Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policy makers, and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work? This week,
Speaker 1: conservation a subject I'm deeply committed to. My guests today
Speaker 1: are passionate about protecting two very different locations. Rob Snyder
Speaker 1: helps island and remote coastal communities in Maine adapt to
Speaker 1: changing environmental and economic factors. But first I sit down
Speaker 1: with Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village
Speaker 1: Society for Historic Preservation. Berman goes after the big dogs
Speaker 1: in New York City real estate, like n y U
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump, and he and his team can count
Speaker 1: many victories. Under his direction, the society secured landmark protection
Speaker 1: for over one thousand buildings. I want to know about
Speaker 1: his biggest heartbreak, the building that got away. I expected
Speaker 1: him to be moaned the upcoming expansion of the Chelsea Market,
Speaker 1: pushed through by Christine Quim, former Speaker of the New
Speaker 1: York City Council and Merrill candidate, But I got a
Speaker 1: very different response. You know this is gonna sound sort
Speaker 1: of strange, but one of my personal favorites that we
Speaker 1: lost was this beautiful building called the Tunnel Garage, which,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, was a parking garage. Would you
Speaker 1: would never think who would care about a parking garage?
Speaker 1: It was one of the first purpose built parking garages
Speaker 1: in New York. It was this beautiful Art Deco building
Speaker 1: that had a medallion on it that was an image
Speaker 1: of a model t forward emerging from the Holland Tunnel,
Speaker 1: which hadn't even yet been built. When this tunnel, which
Speaker 1: was built near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Where
Speaker 1: was this. This was on the corner of Broom Street
Speaker 1: and Thompson Street, so sort of at the edge of
Speaker 1: soho the South Village. Beautiful building, I mean it really,
Speaker 1: if there's a parking garage anywhere on Earth that people
Speaker 1: would rhpsodize about, it was this one. And it had
Speaker 1: been on sort of lists for years of a building
Speaker 1: to be saved. A developer came along and bought it
Speaker 1: and said, you know, I just want to tear it
Speaker 1: down and build a slightly larger condominium building. Here. How
Speaker 1: many stories, eight stories? How many units? I think about
Speaker 1: thirty or so, you know, pretty a bland, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of you never look at the building, you never
Speaker 1: look at it twice. What's another example, Well, here's one
Speaker 1: where sort of the opposite. There was a vacant lot
Speaker 1: at the northern end of the Greenwich Village Historic District
Speaker 1: and there was a plan to develop it, which we
Speaker 1: had no objections to. You know, vacant lots are there
Speaker 1: to be developed. Um. But the developer put forward a
Speaker 1: proposal for this thirteen story curving, entirely glass walled building
Speaker 1: in the Greenwich Village Historic District and we thought that's ludicrous,
Speaker 1: that would never never be approved. What does that have
Speaker 1: to do with the Greenwich Village Historic District. The notion
Speaker 1: is new development in these areas should kind of fit
Speaker 1: the character. They don't have to mimic it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a town some compatibility. The Commission unanimously
Speaker 1: approved it, which we were really taken aback by. Um.
Speaker 1: What's one that was a tremendous victory for you whereas
Speaker 1: where something where you guys really fought and scored. I'd
Speaker 1: say one of the ones that we're most proudest of
Speaker 1: is the part of Greenwich Village South of Washington Square
Speaker 1: what we often called the South Village, the part of
Speaker 1: Greenwich Village that everybody associates with, you know, the folk Revival,
Speaker 1: the Beatnicks in the nineties and nineteen sixties. Bleaker McDougal.
Speaker 1: That area amazingly was not protected by landmark protections. Any
Speaker 1: of those buildings could have been demolished and replaced with
Speaker 1: pretty hiddeo New York. Yes, very much so. UM And
Speaker 1: after really fifty years of people trying to get that
Speaker 1: area landmarks, we were able to get it landmarked in
Speaker 1: two stage. Uh. It took uh thousands of people really
Speaker 1: coming together and pushing the city. In One part of
Speaker 1: it is we actually had almost sort of blackmailed the city.
Speaker 1: They wanted to get an area adjacent to that reasoned
Speaker 1: as basically a sort of a stop to a developer,
Speaker 1: Trinity real Estate in this case, UM, and we pushed
Speaker 1: the city council to say, we won't approve the reasoning
Speaker 1: that you the city want, unless you move ahead with
Speaker 1: this landmarking that the community has been asking for for years.
Speaker 1: So we really kind of backed them into a corner. UM.
Speaker 1: And we, to be honest, we sort of used um
Speaker 1: election year of politics as a bit of a cudgel. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, people were trying to look like they were
Speaker 1: being friendly to the community, so uh, we were able
Speaker 1: to make them do something that they had not wanted
Speaker 1: to do and had been unwilling to do for years.
Speaker 1: What area do you live in yourself? I actually live
Speaker 1: in Hell's Kitchen, so I'm a bit further to the north. UM,
Speaker 1: but I'm a lifelong New Yorker. I've worked in the
Speaker 1: village where I grew up, in the Bronx, but I've
Speaker 1: been working in the village and on the West side
Speaker 1: of Manhattan since uh for over twenty years. Where did
Speaker 1: you go to schools? I went to Bronx High School
Speaker 1: of Science. UM, so I've lived in New York my
Speaker 1: whole life. What about college where you go? I went
Speaker 1: to as Leyan University. Would you study art history with
Speaker 1: a focus on architecture and urban planning? Talk about if
Speaker 1: you would. What happened to Christine Quinn with the Chelsea Market,
Speaker 1: Because of my understanding is correct, that was in her district.
Speaker 1: And I want to be very clear that during that
Speaker 1: political race, I endorsed de Blasio and worked for de
Speaker 1: Blasio and did not support Quinn. And this is not
Speaker 1: you know, to bash Quinn at all, but describe what
Speaker 1: happened in that Chelsea marketing and what you think was
Speaker 1: going on pressures that were on her. Yeah. Well, so
Speaker 1: you know, Chelsea Market is this old industrial complex built
Speaker 1: by Nibisco in Chelsea, UM. That was Nibisco Factories, Bisco
Speaker 1: Factories where the oreo was invented bakery. Yeah, and who
Speaker 1: developed into into the current Chelsea market how long ago?
Speaker 1: It was originally another group of people, including a guy
Speaker 1: named Irwin Cohen, and that was in the late ninety
Speaker 1: nineties that have been sitting there basically abandoned UM. And
Speaker 1: he came up with this idea that everybody thought was
Speaker 1: crazy at the time because this was a real backwater
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, of turning it into this huge retail
Speaker 1: market UM with offices and things like that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was wildly successful. You know, the neighborhood around it transformed.
Speaker 1: It's a huge building. It's a beautiful old building, but
Speaker 1: it's a huge building. They have air rights up above.
Speaker 1: They did not have air rights up above, and that
Speaker 1: that's that's where the key comes in with this. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to build basically two towers on top of
Speaker 1: this lovely old building. But they couldn't because they had
Speaker 1: no development on top of the eight stories that are
Speaker 1: already there on top of the building that already exists.
Speaker 1: So they came to the city and they said, we
Speaker 1: want you to rezone us to give us these stories
Speaker 1: that they Originally it was going to be, uh, the
Speaker 1: addition was going to go up to something like two
Speaker 1: fifty feet in the air or something like that. I
Speaker 1: mean huge, and one on the west end, one on
Speaker 1: the Yeah, yeah, huge building, huge building. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: at this point Quinn had already kind of shown herself
Speaker 1: to be very willing to be accommodating to developers, so
Speaker 1: we knew this was going to be an uphill battle
Speaker 1: at best. Although Chelsea was where she was from, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who were very animantly opposed
Speaker 1: to it, where people she'd known and worked closely with
Speaker 1: for years, We were opposed to it as well, and
Speaker 1: she did eventually approve it. A slightly scaled back version
Speaker 1: made it a little less a little less bad as
Speaker 1: the work started already. No, and when it's not been
Speaker 1: clear to us why they haven't moved ahead yet, but
Speaker 1: they have all the approval, so it's really up to
Speaker 1: them to go any time that they want. But this
Speaker 1: was definitely a disappointment. And what was particularly disappointing was
Speaker 1: that there were commitments that were quote unquote made as
Speaker 1: part of this approval about how it would have to
Speaker 1: remain all independent businesses, there couldn't be chain stores and
Speaker 1: all these other kinds of things, which it turned out
Speaker 1: none of these agreements were enforceable. It was really just
Speaker 1: sort of window dressing to this approval that the city
Speaker 1: gave them, and that's disappointing when you see things like
Speaker 1: that happen. When do buildings need to come down? Things
Speaker 1: have to change, We need to make room for more people.
Speaker 1: Is that a reality for you? Oh, it's absolutely reality,
Speaker 1: and you know we would want Did you acknowledge that
Speaker 1: one you wanted to save ultimately didn't need to be saved.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. There's areas of um Our
Speaker 1: neighborhoods where we've fought for new zoning that we thought
Speaker 1: would encourage good development as opposed to bad developments, which
Speaker 1: meant the expectation was things will get built. Give us
Speaker 1: an example of an area where this kim into play.
Speaker 1: For instance, in the East Village. We working with a coalition,
Speaker 1: we're able to get almost the entire East Village re zoned.
Speaker 1: So the old zoning would have encouraged big, tall towers,
Speaker 1: It would have encouraged building things like dormitories and hotels.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, but as an n y U,
Speaker 1: that's where n Yu went to build a lot of
Speaker 1: their dormitories and along Third Avenue in that area. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we didn't want to see n Yu take over
Speaker 1: the East Village, so we pushed foreign got a rezoning
Speaker 1: that said, yes, there can be new development here, but
Speaker 1: the size and scale of it is going to be
Speaker 1: more like what you think of the East Village. Seven
Speaker 1: story building, six story buildings. This is what zoning does.
Speaker 1: You can get these what are called contextual zoning districts
Speaker 1: that says you can build but to a certain high,
Speaker 1: certain number of square feet, things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of developments go up in the
Speaker 1: East Village under this new zoning that are so much
Speaker 1: more in character with the neighborhood than what would have
Speaker 1: been built under the old zoning. So we weren't pushing
Speaker 1: there to say no new buildings or nothing can ever
Speaker 1: be torn down, but that there should be new buildings,
Speaker 1: but it should really reinforce the character of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Just around the corner from our office, there was a
Speaker 1: huge parking lot that was just built on with an
Speaker 1: eight or nine story building. Right next door to it
Speaker 1: is a dorm that n YU built a couple of
Speaker 1: years earlier. That's twenty six stories. Um, there's been quite
Speaker 1: a few new buildings closer to the traditional campus, but
Speaker 1: this will be a whole additional campus for the university.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like, um, the city you turn around
Speaker 1: one day, you know, we have another subway tunnel, we
Speaker 1: have water tunnels that are coming in. I mean, the
Speaker 1: city is constantly, constantly, constantly being changed. And if you
Speaker 1: had one wish, I mean, I'm sure you have a
Speaker 1: laundry list of things. What's one wish of how you'd
Speaker 1: like things to change in the next thirty years, you know?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the biggest pressing issue facing New
Speaker 1: York is ensuring that it stays a place that's affordable
Speaker 1: and accessible for a broad range of people. So I'd say,
Speaker 1: if if I had one wish for the city, it
Speaker 1: would be that that somehow we could it could be
Speaker 1: a place where you know, sort of the most successful
Speaker 1: you know, innovators and and zillionaires can live there, and
Speaker 1: poor working folks and the middle class people who are
Speaker 1: you know, sort of raising kids, are starting out or
Speaker 1: living on their own or sort of whatever, and everybody
Speaker 1: in between, you know, the immigrants, the longtime residents, um
Speaker 1: and see some of the steps that were taken to
Speaker 1: allow for like Mitchell Lama, that's dying, that Mitchell Lama housing,
Speaker 1: and it's it's tragic for those who don't know who
Speaker 1: we're listening that don't know what Mitchell Lama housing was.
Speaker 1: This was an attempt back then to have the city
Speaker 1: developed property where developers would build affordable housing and men
Speaker 1: should as affordable housing. I'm being very shorthand with this,
Speaker 1: and manage it as affordable housing for a given period
Speaker 1: of time, like thirty years or something, and then after
Speaker 1: a certain period of time it would slowly devolve, if
Speaker 1: you will, into or evolve into private housing. They would
Speaker 1: sell it as condominiums. And right now we're hitting that
Speaker 1: place where, especially in Manhattan, very few of them are left,
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Mitchell Lama's rolling over now to
Speaker 1: private condominiums. Which is really changing the city. But New
Speaker 1: Yorkers have resigned themselves to the fact that affordable housing itself,
Speaker 1: just like pay phones, is a thing of the past,
Speaker 1: and now more and more people who never dreamed of
Speaker 1: going to Long Island City and to Astoria and to
Speaker 1: Brooklyn is just a part of Manhattan in terms of
Speaker 1: how many people who live and work there and put
Speaker 1: their kids in school there, but who work in the
Speaker 1: city and commute. More and more and more people have
Speaker 1: resigned themselves or even are happy to commute. Is that
Speaker 1: your experience as well? Yeah, And you know, in some ways,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's such a bad thing that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who would have only considered living in
Speaker 1: Manhattan before now are living throughout the city. What I
Speaker 1: think would be a terrible thing is if Manhattan became
Speaker 1: a place that only the wealthy could live, and that
Speaker 1: more and more the other boroughs that became the case
Speaker 1: as well. I'm not sure that I know what the
Speaker 1: answer is. I mean, clearly, if we had a different
Speaker 1: political environment, we'd have things like Mitchell Armor programs and
Speaker 1: other things to create and build affordable housing, saying this
Speaker 1: is an investment in our city's future. The construction is good.
Speaker 1: It creates jobs. The fact that we give good, affordable
Speaker 1: housing to people who we need to you know, uh,
Speaker 1: to be teachers, to be firemen, to be a sanitation.
Speaker 1: We don't have housing for those people, now, you know,
Speaker 1: we were One of the first things that happened in
Speaker 1: New York years ago was the police were successful in
Speaker 1: argument against the residency requirement because they said, you can't
Speaker 1: force me to live here because I can't afford the
Speaker 1: rent here on a policeman's salary. So they did away
Speaker 1: with But of course this is a city where rather
Speaker 1: than build affordable housing for people like the police and
Speaker 1: have them invested in the community they live in, they
Speaker 1: all leave, which makes them somewhat us invested, I think
Speaker 1: in the community they live in, although many of them
Speaker 1: come from the city. It seems we could do a
Speaker 1: whole hour about the power of the real estate development
Speaker 1: community and the landlords support in this. I mean, they
Speaker 1: run the city. They run the city in so many ways,
Speaker 1: and they run the city. I mean what gets built,
Speaker 1: what doesn't get These guys like you fight them and
Speaker 1: win because public outrage and public passions about these things
Speaker 1: still have some power, right well, all ultimately government makes
Speaker 1: the decisions, and while certainly the people with money and
Speaker 1: access have enormous influence over them, the average people do
Speaker 1: because they vote. And if you, if you exercise that
Speaker 1: um strength that we have, and it's the only thing
Speaker 1: we have, is the power of the vote, that's the
Speaker 1: way that we can affect these I want to finish
Speaker 1: with this. The society has an LGBT initiative for some
Speaker 1: of the preservation. They do talk about that New York
Speaker 1: and especially the village really has such a wealth of
Speaker 1: sights connected to the LGBT les being gay, bisexual, transgend.
Speaker 1: The civil rights movements. I mean, uh, the one that
Speaker 1: everybody knows, of course, a Stone Wall where the riots
Speaker 1: took place in nineteen sixty nine, which in many respects
Speaker 1: exactly um, but there's many other ones as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: just around the corner from there, there's Julius Bar, where
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six there was this sit in or
Speaker 1: sit in as it was called, the first planned civil
Speaker 1: disobedience for gay rights. At that time, A few people
Speaker 1: sort of know or remember this. It was actually illegal
Speaker 1: to serve alcohol to someone who you knew was a homosexual. Um,
Speaker 1: So it in essence made gay bars illegal. That's why
Speaker 1: they were all the Hotel Tennessee. Williams of A stated
Speaker 1: people were breaking the law. I know. Yeah, So as
Speaker 1: a result of this, actually there was a legal case
Speaker 1: that more or less change that um and so that
Speaker 1: was put that in a movie. I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, back when there were very very very few
Speaker 1: places that gay people could meet, almost all of them
Speaker 1: were in places like Greenwich Village. And this year, in
Speaker 1: late June, just a few days before New York City's
Speaker 1: annual Pride Parade, and after many years behind the scenes politicking,
Speaker 1: Andrew Berman and his colleagues celebrated early the Stone Wall
Speaker 1: in one it's New York City Landmark status, making it
Speaker 1: the first site designated primarily for its significance to LGBT history.
Speaker 1: Take a listen to the Here's the Thing Archives. I
Speaker 1: talked with another hard working advocate, Josh Fox, the environmental
Speaker 1: activist who's filmed gas Land exposed the dangers of fracking.
Speaker 1: They would say, oh, your water is fine, and then
Speaker 1: they would go and get them a glass of water
Speaker 1: to drinks. All right, Well, if you think this is
Speaker 1: fine for my mother to drink, then you go ahead
Speaker 1: and drink it, and they wouldn't drink it. Take a
Speaker 1: listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and or listening to Here's the Thing. Conservation isn't
Speaker 1: only about preserving urban sites. It's also about saving a
Speaker 1: way of life. Rob Snyder, president of the Island Institute,
Speaker 1: helps communities in remote coastal Maine thrive. I know a
Speaker 1: bit about fishing towns, having spent much of my life
Speaker 1: on Long Island. Pressures are different in eastern Long Island
Speaker 1: and rural Maine, where I live. It's constant commercial development,
Speaker 1: but the struggle to survive as a working fisherman remains.
Speaker 1: Coastal Maine. As Rob Snyder explained, the situation is more remote.
Speaker 1: People is the largest island community in Maine, which one
Speaker 1: Vinyl Haven off of Rockland, Maine, mid coast area, and
Speaker 1: they take a ferry. Yeah, you take a ferry out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you take a ferry year round, year round. You can
Speaker 1: take a ferry. If you're on Matinicus, you have to
Speaker 1: take a bush pilot flight on Scotland, air plane flies
Speaker 1: a couple of times a day as long as the
Speaker 1: fog is lifted, and you can get year round so
Speaker 1: there's no ferry service too, there's a monthly ferry, so
Speaker 1: I kind of want to go hang out way, Why
Speaker 1: are we interviewing those people? So? You know, I think
Speaker 1: that interestingly though, the kinds of pressure you're talking about
Speaker 1: about how to conserve place and conserve community in places
Speaker 1: where the land is finite and so finite, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you really have a huge challenge in balancing conservation and community.
Speaker 1: Is there pressure to develop those islands? There really isn't
Speaker 1: the kind of pressure you're talking about. What you see
Speaker 1: more so is the as property values escalate, the year
Speaker 1: round community, the people who have been there for many
Speaker 1: generations are having a harder time holding on being able
Speaker 1: to pay their tax bills and stay on the islands,
Speaker 1: whereas there be you know, whereas you're seeing increasing pressure
Speaker 1: which changed, Why is it harder? Why is it harder?
Speaker 1: I think there's a two things going on at once.
Speaker 1: I think you have uh main is as you point out,
Speaker 1: it's got an iconic stature that the natural beauty of
Speaker 1: the places absolutely stunning, and so it attracts people to
Speaker 1: the coast and more remote more remote. Absolutely people come
Speaker 1: there because they want to get away from UM the
Speaker 1: New York Yeah, too much about long and they talk
Speaker 1: about the cape and and other places they want to get.
Speaker 1: Don't have Tiffany and Maine have a Tiffany No, they
Speaker 1: have not even a Tiffany outlet store. Yeah. If you
Speaker 1: want a shop, you do not go to the main island. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a you know. You also have
Speaker 1: pressure because so much land has been conserved over time,
Speaker 1: because the main coast has been a place for rustication
Speaker 1: for a hundred plus years, you had people come in
Speaker 1: and conserve large amounts of the main coast, And so
Speaker 1: the communities that are left in these places often are
Speaker 1: highly constrained to raise additional tax money to function as
Speaker 1: a town. A lot of the land is with the tax.
Speaker 1: French Borough has of its land conserved. Um where some
Speaker 1: of those families over the last hundred years were the
Speaker 1: families we would know of course, for example, I mean
Speaker 1: that the Rockefellers had. Yeah, and and to their credit
Speaker 1: they put some land aside for future development when they
Speaker 1: made the large land transaction. What we're thinking about now
Speaker 1: is because more and more people still can as as
Speaker 1: they should want to consider how to conserve their land
Speaker 1: if there if they're going to sell it off or
Speaker 1: if you know, because generations are changing, the younger kids
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want the property anymore the money. They want
Speaker 1: the money and they also are potentially able to put
Speaker 1: that land into a land trust. So what what is
Speaker 1: the town going to do. Well, we're having a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions about how can you be really creative about
Speaker 1: conserve land so you can actually contribute to the community's economy.
Speaker 1: So on french Borough, you know, they're looking at all
Speaker 1: all options for for example, for example, um, could you
Speaker 1: put camping facility on some of that conserved land? And
Speaker 1: that's just one example. In other communities, this is a
Speaker 1: big tension on the customine. How much conserve land is
Speaker 1: enough is often the question. I think the kind of
Speaker 1: the better question is how can we take advantage of
Speaker 1: the economic opportunity to conserve land creates. But back then,
Speaker 1: when somebody would have a piece of land, let's say
Speaker 1: it's a thousand acres and you have a compound somewhere
Speaker 1: and you pocket a few hundred acres, you pocket a
Speaker 1: couple hundred acres for your descendants, and you're gonna leave
Speaker 1: land people to build houses in the future and then
Speaker 1: give away the rest and now that's all kind of changed.
Speaker 1: And that's all change in terms of land use. And
Speaker 1: when people are thinking about climate, like you've mentioned climate change,
Speaker 1: they're thinking about how can I use this land to
Speaker 1: actually make a difference in the place that I love.
Speaker 1: I've been coming here as since a child. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe I want to put a solar array on this
Speaker 1: piece of land, or maybe I want to put a
Speaker 1: wind turbine on this piece of land. You know you
Speaker 1: doing up in Maine. I think it's doing well. The
Speaker 1: Islands too, worked with the North Haven and Vinyl Haven
Speaker 1: Islands off the mid coast to build three wind turbans,
Speaker 1: so that those communities could be energy neutral. Right, they
Speaker 1: produce as much as they consume. Alternative energy is is radically.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly important because unless we start inevitable, it's inevitable.
Speaker 1: But until we stop putting carbon in the atmosphere, we're
Speaker 1: just going to destroy the ocean. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's awful plants exactly. I mean, we're just the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Maine is a gigantic sink for CEO two.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, we're seeing clams that are unable to
Speaker 1: build shell fast enough clambers who used to go fill
Speaker 1: a bucket with clams down in Casco Bay, which is
Speaker 1: off the city of Portland's you know, it's got a
Speaker 1: number of island communities there. They can't fill a bucket
Speaker 1: all the way anymore because it just crushes the shelves.
Speaker 1: I means it's incredibly such. You know, in a time
Speaker 1: when the ocean is changing so much and you're seeing
Speaker 1: species move through your community, you're looking to diversify. You're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what is the future hold for me?
Speaker 1: What are my economics right? And so you see you know,
Speaker 1: you see fishermen starting to experiment with investing in oyster aquaculture,
Speaker 1: looking at Kelp growing Kelp for eight. You're heavy into
Speaker 1: this fishing industry and this and this fishing fishing and
Speaker 1: energy and energys of our work. I mean, you're trying
Speaker 1: to protect communities and lifestyle. And the Island Institute is
Speaker 1: about sustaining island communities, island and remote coastal, about conserving land.
Speaker 1: It's really preventing building on land. No. I mean, when
Speaker 1: we started thirty years ago, there's no question that people,
Speaker 1: you know, we we owned islands, we helped develop model,
Speaker 1: experimental models for how you could reintroduce sheep to island
Speaker 1: private islands, and how you could maintain pastures and how
Speaker 1: you could do homebuilders have an alliance there that you
Speaker 1: have to contend with their no. I mean we're we
Speaker 1: are viewed as a bridge because that's ultimately the people
Speaker 1: who do live in the community year round. What do
Speaker 1: they do typically? Well, you have age, yes, so large
Speaker 1: service sector, a lot of caretaking, a lot of how
Speaker 1: we keep housekeeping, you know, transportation, fairy transportation. You have
Speaker 1: people who um do telecommunity so we have increasing number
Speaker 1: of people who are working online from the islands in Maine,
Speaker 1: and I think that's an important part of the future.
Speaker 1: I hope, you know, I see, I see that as
Speaker 1: being possible. Obviously, education, healthcare, the stuff you would expect.
Speaker 1: There's elder care facilities on these islands. There's beautiful schools,
Speaker 1: whether it's a one room schoolhouse or a K through
Speaker 1: twelve uh school. You know, they they're large employers as
Speaker 1: well as the municipality because we have of course a
Speaker 1: lot of local control in Maine. But then the vast
Speaker 1: majority the rest of it's fishing, right, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you go to a place like Vinyl Haven. You have
Speaker 1: three D fifty boat captains and their crews living on
Speaker 1: that island. Right. You have six thousand lobster fishermen in Maine.
Speaker 1: It's the last large it's an incredibly small boat but
Speaker 1: very large fleet fishery. Right, So six thousand of those
Speaker 1: guys I think about active, actively fishing. You know, there's
Speaker 1: obviously folks who are retired and too young to be
Speaker 1: full time. But you know, that's a big that's a
Speaker 1: big piece of the economy. That's why you hear me
Speaker 1: talking so much about this. Affordability is a big piece
Speaker 1: of it. We've made a lot of headway on that
Speaker 1: in recent years. A lot needs to still be done.
Speaker 1: But the average island income can only afford one half
Speaker 1: of the average island home price. Right, So you if
Speaker 1: you're a teacher and you're married to a fisherman, you're
Speaker 1: increasingly unable to afford a home in your own community.
Speaker 1: And so we're very focused on how do how do
Speaker 1: you transition? How do you help people All the kids
Speaker 1: that left and went to college that came back to
Speaker 1: couldn't afford Yeah, so how do you help people transition
Speaker 1: in But one of the big things that we're doing
Speaker 1: in Maine right now is investing a lot in kind
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure, the processing of seafood, the processing of lobster.
Speaker 1: How do you get enough capacity online to handle you know,
Speaker 1: we we caught million pounds of lobster last year and
Speaker 1: off the coast of Maine. A lot of it's getting
Speaker 1: processed over in Canada, right and so we're moving those
Speaker 1: trying to move those jobs to Maine. It was cheaper
Speaker 1: up there. It was cheaper up there. Without're gonna make
Speaker 1: it cheaper down here. That's right, that's the idea. But
Speaker 1: and that the there aren't many people who want those jobs.
Speaker 1: They don't want them. They don't want to stand in
Speaker 1: the cold and pick lobster. Where are you from. I'm
Speaker 1: actually from Cleveland, Ohio, from the east side of Cleveland.
Speaker 1: And you grew up when you would your dad do.
Speaker 1: My dad's an insurance and my mom was a nurse,
Speaker 1: and Cleveland was a great place to leave. Good to
Speaker 1: leave was like, oh my god, you got me there.
Speaker 1: I love Cleveland. Yeah, I've come to love it a
Speaker 1: lot more since I left. I mean, it's interesting it's
Speaker 1: become a place since you know, you know, I kind
Speaker 1: of grew up with the you know, the river on
Speaker 1: fire and the you know, the terrible stuff in the
Speaker 1: lake kind Yeah, and it's all it's all turned around.
Speaker 1: I had a hard time growing up there only because
Speaker 1: it felt like anywhere USA. And you left him. Where
Speaker 1: did you go to college? I went out to Colorado,
Speaker 1: Colorado white there because you wanted just the opposite fresh Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I had a transformative experience with outward bound.
Speaker 1: I was able to learn mountaineering skills. So what I'm warsmen.
Speaker 1: People like the fresh air and getting out absolutely, So
Speaker 1: I went out west, and you know, but I've always
Speaker 1: you know, I thought I was going to run bike shops.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought I was going to do. I
Speaker 1: loved if you were in Colorado now you have a
Speaker 1: marijuana bike shop, I would have. I'll let my brother
Speaker 1: know that's an option now. Ye. So I mean I
Speaker 1: have family out there now, and I loved living out there.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, I've got married my wife's families
Speaker 1: back here in New Hampshire, and you know, we wanted
Speaker 1: to live near family, near the ocean and get to
Speaker 1: know the coast of Maine. You were in Colorado, how
Speaker 1: long I lived in Colorado for ten years. Wow, and
Speaker 1: when what was part of the decision to leave there?
Speaker 1: It sounds whenever I go to Colorado, if you are
Speaker 1: an outdoors type, it's just eden, It's just so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It is when you wanted to leave there, you want
Speaker 1: you want to be near water. I really I left
Speaker 1: because I was looking for real community. I felt like
Speaker 1: the front Range of the Rockies was being over developed
Speaker 1: and exploited and it was horrible. It was a place
Speaker 1: I didn't want to live in the future. For available water,
Speaker 1: for thoughtless development. That's why you mightn't want to stay
Speaker 1: and fight that issue there. No, I I actually once
Speaker 1: I got married, you know, it was really important to
Speaker 1: my wife to be back near her family, which is
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. She was in New England. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she So you went somewhere before Mayne. It's true. I
Speaker 1: lived in Toronto. I lived in Canada for a while,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I had thought for a long time,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is one of these kind of
Speaker 1: crazy ideas you get. At some point You're just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go live in China, and so I had this,
Speaker 1: this is this one I'm leaving up to Troyes. Where
Speaker 1: did China. China came into it because I thought I
Speaker 1: wanted to get into our communist Oh no, I thought
Speaker 1: I wanted to get involved in international relations, and I
Speaker 1: thought that would be the place in the future where
Speaker 1: I'd be able to find work, getting involved with potentially
Speaker 1: helping the business community um negotiate opportunities in China. I
Speaker 1: constructed this near it in my head. Yeah, without having
Speaker 1: any experience or resources to back it up. But it's
Speaker 1: just that it was a different from you. I lay
Speaker 1: a bit and I'm thinking, what if I got that
Speaker 1: Those Chinese folks want I get over there and said
Speaker 1: what do I have? So I DVD collection South of
Speaker 1: the Chinese. I went and studied over there as an undergraduate,
Speaker 1: and I got really interested. Instead of international development work.
Speaker 1: What really struck me. I lived in the southwest of China.
Speaker 1: There's twenty seven minority groups living in a province called
Speaker 1: Yunnan Province, southwest China. South of the Clouds is what
Speaker 1: the name stands for, and it's gorgeous. It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: environmentally diverse area. It's got everything from the Tibetan Plateau
Speaker 1: down to the Makon River, all on the same all
Speaker 1: in the same province, in one part of an incredible country.
Speaker 1: You know, in the readings I was doing in school,
Speaker 1: is all about, you know, these gigantic international aid or
Speaker 1: organizations and international development organizations. They come in and they
Speaker 1: tell the locals what to do, right, and they take
Speaker 1: stuff from them, and they tell them how to live
Speaker 1: their lives. And you know, and and I thought, people
Speaker 1: talk to each other, we're friends with each other. There's
Speaker 1: a way that money moves from U. S. A. I.
Speaker 1: D or Ford to a very local hill tribe on
Speaker 1: the border of Vietnam in China. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: go see it. I wanted to make some friends, and
Speaker 1: so I spent time exploring this kind of how how
Speaker 1: is the rural economy of China evolving as a result
Speaker 1: of international aid? And it was very I guess probably
Speaker 1: not very surprising. But to me, I what I learned
Speaker 1: was in China, these minority groups were going to be
Speaker 1: wearing their costumes and dancing for time immemorial so that
Speaker 1: tourists could come and watch them and appreciate them. Right,
Speaker 1: And I thought, this is the classic kind of tourism development.
Speaker 1: It's like the disnification of culture. And I also saw
Speaker 1: that it was made possible because at every step of
Speaker 1: the way, relationships were created, deals were cut. It was
Speaker 1: not some invisible hand of international money coming in and
Speaker 1: changing people's out of those people changing their own lives
Speaker 1: in ways that maybe they wanted those consequences. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't going to make a value judgment. And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I could spend the rest of my
Speaker 1: life over here and not change that. I can never
Speaker 1: make a difference. I felt like it was going to
Speaker 1: be impossible to have an impact in this world if
Speaker 1: I spent my time over in China. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, and I had met my wife, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's go home. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the US and apply this energy and effort to try
Speaker 1: and to make the world a better place at home.
Speaker 1: How long will you in China? Oh? Just for collectively
Speaker 1: a year, right, Not a long time, you know, not
Speaker 1: a long time. I was there to get a preliminary
Speaker 1: research visa, and that was before or after Colorado. This
Speaker 1: is after Colorado, so ten years in Colorado. Then this
Speaker 1: little kind of spent a couple of ye I was
Speaker 1: that was part of graduate work. Go back to New England.
Speaker 1: Did you know when you were heading back to New
Speaker 1: England that this environmental based work was what you wanted
Speaker 1: to do? Did you go there gunning I want to
Speaker 1: work in the nonprofit sector. What happened was that colleagues
Speaker 1: of mine in Toronto were at a bar on Prince
Speaker 1: Edward Island when staff from the isl Institute were at
Speaker 1: the same barrin Wow, great things happen in bars, especially
Speaker 1: in remote bars in Canada, and so they they got
Speaker 1: me into the Island instit So you should check out
Speaker 1: this place. These communities are really incredible. The challenges they
Speaker 1: face are remarkably complex, and you know you've got this background,
Speaker 1: even though it's over in China, Like, what about taking
Speaker 1: the thinking about how to how do you do smart
Speaker 1: work to help communities sustain themselves? How do you take
Speaker 1: into account the limits on the environment, and how do
Speaker 1: you take into account the social cohesion of small communities?
Speaker 1: How do you how do you bring those things together,
Speaker 1: those strengths that these places have to help make them
Speaker 1: sustainable for years to come right to me? That was
Speaker 1: an incredibly compelling mission. When I came to Maine, I
Speaker 1: thought I'd left China behind. I thought, there's nothing I'm
Speaker 1: gonna see on the coast of Maine that's anything like China.
Speaker 1: And you know what I found was kind of surprising,
Speaker 1: right that if we wanted to get involved in preserving
Speaker 1: a commercial fishing wharf so that fishermen could always go
Speaker 1: down to see to make a living, and the only
Speaker 1: way to conserve that work wharf was under the existing
Speaker 1: state statutes around land conservation, scenic beauty, cultural importance, you know,
Speaker 1: open space, just farmland, you know, like forest land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the requirements, but none of them applied to fishing, right that.
Speaker 1: You know, like you figured we on our flag, we
Speaker 1: have fishing, farming, and forestry in Maine, and um farming
Speaker 1: and forestry have these land protections. There's nothing there to
Speaker 1: preserve access to the ocean for fishermen. And so we
Speaker 1: that first piece of land. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: take too much credit here, there were groups, a lot
Speaker 1: of groups that worked on creating language that allowed that
Speaker 1: land to be conserved because of its scenic beauty and
Speaker 1: the only because that was what was available. So the
Speaker 1: esthetic coding written into that initial easement on that wharf.
Speaker 1: What does the architecture need to look like on that wharf.
Speaker 1: What kind of fisheries will be allowed to land there?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're having to design the future. And I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Like, if we're not careful, we're going
Speaker 1: to have like the disnification of the lobster fishery. You know,
Speaker 1: like guys are gonna have to wear their orange Grundin's
Speaker 1: and have lobster boats with certain lines. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it just could be. It could be the worst of
Speaker 1: all situations. And so you know, I thought, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what we don't want as an outcome. I don't want
Speaker 1: to see what happened in China happen on the coast
Speaker 1: of main So we we changed this to its constitution
Speaker 1: actually to include fishing as a new category. When I
Speaker 1: think about what the future holds, it's if we if
Speaker 1: we're successful, the coast of Maine will really be a
Speaker 1: beacon for how we could live in this world because
Speaker 1: people will understand how to live within environmental boundaries. They'll
Speaker 1: know how to live relying on each other. Right, They're
Speaker 1: gonna and they'll be and the coast of Maine will
Speaker 1: be connected. It's gonna technology will allow the coast of
Speaker 1: Maine to be sharing what it's learned practical adaptations to
Speaker 1: climate change will be able to be shared easily with
Speaker 1: similar communities anywhere. That to me is the opportunity. For
Speaker 1: Rob Snyder, the current opportunity is to help main fishermen,
Speaker 1: both current and future, move beyond lobster as a source
Speaker 1: of income. He hopes there is money and kelp. He
Speaker 1: says it tastes great by the way, and he is
Speaker 1: encouraging fishermen to add muscles, scallops and oysters to their hall.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing