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The City Club of New YorkFighting vigorously for the urban
environment and responsible government
Press Release
February 10, 2014
For immediate release
Sen. Avella, City Club, Others Sue toStop Megamall in Flushing
Meadows Park
State Senator Tony Avella of Whitestone, Queens, The City Club
of New York, park
advocacy groups, and an array of residents and business people
neighboring the Flushing
Meadows-Corona Park, filed suit today to cut off the threat of
construction of a 1.4 millionsquare foot shopping mall within the
Park.
The complaint alleges that the project cannot proceed without
approval by the StateLegislature under the public trust doctrine
that protects all parkland throughout the State
against any form of transfer or introduction of non-park uses
without consent of the Legislature.
It does not appear that any such approval for the shopping
center use has been requested or
obtained.
The complaint also alleges violations of the Citys Zoning
Resolution and Charter, and
seeks annulment of approvals granted by the City to date for the
related Willets Point plan.
The site is 30.7 acres near the northerly end of the Park. From
1964 to 2006, the site was
occupied by Shea Stadium. When Shea was demolished and replaced
in 2009 by Citi Field at a
location slightly east of the Shea site, the project site became
a parking field for visitors to CitiField. The site has also been
used for a variety of public recreational events including foot
races,
circus performances, an annual wheelchair baseball game, and
concerts.
In 2012, Sterling Equities and the Related Companies, both
well-known developers,
convinced the Bloomberg administration to allow the shopping
mall on Park property, although
the City Council had approved a plan in 2008 to place the
intended retail development in the
neighboring Willets Point development project along with
affordable housing.
The project has moved forward without the customary public
review. There have been
no hearings on it before community boards, the Planning
Commission, the City Council, or theState Legislature. The
Bloomberg administration appears to have acted on the assumption
that
no public review is required because in 1961 the State
Legislature approved construction of Shea
Stadium and provision for parking, with wording broad enough,
say proponents of the project, toallow replacement with a shopping
center. The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
for the project on the parking field declares that the parcel is
on designated parkland and that
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legislation permits the shopping mall project. It lists
approvals that the City and developers
expect to seek, but State legislative approval is not among
them.
The contention that the 1961 law exempts this transaction from
the public trust doctrine,
says John Low-Beer, one of the plaintiffs lawyers, is wrong. The
1961 law was intended to
allow a stadium and uses directly related to a stadium, such as
parking, concessions, and othercommercial activity typically
incidental to a professional sports arena.
Low-Beer adds that the 1961 law says nothing about a shopping
center. In fact, the
Legislature explicitly prohibited any purely commercial uses
other than ones strictly related tothe stadium, such as concession
stands. The public trust doctrine requires that any legislative
consent be very specific about what it will allow. If it doesnt
specify a use, then that use is not
permitted.
Senator Tony Avella stated that Parks are intended to serve the
people, to provide open
space, landscaping, opportunities for recreation, playgrounds
for children, and escape from the
hordes and noise of a busy commercial city. The only commercial
uses that belong in them arethose, such as snack stands, that
enhance the park experience. A shopping center is not one of
them. We have a wonderful law that is supposed to assure all of
this, known as the public trust
doctrine. Im outraged when the people who are supposed to
administerparks for everyone turn
them over to private interests without seeking the State
Legislature's consent as the public trustdoctrine requires. So, I
am very pleased to be a party to this action.
The plaintiffs include Paul Graziano and Ben Haber who have
prominently opposed aspate of recent proposals for new or enlarged
sports venues in the Park, as well as the shopping
center. The efforts of Save Flushing Meadows Park, a coalition
of many Queens civic groups
put together by Graziano, Haber and others, thwarted the
proposed professional soccer stadium,
though it was unable to stop a half-acre expansion of the Tennis
Center. They have also ledopposition to the shopping center.
New York City Park Advocates, a City-wide parks advocacy group
that helped toestablish Save Flushing Meadows Park, is also a
plaintiff. Other plaintiffs are individuals and
businesses falling into several categories including nearby
residents, park users, and businesses
along Roosevelt Avenue and in Willets Point having special
concerns about traffic and businessdisplacement.
The efforts of the Save Flushing Meadows Park group were
recently bolstered by the
City Club which took on the shopping center as a major project
after successfully participating ina campaign to defeat a proposed
upzoning of the East Midtown area around Grand Central
Terminal that would have doubled the permissible bulk in much of
the area. After Council
leaders announced in early November that the Council would vote
against the plan, Mayor
Bloomberg withdrew it.
Michael Gruen, President of the City Club, said that the City
Club joined the shopping
center fight out of concern that Flushing Meadows Park has long
suffered from neglect inmaintenance and from getting eaten away as
a recreational park by a voracious assumption that
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every new idea for a commercial sporting activity should be
given a home in this one Park.
Fortunately some of the worst, such as a proposed grand prixrace
track around the lake, have
been defeated. But this is a beautiful park and it deserves much
better treatment.
Gruen added that the City Club sees the shopping center project
as perhaps the most
egregious example of commercialization of parkland throughout
the city. There are places wherethe annual cycle of fashion shows
and holiday bazaars leave little time for enjoying the openspace
and landscaping. That it is the worst of a pattern of treating
parkland as an asset to be sold
off for commercial use caused us to take it on so that we could
get the courts to draw a clear line:
commercial uses that do not enhance the recreational experience
of parks do not belong in theparks.
Gruen said that the City Club hopes clearly to confirm that any
alienation of parkland
requires legislative action, very specifically stating what uses
are to be allowed. The legislativeconsent must then be construed
narrowly by the courts so that ambiguities in statutory
language
cannot be exploited, as the developers here are trying to do, to
justify other commercial uses that
the legislature had no evident intention of condoning.
The case is filed in the New York County Supreme Court. John
Low-Beer, Lorna
Goodman and Meredith Feinman represent the plaintiffs.
The complaint asks the Court to declare that the shopping mall
project is illegal and to
enjoin further steps toward its construction without compliance
with applicable law including the
public trust doctrine, and without imposing appropriate zoning
regulations on the site.
It also asks the Court to nullify actions taken by the Planning
Commission, and approved
by the Council in October of last year, to permit construction
of parking facilities in Willets
Point in lieu of the affordable housing and supportive
facilities called for by the 2008 plan. Thecomplaint asserts that
the Commission and Council knew that the changes in the Willets
Point
plan were needed for no other purpose than to accommodate
stadium parking displaced by the
intended shopping center, and knew that the shopping center
project itself is illegal withoutapproval of the legislature. They
knew that their action would facilitate illegal construction of
the shopping mall, the promoters of which had clearly stated
their belief that they could proceed
with without legislative approval. The Commission and Council
thereby acted illegally, andarbitrarily and capriciously.
Contact:
Michael Gruen
[email protected]
(212) 643-7050
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]
