Posted Nov 13, 2013, 4:51 AM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 1,748
|
|
I think we just got a taste what's comming for the city from de Blasio.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/ny...t-side.html?hp
End of Proposal to Raise Skyline on the East Side
By CHARLES V BAGLI
Published: November 12, 2013
Quote:
Opposition in the City Council and an incoming mayor intent on imposing a more liberal vision have dealt a fatal blow to the Bloomberg administration’s final plan to recast the New York City skyline with a new crop of office towers in East Midtown that would rise higher than the Chrysler Building.
Key members of the Council said on Tuesday that the proposal — to rezone a 73-block area into a district of sleek glass towers that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said would make New York competitive with London and other world-class cities — would be defeated in a vote later this week; the administration said it would withdraw the proposal, essentially killing it.
“A good idea alone is not enough to justify action today,” the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and Councilman Daniel R. Garodnick, who represents the area, said in a statement. “After extensive negotiations, we have been unable to reach agreement on a number of issues in the proposed plan.”
The startling end-of-term setback for Mr. Bloomberg captured the ascendancy of a powerful liberal bloc in New York politics, and demonstrated just how swiftly his vision of a corporate-friendly government has fallen out of favor in a city that picked Bill de Blasio as his successor just a week ago.
Mr. Bloomberg said he was disappointed at the Council’s failure to support his plan, adding that it would cost the city “hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed subway and street improvements and $1 billion in additional tax revenue — as well as tens of thousands of new jobs.”
The administration had tried desperately to line up votes for approval in the Council and to convince opponents that the plan had merit. City officials have argued that the key to the city’s future is in its ability to build modern towers in what has been the city’s premiere office district, where the majority of buildings are more than 50 years old.
But Mr. Garodnick and Ms. Quinn, both Democrats, said they were concerned about the price and methodology for selling development rights within the district; building density; and the uncertainty of funding for improvements to the transit system and the streets, which would be filled with many more riders and much more traffic.
But that does not necessarily mean that the area around Grand Central Terminal will not be rezoned in the future, though in a way that is less generous to developers. Mayor-elect de Blasio, a Democrat, said he looked forward to working on a new rezoning plan and praised the Council for “pressing the pause button.”
“We cannot afford to hand over the right to develop some of the most valuable real estate in the world without ensuring real and fair benefits for the people of New York City,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mr. Bloomberg’s rezoning proposals for the districts on the Far West Side of Manhattan, the waterfront in Brooklyn and more than 120 other neighborhoods have passed, but this time he did not have the clout to overcome opposition from four local community boards, preservationists, some civic groups and the hotel workers union.
In part, he is viewed as a lame duck. Ms. Quinn, his once-loyal ally whose close relationship to him haunted her in her losing bid for mayor, had no desire to lift a finger on his behalf before she, too, leaves office in January. Mr. Garodnick, a top contender to replace Ms. Quinn as speaker next year, is seen as being wary of alienating liberal opponents of the plan whose support could prove crucial for him.
The Bloomberg administration had hoped to push the rezoning proposal through the city’s public review process in less than half the time it spent on a redevelopment plan for the rail yards on the West Side. Critics, however, saw the urgency of the mayor’s efforts simply as a desire to expand his legacy. Mr. Garodnick and other critics agree on the need to ensure that construction of new office towers gets underway, but they contend that the hastily cobbled proposal needs more work.
The Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s lobbying arm, expressed disappointment, saying the proposal would have generated revenue for the city when builders bought development rights for taller towers and created construction jobs.
“The city is losing hundreds of millions of dollars from the private sector for transit and street work, tens of thousands of good paying jobs, and billions of dollars of investment that would pay for services,” said Steven Spinola, president of the group.
Mr. Spinola added that his organization would work with the de Blasio administration to clear up issues.
Some real estate leaders attributed the defeat of the rezoning to Peter Ward, president of the Hotel Trades Council, a union umbrella group that has a good deal of influence in the council. The Bloomberg administration had rejected Mr. Ward’s request that plans for hotels in the district go through a special approval process that has often allowed the union to secure guarantees on wage levels. City Hall, however, failed to get a single community leader, state legislator or council member from the district to drop their opposition.
The local community boards in the Grand Central district had been alienated by the administration’s failure to consult them. They feared that the rezoning would overwhelm the neighborhood and an already crowded transit system with towers twice as tall as is currently allowed.
|
|
Prev
if the tower gets approved will construction start nex year?
Linear Mode
