The first speaker last night at Citizens to be Heard, and the only speaker who spoke in favor of the proposed development of Echo Bay by Forest City/Ratner was Robin Sherman.
Sherman submitted a petition she claimed was signed by 550 people supporting the Echo Bay Project.
I spoke second and questioned whether these were the same petitions being peddled at the New Rochelle Train Station over the past two weeks by representatives of Forest City/Ratner. She did not reply and soon after left the meeting.
So, who is Robin Sherman?
She represented herself to City Council and the public in the audience and on TV as a New Rochelle resident residing on Stonelea Place, a neighborhood near Echo Bay and that she supported the Echo Bay Project.
She did not mention that she is employed by Investment Design Properties Ltd.
According to her LinkedIN Profile, Robin Sherman is an attorney and Senior Vice President at Investment Design Properties Ltd.
The President and Chief Executive Officer of Investment Design Properties Ltd. is Greg Merchant, recently appointed to the New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency by New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson.
She likewise did not mention that less than a month ago she owned a home at 34 Hayhurst Road in the North End of New Rochelle. Public records indicate she owned the house since 2006 and sold the house on October 29, 2013.
Here is a question for New Rochelle residents to ponder.
Why is an employee of a company owned by a member of the New Rochelle IDA submitting to City Council a petition filled with signatures collected by employees of Forest City/Ratner?
PHOTO CREDIT: Excerpted from Westchester County Business Journal
UPDATE: A reader sent along the following research on Robin Sherman.
Robin Sherman previously worked at Empire State Development Corporation (until April 2005) on the redevelopment of Times Square. Forest City Ratner was giving land through eminent domain to build the New York Times building in Times Square from ESDC (see story here). The ESDC is also partnered with Forest City Ratner for the Atlantic Yards project (which was announced in 2003 while she was still there) and received land from eminent domain.
Her husband, who I believe to be Randy Sherman, is employed by Murray Hill Properties. Forest City and Murray Hill share the same consultant (Divney, Tung, Schwalbe see here http://www.divneytungschwalbe.com/clients.html).
They are both also clients of Eastern Consolidated (see here http://www.easternconsolidated.com/client-list).
Moving companies as well? http://www.sherdeltransfer.com/references/realestate.html
Engineering firms http://www.mgepc.net/clientlist.html
And another thing…IDAs
The above post points out yet another anomaly/corruption in the New Rochelle development system. That a member of the Industrial Development Agency ((DA) can lobby for one project or another, even participate in business transactions with one developer or another (especially one doing business and even benefiting from a Memorandum of Understanding with the city) is further evidence (as if any more was needed) that the entire process as practiced in NR is fraught with conflicts of interest at best, and outright corruption at worst.
That the city manager and city council members serve or are eligible to serve on the IDA is bad enough. Blame for that must be laid at the doorstep of our very inept and immoral state legislature sitting at Albany which authorized the enabling legislation for the present IDA boondoggle decades ago. But the involvement of a council member, a putatively professional city manager (no offense to the incumbent chief bureaucrat who is only doing his job) and an IDA appointee in this unprofitable, unjustifiable and illegitimate public housing project (for that is what Echo Bay is after all, in the end!) must test the temper, patience and even understanding of even the most benign, apolitical and forgiving observer of the local political scene.
How can the contrived mechanism of the IDA; the unprofessional complaisance (if not complicity) of the city finance, development/planning and management staff, and; the incompetence and ignorant conduct (if not willful misconduct) of our freely-elected city council be excused? The state legislature and the city council and mayor must ultimately be held to account.
And the public must finally demand the amendment, correction or excision of state laws concerning industrial development in general and the structure, purpose and powers of local IDAs specifically. They are not working. They are responsible for little permanent productive employment of any kind. They represent a profound misuse and squandering of precious public monies which might be spent on legitimate governmental purposes (or be returned to the taxpaying public which provided them).
It was said regarding the Holy Roman Empire’s eventual demise that it was never really Holy, Roman or even an Empire. Of the state IDAs it must similarly be said; they create little industry or development of any consequence and enjoy little if any legitimate authority. Let us finally have them fixed by our employees in the state capital or simply have the wasteful and crooked things put to rest.
NR IDA Incest
Stephen
Lets say I have a neighbor who was on the IDA briefly who thought to speak her own mind about some of the items that she was asked to ultimately vote on the IDA. When it did not jive with the Mayoral Agenda she would be taken aside and spoken too.
Same wood shed Shari was taken too.
Now this same lovely person preferred not to become a rubber stamp for the Mayor even if she helped a local councilman in his campaign. Either a IDA member tows the party line or they get chastised by Chuck. Now when you look at who is serving on the IDA you know that this entity is not operating independent of the Mayors Agenda. They don’t even attempt to cover their tracks.
Most of the IDA Board members should resign do to conflict of interest.
NY State should rescind New Rochelle’s license to operated an IDA as the entire group is about Bramson’s will. They do not look at the project in any other manner. I think it needs NY State oversight.
Political Incest
One more point to note is that Gregory Merchant, a member of the New Rochelle IDA appointed by Mayor Noam Bramson, admitted in a recent meeting regarding Echo Bay that he sold the Beechwood Property–where they intend to move City Yard should the Echo Bay project be approved–to the City of New Rochelle. He also went on to correct a citizen who questioned the $5 million price tag for this purchase, by stating that “the land was sold for $2.5 million. The other $2.5 million was specific to the billboard along Interstate 95 that was directly above this property.” After the sale was completed, the City of New Rochelle promptly took down the billboard.
Divney? You mean the guys who shuttered Stephenson school?
Did I hear the name “Divney?” Residents of New Rochelle of a certain age (those who moved here approximately 25 years ago) will recall a consulting firm of considerable notoriety of the same name mentioned at City Council and Board of Education meetings of the time on a regular basis.
A certain “Divney” planning/demographic firm had been hired some years previously to review the current and future needs of New Rochelle in the way of school facilities and classrooms.
From what I can recall, this firm (with the prescience of the technology industry-expert who said that all the computing power the world would ever need had been created sometime around 1971) determined that the city had all the classrooms and grounds it would ever need, and recommended the closure of the Stephenson and Roosevelt public schools (followed by the razing of the former and the conversion to an apartment building of the latter).
If last night’s petition bearer’s family does business with a consulting firm at least partly responsible for New Rochelle’s continual shortage of school facilities experienced for well-nigh three decades, one might fairly question their judgment regarding business vendors as well as their regard for conflicts-of-interest. To be fair, however, how could anyone (or any service-providing firm) on earth have contemplated the studied indifference to the needs of New Rochelle residents of a succession of school board chief executives?
Even further, how could anyone have imagined 10, 20 or 30 years ago that the population of the once majestic Queen City of the Sound would balloon to an unmanageable total of some 80,000 residents (with almost all of the increase in publicly subsidized high-rise rental apartments (Avalon, Avalon II) and overcrowded illegal home/basement/garage conversions)? The once archetype of modern American urbane/sophisticated suburban-small city living now the sixth largest urban agglomeration in the State of New York, and possessor of quite possibly the sorriest looking downtown this side of East St. Louis, Illinois or Midland, Texas.
Ah, the creative enterprise of ambitious, life-time politicians like current and immediately past New Rochelle mayors, on the prowl for the widest possible voter base and trophy developments to add to their CVs.
Divney, could it be Mike Divney ?
As in Divney Tung & Schwalbe. You remember Mr Tung’s -slip go the tongue- as it were at the city council meeting where he alluded to the funding of the mayors campaign?
the story can be read by clicking on the link below
HERE
Oh what a wicked web we weave
FOIL Request for Petition
I have made a Freedom of Information Request to have access to the petitions filed by Forest City…I mean Ms. Sherman.
I intend to publish the documents.
If you are interested to help, I intend to crowdsource the effort of reviewing each and every signature. I will need about 20 people to take about 25 names each.
What is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing?
Be ready when I shout for help.
This project reeks on a whole new level
This project reeks on a whole new level. Robin recently sent out emails to friends in New Rochelle advocating for this project–again not disclosing her professional ties to the architects of this charade.
It seems to me that the only people who are for this project are those whose pockets will be personally lined by its approval.