“We’re asking the court to step in and enforce the law before it’s too late,” said Paula Segal, an attorney with TakeRoot Justice who represents QNU.
TakeRoot supports community organizations resisting private development by providing strategic and legal advice on the environmental review and the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). ULURP requires that applications to rezone an area be reviewed by the relevant Community Board
Without Moya's backing, the rezoning proposal never came to a vote in the City Council, and the project was scuttled.
“Today, the BSA got it wrong,” said Paula Segal, senior attorney with Equitable Neighborhoods Practice at the Community Development Project, who is working with QNU. “The City cannot allow developers to bury big box stores underground to skirt...”
Building a case like this takes thousands of hours, Segal says, working with community organizers to prepare affidavits, gathering evidence to build a legal argument, responding to questions from the judge. Consistency is everything.
“The danger is, if we don’t challenge Target, national retailers will think they could put department stores anywhere in the city,” said Paula Segal, attorney for QNU. “We will no longer have residential districts. It will just be mall NYC.”
“It is illegal for them to build here,” she said, “and our community will not take it.”
TakeRoot’s Equitable Neighborhoods team represents Queens Neighborhoods United (QNU), New York City Council Member Francisco Moya, New York State Senator Jessica Ramos, Desis Rising Up and Moving and individual QNU members in litigation against the City and the developer to
