NYC NOW - September 26, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

New Jersey Senator Corey Booker urges indicted Senator Robert Menendez to step down. Meanwhile, a NJ think-tank suggests that the state could address NJ Transit’s $1 billion deficit by maintaining a corporate tax surcharge. Also, the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia are expected to dissipate by evening, as per the National Weather Service. Finally, with the rise in remote work, the dynamics of New York City neighborhoods like Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn are evolving. Gone are the days of consistently packed subway cars during rush hour. But how has this shift impacted communities, especially when many now work from home? Jeffrey Lefrancois, chair of a Manhattan Community Board covering Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, and Clinton, and Gib Veconi, chair of Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, join us for a discussion on these changing neighborhood dynamics.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, September 26th. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. New Jersey's junior senator Cory Booker is now calling for his indicted colleague, Senator Robert Menendez, to resign. And a statement released today, Booker says, stepping down would not be an admission of guilt, but, quote, an acknowledgement that holding public office often demands tremendous sacrifices at great personal calls.

Booker says he's always known Menendez to be gifted and empathetic and that he's shocked by the detailed specific allegations against him. Prosecutors say Menendez took hundreds of thousands of dollars and lavish gifts to help Egyptian interests and interfere with criminal investigations. A New Jersey think tank says the state should solve its public transportation fiscal problems by extending attacks on some of the state's biggest businesses. In a report released today, the organization New Jersey policy perspective proposes that. that the state continued a corporate tax surcharge. It says that would help cover the $1 billion deficit faced by NJ Transit once pandemic assistance ends. The state enacted the corporate tax on profits for the top 2% of businesses in 2018, but it's set to expire at the end of the year.

New Jersey already has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the country. Ophelia's remnants are finally going away by early this evening and after a thorough drenching since Saturday. That's according to National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Connolly. The remnants of Ophelia are offshore over the ocean right now, and they are going to continue to drift southward as the day goes on. So we've got pockets of light rain out there. It's not very heavy today. We're not expecting it to be heavy today.

Some spots such as southern queens and parts of Staten Island will see the rain linger a bit longer, but the last of it should end by 11 tonight and then dry conditions for the next couple of days. With sunny skies tomorrow and just a few clouds Thursday and 65. This is WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. With more people working from home now, some of New York City's neighborhoods have shifted.

New York City mornings and evenings were previously packed with commuters trying to get to and from work, but now subway cars might feel a bit lighter on some days. How have neighborhoods in Manhattan and places like downtown Brooklyn where there are a lot of offices changed? Have people's relationships with their community changed if they're home most of the time? Jeffrey LaFrancois is the chair of a Manhattan community board that covers Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea, parts of Midtown. Gibbaconi is the chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council, which runs the Open Streets programs on Vanderbilt Avenue and Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights. They both join us now to talk about it. Welcome to you both. Thanks for coming on, all things considered.

Thank you. Gabe, can you tell us about the Open Streets programs that started during the pandemic in Prospect Heights and how they've evolved now over three years into the pandemic? The Open Streets programs began as pandemic relief. We started one on Underhill Avenue, which was a program mostly designed to create some space for people to socially distance. And we started another on Vanderbilt Avenue, which was intended to provide economic relief for a large number of restaurants that are on that street, who we were concerned would have difficulty surviving the ban on indoor dining. What we didn't expect was how the community was going to adopt them. We found Folks would come out not only with their kids to be able to recreate on the street, but also to bring out picnics, often come with a table and chairs to have a family dinner on the street at night. And we've actually had about half a dozen couples get married on the street. So today it's one of the largest what's called the Full Closure Open Street program in New York City. We close for Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays. All of the planning and management is still done by volunteers who live and work here in Prospect Heights.

You're the chair of a Manhattan community board that comprises the area between 14th and 59th streets adjacent to Midtown. Many offices there, of course, empty now. And a lot of people are demanding that those office spaces get converted into affordable housing units. Can you talk about how you've seen the neighborhood change during and after the pandemic? No doubt the neighborhood has changed. And we, I think, are continuing to it establish, you know, what a new normal is for 2023 on the west side. You know, it was announced last week that tourism numbers have very much rebound. hotel occupancy rates are very strong.

So there's a, you know, the real, the tourism is back, the sounds of the world you hear on the street again. But struggle remains to be had as it relates to folks coming to work five days a week. And I'll be one. I don't think there's gonna be a five, you know, day a week, solid work return. Small businesses are happy to have sort of their neighbors

working from home. But at the same time, in sort of the microeconomies of midtown, a lot of the mom and pops have been negatively affected by the work from home factor, because not as many folks are coming to grab lunch, to go to happy hour when they leave the office. And likewise, just, for example,

on Restaurant Row on 46th Street, just outside of the theater district, they've adapted to figure out how best to make sure they can meet the demand. I think many of them are now closed on Mondays. And so businesses are continuing to figure out how best to serve the consumer for today. And I certainly think we feel that

in neighborhoods, you know, like you mentioned, the core of Midtown, but also sort of the residential confines as well, Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea, and further south into the village, too. Gibb, what difference do you see in your community after Open Streets became a thing? Open Streets has brought the community together in a way I could never have imagined before this. Because we created a program that involves both residents and businesses, that relationship has become very, very close right now. And businesses on Vanderbilt Avenue that may have only had a passing acquaintance now work together quite closely. And it's a really marvelous thing to watch. It's made the street much more cohesive and really created a community. And having people be able to

come out every weekend and experience that together in their own neighborhood has also created a cohesion in the community that has never really existed in the same way before. We talk about people who are working from home, who are spending more time in the neighborhood. These are the kind of people who come to the programming we do during the week on Underhill Avenue to take yoga classes, Zumba play chess. Do you think that it's sustainable moving forward? What is the future of it? It is still relatively new to New York City, even though we're in our fourth year of operating it. It hasn't been fully integrated into all of the agencies of New York City that we have to work with to make it possible. So obviously, it's DOT's program, but we also do a lot of interaction with the police.

We interact with sanitation. We interact with the mayor's office as well. And it's not necessarily understood on the same level by all of those groups. These programs are extremely labor intensive to run. it's a lot more than just having a couple of barriers on the street. When we open Vanderbilt Avenue for the weekend, we're creating four acres of temporary public open space. We went from something that was basically zero in 2020 to what's effectively a small business right now. So the sustainability of it is really a question of having the city be able to fully support groups like ours that operate

on a volunteer basis or a nonprofit basis and support us with the type of infrastructure and services, we need to be able to continue this. What have you heard from opponents who don't like six blocks of streets closed? When you see something as visible as an open street, especially something as large as Vanderbilt Avenue, there's a tendency to point to it and say, you know, the traffic problems that we have, we have congestion,

we have trouble finding parking, these must be the fault of the open street. But the fact of the matter is, I don't know anyone who believes that it'll ever be easier to drive and park in Brooklyn. What we're doing right now is not working. And we have to find solutions that are aligned with city policies that point to reducing the dependence on cars to be able to move forward. These kinds of traffic impacts are multivariate in cause.

They're not just about a street that happens to be closed for an open street on a temporary basis. People do complain about lack of parking. But the other thing people in New York City complain about is lack of open space. Our neighborhood is in the process of being rezoned for much greater density. And one of the things that comes up in every public meeting is where is the open space? How are we going to account for that as we add more people to this neighborhood? And they're not that many ways. Jeffrey, you were talking about how New York City is continually changing. And it is. That's part of the lifeblood of the city, right? One of the things, That's huge part of the conversation right now.

I mean, all of us are our subject to it is that the cost of living are so high. What are you hearing from residents in your area about it? Do you see less people moving to the city? You know, yeah, it has become incredibly expensive to call Manhattan and I think all of New York City home. And that, I think, stems from the fact in a major way that we really stopped building for people after 19, which is when the last citywide zoning changes were put into effect, which was really regulated very heavily the amount of housing and affordable housing that can be developed in the city. So fast forward through a time of booming growth pre-pandemic, contraction during the pandemic,

and now a boom again, and here we are. It's really hard to save money, to pay the rent, and, you know, occasionally have dinner out. But no matter what at the end of the day, people still want to call New York City home. That was Jeffrey LaFrancois, the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4, which covers Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea, and other parts of Midtown, and Gibvaconi, the chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council. Thanks so much for coming on. This was a great conversation.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening.