The view looking south down Tenth Ave. from 30th St., with the back of the Farley Post Office building to the left, where possible development of the Expanded Moynihan Station would include a new arena for Madison Square Garden.
Stalled West Side projects await help from on high
By Chris Lombardi
The ambitious local development projects that have been making heads in Chelsea/Clinton and the Flatiron District spin in recent years—especially the redeveloped Hudson Yards and Moynihan Station—now need firm leadership to become a reality, local experts told Chelsea Now this week.
Last Tuesday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority collected a second round of information from developers bidding to build at Hudson Yards. Meanwhile, controversy erupted after the state announced plans to sell blocks of Eighth Ave. north of the Javits Center—thus cutting off the potential to someday realize a “world-class” convention center once promised by former governor George Pataki. And furor began again over the future of another fabled project, Moynihan Station, after representatives of Madison Square Garden, whose relocation is central to plans for the new train station/retail gallery on Eighth Avenue, declined to attend a Feb. 19 meeting with officials and historic preservationists.
The newspaper headlines were nearly unanimous in stating that all these grandiose plans were at risk of turning to dust, citing myriad complications to each plan. The articles examined disputes concerning financing, the clout of historic preservationists and changing economic conditions. It seemed clear, as Assemblymember Richard Brodsky told the New York Sun, that “None of these projects is likely to move forward as advertised.”
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to some local pundits polled by Chelsea Now. In fact, they said, peeling the stardust off the plans is essential if these already linked projects are going to bear fruit.
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Looking north up 11th Ave. from 30th St., with the Javits Center on the upper left, just east of the Hudson Yards site.
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Fading Yards hopes
Last week, the MTA received responses from four of the five development teams that had submitted initial bids in November for the right to develop the former Hudson rail yards, after the MTA asked all of them how much they would offer for a 99-year lease on the site. The leasing plan, applauded by former MTA chief Richard Ravitch, had long been suggested by local agencies, including the Regional Planning Association, Communiy Board 4 and the Hudson Yards Community Advisory Committee.
“We’ve been concerned that there’s a rush to sell off this land,” said HYCAC co-chair John Raskin, organizing director of Housing Conservation Coordinators. “It’s bad planning—bad for the taxpayers, and bad for the MTA. I think it’s positive that they’re stepping back.”
Anna Hayes Levin, chairperson of Board 4’s Hell’s Kitchen Land Use Committee, said the move marked a welcome shift from the MTA’s previous more-cash-now policy—and an acknowledgment of the current, uncertain financial climate.
For starters, the Yards are a public asset, said Levin. “Everyone knows, the better way is to give them a long-term lease.” One of the reasons the leasing strategy wasn’t broached sooner with developers, she added, was that it wasn’t in line with the philosophy of the chairperson of the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, former Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff. Leasing “is not a financing strategy that Dan Doctoroff supports,” Levin said. “It was his land-use vision driving the process.”
But HYDC’s request for cash up front for such an expensive project, in which the chosen developer would first have to spend at least a $1 billion to make the yards buildable, may have proved ultimately less lucrative than planned, Levin said.
“I don’t know about the terms of the bids that came in, but my guess is that they were so full of contingencies, so many hedges depending on future financial conditions, that it made the MTA realize—we can’t count on this to plug our budget hole.”
For Juliette Michaelson of the Regional Plan Association, the MTA’s willingness to consider leasing the 26-acre site is consistent with practices that have yielded solid annual income for cities elsewhere. “The MTA’s going to be around for a long, long time,” Michaelson said. “It only makes sense for them to pursue something that helps support operations for that long.”
Michaelson added that the city of Boston, through development authorities, has financed many of its larger transit-related projects through leasing. Closer to home, “Battery Park City is a model,” she noted, for its leasing agreements within the neighborhood.
All agreed that dialogue about the future of the rail yards had become less lofty—and perhaps more realistic.
“I sense the MTA’s ardor for the project may be diminishing,” Levin said. She cited the agency’s willingness to alienate potential bidders with the lease request—an action that eliminated Brookfield Properties, which decided not to submit a revised bid, and may have led to Morgan Stanley’s decision this week to suspend its anchor-tenant status with Tishman Speyer. Meanwhile, conditions in financial markets, critical to financing any development scheme for the Yards, have changed markedly in recent months, cooling the developers’ confidence. “Anything they build, it’ll expose them to ginormous financial risk,” Levin said. “It does sort of dampen the boosterish aspirations they presented in their proposals.”
Jawing over Javits
Meanwhile, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Governor Eliot Spitzer’s well-publicized brawl over the expansion of the Javits Center ended with the establishment of the Convention and Trade-Show Industry Task Force to oversee future options; though not until considerable ire had been stoked by Spitzer’s announcement that one way he would plug the state’s deficit would be by selling two valuable blocks adjacent to Javits.
In his State of the State speech, Spitzer announced plans to sell both the northern portion of Eighth Ave., between 39th and 40th Sts., and a block just north of Hudson Yards between 33rd and 34th Sts., using the funds to develop Governors Island, Hudson River Park, and affordable housing and transportation projects. After announcing the formation of the task force last Thursday, the Spitzer administration went forward with its plans to sell the 33rd-34th St. parcel, though questions have since been raised by Javtis officials about the needs of trucks currently using the block to serve the Javits Center.
“The state has clearly come to the correct decision that it does not make sense to expand the Javits at that location,” Levin said. “The disagreements have been about the timetable—how quickly you do it.”
Michaelson agreed that stopping the Javits expansion seemed sound. Other world-class cities, she pointed out, use a different model. “Tokyo, Milan, Rome all have smaller convention facilities downtown for smaller, more cultural events that last a few days. Then, at satellite locations 10 to 20 miles away, space for the big shows.”
“Those trade shows—they require so much more space, and people just come for the day,” Michaelson added. “They don’t add to the city’s revenues… Meanwhile, the way the West Side is growing now, it makes no sense to have a convention center—with 18-wheelers full of cargo and all the extra congestion—right in the middle of it.” The new task force, she noted, is already looking at several locations in Queens, such as Willets Point.
Still, Michaelson maintained, what’s most important is not the Javits decision, but the area’s 15-year-old flagship project, the Expanded Moynihan Station.
Moynihan most vital
This week, the Empire State Development Corporation released the first known images of the new Moynihan Station, following a month when the project’s funding and support had been in doubt within some quarters yet again. The spark came after the release of news that the Dolan family—owners of Madison Square Garden, which is set to move to the historic Farley Post Office as part of the plan—had begun to develop contingency plans to stay put. The Dolans had reportedly expressed frustration with the slowness of the process and the refusal of many historic preservationists to accede to the Garden’s proposed alterations to parts of the landmark post office.
Of the three adjoining projects, all local advocates agreed that a successful Moynihan Station is the most important—and that without it, the far West Side is unlikely to fulfill planners’ hopes. “The real estate industry is a pretty conservative one,” Michaelson said. “You need a great new train station that shows the city is investing in the neighborhood before Eighth Avenue can really turn around. Once it’s built, it will create a new little hub of activity, and that feeds everything else. Development grows incrementally.”
Levin agreed, saying that the station is far more important than even the already-behind-schedule extension of the No. 7 train. “To get people to Hudson Yards, there may be alternatives,” Levin said. “Light rail, people movers… But compare that to a new Penn Station—it’s a no-brainer, especially when you look at the data showing the real increase in commuters is coming from across the river.”
As for resistance by MSG to the slow process, Levin said that while the Dolans “have some significant operational needs that need to be acknowledged, there’s a determination in the preservation community to work with the state and the Garden.”
But, Levin added, “there’s still been a certain amount of dithering at the state level.” While praising Spitzer and the Empire State Development Corporation’s Patrick Foye for negotiating with city and federal officials to start closing the billion-dollar gap in the project’s budget, both Levin and Michaelson said that so far, too much of their work has been behind closed doors.
“Someone at the governor’s level has got to get the stakeholders around the table, knock some heads and stay there till they work it out,” Levin said. “And it has to be out in the open.”
The rest of the projects, she added, will move along—even with budget-gap and development-right concerns. “The Hudson Yards rezoning included the Moynihan Station blocks for a reason. Maybe some reconfiguration of the scoping plan for the Yards can include those development rights,” Levin said, instead of creating a new sub-district.
As she spoke, some progress was already visible. The governor was widely quoted offering to match city funds dollar for dollar, emphasizing, “I want everybody to understand we are dedicated to making this happen.”
And with images like the one just made public, people now have a visual representation of a once only theoretical plan—which Levin presciently noted before its release.
“Somehow the folks have to see the image of what this project promises, what Moynihan East might be like,” Levin said. “How hard can it be?”
