let's see if we can get Daniel on the line. Daniel with us from Savannah.

DANIEL: Hi there. I'm calling (unintelligible) Savannah, Georgia. I spent half my time in Toronto and Tel Aviv. And obviously the buildings in Tel Aviv are under tremendous scrutiny in regards to security because of the nature of where it's located. But what I was shocked to find is the influx of security in Toronto, in Canada where I live.

CONAN: And is there a way to repair it, do you think?

DANIEL: It's a really good question. In this post-9/11 world, I would have to say that it's going to take a long time. Time heals all wounds, I'd say, but the security phenomenon that has sort of taken over since 9/11, it'll be here for a while, I think.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Can I ask what you're talking about in particular? What is it that bothers you the most?

DANIEL: I really - it really bothers me, just shopping malls, going out, having to be around security guards all the time. That sort of thing is - can be aggravating, especially in Toronto. We're used to it more in Tel Aviv, as I'm sure you can appreciate.

CONAN: And this is concern for suicide vest explosions, that sort of thing?

DANIEL: Oh, in Tel Aviv, absolutely. The season of the suicide bomber happened - 9/11 happened amidst the season of suicide bomber, where security in Tel Aviv was stepped up, so...

CONAN: Right. Daniel, thanks very much. This is a situation which is - the surveillance may do some of that, but uniformed security officers are going to be part of that for the foreseeable future. I think he's right.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, he's absolutely right. There are also things that - there are modifications in behavior that uniformed security officers can do to help us all. And, excuse me, and one is to - we really need security officers to be very well trained in dealing with the public and in being courteous.

So, for example, at New York City Hall, Mayor Bloomberg, who had reopened City Hall Park to the public - you can walk through that again, anybody can walk through it, which is very nice, lovely park, Mayor Bloomberg has nonetheless left security on access to City Hall itself. But it is very polite and unobtrusive security, and the NYPD cops who man the kiosk are just as polite and as elegant as you could ask for from anyone, and I think especially in routine security that's really important.

CONAN: Email from Jim Turner in Rocklin, California: I live in the Sacramento area. After 9/11, the road that led past the Folsom Dam was closed, resulting in the lost of miles of lakeside parks, closure of dozens of businesses that had no customers, and it has still not reopened. And let's see if we can get Caroline on the line. Caroline with us from Anchorage in Alaska.

CAROLINE: Yes. Good morning. In Alaska, it'd be almost impossible to build those kind of barricade. People are so independent. But I'm wondering if it's beginning to look in some cities like East Germany and in Russia. And a follow up is real quick, the encouragement of people to move out of cities, did that drive land prices down and be a benefit for those who had the money to purchase?

VITULLO-MARTIN: Well, to start with the last question, absolutely not. Land prices in New York have just skyrocketed since 2001. And that has also happened in LA, Chicago, Miami, Boston, London, Paris. So alas, no. Let me jump to Sacramento, though, for just one moment on the dam question because that particular issue - maybe they were right to close the street, to close the road past the dam. But these decisions all need to be rethought and rethought often and the impulse on the part, especially, I think, of the federal government, is to close streets, close roads, close access, close public parks, and then never even consider the reopening of those, never considered the possibility that maybe circumstances have changed and something should be reopened. And I'm sorry. The - what was the other question on Alaska?

CONAN: The question is whether - well, she said it would be unlikely to be able to put up barriers there because people are so independent-minded but...

VITULLO-MARTIN: Yes, and good for independent Alaskans. That's really an important point. We have to fight for our cities, and our mayors have to fight for our cities. And it's very good to be independent and to question every single Jersey barrier that goes up in your neighborhood.

I'd like to particularly point out Mayor Daly in Chicago, who, you know, he was the mayor of one of the most beautiful cities in America, and he made it even more beautiful, and there was no way he was going to let property owners, public or private, push him around and make your city ugly after 9/11, so he really fought hard to make sure that security measures were as unobtrusive and as good looking as possible, and that makes the difference.

CONAN: Caroline, thanks very much for the call.

CAROLINE: You're very welcome. Excellent topic.

CONAN: And, Julia Vitullo-Martin, thank you very much for your time today.

VITULLO-MARTIN: Thank you.

CONAN: Julia Vitullo-Martin joined us from our bureau in New York. There's a link to her piece "Militarized Urbanism Chokes U.S. cities" at our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Tomorrow, the debate over single-sex classrooms picks up again. We'll talk with teachers. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

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"Ugly" Safety Measures Kill Public Spaces

The Case to Sell the Javits Center (Crain's)

2011-10-23T21:49:18Z

Hulking and obsolete, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center may not look like a well-stuffed piggy bank.

But it is. Or could be.

At a recent meeting of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Council for New York City, Regional Plan Association President Robert Yaro proposed selling Javits for redevelopment--netting the state $4 billion.

]]> Those proceeds would pay for four new investments that would resolve New York City's long-vexing lack of high-quality convention and meeting space, at no public cost:

Completing the Moynihan Station infrastructure ($1 billion).

Building a state-of-the-art conference, or "congress," center in the western portion of the Farley Post Office, alongside Moynihan Station ($500 million).

Installing the streets, sewers and sidewalks required to develop the multiblock area now occupied by the Javits Center ($500 million).

Building a 1 million-square-foot, world-class trade and consumer show facility at Willets Point or at the former Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens ($1 billion).

An eight-block obstacle to public access to the Hudson River, the Javits Center has never adequately met the needs of New York's important conference, convention and trade show industry. It's too small for most consumer and trade shows and too inaccessible and expensive for conferences.

Selling Javits would allow New York to separate the roles of trade show venue and congress center into facilities designed for these very different functions--as Hong Kong, London, Milan and Tokyo have done. Like those places, New York could sustain a regional network of smaller conference centers (for example, in the business districts of Newark, Stamford, Conn., and Jamaica, Queens, as well as Manhattan), along with a large trade show hall outside the central business district.

For a new million-square-foot convention center, two sites in Queens offer the highway and airport access necessary for trade shows: Willets Point and the former Aqueduct Racetrack.

Willets Point is a 61-acre redevelopment area near La Guardia Airport. Aqueduct is a 200-acre site located five miles from JFK. Genting Group is developing a racino there--keeping the historic racetrack, turning the grandstand into a casino and eventually building a hotel. This past summer, Genting opened the door to developing a convention center on the site.

A congress center--a place for high-end business and professional meetings--requires a relatively modest 300,000 to 500,000 square feet to attract the lucrative meetings that have long bypassed New York for places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego.

The western half of the Farley Post Office, located on Ninth Avenue between West 31st and West 33rd streets, could accommodate such a center. It has room for 400,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting room space in the nation's most concentrated business, retail, entertainment and tourist district--with direct access to a wide array of transportation options.

Selling the Javits Center is an idea whose time should come. It would help the region take big steps forward, and would show that thinking and building big is indeed still possible in New York.

Hope Cohen is New York director for the Regional Plan Association and associate director of its Center for Urban Innovation.

The Case to Sell the Javits Center

"Militarized Urbanism" Chokes U.S. Cities (USA Today)

2011-10-17T13:23:25Z

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, prominent commentators argued that in an age of urban terrorism, tall buildings should become a thing of the past -- that cities should decentralize themselves and people should be encouraged to spread out around the country. New York magazine columnist Kurt Andersen contended that the Freedom Tower should be abandoned, calling it "a provocation to ambitious terrorists around the world."

Of course, Americans made their own decisions and -- contrary to all predictions -- moved to cities instead of away from them. Demand for living and working in tall buildings soared, and the race by developers to build the world's tallest resumed.

This is as it should be.

]]> Indeed, a week after the nation observed the 10th anniversary of 9/11, developer Larry Silverstein announced that his 7 World Trade Center, the only tower at Ground Zero to be finished, had been fully leased. The rents -- at a high of $80 per square foot -- proved that he had been right all along to persist in building.

Glamour, gumption and dollars

Ignoring Andersen and all other prophets of doom, Condé Nast last spring leased 30% of the Freedom Tower (now renamed 1 WTC), thereby promising to bring unmatched glamour, gumption and dollars downtown -- having a decade before successfully rejuvenated the Times Square neighborhood they're now leaving.

It wasn't just New York that was warned off big buildings. Chicago developer J. Paul Beitler, who in the 1990s had tried to build the world's largest building in the Loop, told the Chicago Tribune in 2001 that such a building would be a liability after 9/11: "Instead of being icons representing man's finest hour and business' highest achievement, they are now being viewed as targets in fanatics' gun sights."

But his town of Chicago -- the nation's first city of great architecture -- correctly ignored him and launched a local building boom instead. Its new Class A towers include the Trump International Hotel & Tower, which at 92 stories and 1,389 feet became the second-tallest building in the country in 2009, after Chicago's 1,450-foot Willis Tower.

Yet there remains a problem. And that is how to save our cities from what's called "militarized urbanism," which is the drive to aggressively -- even belligerently -- secure designated neighborhoods or buildings in order to strengthen control by owners and official authorities. We all want our cities to be safe. But we don't want their beauty, energy and street life destroyed in the process.

Former New York police deputy commissioner Michael Sheehan is probably the most prominent of the few security experts who understand the dilemma. In his book Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism without Terrorizing Ourselves, he argues that effective counter-terrorism policy needs to balance security measures with good city planning. He writes, "During my tenure at NYPD, I spent considerable time denying requests for Jersey barriers, ugly concrete planters, and bollards proposed by managers and security directors of Manhattan properties."

In the years since 2006, when Sheehan left the NYPD, Manhattan has become jammed with Jersey barriers. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly last month, many important or landmarked buildings on the East Side -- or any places delegates might go, for that matter -- were surrounded by huge Jersey barriers stamped "NYPD." Instead of looking like the stylish, assured world capital that it is, New York had the appearance of a bunker, made even worse by the horrendous traffic congestion caused by the barriers.

Our national fortress

Washington, D.C., a once graciously planned and welcoming city, is another fortress city. It has been subject since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to ugly measures that evoke fear rather than safety, as The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt charged in a column called "Capital Eyesore." Chain-link fences, hostile guard booths, bollards and Jersey barriers disfigure iconic neighborhoods. Major streets have been permanently closed and others shut off, even to pedestrians, when a head of state or important dignitary is staying nearby.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley successfully fought some of the most destructive security proposals but was unable to prevent the federal government from disfiguring the beautiful public space in front of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's federal building, first with Jersey barriers and now with huge granite bollards. Indeed, the federal government has spent millions of taxpayer dollars defacing public spaces.

The good news is that push-back from a combination of citizens and professional designers, planners and architects is forcing changes in how the federal government interprets its legislative and regulatory mandates. The National Capital Planning Commission's report sets out strategies for making buildings attractively safe. And it cites successes, such as Washington's Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center, which despite strict security has a lively food court in a pretty patio and free Wi-Fi that attracts both tourists and locals.

Paradoxically, the new big buildings are probably the safest precisely because they can be designed and engineered to the highest possible protective standards. As the eminent Dutch architect Jan Willem van Kuilenburg of Monolab told Radio Netherlands Worldwide last month, clients today have put security front and center. Renowned for spectacularly modernist designs, he noted that 9/11 has "become embedded into our thought processes, and it will never leave."

That's as it should be. And as we face the future, we must keep building, restoring, expanding and cherishing our cities -- without defacing them.

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a New Yorker, is a senior fellow at Regional Plan Association and director of RPA's Center for Urban Innovation.

"Militarized Urbanism" Chokes U.S. Cities

The Infrastructure That Holds New York Together is Falling Apart (The Capitol)

2011-09-26T14:07:27Z

New York was once a pioneer in building ambitious public works to knit a far-flung state together, from the Erie Canal to the Brooklyn Bridge to the country's first subway system.

These days, the state is struggling just to maintain and replace aging infrastructure--from roads and bridges to water and sewer systems to dams and power lines--let alone launch 21st-century projects like high-speed trains to meet the needs of a growing population.

]]> The recent flooding caused by Tropical Storm Irene and Lee also put the state's infrastructure needs into focus. Besides tearing up roads and train tracks and leaving a billion dollars' worth of damage in its wake, the flooding highlighted the state's vulnerable water infrastructure, from overflowing wastewater systems to dams and levees that were pushed to the brink.

The poster child for the state's woes is the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River, past its useful life and in desperate need of replacement. A new bridge will cost anywhere from $6-16 billion.

Hope Cohen, associate director at the Regional Plan Association's Center for Urban Innovation, suggested rounding the cost of a bridge to an even $10 billion. Add to that about another $10 billion to meet the shortfall in the MTA's capital plan. And another $10 billion or so for the state Department of Transportation's capital program to fix and build roads and bridges throughout the state.

"The MTA has come up with some innovative financing for how they're going to cobble together their ten," Cohen said. "I haven't heard of any ideas for New York State DOT about how they're going to come up with their ten, so they're still trying to figure that out. And now you come along with the Tappan Zee that needs ten of its own. Well, where are you going to get it?"

It's a tough question Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration will have to face sooner rather than later--and it's even harder to answer for projects like expanding sewage plants and power lines, which don't carry the visceral power of a crumbling bridge. But some say it's as much about attitude and priorities as it is about dollars and cents.
In a speech to the New York Building Congress last month, the Port Authority's Chris Ward criticized the political environment surrounding the authority's attempts to raise its tolls and fares.

"Unfortunately, you cannot always do more with less," Ward said. "Sometimes you must simply do more. And until that reality becomes part of our political conversation, we will be playing catch-up with the rest of the world."

Jonathan Peters, a finance professor at the College of Staten Island, said the new governor likely wants to invest in infrastructure, if only he can round up the revenue.
"Does he have the tax revenue for it?" Peters asked. "Does he have the political will to raise the taxes to make it happen? We've had this kind of ongoing deadlock in Albany over taxes and over who pays for what. It's not looking good."

Of course, the state's legacy as a builder of roads and bridges glosses over the difficulties faced in the past--and the use of innovation and creativity to move projects forward.

In developing the Erie Canal, for example, then Gov. DeWitt Clinton tried to get President Thomas Jefferson to provide federal funding for it. The president refused.

"So he sold shares, and he basically did some of the first, essentially, municipal bonds, and got private investors," said Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

"The price of produce that was shipped down that canal paid for the canal before it was even finished," he said. "It so radically changed the price of shipping once you were able to ship things by barge from upstate New York and eventually through the Great Lakes and the whole Midwest."

The Infrastructure That Holds New York Together is Falling Apart

Reconstructing New York's Building Business (Crain's)

2011-09-18T13:47:09Z

It was billed as the summer that would transform the city's $24 billion unionized construction industry. Two dozen contracts were expiring, and contractors vowed to negotiate a wide array of concessions to regain work lost in recent years to nonunion builders.

After down-to-the-wire bargaining and a brief concrete workers' strike, most of the deals got done--many with significant concessions on work rules and wages.

]]> But the biggest changes for the industry, it turns out, are yet to come. The players in the drama--developers, unions and contractors--emerged from the contract talks far from satisfied and bent on transforming the way that business is conducted. New alliances that are on the cusp of being formed could shake up an industry long set in its ways.

"Some of the negotiations achieved substantial progress, and others achieved very little," said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. "We can't continue to let these issues be in somebody else's hands. It's clear the current system doesn't work."

The most significant changes for owners were seen in the deal reached with operating engineers, who agreed to unprecedented concessions designed to increase the productivity of certain classes of workers. For some projects, the steamfitters agreed to alter a rule requiring crews to work in pairs. And the painters acceded to key givebacks, including a 20% reduction in benefit contributions.

But REBNY members were incensed that wages for concrete workers and carpenters were cut 20% only for residential and hotel projects of up to 16 and 20 stories, respectively. Mr. Spinola argues that the move will primarily benefit nonunion developers, who tend to construct smaller buildings.

"The summer was an eye-opening moment for the owners and developers," said Hope Cohen, associate director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Regional Plan Association. "They were allowing business to occur without a lot of hands-on involvement. But a better understanding of how it works and discontent with how it works are the two things that have the potential to change the industry structure in the long run."

Developers are meeting this week to begin mapping out a strategy. They are likely to discuss negotiating directly with the unions, starting their own construction companies, and recruiting contractors from outside the city to increase competition.

Developers' last resort

Building with nonunion labor will also be on the table--though that is a last resort for many big developers, which value the quality and speed of union work and want to continue the industry's tradition of creating good jobs. Union developers were irked that Sam Zell's Chicago-based Equity Residential swooped in to construct a building in the heart of Manhattan using nonunion labor. They worry that other developers will follow suit, tilting the field against those who want to remain union.

"There is a consensus among owners that they cannot continue to compete without bringing down costs," Mr. Spinola said. "If that means having more flexibility on which contractors you're putting on the job, then they are interested in at least exploring that."

The owners aren't the only ones meeting. About two dozen top labor leaders met over several days on Long Island last week about a prospective alliance with the bill-payers of the industry, though for a different reason. With their traditionally close relationship with contractors on the rocks, labor plans to make the case to owners that workers have already made cost-saving sacrifices, and contractors now need to follow suit.

"We want to convince owners that the things we've done actually do result in substantial economic efficiencies," said Paul Fernandes, chief of staff of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. "We don't feel they're getting the full story."

Cutting out contractors

Mr. Fernandes said that owners more often save on projects when they are building or actively managing them, rather than giving contractors free rein. He said Forest City Ratner Cos. actively priced out its Atlantic Yards project with construction managers, saving millions of dollars.

Contractors, who could be the odd group out if a labor-developer alliance takes hold, also met last week to chart a course of action. They want a system that enables construction managers to get bids from every possible union contractor before considering nonunion options.

Union contractors, represented by the Building Trade Employers' Association, opened the door to using nonunion workers by pulling out of the agreement that has set rules for the construction industry since 1903, effective at the end of the year.

Louis Coletti, president of the association, said contractors want to remain 100% union, but by quitting the plan, they "created a mechanism" to go nonunion if economics demand it. He said he's not bothered by developers' potential relationship with labor.

"If developers are able to help us, as contractors, maintain a union environment by doing better than us, then that's terrific," he said. "We're ready to stand with them and provide as much assistance as we can."

But Mr. Coletti added that he wasn't giving up on repairing the tattered relationship with labor.

"At the end of the day, they're the best partners we're going to have," Mr. Coletti said. "It was a very difficult negotiating process. But it's time to stop throwing stones at each other and get back to the table and continue discussions on how we'll grow the union market in New York City."

Reconstructing New York's Building Business

To Heck and Back

2011-09-06T21:32:04Z

"We are one nation. We are one people. We will rise and we will fall together," President Obama declared in his Labor Day speech. "Anyone who doesn't believe it should come here to Detroit. It's like the commercial says: This is a city that's been to heck and back. And while there are still a lot of challenges here, I see a city that's coming back."

We've heard that before. Sixteen years ago, when we were an editor at City Journal, we worked on an article by Julia Vitullo-Martin titled "Detroit Fights Back." "No American city ever fell as far or as fast as Detroit," Vitullo-Martin began. "But now Detroit is poised for a comeback. Every signal--economic, political, social--is positive." One hopeful development was the retirement of five-term mayor Coleman Young, whose tenure had proved disastrous.

]]> "By 1973, when Young was elected mayor, the population had fallen to 1.39 million from its peak of 1.85 million in 1952; it stood at 1.03 million in 1990," Vitullo-Martin wrote. "The proportion of whites in Detroit dropped from 56 percent in 1970 to 22 percent in 1990--the smallest of any of America's 150 largest cities."

Those trends have only continued in the ensuing two decades, as the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments reported in April: "The total population in the City of Detroit declined from 951,270 in 2000 to 713,777 in 2010, a decrease of 237,493 or 25%. . . . Overall diversity in the city declined slightly, from 81% Black Non-Hispanic in 2000 to 82% in 2010. The White Non-Hispanic population dropped to 8% in 2010 from 10.5% in 2000."

In 1995, when Vitullo-Martin wrote, unemployment was on the decline: "Detroit's unemployment rate is down to 9 percent, far above the region's 5.3 percent but well below the city's 13.4 percent of April 1994 and way below 1990's 16.1 percent. Home prices are soaring." The average official city unemployment rate last year was 22.7%, and regional unemployment was 13.7% as of June 2011.

As of 1995, Detroit ranked "11th among American cities in overall violent crime." By 2010, according to a chart by CQ Press, Detroit had the country's third-highest crime rate, lagging only St. Louis and Camden, N.J. "It has been a murderous summer in Detroit with some 254 shootings and 52 dead," Henry Payne of the Detroit News reports:

[Obama] parachuted into this city's sanitized, heavily-securitized [sic] downtown square-mile of corporate headquarters and Whole Foods markets - safe from the murderous streets of the city's other 138 square miles that have claimed 250 lives already this year and put Detroit on path for a staggering 50 per 100,000 residents murder rate in 2011.

Obama saw "a city that's coming back" because he avoided the vast majority of the city, which has "been to heck" and remains there. Actually, the TV commercial to which Obama alluded--a Chrysler ad that ran during this year's Super Bowl--uses the word hell. The commercial aimed to cast the auto maker as a rugged survivor when in fact it is a welfare case, the recipient of not one but two federal bailouts.

Vitullo-Martin's piece, sadly, proved not to be prescient, but it is very much worth rereading for its account of the decline of a once-great city:

Detroit's economy unraveled most dramatically in the 1970s, as the auto industry made wrong decisions at every turn. . . . General Motors, much larger than Chrysler or Ford, set the terms for the whole industry--and they proved self-destructive terms. When GM signed an excessively generous labor contract with the UAW--as often happened in the days when U.S. companies could sell products as fast as they could make them and so kept their plants running at any cost--Ford and Chrysler meekly followed suit. The Big Three raised car prices as they liked, with little fear of being undercut by overseas competition. The industry had become a shared monopoly, with predetermined, protected market shares. Labor and management costs mushroomed, and the industry's inbred culture stifled innovation.

Meanwhile, Coleman Young, who had been a civil rights hero, deliberately accelerated his city's decline:

Middle-class citizens, white and black, sought the lower taxes and better services available right across Eight Mile Road, Detroit's northern border. White flight escalated again during the court-ordered school busing efforts of the seventies. Mayor Young antagonized whites further by promoting a confrontational stance toward the suburbs--a stance that allowed him to consolidate his political base by fanning the resentments of an increasingly black Detroit. . . .

Many white Detroit business people, unwilling to be quoted by name, look back on the Young years with particular bitterness. Says one, who left the city in 1982: "Coleman was a racist, and he made it clear that white businesses were unwelcome, which meant to me that we would go unprotected. We could get robbed, burned out, preyed upon by city inspectors, and Coleman wouldn't do anything. He encouraged attacks on us. There was absolutely no reason--not a one--to stay in Detroit."

We heard echoes of Young's confrontational approach in yesterday's comments by Jimmy Hoffa Jr., head of the Teamsters Union, who was among the warm-up acts for the president's Detroit speech. As the Associated Press reports:

In addressing the crowd before Obama's appearance, Hoffa said there has been a war on workers. "And you see it everywhere, it is the tea party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war."

Hoffa added: "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Hoffa describes the combatants in his "war" as "workers" on the one hand and "the Tea Party" on the other. But of course he isn't interested in workers in general, only those who belong to unions--a group that, after decades of private-sector union decline, largely consists of employees of government, government contractors and government bailout beneficiaries such as General Motors and Chrysler. "The Tea Party," meanwhile, is a dysphemism for taxpayers.

"Despite President Obama's repeated claims to change the tone in Washington, the White House had no comment this afternoon" on Hoffa's highly uncivil rhetoric, ABC News reports. Hey, give Hoffa credit. It isn't easy to stop this president from talking.

In his own speech, the president made clear that he agreed with the substance if not the tone of Hoffa's remarks. But turning America into Detroit may not be easy. After all, once Detroiters moved past Eight Mile Road, they were no longer able to vote against Coleman Young. Obama can't shrink the electorate he will have to face next year.

To Heck and Back

Carpenters Hammer Out a Deal, Avoiding Strike (Crain's)

2011-09-02T22:28:28Z

After several contract extensions, the District Council of Carpenters has finally hammered out a new, tentative deal with the Cement League, though agreements with several other industry associations remain outstanding.

A statement on the union's website said that the deal was reached Thursday. No details were offered.

"This is a positive first step in our overall goal of reaching agreements with all of our association partners," the statement said.

]]> Bryan Winter, executive director of the Cement League, declined to comment.

John Musumeci, a 25-year carpenter and blogger about the union, said that the deal is for three years and provides raises of $1.50 an hour in the first year, $2.50 in the second year and $3 in the third year.

An industry source said it includes a provision similar to one in the recent concrete workers deal that is designed to help regain market share from nonunion builders. The concrete workers gave contractors a 20% discount on hotel and residential buildings of 16 or fewer stories.

A union spokesman would neither confirm nor deny those details.

Talks with the Cement League were believed to be among the most contentious, so the completion of a deal with the League is a sign that others could be near. The carpenters' contracts, covering some 25,000 workers, expired June 30 and deadlines have been extended multiple times.
The union's website said that progress was made this week in talks with the Building Contractors Association, the Floorcoverers Association and the Association of Wall-Ceiling and Carpentry Industries. Talks will resume with those associations on Tuesday, the union said, and the current deals with those groups have been extended until Thursday.
The industry source said it's likely that Frank Spencer, who was appointed in 2009 by the general president of United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America to oversee the local union after several of its officials were indicted for bribery, will join the talks next week in an attempt to work out final issues.

The union's statement made no mention of talks with the General Contractors Association of New York, the group that was widely believed to be furthest from a deal in recent weeks. Just two weeks ago, the association's director, Denise Richardson told Crain's that an agreement was "very far away." She did not respond to a call Friday seeking comment.

Among the key issues in the negotiations is full mobility, or contractors' insistence on the right to choose all of their workers. Presently, as per a federal judge's order, they must hire a third of their workers through the union's hiring hall.

Contractors argue that the system is inefficient and hurts productivity because they end up with workers who may not have certain skills needed on specific job sites.

Carpenters Hammer Out a Deal, Avoiding Strike