Bronx Terminal Market CBA

The 2006 CBA concerning the Bronx Terminal Market mall development has been criticized (here and here) because the negotiation process did not truly involving any grassroots community organizations. While the agreement does include a number of valuable community benefits, the developer will only be fined $60,000 for failing to comply with the CBA (with a cap of $600,000 on the amount of fines that can ever be assessed), weakening the value of the CBA in the eyes of many stakeholders. Critics have also drawn attention to the subtleties of some of the contract’s provisions: the amount of retail space reserved for local retailers makes up only a minimal portion of the mall’s square footage; and the living wage and minority hiring provisions are not expressly enforceable as to the developer’s tenants. Finally, community groups have criticized the negotiation process for being neither transparent nor inclusive. Although eighteen groups representing various interests were selected by the Borough President to participate in the process, they were given only about a month to prepare a draft CBA and were not given any assistance in the process. Evidently, this resulted in many of the community groups having little influence in the actual negotiations. When the organizations received copies of the completed CBA the morning of the council vote to approve the development plans, only three of them signed the agreement, while at least seven refused to do so.

While the Bronx Terminal Market CBA may not have been completed in a manner satisfactory to CBA proponents, it is being implemented. The City University of New York reported in 2007 that it had received $175,000 from the developer to provide pre-apprenticeship training to Bronx residents. Like Atlantic Yards, this seems to be another CBA in which real benefits are going to be provided to the community, but the question is whether those are the benefits that the community really wanted.

A copy of the CBA is available here.