Seriously. His personal story at the end of his speech brought a bit of mist on my cynical eyes. I thought he was great. Please, someone tell me, who is this guy?!?!

Scott Stringer raised eyebrows when he described how small his ____________ is compared to Carl McCall's and ... aaaah ..... hmmmmm ... Betsey Gotbaum's ?!?!

Find out what Stringer was talking about after the jump :

[via The Daily Gotham - Chuck Schumer at Stuy-Town Press Conference]

Upon reviewing these video clips, there's one thing that I just realized about Schumer's shpiel : He's calling out MetLife's possible use of public land for free due to eminent domain as a playing card in the negotiations.

Does this mean, if it is true they did not pay for the land, that there are potential grounds for demanding from the company to pay what is owed to the city and with interest? Could there actually be any repercussions to MetLife's weaseling out of paying for the land they used to develop Stuy-Town?

More importantly, what effects, if any, could this have on development projects like Atlantic Yards and Williamsburg?

Hmmmmm.

You can find this clip at YouTube as well.

[via YouTube - The Daily Gotham - Stuy Town Press Conference - Dan Garodnick]

An anonymous tipster alerted me of this press conference and so, I was part of ... ahem ... New York City's media taping the whole thing. It was fun to see Dan in all his incumbent glory dealing with the heavy issue of the selling of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper.

Dare I say he sounds ... ahem ... mayoral. This is a guy NYC Democrats ought to keep an eye on for taking back City Hall in 2009.

Can you find the bureaucrat in the quote?

[via New York Daily News - Home - A neighborhood goes up for sale]:

Since 2002, MetLife has removed dozens of units from rent regulation as the leaseholders have died or moved on --making the requisite capital improvements where necessary to justify the rent hikes.

If MetLife sells the buildings, current tenants in rent-stabilized apartments would be protected if the buildings remain rentals -- and be offered an insider's price if it goes condo. If they refuse to buy, they can still remain in their apartments under rent-stabilization laws.

"It's not the owner, it's the apartment" that's rent-regulated, said Peter Moses, a spokesman for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

Peter Moses is an idiot.

Apartments are not living things. They don't sign leases nor do they negotiate them. People do. This is the kind of talk that takes complete responsibility off the shoulders of landlords and takes away complete bargaining power from tenants. And is representative of the tactics of corporate politicians. Take away all resposibility from the capitalists deed by transferring it to capital itself.

That was my fat face on Channel 7's Eyewitness News last night.

Kelly Richardson of Eyewitness News (NYC-ABC Channel 7) interviewed me yesterday on the matter of the selling of Stuyvesant. This after I received a flurry of links to the New York Times article that discusses the sell, estimated at $5billion dollars.

Ms. Richardson made really good use of some of the points I discussed with her :

• Since Insignia took over management of the buildings five years ago, it has shut out tenants from any decision making on how the company will proceed developing the largest swath of housing in Manhattan.
• Insignia also has used the weakness of the area's zoning board to wield this piece of Manhattan as 'private property' and not hold Town Hall meetings to discuss the possible impact selling of the property would have on the neighborhood and New York City.
• Last but not least, Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant Town were developed to maintain the working and middle classes in New York City. There is a sense of betrayal of how the city has allowed MetLife and Insignia to go on without impunity to treat what should be city, and hence our land, as a private fiefdom.

Rudolph Giuliani changed the dynmics of how the city interacted with the owners of this piece of New York City. Since the days of his administration, "laissez-faire" has come to mean let MetLife do whatever they want because it is their property. Both Rudolph Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg have treated New York City from 14th Street to 20th Street and from 1st Avenue to Avenue C as if they were exempt from the democratic process of the city. MetLife, aided and abbetted by the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, has been able to wield "private property rights" over this slice of New York and treat it like a fiefdom that exists outside of the interests of the citizens of New York.

But it's not only the Republicans who've been remiss. I have a bone to pick with Eva Moskowitz.

Eva Moskowitz in her years as city council member did absolutely nothing to ensure the interests of the city were taken at a higher stake than the interests of MetLife. On the contrary, the woman had no understanding whatsoever of the demographic dynmics of the place. To her this was a white, middle class and mostly senior-aged enclave.

Which is why those pictures included in the New York Times article were so effing wrong.

I spent the whole weekend and well into today upgrading the sites. By the end of the week I will have migrated all my sites to the same system, same platform and same administration rules. It will be so much more easier to write one book for all the sites on how to use and/or manage things here. So when the kids asked to go by 6pm to the FDR highway, I was more interested in debugging and tying all the lose ends than in packing water, peeing three time and goodies for the long wait.

By 9pm I was ready to take a break. I could already hear the test denotations happening on the East River. I thought about maybe trying to find the ball-und-chain and kids. Then I decided to head for the roof. I took my keys and some smokes and went up the half flight of stairs that take me there.

The door was locked.

Not just locked, mind you. It was bolted from the outside. Great excuse for security from a company that makes billions in selling financial amulets against disasters.

When I moved into Stuyvesant Town 12 years ago, the average resident's age was about 60. Many people who still lived here had moved in when the complex was inaugurated in 1949. The policies skewed in favor to senior citizens needs. Meaning, they were more akin to taking care of quality of life issues than in squeezing every penny out of their residents.

That was 12 years ago.

Now that Metropolitan Life Insurance successfully lobbied to change landlord and rent regulation laws, the company is not only shameless about their "we're in the landlord business for the money", bu they've turned paranoia into a management policy.

Gone are the years we would go to the roof or to one of our parks here in Stuyvesant Town, residents, security personnel and management, share our picnics or drinks and watch the sky light up with patriotic fire. But that was when watching from the rooftops meant you could see the East River and Battery Park City fireworks show along with the Twin Towers light show and the Empire State Building's colored lights.

The Villager
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_111/organizationalmeetingon.html
Volume 75, Number 4 | June 15- 21, 2005

Organizational meeting on downzoning and landmarking on the Lower East Side
By David Katz

People, politicians and community organizations who have been active in zoning and landmarking issues on the Lower East Side have been invited to an educational forum at the Clayton Gallery, 161 Essex St., on Mon., June 20 at 6 p.m.

"This will not be a rally," emphasized organizer and gallery owner Clayton Patterson. "It is strictly an informational meeting in which groups involved in the struggle to preserve our communities will speak, and in which the politicians who have shown up at their rallies will also be invited to comment, and state what they think can be done about the situation."

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is spearheading the movement for downzoning the Far West Village to prevent out-of-scale construction from destroying the character of the neighborhood, will speak about the lessons learned there, and how they can be applied to the East Village. Richard Kusack, of The Committee for Zoning Inaction, will address "Trojan horse zoning," the bait-and-switch process by which developers misuse or misrepresent their projects as community facilities and dormitories in order to erect hotels and luxury housing; also invited are representatives from L.O.C.O; the Ludlow-Orchard Community Organization, who have been involved in the fight against the construction of a 24-story luxury hotel directly opposite a proposed 15-story luxury condominium on Orchard St. between Houston and Stanton Sts.; the East Village Community Coalition, involved in the fight to preserve St. Brigid¹s church and annex on Avenue B and the old P.S. 64 on E. Ninth St.; and representatives from 4 E. Third St., 47 East Third St. and 81 E. Third St., sites of recent protests over such issues as overdevelopment and construction not conforming with Buildings Department guidelines.