Title:بازگشت به تجارت با رفع نیازهای مشاغل Rockaway تحت تأثیر S

۲۰۱۳-۰۷-۱۹ این وب‌کست فقط برای مشاهده در دسترس است، برای اعتبارات AICP CM قابل استفاده نیست. ارائه دهندگان: جیمز راوس، ارین تورسن، هیلاری پاپینو، ماندو سن روز دوشنبه، ۲۹ اکتبر ۲۰۱۲، ابرطوفان سندی شهر نیویورک، پرجمعیت ترین منطقه ایالات متحده را درنوردید. سندی بزرگترین طوفان اقیانوس اطلس در تاریخ بود که خانه ها و مشاغل را در سراسر شمال شرقی ویران کرد و تنها در شهر نیویورک بیش از ۱۹ میلیارد دلار خسارت به بار آورد. در پاسخ به این فاجعه، بخش متروی نیویورک APA یک تلاش شش ماهه را برای ارزیابی چگونگی تأثیر ابرطوفان سندی بر مشاغل در راکاوی، کوئینز انجام داد، جامعه‌ای که منحصراً در یک شبه جزیره باریک و یکی از مناطق سخت‌گیر نیویورک واقع شده است. شهر. تیمی متشکل از بیش از ۶۰ برنامه‌ریز خدمات خود را برای ارزیابی نیازها، شناسایی منابع، و توصیه‌هایی برای استراتژی‌های برنامه‌ریزی کوتاه‌مدت و بلندمدت ارائه کردند که به کسب‌وکارها کمک می‌کند تا بهبود یابند و برای آینده برنامه‌ریزی کنند. تیم APA با Rockaway Development & Revitalization Corporation (RDRC)، یک شرکت توسعه اجتماعی که پشتیبانی کسب و کار را در Rockaways ارائه می کند و بیش از ۳۰ سال است که توسعه اقتصادی را در سراسر شبه جزیره ارتقا داده است، شریک شد. هنگامی که سندی نزدیک به ۱۰۰۰ کسب و کار را مورد حمله قرار داد و آواره یا آسیب رساند، RDRC وارد عمل شد. RDRC ثابت کرد که یک شریک ارزشمند است و به تیم APA کمک کرد تا از حدود ۳۰۰ کسب و کار بازدید کرده و بیش از ۱۰۰ مصاحبه تجاری را در ۳ راهرو تجاری انجام دهد. Chapter اخیراً گزارشی را منتشر کرده است که این روند و درس‌های آموخته شده در این مسیر را مستند می‌کند به این امید که تجربه شهر نیویورک بتواند به جوامع دیگری که تحت تأثیر طوفان‌ها و سایر بلایای طبیعی قرار گرفته‌اند کمک کند. این وبینار شما را در فرآیندی که تیم فصل مترو نیویورک برای انجام ارزیابی نیازهای خود و ایجاد توصیه‌های معنادار برای برنامه‌ریزی قوی انجام داده است، راهنمایی می‌کند.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Attendees are in listen only mode hi everyone and welcome to the webcast my name is brittany kavinsky it is now 1pm so we will begin our presentation shortly today on friday july 19th we will have our presentation on getting back to business addressing the needs of rockaway businesses impacted by super

Storm stan sandy given by james rouse hillary papanow mandu sen aaron torrison and kevin alexander for help during today’s webcast please feel free to type your questions in the chat box found in the webinar toolbar to the right of your screen or call 1-800-263-6317 for content questions please feel free

To type those in the questions box and we will be able to answer those at the end of the presentation during the question and answer session here’s a list of our sponsoring chapters divisions in universities i would like to thank all the participating chapter divisions and universities for making

These webcasts possible as well as the new york metro chapter for sponsoring today’s webcast as you can see we have a couple webcasts coming up for the next few months to register for any of these upcoming webcasts please visit www.utah.apa.org webcast and register for your webcast of choice

You can also follow us on twitter at planningwebcast or like us on facebook planning webcast series to receive up-to-date information on the planning webcast series sponsored by chapters divisions and universities to log your cm credits for attending today’s webcast please go to www.planning.org cm select today’s date which is friday

July 19th and then select today’s webcast getting back to business addressing the needs of rockaway businesses impacted by superstorm sandy this webcast is available for one and a half cm credits we are also recording today’s webcast and will be available on our youtube channel later today just search planning

Webcast on youtube a pdf of the powerpoint will be made available upon request at this time i would like to introduce our speakers for today our first speaker is james rouse he currently serves as president of the american planning association new york metro chapter he has been responsible

For leading the chapter’s post sandy initiatives which includes the content of today’s webinar organizing trainings in staten island organizing events and reports with sister organizations such as aia asla et cetera and providing input and testimony to government agencies and new york elected officials in this day job james works as director

Of capital programs for bronx borough president ruben diaz jr where he has managed over 120 million in capital allocations that leverage billions of dollars in development for the borough and is the primary point person for special land use and policy initiatives hillary papanow is a certified urban planner with a specialization in urban

Policy and over six years of experience working as a research analyst in state and local government ms papanow currently works as a special assistant and research analyst for the new york city comptroller’s office audit borough where she assists with the bureau’s risk assessment to help shape meaningful

Audits in this role ms papineau manages public complaints and meets with a variety of advocacy groups on issues ranging from transportation housing to parks and social services mandu sen is an urban planner and food activist she has designed surveys interviewed and analyzed data for hundreds of businesses in different

Sectors and parts of the world a passionate supporter of immigrant businesses her graduate thesis focused on identifying ways to support south asian food businesses originating in queens miss sten has an undergraduate degree from yale and a graduate degree from the pratt institute aaron torrison is an urban planning

Professional with more than six years experience in community planning revitalization and development in the not-for-profit profit sector she is currently a senior program coordinator at sustainable long island and works with communities throughout nasa and suffolk counties miss torreson has extensive experience designing coordinating and facilitating community planning and engagement

Processes and has led more than a dozen large-scale forums and planning sessions at local and regional levels she regularly develops and conducts interviews surveys and interactive activities designed to help residents and businesses shape the future of their communities a strong advocate for environmental economic and social sustainability miss

Torreson has been working to strengthen the regional food system through professional and extra curricular projects kevin alexander has served as the president and ceo of rockaway development and revitalization corporation since april 2006. his primary responsibilities include overall governance of the organization identifying funding opportunities aligned with the needs of the rockaways

And creating effective collaborations and partnerships focused on improving the quality of life for residents kevin’s professional background includes over 10 years experience as chief financial officer of two prominent not-for-profit corporate corporations harlem congregations for community improvement and harlem dowling west side center for children and family services

He possesses over seven years of city government experience in the areas of financial management strategic planning and contract administration prior to prior to leaving city government he served as deputy agencies chief contracting officer for the new york city department of human resources administration with administrative mr administrative oversight of a

Contract and procurement portfolio of over 5 000 human services contracts valued in excess of 2.5 billion dollars so now i’m going to hand it over to our first presenter who’s going to be james rouse thank you brittany and thank everyone for uh uh participating in this webinar um

It’s been it’s been an interesting last nine or ten months for um the new york metropolitan area and new jersey as well um we had a number of neighborhoods that were extremely devastated by the the superstorm that that hit our area it was a unique combination of you know a dissipating hurricane a

Nor’easter and high tide from a full moon so when one start one of them started tying down the other would step in and pick up the pace and just continually devastate a number of our communities particularly along the atlantic shore when when the storm hit a lot of our planners went out and

It took took the time and opportunity to do a lot of the initial cleanup and assistance efforts that were necessary in various neighborhoods but a number of planners had come to the chapter asking for more medium and long-term opportunities to assist an affected community from a planning and community development standpoint

Back in early november uh one of our economic development committee members larissa ortiz of lewis ortiz associates made a connection to kevin alexander of the rockaway development revitalization corporation who are based in far rockaway who saw our need um to reopen the 1100 businesses that rdrc which is the acronym represent

Throughout the rockaways at the time of the storm um immediately after the storm over 90 percent of the businesses on the rockaway peninsula were devastated and shuttered flooded or subject to fire we what we had decided to do after speaking with kevin from finding his needs was to take undertake a six-month

Planning effort to analyze how super storm sandy impacted businesses on the peninsula and come up with opportunities for to come up with opportunities to address these specific needs of the community not only to reopen but to think think ahead think more resilient i think how to engage additional strategies its unique place

Along along the atlantic ocean and as a barrier peninsula for much of the new york metropolitan area so while doing that um you know we developed a relationship and we developed a strategy to go out and do a number of surveys for the area to properly assess the needs next slide

So today what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over um we have panelists here that are going to go over the the scope of work that that we did the various areas uh shelter and housing food access and transportation talk a little bit about the results from our research and

Survey outreach and then going to the list of recommendations that we had submitted to rdrc in order to better help them um identify partnerships and grant opportunities and then we’ll finish up with lessons learned and final thoughts in terms of moving forward so the rockaway peninsula is um located in queens one five

Boroughs in new york city it’s located if if you see um it’s the peninsula at the bottom of the borough of queens along the other barrier islands of um long island is the only part of new york city that’s not contiguous to another landmass in new york city

It’s actually connected to nassau county it’s important to note because it’s an approach and an attitude that many rockaway residents feel the city has taken towards the peninsula over over its history is that it’s this outlying area that doesn’t get a lot of attention historically the rockaway peninsula was a vacation

Destination point for many new yorkers back before automobiles and airplanes while the subway was being built and cars were just beginning to get introduced many new york city residents used the rockaways as well as place like coney island as their their vacation spot their weekend getaways it was populated with a number of

Bungalows throughout the early to mid 20th century um almost exclusively all seasonal bungalows that didn’t have the basic sewer systems or or extensive as a forming system that you would find in permanent homes with the advent of the popularization of the automobile the building of the highway system and popularization of commercial airlines

The rockaways fell by the wayside as a vacation destination and over the next few decades saw a significant amount of devastation in that bungalows were abandoned and as a result whole communities were raised and left vacant and fallow for um for a number of decades this coincided with the construction of a

Large number of high-rise buildings by robert moses that were a mix of public housing projects and senior housing so while it’s far from the center of manhattan and other parts of new york city do you have a very dense population particularly on the eastern end of the peninsula that’s

Challenged through either through um in impoverished housing conditions or through a frail and frail and elderly throughout the rest of the peninsula you see a diversity of of uh of housing stock and incomes as i mentioned over towards the east far right way auburn edgemere area is where a lot of the

High-rise housing is placed as you get towards more west along the peninsula towards um roxbury the ponzi rockaway beach and breezy point it gets a significantly more low rise and breezy point is where the the major fire had occurred and is where you find a number of converted bungalows into permanent homes

The rockaway peninsula itself is a seven miles long consisting of 13 neighborhoods that includes broad channel which is the island mass in the middle of jamaica bay jamaica bay is part of the gateway national recreation area which also includes land along the eastern shore of staten island and sandy hook in

In new jersey so it the reason is called the gateway because it’s the enter into the narrows into um the hudson iran and the bay um it’s situated less than 20 miles from manhattan but it’s very difficult for many rockaway residents to to uh make it out and have uh transportation um opportunities

So a little bit about um what exists in in the rockaways um there are approximately 115 000 people who live on the rockaways as per the last census there are diversity of incomes although not extremely wide-ranging there’s very little extremely wealthy folks who live on the peninsula so per capita income is approximately

Twenty one thousand dollars um it’s um currently about thirty five percent white forty percent african american and twenty percent hispanic now while on its face it seems like that the rockaways is a very diverse community but as i mentioned it’s 13 separate neighborhoods along the peninsula and 13

Neighborhoods that rarely talk to each other they are divided both by income and both by ethnicity so in trying to coordinate out in the rockaways there were a significant number of barriers that that we had faced in terms of just trying to do uh basic outreach and getting getting different groups and even

Different not-for-profits talking to each other um as a result uh 30 36 percent of the area is on some form of public assistance um six thousand alarm cash assistance 9 000 on ssi and over 25 000 on medicaid which notes the the elderly and senior population that live there

So one one big issue um with the rockaways is that it’s difficult to get from point a to point b on the rockaways there’s a subway line that goes out the a train so the rockaways that once it gets the rockaway peninsula splits into two separate directions um but except immediately after

Hurricane sandy you can’t get across the peninsula by subway on one train you have to go into transfer broad channel and then come back out to go into uh to the other side of the peninsula so it just kind of calls to the mindset of um the disconnect along the peninsula

Um the the per capita income you know that we were talking about before is five thousand dollars less in queens forty thousand dollars less in manhattan so significantly a middle and working class community so to give you some context of what sandy did to new york city in the area october 29th

We saw the storm hit and when most folks woke up on october 30th um they found a number of communities um laid to waste closed over 19 billion dollars in damages in new york city alone approximately 48 people died in new york state because of the storm

Which in comparison you know given the magnitude of the storm we’re just very thrilled it wasn’t much greater because there was an opportunity given the high level of flooding and the number of people who died i mean the number of homes that burned down in places like

Breezy point or in staten island that the damage wasn’t much worse water levels rose over 10 feet due to the storm surge and the astronomical tide and some spots the tide was as high as 14 feet um in breezy point the neighborhood that received the most press along the

Rockaway peninsula 130 homes were lost due to fire damage i’m in a very consolidated area as i mentioned before these were converted bungalows and so homes are very close together so when the wind picked up the fire just spread throughout throughout the community and the reason why we got involved a number

Of businesses were forced to close their doors and four or five months after the storm still over 60 of the businesses along the rockaway peninsula were closed this is significant um in the sense in the work that we we did with rdrc is because if you’re talking about

Ways to be resilient if you’re talking about strategic ways to repopulate the area you have to talk about basic goods and services where are people going to buy food where we’re going to buy clothing where are you going to locate hospitals which is a big issue there because

Peninsula hospital closed a few years prior where are you going to provide just basic basic access towards the pharmacies and just sit down restaurants and trying to best serve the community if you don’t have those resources there what’s what’s the incentive for people to come back and consider investing in in the neighborhood

Next slide because i’m going to click on the next slide i don’t have access at the moment sorry we seem to have a technical difficulties here erin can you make sure your screen is not set to pause yeah it’s not on pause it’s it’s just not advancing um let’s go ahead and

See if that resets it aaron click on show my screen i can’t seem to it’s just spinning okay um does anybody else have the presentation up on loaded on one of their computers yeah i do okay hilary i’m gonna make you the presenter and we’ll just um go off your screen

Okay all right james you should be all set yes excellent thank you very much uh we apologize to anyone uh for the technical difficulties thank you for your patience so just want to talk a little bit about rdrc their background they’ve been to cdc since community fellow corporation since 1987.

Their primary function is to provide business and community development services and support and employment readiness training small business advice managing commercial revitalization projects but they also have some housing assistance primarily focused on foreclosure prevention which is key um for a community like the rockaways which while there are a number of high-rise um

The number of high-rise housing there there are you know as you saw with the demograph graphic demographic information it’s at least the third one to two family homes so it’s a challenge community um a lot of folks don’t have insurance out there so particularly after the

Storm when they were looking to turn to someone if they realized that um that they didn’t have flood insurance they didn’t you know they were looking for opportunities to rebuild their homes and rdrc is able to play play a role in that as i mentioned before a thousand businesses were

Damaged in the corridor um rdrc um immediately sprung into action they’ve been they’ve been you know working in the community over for over 30 about 30 years and worked you know worked with partnerships with other groups margaret housing corporation rockaway waterfront alliance and as well as community community and district leaders throughout

Throughout the peninsula and and the borough so um at this next slide so um i’m gonna turn turn it over um but we when addressing it we had um we formed four subcommittees to address the needs of the local peninsula one focused on shelter and housing for the reasons i mentioned before a

Number of homes were devastated by fire and flooding as well as concern foreclosure prevention transportation needs and access on the peninsula mentioned the a train before bus service and long island railroad service data support which helped put together this presentation maps and other other data information and food access

And business outreach to address the lack of proper proper healthy and fresh foods on the peninsula and just opportunities for business so i’ll turn it over to hillary great um thanks james for giving all the context and background information to put this into contact so just to recap a little bit um

The apa chapter the new york mentor chapter was working with our drc we initially had our first meeting a small team of planners led by james met back in november shortly after the storm and took a tour of the rockaways and some of the commercial areas and some of

The hardest hit areas and that’s really what kind of kicked off the effort that our chapter undertook which was about a six-month planning effort um and i think as we go throughout this webinar one of the interesting things was how our scope really focused on really the short-term immediate needs and

Developing recommendations to help alleviate these challenges in the long run and a lot of the work really came down to these to the business aspect of our work so um out of that initial meeting back in november um touring the hard hit communities is really how these

Really a b and c the shelter has the same transportation and then the food access and business came as three kind of critical areas that our teams could help address and then the fourth team the data and support became more of an internal team that helped develop math

And other technical and visual aids so i’m going to go through these in more detail and then after i finish describing these four subgroups i’m going to pass the torch over to monday who’s going to really hone in on the business outreach that we did and the interviews with the business committee

Community as that became really one of the largest the mean scope of our work so starting with shelter and housing so the substantial housing was really focused on foreclosure prevention especially as james mentioned insurance issues were going to be pretty significant with the rate with insurance rates going up and so

Possible buyout programs different um different challenges were coming up around housing and so a lot of residents were going to have to determine if they could force continue moving the area what different grant or options were available to help them in terms of support and so really what this

Committee really focused on is identifying grants and other housing assistance opportunities to help provide information and assistance to local residents as they figured out what their next steps would be what their short or long term steps would be so this group really focused on the enterprise grant is one example

That can be providing support to organizations for housing construction repair so that was the primary focus of the shelter and the housing group and this enterprise grant for example really focus on construction repairs which included heat and hot water lost revenue for very low income housing developments suffered disruption services

And direct resident assistance as well as organizational working capital so that was the focus of this group and then james discussed some of the the unique geography of the rock lane which uh has a pretty clear impact on the transportation system and the transportation options for the rockaways so

One of the most devastating impacts of the storm was the a train that james mentioned which really suffered extreme damage and really further geographically isolated the rockaways and so it really figuring out how to adjust this challenge was one of the most crucial um any other aspects of the transportation

System that were impacted would be the subway line to get to the airport and um and from the local bus routes as well especially because the subway itself doesn’t cover the entire extent of the island and so um because of the severity of the damage the subway service was suspended um

All the way until late may i believe may 30th and so coming up with alternatives was what was critical for this whole challenge so 35 000 customers were really impacted by not being able to get the queens and then many of the rockaway residents who were commuters into manhattan were impacted

Um another aspect of the transportation system was the long island railroad so that’s another option to get between queens and manhattan but the challenge there is that the long island railroad has a separate fee that you have to pay and two for many residents that was just not

A viable option financially to pay for your long island railroad task as well as your metropass and so that was um that was another challenge that was faced so what our team did was trying to develop recommendations in the long term that could help address some of these transportation challenges

Coming up with recommendations that looked at kind of unique alternatives for example there’s something called the city ticket which the mta the new york city metropolitan transit authority currently offers for weekends where it’s a reduced fare program for long island railroad residents and and for new york city metro residents so

Looking at unique alternatives to making transit more accessible in that sense is one of the recommendations that we looked at the team also met with a local community board and community birds are the most local form of government and they have the responsibility of dealing with a lot of

Local services and so those meetings are important to um to connect different stakeholder groups and developing long-term solutions and so um just moving forward this just gives you a picture visually of one of the railroad tracks for the subway but um just looking ahead to one of the one of

The interesting transit options that came out of this challenge was the ferry service so here you can see i know it may be a little tough to read but the long island railroads the light blue um if you look down at the keep the bottom purple the ferry is a really interesting

Transit option that was created after sandy and so um that goes from rockaway as you can see all the way into manhattan and that became a very very popular option rockaway did have a ferry service prior to sandy but i don’t believe it was used as frequently as this ferry pathway has

Been and there’s a lot of demand they’ve actually continued the service extended it through labor day and there are a lot of local residents advocating to keep it up permanently so another solution that the transit system developed during sandy was what’s called the each shuttle and that’s the second one up from the

Bottom that kind of light brown dot and so basically what happened was a temporary extension of the subway was up and running within rockaway and that was at each shuttle but um but that did not run at night it only went in one direction so there were

A lot of challenges still remaining with the transit system um so that that kind of encapsulates some of what was happening in terms of transportation hillary can you clarify real real quick um was it was it 2013 or 2014 that the train the subway was restored yeah okay thank you

Oh we may have had a table in there but it was may of 2013 yeah it was a couple months ago so it’s about a six month lag until that was up and running are we good yep great okay so the mapping and support is great the mapping and support team was really

A good strategy that we um that we put together in terms of these committees the support team really was critical in developing some of the maps especially that helped with our immediate strategies and long-term planning as planners i think we all understand the value of maps so i won’t spend too

Much time talking about this but with the business survey and interview process the market analysis that monday will get into and just really understanding some of the land use opportunities and challenges and rockaways of having a team dedicated to mapping into technical needs was really really important and i think something

That we took away as a really helpful and positive strategy that the team took on took on and so then to move forward into the business outreach um just to put it a little bit more into context originally this was the food access and businesses speech

Um some of the key grocery stores had been shut down after sandy and so food access was a critical need but as the team’s efforts really underwent um developed further we realized that really we had to expand this to businesses in general because that’s where the real critical need was more

Than specific to food so we did provide some assistance in terms of there’s some grant opportunities for for food access that we’re able to identify new york city also has a unique zoning program it’s called the fresh program food retail expansion to support health i believe it stands

For and so one of the good things that’s come out of sandy was um a local grocery store operator was funded through this grant program through this fresh program which basically um allows for grocery stores it provides incentives for grocery stores to open up particularly in industrial areas but um

But to get back out of that we really honed in on this business work in particular and so we really broke our work down into into two phases so the first phase was really identifying those immediate needs and a lot of times people will say we’re your planners why are you focused so

Much on the businesses in the short term but that was what the need was i mean to ask businesses long-term questions was completely impractical and just not realistic until we really were very focused on what we could do to support immediate needs and identify barriers to to moving forward in long-term recovery

Efforts and that’s what um phase two was we really were not able to focus on um on long-term implementation and long-term planning but to identify steps that our years the american business community could take in the short term to build the foundation for the longer term recovery which would be

A much larger process and so as part of this effort we did a few things first we start with a market analysis looking at the business community and the trends that were taking place in rockaways before sandy struck so we knew what the before and after scenarios were and could look like

And then uh the second piece working very closely with our drc for the structured interview process to really do a needs assessment for these local businesses and that’s what monday’s going to get in just a moment along with american analysis and so that’s primarily what our teams did was we were facilitating and

Conducting and leading these interview teams so with that i’m going to hand i’m going to pass the torch over to mondays who’s going to jump into some pretty danny business thank you hillary so as you already mentioned before looking at the results of the business interviews you conducted it’s worth

Taking a step and looking at the pre-sandy context of the business in the rockaways um the general estimate was that there were about 1100 total businesses pre-sandy about a quarter of them which we didn’t drink businesses just to give you a sense of what type of businesses were there

Um like a lot of new york city many of these businesses were small businesses um and uh james already talked about the social demographics of the rockaways so it’s a mixed community but although a lot of low-income areas and so businesses there were facing the kind of challenges you’d expect in low-income areas

Next so the pre-sandy business context looking back at the retail context really helps to illustrate just how much damage was done to the residents of the rockaways by sandy uh when a lot of as a result a lot of business called closure post sandy so this chart uh shows demand in the

Rockaways and supply and the retail gap pre october pre-november 2012. so as we can see demand forest outstrip supply in the hundreds of millions of dollars only a quarter of the food and drink demand the rockaways was met within the rockaways for example so what this means is that people had to

Leave the rockaways to meet their needs and when you remember the unique geography of the rockaways along put into a with not a lot of points of access you realize what a challenge is it it is and what happened post sandy when trains weren’t working cars were

Got flooded and towed away roads and bridge damaged so basically the business closings as a result of sandy we’re exacerbating already a difficult situation in terms of business access in terms of access to basic needs moving to the business interviews so there are several things worth emphasizing before we talk about the

Business interviews we conducted first of all you know rdrc was our client and we were going in there representing them so we were this was both a check-in so to speak and a formal data gathering process so whenever we as teams of volunteers visited the businesses we introduced ourselves um

As volunteers for rdrc the again rdc’s the nickname of the acronym of the development corporation was our client gave them material about rdrc contact info etc we had to explain that we’re not fema that was sort of big we’re not fema secondly um instead of doing surveys where you know

From the beginning you need to get the sample size right etc we’re all familiar with the process of conducting a proper survey uh we went for structured interviews in key areas interviews are more flexible too and generally i think post recovery you’re always sort of changing things things are always

Changing on the ground and you need to be adaptable and conducting surveys is really hard interviews are more flexible um so looking at the three corridors we identified rdrc identified three economic key economic corridors where they wanted to conduct the interviews so going from right to left the rockaway beach boulevard

Which is also the area where a lot of people go come visit in the summer to go to the beach it’s a very hip beach and it’s becoming the last few years um beach 116th street and beach 129th street uh because the far rockaway businesses

Which is the area all the way to the right of the map uh were not significantly damaged during uh superstorm stead standing they were lower priority and interviews were not conducted in these areas moving on to the survey design a series of qualitative and quantitative questions we developed

And the priority was to identify the short term needs understand how rdrc could assist the businesses in the recovery process um long-term needs are really not addressed by the interview tool it’s not it was not a priority of the business it was not an immediate priority of rdrc the question was how to

Deliver aid to the businesses in need we ended up going out to the field beyond four interviews three times december 8th 2012 and january 5th and march 30th 2013. these were all saturdays because we were a team of volunteers so we had to accommodate working folks schedules

The interview each form changed a bit um as we sort of learned in the field initially we were asking general questions regarding post-sandly challenges but uh we ended up drilling more on what kind of assist the kind of assistance we need the most so the kind of questions we asked were

Basic information are you open are you close it wasn’t always that easy to determine because sometimes um because we were there on the weekends we might miss a business that was open during the week or a lot of businesses seemed open they were actually closed it was just a lot

Of activity and renovation going on um identifying the greatest need immediate needs whether electricity money telephone customers etc and finally trying to understand how the businesses were negotiating the whole alphabet soup of aid agencies in the area and how what kind of help could rdrc deliver in facilitating that process so overall

We approached 297 business businesses um of those 102 interviews were completed of the businesses we approached 95 businesses were open for business 135 businesses were closed and there was that mining as 67 uh were undetermined um the status was undetermined again we were only there on the weekend so we

Weren’t sure what was happening with some of those businesses during the week whether they were open partially open et cetera james had mentioned earlier that several months after sandy about 60 percent of the businesses were closed uh we saw higher rates on in the field when we were going out uh

Businesses that were open but one of the things to remember is that we were visiting business districts where so the emphasis to open was foster where aid was concentrated and so there are a lot of businesses scattered all over the rockaway so that’s something to keep in mind

And we really had these again these were business districts uh general serving all sorts of needs so there are various business types from restaurants to gift shops to pharmacies pharmacies to gas stations just what you’d expect so business interview results the picture that emerged was pretty complicated but there are several key takeaways

So the first one was money when we went out there and asked businesses do you need help with renovations do you need help with any kind of specific physical need we thought was a priority the first thing we said was no we need his money because and

The fri one of the things they said almost exclusively was that there was strong preference to receiving ground server loans business owners simply did not want to go further into debt money was needed to address all areas of business operation to compensate for lack of business because they lost

Business over a lot of businesses lost business over the crucial christmas season to make up for loss of inventory and of course to renovate the business um it’s important to remember that the businesses we spoke to were either open or attempting to be open so already dealing and one as best as they

Could with the physical aspects of post-id recovery uh so their concerns were really focused on the days and weeks and months ahead making sure they can pay rent so that they can buy new stock that they can make up the money that they had already sunk in renovations the second key concern that

Many many many of the businesses cited as really important was customers businesses complain that the number of customers is dropped sharply not only because of what you’d expect because many residents had left the rockaways as a result of sandy but also because many customers were simply not aware of businesses being

Open you know the perception was that the rockaways was closed the wraparound wasn’t working anymore and they were really fighting to let people know that businesses were open this is where the fact that we were zooming in on specific business clusters is important some business owners were really concerned about gap in the

Streetscape because you know you’d walk down the street and one business was open even if it’s still like looking a little disheveled you know not entirely finished fixing up and the next business was clearly shut down and not clear whether renovations were ever going to happen

So they were really worried about how it would impact a potential customer’s perceptions of these areas um the attractiveness of the area overall and really emphasize the need in terms of responding to um disasters uh reopening not just one or two critical businesses it might be a

Temptation just you know such as a grocery store pharmacy but looking at a district of the whole so that the businesses can sort of support each other and attract customers together looking at the physical infrastructure challenges so while the main concerns were indeed money for various needs and customers obviously

Physical infrastructure is a key issue depending on the area um many businesses were dealing with localized challenges prolonged power loss as long as three or four to two or three months after sandy along the phone service loss uh some business suggested that many of the renovations were done in haste post-sunday so

Many businesses did not actually properly address uh issues such as mold maybe they were painting over a wall with mold or just plastering sheet rack on top of it without doing the proper difficult work that you need to do to get rid of mold for example and of course

Um thinking long term business owners to strengthen so much pressure that they could not afford to think of wait is this renovation even make sense for the location should we be doing slightly something different in terms of construction to make the next super sort of standing this was just something that they did

Not have time to think about um and it didn’t it actually did not came up come up as a result of an interview with into our interviews it was something that we and the fact that it did not come out this significant um of course both issues but the issue of

Quality renovations and whether these renovations were up to standard to the new standard for preparedness to the next for the next disaster are issues that homeowners face as well finally um uh business phrase business interviews are raised to additional issues first of all who is supporting the businesses who is

Actually giving money to the businesses and other kinds of support very few businesses we interviewed reported receiving any financial aid from the government uh renovations were almost exclusively done out of the business owner’s pocket or through informal loans etc occasionally there was an exception in the case of franchises or chains um

Verizon for example helped franchisees renovate gave them some money to renovate just tuning is an example of how hard it was for smaller businesses in one case a business owner had applied for aid but his application was rejected because his financial situation was not good enough to qualify for a sandy recovery loan

This was a liqueur store and he tends to hold massive amounts of inventory and he lost almost a million dollars worth of inventory and in order to start operating again he basically had to borrow right and left in order to restock and he claims that that disqualified him from getting certain loans

So that’s the kind of situation they were dealing with um another big complaint and another issue that emerged was the the bureaucratic hurdles businesses were face facing uh for one thing to fill in the various um applications businesses had to fill in very lengthy documentation that might have been

Destroyed during sandy or maybe they were just too busy business owners may be too busy to take the time to focus on filling it in they needed help in some cases it took months for businesses to hear back from relevant agencies we kept on hearing oh we

Applied a month ago but we never heard back not surprisingly business owners supported a general sense of support services being overwhelmed or not really there for them they reported general sense of lack of coordination they didn’t really understand who was supposed to help them how was that was supposed to work um

There were other bureaucratic hurdles that were more specific in a certain area we heard a repeated complaint from multiple businesses that they were being issued fines for things like incorrect signage by new york city’s department of consumer affairs and that was even before businesses that opens

In one case the star owner who was still the store was still closed was issued a 900 fine for a incorrect sign he actually went ahead and appealed the fine and what you see in that photo on the slide is actually the whole paperwork we filled and um

In order to appeal the sign and he went along and appealed it and he won his appeal the fine was cancelled but you have to wonder here’s a business owner struggling to reopen host sandy and he’s spending a lot of time appealing a fine for not for you know a

Health issue not for a hazard but for incorrect signage so is this the correct priority of city resources is this the correct use of the time of a business owner who’s still dealing with a business that’s still shut down months and months per sandy so these are the kind of issues we

Encountered when we went out to the area and interviewed businesses erin great thank you mandu so i’m just going to walk through a few of the recommendations from the report touching on each of the different areas that we’ve covered so far and while the project and our effort was

Designed primarily to serve our drc and help them you know tackle and address the challenges facing the rockaway business community we also saw this as an opportunity to for the metro chapter to learn uh from the experience and provide some lessons and recommendations that we hope can you know prove useful

To other groups uh dealing with similar issues down the road so first under shelter and housing although rdrc doesn’t provide housing they aim to preserve the quality of housing throughout the walkaways through promoting and preserving housing for low and moderate-income individuals and families through a variety of training and counseling

Programs they have a first-time homebuyer certificate training session that’s certified by hud and they offer foreclosure prevention counseling so as hillary mentioned earlier the team had identified the enterprise grant and loan program as a possible fit to support their housing work in the wake of sandy and we also recommended that rdrc

Explore a partnership with the center for new york city neighborhoods to bolster their foreclosure prevention services we also talked earlier about transportation and the city ticket program and how important that was to the rockaway business community in terms of accessibility of of transportation and not necessarily an immediate

Aftermath of the storm because of the closures on the railroad system but even going forward long term this would be a more affordable and more accessible way that could open up the business community when other options you know may not be available down the road we also recommended that rdrc establish a

Working relationship with the community board to address future transportation needs um and in terms of business outreach this was really the bulk of our efforts and recommendations were focused on the business services so as uh mandu just described the interview results really indicated that the principal needs of businesses in the period

Following the storm were for funding and for better clarity on how to negotiate and navigate the applications for post sandy aid so our team members conducted research on some of the best practices in business recovery assistance and one of the commonly identified effective solutions was an a mobile assistance unit

So drawing on this research and our assessment of the business needs in the community we felt this mobile unit would be a useful tool and a helpful resource for our drc and the businesses this slide here shows some of the findings from our best practices research this is recommendations taken from

Restoreyoureconomy.org you can see at the bottom of the slide and there’s a number of steps and components that are recommended here and we framed our recommendations around some of these first identifying and seeking funding to establish the mobile unit and we recommended and provided some guidance to our drc on applying for

Discretionary funding from the new york city council or different foundations or banks second to work with local partners to develop a marketing and promotional campaign to advertise the mobile unit and then a hotline to field inquiries and provide quick and easy access to uh information for some of the local businesses

As far as the other lessons learned we group them into several different categories the next slide please can we go to the next five please thank you so this is um some of the lessons learned and and what we hope will be useful for our team and

For other teams going forward down the road sandy as we all know was an unprecedented storm and many of the agencies and partners in this region had little to no experience dealing with uh you know a storm of this magnitude and the resulting damage and devastation so naturally with a storm this severe

The pressure to act quickly was great and then our team jumped to action and so did many many others looking back on the storm and the work of our drc and our volunteer team we tried to assess what worked and what didn’t there’s lessons you know in both on both

Sides of that so over the next couple slides i’m just going to go through some of what we learned and we hope we’ll provide useful to any of us sorry go back to the previous slide thank you so under planning and project management just a few quick points but

First it’s important to understand the client and the capacity and skills of the volunteer team so that would help define the scope of work and ensure realistic goals and targets as well as to help assign tasks and roles to the appropriate people so that we can take advantage of their particular skills

In a disaster situation especially there the needs are so many and so great it’s difficult for one group to tackle them all so it’s important to kind of tightly manage the expectations and help everyone understand what their different goals are and what the project aims to achieve

With any group project it’s important to have a designated leader or a manager and this person could help monitor and evaluate the scope of work for example as we talked about earlier determining whether the intent is for immediate relief or sort of mid-term longer-term recovery work

And then the leader could also serve as a primary liaison with the client so that you don’t have many different groups or people trying to communicate and working at sort of cross purposes and then lastly communications are really important as i’m sure we all know group communication can be really

Difficult and having a plan at the beginning would be helpful to facilitate better communication and quicker flow of work so this communication plan would maybe touch on the frequency of calls or meetings methods for communicating and designated points of contact next slide please so in terms of information gathering um

Mandu touched on this a little bit with the questionnaires interviews and surveys but um we wanted to have there were several purposes for our uh interviews both to touch base with the businesses take stock take inventory of which were closed and which were open but then also to identify their immediate pressing needs

So to do this it’s important to understand what information you’re trying to obtain and gathering good usable information or data takes work and these are just some of the lessons that we learned in this process in no particular order but first identifying what it is that you’re trying to answer

Being specific concise objective and always remembering the purpose of the data gathering it’s also helpful to test surveys and and or interview questions in advance if you have a team of volunteers maybe try to give them copies of the questions ahead of time so that they can practice and become

Familiar with the questions and then be able to answer questions about them when they’re out in the community talking with the business owners for example it’s also important to avoid leading respondents to certain answers or making assumptions about what they know and we also uh suggested like i said

Training the volunteers um and providing identification uh was also important um just in terms of having so many different groups out in the community at once there were lots of organizations that were working to help in this neighborhood and it was i think hard sometimes for the business owners to

Keep track of who was who and they felt maybe they’d already answered that question so just to avoid duplication of work it would be good to try to identify who’s who and then maybe even coordinate those efforts going forward to share information that’s being gathered and then being sensitive to the

Challenges of the participants a lot of these business owners were just really kind of reeling from the storm still and trying to deal with putting their lives and their businesses back together so it was difficult for them to think about you know months or even years down the road and initially some

Of what we had hoped to gather in terms of information was about long-term rebuilding plan but it just wasn’t feasible for them to think at that level or that time frame when they were dealing with this immediate need so just taking that into consideration when you’re figuring out

What questions it is that you’d like to ask and also we learned that funding identification is really important as well because as mandu mentioned the money money money was one of the quick you know one of the common answers that they presented as their immediate needs so if there was any way

To as part of a information gathering process to collect information about what funding opportunities businesses or agencies like rdrc might be able to tap into immediately to kind of as a stop gap until some of the longer term recovery funds became available so these might be funds to assist with

Assessment or immediate cleanup and repair next thank you bigger picture post-disaster planning in general it’s important to sorry about that so as i touched on earlier with a group flight apa it’s important to differentiate the the types of work that a group is doing whether it’s short-term or long-term rebuilding strategies

And in some cases it might be both but in our experience there was a high demand for some of the immediate relief and at least initially like i just said a lack of interest or ability to think about some of the longer term recovery work so that’s part of defining the scope of

The work we also recommend thinking about identifying different partners and the system to track and coordinate efforts so i mentioned previously that there were so many different groups in the area conducting different surveys or trying to get different information and in hindsight it would have been great if

We’d been able to have someone focused on trying to understand what those different groups were doing and what information they were gathering so that we could all learn from one another or at least avoid asking the same questions over and over again and in terms of funding as people were asking about

You know what resources they could tap into and different organizations were trying to assess what monies were available for assisting businesses it’s important to remember that having clear goals objectives and measurable outcomes is important so that the funders can understand what the impact of their funding will be um you know they

In other words what is going to be the impact or what difference their financial support is going to make and then planning now for later um it’s a hard thing to do for many people uh it’s very common in the planning field to to have to work hard to get people to

Think long term down the road but many of the businesses we encountered and spoke with didn’t have a plan in place for what happens in case of an emergency and so if there’s any um you know one of the next steps that might be worth looking into is what are

The protocols and what can businesses do to ensure that they are prepared for next time and do they have a plan in place for how to recover how to come back and contacts for whom to you know work with in the case of future disasters looking ahead um just these are some

Thoughts about some of the future efforts uh with the new york metro chapter team as well as it throughout the region and going forward um building on the work that was started as part of this project recovery efforts should tie into long-term resiliency planning efforts for the region

As with many planning projects it doesn’t make sense to do so in isolation so planning should build on and take into consideration the broader context of what’s being done at the various levels whether that’s local new york city uh metropolitan region state you know throughout the tri-state region

And then exploring partnerships for uh rebuilding for design for long-term planning strategies there’s a number of groups that are involved in these types of activities whether they are professional organizations colleges or universities and and there’s a lot of talent out there that can be taken advantage of

Along a similar line taking advantage of existing programs that may not be specifically disaster oriented but could be used to help facilitate rebuilding and long-term planning there are a number of state and local programs or federal programs that aren’t specifically oriented toward disaster planning or recovery but can assist

Hillary mentioned earlier the fresh program that helped the key food store and rockaways and other programs such as brownfield redevelopment funding or environmental programs may also be tapped to assist with rebuilding going forward as well as funding from maybe slightly less likely suspects corporate foundations or banks or even

Insurance companies may have programs that could be used and then just to reiterate again building on previous planning efforts and comprehensive planning that’s going on in this area as well as you know the surrounding area to make sure that disaster specific issues are being addressed as well as more traditional planning related issues

So those are just a few thoughts about looking forward and then i’m going to turn it over to james who’s going to provide a few final thoughts thanks aaron um just to let everyone know and actually it does put it this um the storm and and the effort um into

Context for everyone unfortunately kevin alexander the executive director of rdrc won’t be joining us today because he has a structural roof issue which they discovered today and they’re pretty certain it’s storm related so just to give you an idea where in july mid-july already the storm happened in october

And folks are still dealing with issues even after reports have been released recovery initial recovery efforts have gone by the wayside and there’s um efforts already beginning to start um to talk about resiliency so just uh you know if you pray keep keep kevin rdrc um in your prayers to

Make sure that you know he gets through it because um he he’s um rdrc is the largest community development corporation in the rockaways and if he has to struggle to relocate that provides more difficulty for the residents and local businesses to find assistance find guidance towards necessary goods and

Services and grants and loans but in general just want to talk a little bit about the experience itself very quickly and just what you know we’re doing in terms of next steps um first yeah as a chapter president i was very proud of the effort that our economic development committee who led

The charge on this um of which all of the panelists today are are a part of um and it’s led by jason shimada and anthony drummond or our co-chairs put hundreds and hundreds of hours of effort into this we felt that planning needed to take a role in the recovery

And resiliency process and that it went beyond basic what people basically feel are the roles of planners that we found there was a medium-term need to address economic development to address basic goods and services where planners could play a role and set up the framework for next steps to occur

We’ve been in a number of conversations with with different groups ranging from various low levels of government the the city’s special initiative for rebuilding and resiliency to the new york state department of state to fema to reaching out to municipalities on long island and other other government agency offices to

Working with groups like occupy sandy who have a presence in the rockaways coney island and staten island they’ve been doing a lot of the ground work and they they should really be commended for for their effort but also working with other professional organizations such as aia asla the regional plan association groups

Like that because it’s developing these partnerships and thinking regionally is really the way we’re going to be able to recover properly and i also have to acknowledge the the work that the apa new jersey chapter has done uh chuck lattini and sheena collum they’ve been wonderful partners we’ve

Been sharing information because the the efforts and the work that we put in here isn’t isn’t just a solo effort it’s it’s just working with with a number of groups to address and to address the needs because even though for a lot of people if an individual’s recovery is local

It’s not going to succeed unless we we can all you know pool our resources together and focus on a way to get this done those who you know new york city new york city is a very tough place to get certain things done there are a lot of competing

Interests you know amongst planners architects engineers and most importantly developers and banks um who are looking um you know just to make their mark and make their footprint here so it’s it’s been a wonderful experience working um with our members to on this report and with rdrc

Um apa national has played played a role in all of this they’ve assisted in hosting a series of workshops throughout new york and new jersey to address the needs with it with the highlight on the rockaways there has been discussion of a community plan assistance team cpat team which is

The conversation is still ongoing but it’s not a cpad team just working with the national chapter to leverage and pull together resources to better assist um kevin and rdrc and other like organizations in in the rockaways to identify opportunities such as grants and loans and just help better position them into the conversation

As was mentioned a few times there are a number of groups out there and they have certain partnerships while rdrc has certain partnerships with local elected officials apa groups and just trying to make sure those connections are made so there are not duplicative services one thing that has been uh

That has been noted many times is that there’s workshop fatigue and that’s why it’s extremely important to coordinate because apa might be hosting a series of workshops residents and then aia comes in with a partnership with sbs to do a series of workshops and then frat institute and another school

Comes in and does a series of workshops so communication is extremely important and that’s a role that apa can play and has played in this process is just making sure that the local groups are connected with one one another and just leveraging the resources from apa national on that

Again on the note of communication it’s really crucial to get neighborhoods to talk to each other we were lucky enough um which one of our executive committee members called it nothing short of a miracle to uh get a foot in the door into breezy point for those who don’t

Know breezy point is a private lane cooperative um whose residents are primarily uniformed service workers cops firemen sanitation workers some secret service workers groups like that who are very a very provincial community um and so for an opportunity for us to get into there to explain

You know what apa is doing what rdrc is doing just so there’s communication happening is not only a benefit to groups like rdrc with benefit to breezy point so that they don’t feel isolated in the process and breezy point is a very isolated community as it’s completely surrounded by

Jacob reese park and the gateway national recreation area so um and just making sure that groups are on the same page as a private land cooperative breezy point can essentially do what they want in terms of resiliency efforts but if they’re unaware that um their efforts to build

Say a six foot dune wall while breezy point only builds a three and a half foot dune wall guess what water is being pushed from the those six foot dune walls down to the three and a half foot two more to where a breezy point is and so it’s important for them

And all groups to know exactly what’s going on and keeping them up to date it’s also incumbent upon us to help rdrc and other groups to identify new opportunities and resources a lot of cdbg community development block grant funding has come out you know we have trying to keep

Groups abreast of what’s going on uh with that just so they know where funding is and where access is is the funding so they can go out to their businesses and residents to let them know that you know the money is flowing um also it’s better utilizing our relationship with the local planning

Schools i had mentioned pratt but also nyu had been working with uh ron schiffman who’s at pratt uh hunter did a few studios in hoboken new jersey and staten island and columbia the urban real estate center there has been very active in in the hurricane sandy process um but it’s just really

As i mentioned just making sure that we can utilize opportunities we can utilize knowledge and and the resources and universities for that and finally just um apa um as as an organization um as a whole has an excellent relationship with the kingdom of the netherlands and from a an educational and a resource

Standpoint they have been wonderful partners um the general counsel rob devos has been been out to the rockaways a number of times has been out to brooklyn um to to assess the area and they’ve put together a variety of workshops over over the time both aimed at professionals and

To and not-for-profits to help dissipate the message and they have been having an ongoing dialogue with us so it’s exploring those relationships and not necessarily just with the dutch but you know with you know potentially other countries and other states who who deal with it so if um other hurricane-prone areas

Um have information um you know we’re more than welcome open to hear it a former chapter member down who’s down in mississippi um who did significant work down there it was a very helpful resource for us um and so we utilized that knowledge and into the process and essentially just

You know keeping making sure that planning is discussed that planning is relevant to to the conversation as i mentioned you know that it’s new york there’s a lot of jockeying going on and so just making sure that sound sustainable planning is an important part of the conversation so

Um i know we’re running out of time so we want to give an opportunity to at least ask a few questions but thank you for participating and this is our information myplanning.org we could you could watch the new york one piece that occurred in november december and this is our

Address and any questions you can reach us at office myplanning.org thanks all right great thank you james um the first question comes in from mohsin logistically speaking how did you manage to prioritize the short-term activities and keep midterm and long-term folks out of the way in early days of the event

Well i think everyone had a sense of that you know we can’t you know dive bomb into communities and you know just start planning you know um we’re really not you know we’ve learned a lot over the last few months but you know are still learning

Um how other states and regions work but this is something that the new york that new york and new jersey had never experienced before we you know when this happened you know last year with tropical storm or in 2011 tropical storm irene the fact that primarily um the middle and that’s our

Upper hudson valleys and vermont so we read a lot about it so a lot of folks didn’t really hunker down and you know take take the storm take sandy seriously because they figured it would be exactly like irene and so we really just didn’t didn’t exactly know what to do

Immediately so the idea of long-term planning and you know just medium-term efforts just really was not on the radar um except for you know except for a few of us uh apa you know we were working like how can we position ourselves it’s like the first month that we had said we

Can’t really get involved now because people are trying to get the lights on they’re trying to get phone service they’re trying to get heating oil gas things like that so i think there was a sense of we recognize a lot needs to happen so let’s take a step back let the emergency

Responders handle it and then after a month or so then we can really um start implementing the role of planners and other professional organizations into the conversation i don’t know if anyone else has comments just to add to that as of all you know as the volunteers were doing these

Interviews you just you just couldn’t ask those questions people just were not mentally ready to answer them so i personally was not on the interview team but just hearing the stories of those who were it just the needs were so immediate that people were not ready for that so

It just sort of naturally tightened our expectations and honed in on how can we help self-immediate assistance so that really played a large goal all right great next question comes in from michael with the rockaways benefit from a development corporation modeled after the lower manhattan development corporation post 911 that would be

Charged with securing and administering federal and state funds in a transparent and efficient and equitable manner well technically rdrc is in the position to apply for and and access those type of funds but the one major issue with with the way new york new york city is run um is there there is

A disparity in you know not only with income race class whatever you want to call it but just in terms of energy um the rockaways while it receives a lot of attention was uh you know a very feel-good kind of effort for a lot of folks whereas the devastation after 9 11 occurred

There were more vested you know vital invested you know moneyed interest into getting lower manhattan back up and running and so there was a very very big effort um to have a central focus also the rockaways are just one of many communities uh devastated by this and

So the mayor’s office to a large large extent um created the uh special a special initiative for rebuilding and presenting tsirr which kind of consolidated all that under the mayor’s office in developing a report in working with specific organizations and and firms to come up with a plan to come up with a

Strategy for for funding um relief you know i i would agree that it is you know a group like rdrc should be bolstered as opposed to forming a new organization they’ve had an extensive history there so it’s instead of reinventing the wheel and bringing um bringing someone from the outside in you

Know we should be looking at our existing community development corporations and looking for ways to best help them all right this question comes in from jeremiah what are the steps being taken now to limit redevelopment in those areas that were shown to be the most impacted by the storm i.e those most at

Risk to such storm events i would say that’s a an ongoing conversation and anyone else wants wants to chime in is is that’s still really being assessed right now a lot of people don’t want to leave that’s that’s the obstacle and but at the same time that’s the crux of you know helping

Our our communities uh recover to date um within the near within new york city’s boundaries there’s only one community that i know of that has voluntarily said you know our neighborhood was devastated we shouldn’t live here if the city wants to buy us out we’re more than happy to listen

And that neighborhood was oakwood beach in staten island an area that i’ve had the opportunity to tour and we’re talking about homes that were built you know wedged into marshland um you know decent homes nice homes but wedged into marshland and just the long inlets um really where there never

Should have been development and once you know four months later when their homes are still sitting at a 45 degree angle and some hopes homes simply floated away the community came together was a community of 165 homeowners and 130 of them signed signed a petition to say if

The city wants to buy us um we’re willing to listen there are other places in staten island to move you know both fortunately for neighborhood context and unfortunately in terms of you know strategizing for resiliency you know not a lot of not a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of towns

Um have the same mindset as of yet i just think as as we get along as we can cost as difficulty to get insurance comes along um then you know we’ll find people and just you know more opportunities for that but one thing i mentioned the dutch they’ve been helpful

Is identifying you know creative strategies how to build not only infrastructure but build you know around neighborhoods to address immediate um needs and causes while in the long term you solve you solve those issues of you know whether we should buy people out i don’t know if anyone else wants to chime in

Yes um this is mandu well while new york state has officially announced a sort of relocation program new york city um and it’s a resilient recently published resiliency report um for the area of the rockaways doesn’t mention relocation as a target um another thing to remember about the rockaways it’s actually fairly densely

Populated um so you’re compared to say some areas of the jersey south shore or even staten island sort of on a relative scale or certain areas of the rockaways are fairly densely populated so that’s something to keep in mind and the community development block grad program is just

Getting launched and that’s going to engage a whole planning process related to that and lease in theory relocations are part of the agenda agenda but only part of the agenda do we have time for one more yeah um our next question comes in from stuart what was the role of the new york

City planning department and related city agencies that’s uh that’s a varied answer i i would say um city planning played a you know played a big role in the process um particularly most notably uh howard slacking and mike morella mike who’s a former chapter executive committee member um

Was in has been in charge of the waterfront revitalization program and the updated amendments as well they did play a role they were very crucial to the sirr process but one thing that we heard from many agencies is that it was a very top-down setup and the agencies

Were kind of on a as you know a need to know basis um so once you know once the various committees and leadership of the sir um process um we’re ready to to involve agencies at certain standpoints that’s when they became involved but in terms of actual product um there were um

Text amendments to the the waterfront revitalization program um my my office is currently reviewing and about to issue comments for the department’s flood resiliency text amendment program which is working to lack zoning regulations in coastal areas and implement different types of regulations laxing in the sense of you know there are certain height

Restrictions in uh more low-rise areas and where where to build and where to articulate far so that so in order to um to compensate for lost floor area through the need to build higher the need to remove remove any certain types of uses below six or eight feet um above

Above a base c level and trying to design homes according to flood level as opposed to to base c level and other streetscape initiatives you know requiring that even though you’re going to going to be talking about raising homes including you know active streetscape design guidelines and you know potential

Glazing just so it doesn’t look like a dead um street wall adding you know lower level porches just you know to give that opportunity so they they have been been very involved in the process okay great um well yeah that’s all we have time for today thank you so much to

All our presenters and all of our attendees for attending today’s event i’m going to go through a few reminders on how to log your cm credits for attending today’s event and where you can find a recording of the webcast today um in just a moment so um here i

Will switch it back over and uh thank you again to the presenters aaron james mandu hillary it was a great presentation thank you okay so for those of you who are still in attendance to log your cm credits for attending today’s webcast please go to www.planning.org cm select today’s date which is friday

July 19th and then select today’s webcast which is getting back to business addressing the needs of rockaway businesses impacted by storm sandy this webcast is available for one and a half cm credits also we are recording today’s session so you will be able to find a recording of

This webcast on our youtube channel later today this does conclude today’s session i want to thank everyone again for attending

ID: BMgK1vP0ZFc
Time: 1374262255
Date: 2013-07-20 00:00:55
Duration: 01:31:34

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