Albee Square Mall

Testimony last updated May 24, 2007

Testimony on the Amendment of the Lease of Albee Square Mall in Downtown Brooklyn

Pratt Center for Community Development
Mercedes Narciso
May 24, 2007

Thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony today. My name is Mercedes Narciso and I am a Senior Planner with the Pratt Center for Community Development, a university- based organization that works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers by helping communities to plan for and realize their future.

The Albee Square Mall sits on a large City-owned site in the heart of downtown Brooklyn. Any action the City takes to catalyze the redevelopment of this publicly owned property should be carefully structured to maximize the benefits of the development for Brooklynites and the City as a whole. The current redevelopment plan does nothing of the kind, and we urge you to reject the amendments to the lease of this property that would make the redevelopment plan possible.

As you are aware, the redevelopment plan calls for the demolition of the existing Mall and its replacement with a 1.6 million square foot building that will have 125,000 square feet of office space, 475,000 square feet of retail, and 1 million square feet of housing, 80% of which will be luxury rental units. This project has already received a subsidy of $3.2 million in tax abatements to incentivize the new developers to complete the office component of the deal. If approved, the plan will grant the purchaser tax abatements on the 1,000 units of housing for the next 25 years, representing a loss of millions of dollars to the City -- maybe as much as $750 million.

If the City is going to forego such a significant amount of future revenue, it should do so because the benefits outweigh the costs. The vague promise of jobs and the low number of affordable housing units the project will produce are simply not enough. On this publicly owned land the City should insist that a majority of the new units are affordable to low and moderate income New Yorkers instead of the 20% affordable units offered by the current plan. Since a number of hard-working small retail proprietors will be displaced by the redevelopment, the City should insist that the new developer relocate them back in the new building or in a comparable location in downtown Brooklyn. In addition, the interested public should have an ongoing opportunity to review and comment upon the future of this property, and the site should certainly not be sold to a developer without a public review process.

Since the sale of the Mall can only happen at the discretion of the City, Pratt Center believes the City should negotiate a much better deal before allowing it to go through. The sale itself will provide a profit of $100 million to the current holder of the lease, a profit that is derived from the City’s action of rezoning the site to allow for a much bigger building. We simply do not believe the City is getting the best deal it can get for its land or for the increase in property value that its own actions brought about.

We urge you to reject the lease amendments and insist on a better deal for Brooklyn and the rest of the City. Thank you very much.