[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we begin a series that will run through this whole new year called 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. Why? Well, in addition to the changes that Mayor Eric Adams will bring to New York City, many will come from the brand new City Council. Because of the term limits law, a majority of the 51 City Council members are new this year, and for the first time ever, a majority are women.

We decided it's a good time to touch every neighborhood of the city this year by inviting every City Council member on the show to talk about the people and the needs of their districts, as well as some of the news of the day and to take your calls, hence 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. We plan to go in order as much as we can. We begin the series right now with a brand new City Council member from District 1, that's in Lower Manhattan, Christopher Marte. He succeeds council member Margaret Chin, who served three terms.

Marte's bio page says he was born and raised in the Lower East Side, where his dad owned a bodega and that the store had to close because of rent hikes. He has previously worked in the finance sector, including managing IBM's retirement funds. He has also worked with groups helping formerly incarcerated people start their own businesses. Co-founded two community gardens in Nitro Public Housing neighborhoods, and worked as a legal researcher at an immigration law firm, among other things.

He challenged Margaret Chin in 2017 and came within two points of her, now he has won election with Chin term-limited. District 1 includes Battery Park City, the Lower East Side, the Financial District, Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo and NoHo, Tribeca, the South Street Seaport Area, and also Washington Square, and the South Village.

By the way, this series will include a show and tell feature each week, each council member will get to describe something, anything in their district that they would like to highlight. We'll reveal what Christopher Marte's Lower Manhattan show and tell item is as we talk. Council Member Marte, congratulations on your election, first of all, and welcome to WNYC as the first guest in our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

Christopher Marte: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Would you like to introduce yourself a little more to our listeners before we talk about the district? Where was your dad's bodega?

Christopher Marte: It was on Rivington Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, right on the Lower East Side off the Battery.

Brian Lehrer: You say rent hikes forced the store to close, was your family a victim of gentrification?

Christopher Marte: It was. Not only my family, but a lot of my relatives, a lot of the people I grew up with on the Lower East Side, and small business owners that I knew.

Brian Lehrer: What's at that location now, do you know?

Christopher Marte: It's a French Wine Bar. It's actually a really nice place, but it just shows the consequences of bad land-use policies.

Brian Lehrer: I see you went to Catholic school and then majored in international economics and politics at LIU, what they call LIU Global. Why did you go international?

Christopher Marte: Growing up downtown, especially right next to Chinatown or next to Orchard Street, where it's really a melting pot of cultures and languages, I always followed the drive to learn more about different parts of the world. For college, I took advantage of this program that allowed me to travel for three and a half years, and I spent almost two years in China, a year in Latin America, and half a year in London.

Brian Lehrer: How would you say that that experience and your global issues background overall informs your approach to local issues in your district, and how will inform it now that you're a member of City Council, a very local position?

Christopher Marte: I think it's being able to relate to people no matter where they're from, no matter what language they speak, or what's their living situation. Especially in my district with Chinatown, you could just see people smiling, really engaged once you tell them where you've been in their country, that you kind of know their history, whether it's in the Lower East Side, and people from South America talk to me about their past in Ecuador or in Central America, I think it helps to meet people where they're at and to relate with them. I think no matter where you're from in this world, all politics is local. It's great to use this experience to help people with their day-to-day issues.

Brian Lehrer: You worked in the finance sector, managing IBM's retirement funds, as well as the community group work you did. For people may be suspicious of folks who come from finance, how would you say that combination experiences set you up to approach policymaking in your district and to get the people in your district?

Christopher Marte: Yes. It's a really unique experience working for IBM in their pension program because you're making decisions every day but with a long-term perspective, and you respect that people have spent all their lives working for an organization, and you take that weight and the responsibility with great responsibility just because you know the trade you're going to make, the investment you're going to make, it's going to really affect people.

This is how I see local politics. It's like, we're going to be making decisions, whether it's voting on land-use policies, voting for citywide legislation, making budget decisions, and being able to take a long term view, especially where we're at in the city where we have to come out of this crisis. I think the only way we could do that is by having that type of perspective.

Brian Lehrer: Your district includes vast amounts of wealth, including the financial district, and some of the very wealthy residential neighborhoods around it, and a good deal of poverty. How would you describe the demographics or the human makeup of your district?

Christopher Marte: I think you just set it right. We have some of the wealthiest of color in Battery Park City, Tribeca, but we have people who live beneath and close to the poverty line, whether it's in the Smith houses or some of the rent state people who live in rent-stabilized apartments, and they come from all over the world. There are Fujianese community on East Broadway, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and so it's a really diverse beautiful community.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, it's 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks Episode 1 with City Council District 1 member Christopher Marte from Lower Manhattan, and we can take your calls for Lower Manhattan's new City Council member Christopher Marte at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call from his district or from outside it, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer with any question you may have, as we launch 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in District 1 in lower Manhattan.

All right. Councilman, we're inviting each council member as you know to bring a show and tell with them, virtually, of course, especially in your case, when we reveal what it is, and you have chosen one that represents one of your central policy concerns. It's the Extell Tower, One Manhattan Square, that big tower right by the Manhattan Bridge. You obviously couldn't have carried that with you in person. Describe the Extell Tower for people who don't know it, and tell us why you chose it as your show and tell item.

Christopher Marte: Yes. The Extell Tower is a 100% luxury glass building that reaches close to 87 stories high. It could be seen from Brooklyn, from Staten Island, and all of lower Manhattan. The reason why I wanted it to be my show and tell because it's the main reason why I became a community organizer. We've been fighting against displacement and gentrification for decades.

I think the Extell Tower is a great symbolic of what could go wrong when luxury developers influence corrupt politicians to influence our land use policy in our district. It's something that I ran on 2017. It's something that I've been working on between that, and it's something that I really want to deliver for my community because we've seen people unite around it, whether you live in Tribeca, or Soho, Noho, Chinatown, Lower East Side, we have seen how much rezonings our land-use decisions have affect our quality of life, and who gets to live in this community. For me, it's really personal. I feel like that will always be a reminder of the work we have to do in the council to represent our community.

Brian Lehrer: What would you say to people who think New York City with its chronic affordable housing shortage needs just a lot of housing, a lot of affordable housing, obviously, but also a lot of market-rate housing too to help supply equal demand in the marketplace, which would also theoretically bring down rents. Also, the density is necessary and good for the environment, as opposed to sprawl because people have to live somewhere.

Christopher Marte: Look, we live in one of the densest communities. We have a lot of development in our district. I think what we've seen is that a lot of that development isn't truly affordable to the community that lives here. I'll just give you this one stat. Under the de Blasio administration since 2014, he has built 8,233 "affordable units", but when you look at those units and the price, it doesn't match the medium average income of our community. Only 9% of that 8,000 plus units are actually affordable to the people that live here.

When we think about what affordability means, it's typically not representative of what's on the ground. I don't think what we have is affordability crisis. I think under MIH and under the de Blasio administration, we've seen more luxury development, more development that doesn't suit the neighborhoods or doesn't suit the crisises we're living in, whether it's a homeless crisis or a shelter crisis, we need to really build more deeply affordable housing.

Brian Lehrer: Here's the land use and zoning question coming from a caller in your district. Frederica in Lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC, with your new council member, Christopher Marte. Hi, Frederica.

Frederica: Hi, thanks for taking my call. Hi, Chris. I wondered what are your plans for undoing some of the more disastrous features of the recent SoHo/NoHo rezoning. I'm referring specifically to the $100 per square foot flip tax to convert from Joint Live Work to Use Group 2 Residential. Also, Margaret Chin's plans for increased penalties for non-artists living in Joint Live Work units. I also wondered, do you have any plans to revisit the mandatory inclusionary housing programs to encourage the City Council to do that too?

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, Councilman. A lot on the table there.

Christopher Marte: Of course, we're planning to relook at it. When it comes to the SoHo/NoHo rezoning, I also want to include Chinatown, because most of the development is actually going to happen on the north side of Canal Street. When it comes to this rezoning, the purpose of it was to make sure that we can convert illegal tenants in SoHo/NoHo and make them legal. I think this new conversion program that was instituted by the city does not do that.

I want to work with the central staff at the City Council and City Planning to amend a lot of what was done in that rezoning and create a new conversion program that doesn't put a tax on people who've been living in the district for decades or have their own tenants or landlords rat them out so they could face massive fines until they get evicted. There's a lot of changes that needs to be done. I've been working with a lot of community activists on the ground to create a proposal so we could go to HPD and city planning with some of these ideas.

Brian Lehrer: The supporters of SoHo/NoHo rezoning, I think, talk about it as a way to create affordable housing in a largely wealthy community, and that mixed-income neighborhood, which we've had so much housing segregation by ability to pay, that that kind of intentional mixed-income housing is exactly what the city needs. Is that wrong?

Christopher Marte: I think that an issue go or at least an issue narrative that the administration have was to bring more affordability to SoHo and NoHo. What we saw in the rezoning that passed, I think actually does the complete opposite. It gives loopholes to massive developers to not even build any affordable housing while getting the bonus and tax subsidies that MIH gives them.

Also where you see most of the developments that can be built are going to be built by landlords and developers that have a history that will choose commercial development over residential. If you look at this neighborhood, SoHo and NoHo, we have flagship stores of Nike, Adidas, Uniqlo. If you're a developer or landlord, you're probably going to want to build one of those instead of building residential units. My fear is, this current plan isn't going to build an inch of affordable housing.

Brian Lehrer: We have many people who want to ask you about the East River Park destruction and burying, and rebuilding as part of a resiliency plan to protect against the damage that was done in the neighborhood by superstorm Sandy. So controversial what's happening at East River Park right now. I will let Max on the Lower East Side ask you the question, but I will say, representing a lot of people who are calling and tweeting. Max, you're on WNYC, hello.

Max: Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I'm a resident of your district. I voted for you, Chris. Congratulations on the victory. Once the court issues cleared up, the park was destroyed very quickly, but it's early days still but there doesn't seem to be the same energy behind rebuilding it as there was destroying it. I just want to know how you're going to keep this project on track and on time, who's ultimately in charge of the process and the outcomes, and what concerned citizens like me can do to help provide accountability and just get this done as fast as possible. Thank you.

Christopher Marte: First thing, thank you, Max, for supporting me and for voting for me. I'm sure as you're aware, I've been against the current plan to destroy East River Park. I was out there almost every single day when the TRO was placed by our courts. Just to address that quickly, no matter where you stand on whether the park should be destroyed or not, I thought this administration plainly illegally violated the law.

I feel like this just shows the symbolic process of how corrupt and not transparent this process was. We had an administration that wanted develop it at any cost. I think, moving forward, I want to make sure with people on the ground and with the new administration, Eric Adams' administration, to make sure that we develop a park with natural plants that's actually going to be resilient. I asked community activists, organizers, members of ARPA to still be out there, make noise, because that's the only way we're going to keep these agencies accountable, whether they're city or state, and the consultants that are hired to actually build out the new park.

Brian Lehrer: The caller brings up getting it done quickly. I think one of the arguments by the mayor and others who are for this plan is that they say it's the fastest way to get the area made safe and get the park rebuilt as quickly as possible. Obviously, opponents are shocked by ripping up a fully functional park with playgrounds and green spaces and fields and like 1,000 trees, and closing it for five years, even if what comes next, there is eventually good, too.

One of the city's arguments, I think, was that the alternative plans that were put out there for storm resiliency in the area would have taken much longer, and actually, therefore, in their opinion, been more disruptive. What do you say to that argument in general, and do you think that it's realistic to hold them to a four-year, five-year timeline?

Christopher Marte: I think we have to hold them to it because if not, we're going to regret going into this process. I think the reason why I always questioned the city's proposal is because they didn't disclose the information or the engineering report when the community asked for it. People went in with good faith to these conversations to say, "Okay, maybe the city is right. Maybe we have to do this as quickly as possible. Maybe it's the best affordable option."

When we asked for details, the city didn't give us anything. We had to sue the city to get the details and information. I think that type of lack of trust is symbolic of what's been happening throughout the city. I think we have to use RC in the City Council to put pressure on the agencies to make sure that they disclose the information, not only to build this as quickly as possible but also to build this as clean and as environmentally as possible as well.

There's landfill underneath that park. We don't know what type of contamination that's going to go in the air or go in our water. If you look at where the park is situated, it's right next to public housing. We have to keep a really careful eye on whether this is going to impact our health, but we got to make sure that this happens as quickly as possible as well.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is Christopher Marte, the brand new City Council member from District 1 in lower Manhattan, guest number one in our new series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. We're going to interview the City Council member from every district in New York City through the course of this year of great change with most of City Council being new, and obviously, the mayor being new.

Jim, in your district in Chinatown, is going to raise another big issue in the district and another one that has city-wide implications. Jim, you're-- oh, Jim hung up. Did we lose Jim? I think we lost Jim. Well, I'm going to ask the question that he was going to ask because I think it's really important. The plan to close Rikers Island and use four Borough-based jails instead and one would be a jail tower in Chinatown that I see you oppose. First, do you support closing Rikers and using Borough-based jails in the community conceptually?

Christopher Marte: I think we should definitely close Rikers Island. My brother was in and out of Rikers Island four times. I know the trauma it's brought to him. I know the trauma it's brought to his son, to the family. It's a bad system, and it's a bad place. I also think that the Borough-based jail plan was not the right solution to fix the situation, specifically in Chinatown, which I've been working on for the past three or four years, the city refused to even give us a proper environmental process when they're actually developing the site here.

I think we have to make sure that we close Rikers Island. I also think we don't need to build this jail because I don't believe in building new jails. I think the only reason the population of Rikers Island is so big at this moment, is because this last administration failed to appoint judges to have speedier trials. They failed to have an efficient process to make sure that people got the court date.

When you think about the average person that's on Rikers Island right now, they had been there for probably nine months, and some people have been there more than a year. Jails are temporary situations. People shouldn't be spending a year in Rikers Island. I think and I hope that this administration, and I had heard Eric Adams really addressed this in his interviews, saying that he would try to make this process as efficiently as possible to make sure that we don't have people living a full year in a jail.

Brian Lehrer: Sure, but why wouldn't it be a nimby attitude to not have one of the jails in your district, and if not there, where would you propose that it go? Advocates for incarcerated people would argue that the presence of a jail somewhere does not increase crime in that location, so it's a form of bias to oppose jail sighting on those grounds. I don't know if those are your grounds. What would you say about that, and if not in your district, where in Manhattan?

Christopher Marte: We actually have a few jails in our district right now. I agree, it doesn't increase crime in our neighborhood. We actually build an ecosystem around the Manhattan Complex, both the federal and The Tombs. When they built it 30 years ago, they said that The Tombs was a state-of-the-art jail, and 30 years later, it's falling apart in disrepair. There's been fire. There's been malpractice, misconduct. When you build a jail, that doesn't mean that it's going to change the whole system. I think what we have to really address is the condition people are in in jails period, but then also get in a movement that says we don't need to build new jails as a way to put people in incarceration.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. We can take one more. Barbara in Washington Square, the northernmost corner of your district, you're on WNYC. Hi, Barbara.

Barbara: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. Hi, Chris, I voted for you twice, I mean, in two different elections. I'm wondering what you would think about doing for the drug problem in Washington Square Park. It has been there for years and years and years. There's a whole cadre of drug dealers that are there every day. Then there's a group of people there who are homeless but also have tremendous substance abuse problems. They need help.

There's a big business going on here between the dealers and the users and everybody knows about this right up through our Senator and our Assemblywoman. There's been committees, there's been community board meetings about it. It has gone on and on. The precinct says that it's a low-level crime. They don't have staff to deal with it. I'm wondering what your thoughts were about trying to change this.

Brian Lehrer: Councilman.

Christopher Marte: Thank you for that question. I know the situation has changed drastically from the middle of the pandemic, and actually, residents have said the conditions have improved drastically. I think what we need to continue to do is outreach to the people that are there. I don't blame the drug dealers or the drug users. My brother used to be a drug dealer. He drastically changed his life and now runs a really amazing organization.

I think is working with city agencies, the agency that has to solve a drug addiction crisis, working with NYU, working with the local conservancy of the park to give these people an opportunity, and give them the care and support that they need. I look forward to working with you and other community activists on the ground. I think we have to first start with bringing the support that people need who are experiencing those conditions in the park.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcom, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio. As we wrap up with Christopher Marte, the New City Council member from District 1 in Lower Manhattan, let me just get your thoughts quickly on the State of the District right now in terms of Omicron, including how are the schools.

Christopher Marte: Our schools are doing okay, compared to the city-wide condition. I think there's a lot of questions and frustrations on the part of the parents. Yesterday, I had a number of parents calling into my office of seeing where and how they could get a rapid test. We have to make a really big push on making sure that they're accessible to anyone and everyone that requests it. We knew that with school opening, there was going to be a lot of logistical frustration, but hopefully, we can resolve those in the weeks ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Final question, since this is the launch of our series with every City Council member, 51 City Council Members in 52 Weeks, were you an Eric Adams supporter in the primary, and how do you see the new council as a whole functioning as a support system for or a check on Mayor Eric Adams?

Christopher Marte: I wasn't a supporter of Eric in the primary, but I've had a really good relationship with him over the past four or five years. I respect a lot of the decisions he's made as Borough president. Of course, we'll be on different sides of the spectrum. Sometimes we'll be on the same side on certain issues and not on the others. I think I want to work closely with him to pass my main goal in my administration, which would be to pass the Chinatown Working Group Plan, a community-based rezoning policy that will help protect the Lower East Side and Chinatown from speculation and a fight against displacement.

Brian Lehrer: How much commitment has he given you on that?

Christopher Marte: We just started the dialogue. Even having a dialogue with the administration, I think, is a huge jump forward from the current administration who said that was completely too ambitious. I welcome the dialogue, the conversations, and to start working together to build something for this community.

Brian Lehrer: Who had you supported in the primary? I should have known that before coming in, but I didn't do that piece of my homework.

Christopher Marte: I didn't endorse anyone publicly and I did endorse Eric Adams in the general.

Brian Lehrer: Christopher Marte, the brand new City Councilman from Lower Manhattan District 1. Next week, we will go to District 2. Councilman, thank you so much for starting us off. Happy New Year, and good luck in your term in City Council.

Christopher Marte: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for everything you do in the city.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.