With every large-scale urban development project, like the overhaul planned for the Kingsbridge Armory, comes the inevitable question: How will the community benefit? The answer varies depending on factors such as the project’s popularity, the number of jobs created and the public land use review process.

It’s also increasingly about the community getting the developer to sign a binding agreement, offering certain benefits to the community — such as local hiring preferences, job training programs for local residents, or money for local service programs.

Known as community benefits agreements, or CBAs, these pacts are gaining momentum across the country. Over the last decade, after the first such agreement was signed in Los Angeles, community groups have enjoyed pockets of CBA success.

That has not been the case in New York City, where the recent handful of CBA-type accords for big development projects, such as Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and the new Yankee Stadium and Gateway Mall projects in the Bronx, have come with one glaring flaw — a lack of actual community involvement.

Big Hopes for Armory

The Kingsbridge Armory, a massive landmarked building, vacant since the National Guard left in 1993, is being turned into a giant mixed-use development smack in the middle of the densely populated Kingsbridge/North Fordham neighborhood, where nearly a third of residents live below the poverty line. The developer, The Related Companies, plans to fill the space with 897,860 square feet of new uses, mostly retail stores, but also a cinema, restaurants, some community space and a fitness center. It will be called Shops at the Armory.

The Armory project represents what many consider New York’s best chance to produce a substantial, enforceable and community-driven CBA. That cheery outlook is based mostly on the existence of the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (KARA), a coalition of community and church groups, unions, elected officials and local residents organized by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) in 2005. The NWBCCC has pushed for community-driven redevelopment of the Armory since 1998.

Specifically, KARA wants living wage jobs ($10 an hour plus $1.50 an hour in benefits) with hiring preferences for local residents during and after construction, a pledge to protect unions, more community space, affordable recreational opportunities and environmental protections.

“[KARA]’s the first campaign to come out of New York City that has created a strong coalition of community groups,” said Amy Lavine, an attorney at the University of Albany Law Center who focuses on community development and writes a blog about CBAs. “They resemble the successful coalitions in other parts of the country and have real potential to create a strong community benefits agreement.”

The California Model

Many of those successful coalitions were created in the CBA hotbed of California, where the term “community benefits agreement” was coined. Community groups forged the first CBA in Hollywood in 1998.

Three years later, during development of a massive sporta and entertainment complex downtown, a broad coalition of community groups forged what Lavine and others consider the most comprehensive CBA to date.

They secured developer guarantees to create permanent affordable housing, institute local hiring preferences, make park improvements, implement a local parking plan, ensure environmental protections and a commitment to providing other needed services in the area. Monitoring committees were set up to oversee the CBA and ensure its implementation. By all accounts, it’s been a huge success.

Other California CBAs have ensured living wage jobs, something KARA is pushing hard for at the Armory.

Julian Gross, a Bay area-based lawyer who works exclusively on community benefits agreements and is advising KARA, doesn’t see any legal or procedural reasons that make California a better arena for CBAs than New York. But, for a variety of reasons, in California the process has been more community driven and has resulted in stronger, more enforceable agreements.

The Problem With New York

Gross and others say one reason for the disparity is that the CBA movement has only recently hit the Big Apple, meaning community groups, elected officials and developers are behind the learning curve. Second, Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t encourage CBAs and advocates say he even uses them as a smokescreen for community support. Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s city planning commissioner has stated he’s against CBAs, believing development projects should be judged on their own merits.   

“[Bloomberg’s] not a fan of any of it,” said Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance. “His position is that development in itself is mutually beneficial.”

“Generally, I would say the city hasn’t been very interested or supportive [of CBAs],” said Neil Stevenson of New York City Lawyers Alliance, a nonprofit also working with KARA.

Bloomberg hailed the Atlantic Yards benefits agreement, which he called the first of its kind in New York, as well as the Gateway Mall agreement, as landmark accords. To be fair, Lavine said, both of those agreements achieved tangible, if insufficient, benefits, but neither resulted from genuine community participation. Bloomberg has also shown he’s willing to step in to offer benefits when a development project runs into opposition, as he’s done with Columbia University’s expansion in Harlem and a massive redevelopment of Willets Point in Queens.

Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York said the city’s handful of agreements amount to little more than publicity stunts for elected officials and blames them for the lack of strong CBAs. “I don’t think we have any community benefits agreements in New York,” she said. “For the most part, the community has been locked out of the process.”

 

A Cautionary Tale

Damiani said the CBA signed for the Gateway project, another Related effort, should serve as a cautionary tale for KARA.

After the Yankee Stadium CBA, which Lavine calls a “complete joke” because community groups were not included at any stage of its creation, it appeared the Gateway project, a complete redevelopment of the old Bronx Terminal Market, might lead to a more inclusive pact.

In 2006, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, who had already been criticized for getting little in return for the lucrative Yankee Stadium deal a year earlier, reached out to 18 community groups for help drafting a Gateway agreement. But the groups had no experience with CBAs and were given little direction. On the day of the Council vote on the project, the completed agreement, signed by only three organizations, was e-mailed to all 18 groups. Lipsky said seven groups abstained from the agreement in protest.

While the agreement included $3 million for job training and some compensation for displaced merchants, very little space was reserved for local and minority vendors, and the penalties for Related’s non-compliance with the agreement were considered negligible by Gross, Lavine, Damiani and others.

“The first thing to know about the Gateway CBA was that it was drafted by Carrion and Related without any community input whatsoever,” said Lipsky, who advocated for the displaced merchants at the Bronx Terminal Market and later called the accord a “sham.”

(Carrion refused to answer questions for this article, but noted in a statement that he would work with Related and the community to help ensure that the neighborhood benefits from the Armory project.)

Jesse Masyr, who is Related’s development lawyer and worked extensively on the Gateway deal, disagreed with Lipsky. He cited the task force of community groups created by Carrion and praised the work of other Bronx elected officials. Masyr said the agreement lacked more signatures because they were rushing to get it done the morning of the Council vote.

Without assigning blame, Gavin Kearney, an attorney for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, said the problem at Gateway was that the process did not come out of strong community organizing from the beginning. “It wasn’t an organic process,” he said.

“When people talk about community benefits agreements, they think it’s some kind of magic trick, but it’s really the fruits of a successful organizing campaign and the memorializing of that effort in a quality CBA.” Kearney, Gross and others agreed that in the other New York cases, a strong organizing presence was absent.

 

The Armory End Game

Kearney and others interviewed for this article, however, said they believed KARA has waged that kind of successful organizing campaign and is poised to forge a California-like CBA.

Masyr said he believes some kind of benefits package will emerge from the process, but wouldn’t go into specifics. He praised KARA and the community in general for being actively engaged in the Armory project from the beginning and said Related would listen to any community voices as the benefits agreement process goes forward.

Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, a local activist with both NWBCCC and KARA, said she thinks Related recognizes KARA has proven itself to be the strongest voice in the community and deserves a seat at the table.

“We’ve been effective in proving that we have the entire community behind us,” Pilgrim-Hunter said. “We are unified and reasonable and very serious. We can produce huge numbers of people (see story on page 6) and we will be there at every opportunity. We want a partnership with the developer because we feel we’re fighting for the very lives of the people in this community.”

Pilgrim-Hunter said KARA has worked diligently with Gross to make sure there’s precedent in other cities for their demands. Masyr cautioned against comparing development deals in different cities, mainly because the Bloomberg administration doesn’t like CBAs.

Given the city’s stance on CBAs, Masyr said Related is actually a pioneer among New York City developers even if there was poor community involvement in previous deals. “We’re early on [benefits agreements],” he said. “We’re all kind of walking a delicate line on this. There are a lot of city agencies that don’t want them in this [land review] process.”

Though Related appears amenable to signing an agreement, that doesn’t mean Related is going to “jump out and agree to everything we want,” said Jeff Eichler, who represents the retailers union on KARA. “I think we’re in the beginning stages of a long dance.”  

KARA may not be the sole negotiator. The local community board, CB7, held a community brainstorming session for the Armory project and believes a benefits agreement should be in place. “We’ve developed a very good working relationship with Related,” said CB7 Chairman Greg Faulkner, adding that CB7 and KARA share many of the same goals, in terms of jobs and community space. “But we’re not mesmerized. [Related] has an agenda and we do, too.”

Regardless of its role in any binding CBA, Faulkner’s board is the first stop in the critical land use review process known as ULURP that will help determine the fate of the project. Having a CBA in place, Faulkner said, would let the board know Related is acting in good faith with regard to the community.

Both KARA and CB7, along with Assemblyman Jose Rivera, Carrion, Council Member Maria Baez and representatives from the mayor’s office, are included in an Armory advisory group created by the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which oversees the project. Janel Patterson, a spokesperson for the EDC, wouldn’t comment specifically on CBAs. “We feel that collaborations such as [the advisory group] are the best way to make sure that a project serves the needs of all stakeholders — the local elected officials, the community, the city and the developer,” Patterson said in an e-mail.  

Masyr pointed to the advisory group meetings as an arena where benefits-related talks might play out. “We’re learning that there are no exclusive remedies to making these things happen,” Masyr said.

Pilgrim-Hunter still isn’t sure what the advisory group’s role is, but community benefits agreements have not been high on its agenda, she said.

Whoever ends up hammering out an agreement, the goal is “marrying the wishes of the developer making money and the community getting some great benefits, and creating one of the most unique draws in the Bronx,” Pilgrim-Hunter said.

“Politicians and developers are going to move on, but we’re the ones who have to live with this,” she added.