A Meeting With the Mayor

Last Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg invited Henry Butler, president of Community Board 3, Colvin Grannun, president and CEO of Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, and a small handful of other community leaders, business owners and residents to his office for a breakfast meeting.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss issues of concern to the residents of Bed-Stuy.

One of the issues raised was regarding the status of three empty lots along Fulton Street, close to the Bed-Stuy/Ocean Hill-Brownsville Border, off of Howard, Ralph and Saratoga Avenues.

The question -- posed by Butler -- regarded the mayor's plans for these lots, which have languished undeveloped and abandoned for years. According to Butler, several calls over several years to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development concerning the lots have gone unanswered.

The mayor asked who he was reaching out to at HPD. Butler answered, the commissioner's office, the gatekeeper for all new construction. Bloomberg made a note of it, and promised to follow up.

Turns out, later that same day, Wendell Walters, HPD's assistant commissioner for new construction, was arrested in his Harlem home and charged with racketeering conspiracy,  bribery, extortion, wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly accepting $600,000 in bribes since 2002.

The arrest was following a long-standing FBI investigation and had nothing to do with Butler's inquiry.

However, the mayor's office the next day contacted Butler to say they would be moving on getting some development proposals out for the three empty Bed-Stuy lots.