Good riddance to Public Enemy No. 1 — Council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who in a fit of woke pique scuttled a plan to bring nearly 1,000 new apartments to Central Harlem.
Richardson Jordan decided not to run for re-election. She saw she would lose the June 27 Democratic primary to any of several candidates, most notably State Assembly Member Inez Dickens. Her abdication lends a glimmer of hope that the $750 million project known as One 45 can be revived by developer Bruce Teitelbaum, who, in a smarmy but understandable thumb-in-the-eye, turned the site at Malcolm X Boulevard and West 145th Street into a parking lot for trucks.
She managed to block the plan because of an antiquated Council precedent that allows a member who represents a district to veto land-use proposals that require zoning changes. Once she made her no-go clear, Teitelbaum pulled his application last May to avoid a bruising scrimmage with the Council that could only end in defeat.
The tradition known as “member deference” is a particularly irksome cog in the city’s dysfunctional deliberative apparatus. It resulted in other worthy plans that enjoyed wide public support being sabotaged by a single cranky member. In one notorious case, Carlos Menchaca — another anti-development zealot — shot down a minor rezoning tweak at Brooklyn’s Industry City that wouldn’t affect the neighborhood outside the complex’s borders and would have ultimately generated over $100 million in tax revenue for the city’s starved coffers.
Harlem is enjoying its best time in decades. Investment by large institutions and smaller neighborhood entrepreneurs alike has brought modern apartment buildings, hotels, shops, and restaurants to Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell boulevards and to historic 125th Street. These include a forthcoming Renaissance Hotel next to the Apollo Theater and the first uptown Trader Joe’s at the Urban League’s new headquarters.
But at a stroke, Richardson Jordan managed to turn back the clock at a critical, central location. Not only will the neighborhood not have new housing, it’s stuck with the fumes-spouting parking lot which Teitelbaum installed at the site as he was entitled to do under the old zoning.
The New York Times, in full “progressive” whine, characterized the situation as a “case study in how the powerful whims of developers and the morass of local politics can make it difficult to build new homes.” So for Teitelbaum to invest hundreds of millions to create 1,000 new apartments, half of which would rent for far below-market, was a “whim,” while Richardson Jordan’s single-handed act of treachery constituted a Harlem-wide “morass.”
Richardson Jordan is a case study in privileged, borderline-insane hypocrisy. The daughter of Harlem physicians, a graduate of Ivy-League Brown University, she torpedoed One45 because “only” half of its apartments would be affordable — a much higher percentage than in nearly every other project requiring a zoning change. She insisted that they all be affordable to win her vote as if Teitelbaum (or any developer) yearned to go broke on the project.
To put her motiveless malice into perspective, consider that her fellow Council member Tiffany Caban — no less radical than Richardson Jordan — grudgingly set hard-left ideology aside for common sense by endorsing an even larger mixed-income project in Astoria, Queens last September. Although heresy to her socialist fellow travelers, Caban’s surprise decision paved the way for more than 1,000 new homes to eventually rise where there currently are none.
Not only a socialist but a self-described “radical,” Richardson Jordan endorses defunding the police and advocates for redistribution of wealth. On top of which, last year she justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on bizarre conspiracy grounds unfathomable to all but the most rabid America-haters.
Put simply, she is a well-educated, dangerous fool.
Although voters in Central Harlem aren’t exactly conservative, neither are they knee-jerk, anti-progress progressives. Except for a few “activists” who make little or no secret of their animosity toward non-black “interlopers” and middle-class African-Americans, Harlemites have welcomed the recent improvements in their midst.
Richardson Jordan made no secret of her anti-development, anti-capitalist credentials during her 2021 primary campaign. So how did she win despite her platform’s rejection of every positive trend?
Every so often our electoral system casts into power an individual grievously unfit for office. Richardson Jordan benefited from the Big Apple’s virtual one-party Democratic rule. For all intents and purposes, Democratic primaries determine the winners. In case you forgot, Eric Adams handily won his 2021 election and Bill de Blasio his 2017 re-election with 66 percent of the vote each against Republican opponents.
In a cruel stroke of fate, Richardson Jordan defeated longtime office holder Bill Perkins in the primary — a beloved, well-respected advocate for his community for decades — by a scant 114 votes out of some 18,000 cast. She triumphed only because of doubts that oft-hospitalized Perkins would be able to fulfill his duties. Perkins sadly passed away last week at age 74.
The better news is that One45, since renamed One45-for-All, might yet get built in a slightly different form. Teitelbaum recently re-applied for it through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which again will require Council approval.
But never underestimate the reactionary forces that call themselves, in an Orwellian turn, “progressive.” Even with Richardson Jordan on the way out, they might still find a way to make the One45 site remain a parking lot for good — and blame the developer for it.
