New TKTS Now on Track for Fall
When the stalwart seventies-era TKTS booth in Father Duffy Square — it’s not Times Square, mind you, but the square just north of it — came down a year ago, we were promised a new version, complete with a shiny red staircase as a roof, a public space to rival Rome’s Spanish Steps, in time for last New Year’s Eve. No dice. What happened? An ownership change at the manufacturer originally slated to provide glass for that new hull derailed things, architect Nick Leahy of Perkins Eastman tells us. But the team is finalizing its choice for a new supplier, Leahy says, and expects the goods by late summer. “It was a hiccup that we managed,” Leahy says. “The ticket booth is in place and the geothermal heating [underground] is in place, and I would expect installation by early fall.” Which means it’ll be ready for next New Year’s or whatever autumn events — the World Series on the Jumbotron, the Macy’s parade, impeachment hearings — you might be looking forward to. —Alec Appelbaum
the morning line
Jersey Jackals
• The Times reveals that the Garden State has been regularly raiding its own state-worker pension fund, funneling billions into other government projects. Given the size of its public sector, disaster looms; New Jersey, we thought better of you. [NYT]
• Activists in East Harlem faced bulldozers in a dramatic, and failed, showdown over a community garden. The site, on 110th and Fifth, is being cleared for the future Museum for African Art — and, of course, a luxury condo tower. [amNY]
• The Giuliani campaign, God’s gift to tabloids, has turned to Rudy’s international-policy experience: “I’ve probably been in foreign lands more than any other candidate” as a private consultant, he assured New Hampshire and hinted he’ll hit Iraq next. [NYDN]
• The Knitting Factory, the Tribeca music institution, is promising not to go the way of Tonic, Sin-é, CBGB, and many others: Should the rent skyrocket when its lease runs out, the club will try buying the whole building. [MetroNY]
• And midtown’s old-money hangout/tourist trap ‘21’ Club has even longer arms than previously thought: It just stopped the Pittsburgh Pirates from naming a stadium sports bar “Club 21.” Because otherwise the two would be indistinguishable. [NYP]
developing
French ‘Vision Machine’ Starts Rising in Chelsea“Nothing has ever been built like it in NYC,” says Jean Nouvel’s publicist of a project the French starchitect has designed for 19th Street and the West Side Highway, and though it’s a publicist’s job to say that, she might actually be right. Nouvel, a perennially mentioned Pritzker Prize contender, announced that construction has begun — and released the first renderings — on the same day Richard Rogers won the 2007 prize. Is it a recyclable takeout rice container? No, it’s a “Vision Machine,” an energy-efficient skyscraper in which, to quote the publicist, “every single pane has been figured out to correspond to an interior space and no two are alike.”
developing
Union Square Rehab: No Year-Round Restaurant
It is, finally, just the sort of weather that makes a vigorous young New Yorker want to frolic — or at least eat and drink — in the great outdoors. Like, for example, at that bar-and-restaurant place inside Union Square. (It’s technically called Luna Park.) But wasn’t the city planning to do some renovation at the north end of the park, something with that restaurant? Indeed, and yesterday Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe caught us up on the planning. In 2004, he announced plans to complete the Square’s beautification by joining the park’s two playgrounds and creating a year-round eatery where that weird fortresslike structure now stands, near 17th Street. But after local sputtering, Benepe confirmed to us, Parks has ditched the controversial year-round part.
developing
Moynihan Station: It’s Alive?
Huh. Look at that. Last we were paying attention, we were pretty sure Moynihan Station was dead. (Delayed in October, shot down in December, we thought.) But then, this morning, Gotham Gazette’s indispensable “Eye-Opener” pointed us to a Daily News squib from Saturday: The state’s Public Authorities Control Board — you know, that three-member group Shelly Silver uses to block development he doesn’t like — has approved the financing plan that would allow the Empire State Development Corporation to buy the Farley Post Office building from the Postal Service. Guess this means the thing’s back on. Who knew?
Moynihan Sta. Gets a Key OK [NYDN]
Earlier:
Moynihan Station, an Autopsy
It’s Over, and It’s Over
intel
Dan Doctoroff Issues Vague Call for Bold Sacrifice
A city planning guru dropped hints Monday that Team Bloomberg might be considering “congestion pricing” to charge drivers for the privilege of adding to gridlock, and today Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff the chief planning guru did nothing to discourage the speculation. Speaking at the annual meeting of the New York Metropolitcan Transportation Council, a regional body that coordinates federal transportation funds, Doctoroff talked of needing “a shift in the way we use automobiles” and called “congestion road, transit and pedestrian” the city’s main barrier to growth. He also noted that taxes and user fees funded the 1811 street grid, the dedication of Central Park, and the city’s water network. “Those who benefit should pay,” he said. Was he hinting at a new fee on driving or cars? Providing political cover for an MTA fare increase? Telling the suburban county chiefs in attendance to look out for a commuter tax? It remains to be seen. But he did promise to issue the mayor’s sustainability plan in early April, just before tax time. —Alec Appelbaum
Earlier: Bloomberg’s Planners Hear Public on Traffic Woes, Would Rather Talk About Something Else
developing
Forget Condos; It’s ChinatownAn old Chinatown building is being overhauled and prettied up, and — shockingly in today’s New York — it’s not for a condo conversion. The Oversea Chinese Mission, a 44-year-old evangelical outfit with fellowships and libraries and an aging membership, now has luxury condos on either side of its nine-story headquarters at Hester and Mott. But it announced a renovation last week that calls for reworking the building as a beacon to potential new members. “Right now you cannot see into the building,” Nancy Ruddy, a partner in local architecture firm Cetra/Ruddy, told us this morning. The firm has designed a two-story façade of glass, metal, and stained glass to lure locals, from late-shift waiters to early risers.
the in-box
Bill Moyers Does Not Care for Glass Phallic Symbols (or, Not Unreasonably, for Us)A few weeks ago, Daily Intel’s “Neighborhood Watch” mentioned Bill Moyers’s involvement in neighborhood protests over a residential tower the New-York Historical Society wants to build on the Upper West Side. (Later, we got confused and suggested he was also opposed to a Chelsea development, a mistake we quickly corrected.) In a letter to the magazine, Moyers takes issue with our portrayal, takes another jab at the Historical Society, and concedes that we did at least spell his name correctly.
The text of his letter is after the jump, or you can read it here as a PDF. (See real Moyers letterhead!)
developing
South Street Seaport: Some Fresh Food With Your Towers?
The old Fulton Fish Market never caused such a stink. Word leaked last week that the new owner of South Street Seaport, General Growth Properties, wanted to create a tower and open space over what’s now the morose “festival marketplace” of Pier 17 — and last night, area residents attempted to slap down the idea. “People in this room are terrified at the idea of towers,” declared Jeffrey Schneider, head of the 117 Beekman Street condo association. General Growth’s architect, Gregg Pasquarelli, whose firm SHoP worked on the city’s plan to build pavilions and parkland on nearby East Side piers, promised that squeezing the mall’s square footage into a tower was just one of “25 plans” he’s mustering for the new owner. Neighbors want playgrounds and schools; Pasquarelli mentioned the possibility of an outdoor market. Indeed, civic types have proposed New Amsterdam Public, which would be a year-round healthy-food cornucopia. Locally grown kumquats near historic vessels sounds lovely, but General Growth rep Michael McNoughton tells us he expects “several more months” of public talks before his firm proposes a plan. Talks, indeed. As a 119 Beekman resident said: “If you think we’re difficult, wait until you deal with Brooklyn Heights.” —Alec Appelbaum
developing
Kids Do Grown-up Planning for a Chinatown Park
Find the development imbroglio at ground zero childish? Redirect your gaze to Chinatown, then, where some kid-focused planning is progressing in a very mature way. The nonprofit design firm Hester Street Collaborative is rebuilding Sara D. Roosevelt Park — that slab of concrete and turf running from the Manhattan Bridge to Houston Street — by using art exercises to determine what kinds of new fields and seating areas the local kids and elderly need, and the designers celebrated their progress last week at their second annual Chinese New Year party. Collaborative director Anne Frederick says she’s still building consensus and won’t show off designs yet to avoid ruffling feathers — Larry Silverstein, are you listening? — but her group and the schoolkids it trains have already made a mark. There’s talk of making the sidewalk-stenciled names and kid-painted historic signs it set up last spring at Allen and Grand into the basis for a permanent upgrade of the midblock malls. —Alec Appelbaum
photo op
Atlantic Yards Begins Not With a Bang But With a Bulldozer in a Snowy Lot
There it is, folks: The start of demolition for Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards. Reports say they’re knocking down a disused bus depot to create a temporary rail yard so that construction can begin. From the AP’s pictures, it just looks like they’re using a really big bulldozer to move some barrels and take down a chain-link fence. Either way, historic!
Earlier: Bruce Ratner Swings His Ball
atlantic yards watch
Bruce Ratner Swings His Ball
It has begun. As you read this, Bruce Ratner’s bulldozers should be moving in on a defenseless bus depot on the eastern edge of the Atlantic Yards site. Depending on your point of view, this is either an uplifting bit of symbolism or the rough equivalent of Bambi’s mother getting shot by hunters. For the Daily News, which seems capable of looking at the multi-skyscraper megaproject only through the prism of basketball, everything’s coming up roses: “The Brooklyn Nets arena has finally got game,” its coverage begins. Naturally, the ever-indignant Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn takes a different tack.
the morning line
Viva Sullivan County
• Governor Spitzer has approved a “Las Vegas-style” gambling den in the Catskills. The Mohawk tribe will run it, despite the casino being 400 miles away from its reservation, and the state will get a 25 percent cut. That is, if environmentalists and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior get on board. [NYT]
• Call us twisted, but we love watching JetBlue continue to flagellate itself over last week’s stranding of its JFK passengers; the CEO of the formerly cuddly airline is scripting a my-bad TV ad and proposing a “customer bill of rights” that will financially penalize JetBlue for such things. [NYDN]
• The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office seems eager to reinvent itself as a telenovela. An ADA was suspended for allegedly passing witness info to her boyfriend, a defense attorney; that’s one day after a female investigator was accused of a dalliance with a jailed mobster. How soon before evil twins show up? [NYP]
• Next up for Bloombergian rezoning: the Garment Center. Crain’s predicts “a flurry of buying and selling.” Luxury condos? Actually, no, just newer and better offices. Whew. [Crain’s]
• And you can always rely on the City Council for an offbeat ordinance proposal. Today, the honor goes to Councilman Simcha Felder, who wants warning labels on coffee. [amNY]
neighborhood watch
Happy Chinese New Year!Carroll Gardens: Will a bank, national chain store, or real-estate office replace Bleach House, the Dickensiansly named, now-defunct launderette on Court Street? [423smith]
Chinatown: Party like it’s 4705! That’s right, the Chinese New Year kicked off this weekend. Welcome to the Year of the Pig. [Gothamist]
Coney Island: The PR firm for development giant Thor Equities has released another homemade-looking “newsletter” about future Coney fun — which yet again makes no mention of Thor’s planned condo towers for the area. [Gowanus Lounge]
Greenpoint: From the looks of the floor plan, it seems like the Polish movie house turned Burger King at 910 Manhattan Avenue is due to become Greenpoint’s first Starbucks. Rejoice or recoil? [Curbed]
West Village: When special people like Sarah Jessica Parker, Lucy Lawless, or Christine Quinn need to pick up a package, they do it at Something Special, a mailbox-rental place on Macdougal and Houston. [The Villager]
in other news
Well, It’s a Marvelous Night for Luxury Condos
Fulton Mall isn’t the only cityscape element earmarked for the insta-nostalgia scrap heap today. Moondance Diner, the Soho staple beloved by tourists and film crews, is heading into the sunset as well. And as much as we’d love to tell you that the diner and its adjacent parking lot are being replaced by a community center teaching disadvantaged kids interior design and molecular gastronomy, that’s not the case. The case is l-u-x-u-r-y c-o-n-d-o-s. (When the city is entirely luxury condos, where will people eat? Shop? Park? Are we the only ones who wonder this?) It remains to be seen if the developer, Hudson Island LLC, will add insult to injury by, say, appropriating the shimmery texture of the Moondance logo for the lobby walls.
Goodnight, Moondance [NYS]
in other news
Who’s Afraid of Brooklyn Redevelopment?
The great thing about the Atlantic Yards imbroglio is that, while everyone’s busy yelling about that, other developers can do all sorts of things right next door. There are, for example, at least three condo towers quietly rising on the edges of Bruce Ratner’s megaproject. And now, with very little fanfare, a deal has been reached to erect one of Brooklyn’s tallest buildings mere blocks from the epicenter. Where, you ask, will it go? Let’s see how to break this to you. Remember Fulton Mall? Excellent. Now forget it.
the morning line
Cop Cover-Up
• A seven-months-pregnant Brooklyn cop stands accused of covering up for her ex-con husband, who shot another (plainclothes) officer. We give it seven weeks until it’s a Law & Order plotline. [NYDN]
• Speaking of ripping things from the headlines, the speed with which the Law & Order machine has absorbed Adrienne Shelly’s murder is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way — even the actress playing her corpse. [NYT]
• With the U.N. building set for a $1.2 billion spruce-up, diplomats are looking for a temporary home; Bloomberg has scheduled a private talk with Condoleezza Rice about keeping the august institution in NYC for the time being. We suggest HoJo’s. [NYP]
• The 55-story Bank of America Tower at 42nd and Sixth is going to be the greenest building in town, with a 300-ton icebox for a cooling system and recyclable tap water (it will feed the sprinklers in the rooftop garden). If, you know, costs allow. [amNY]
• And the state is hiring marketers to fuck up, sorry, “invigorate” the iconic “I ♥ N.Y.” ad campaign. Because leaving good enough alone is just not the New York way. [WNBC]
developing
Beware of Riprap in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
The city presented its latest plans for redeveloping the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront Wednesday night, and — believe it or not — local activist groups liked the proposals. The new plans include boat launches, picnic grounds, wetland preserves, which are all things — like a more natural-looking waterfront, a bit of which is shown in the rendering above — community groups have been asking for. “I believe they are making a true effort to tune the plan into a community vision,” said Laura Hoffman of the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning. She gave props to how the plan integrates Greenpoint Terminal Market artifacts — like old ropes and bricks — into the park’s design. (We like this new rendering not least because landscapers call the sort of rocky water-edge depicted “riprap.”) How’d things get so lovey-dovey? Team Bloomberg persuaded three developers of waterfront high-rises to turn over open space to the city, and then the city designed with local priorities in mind. The impending towers still give some Williamsburgers the willies, and earlier renderings of the waterfront, warned Jasper Goldman of the Municipal Art Society, “looked like San Diego.” But gritty riprap? That’s so New York. —Alec Appelbaum
developing
Urban Planners Agree: New York in 2030 Will SuckPlanning to stick around town for the next 23 years? You might want to reconsider … Apparently the New York of 2030 — the major American city at the second-greatest risk of catastrophic hurricane damage after Miami, by the way — will be facing a homelessness epidemic, more Miss Brooklyn–esque way-out-of-scale enormous buildings over rail yards, a major shortage of engineers qualified to construct such things, and a war between the union and nonunion laborers who build them. These were the lessons of last night’s NYC 2030 planning meeting, which opened with a cheery presentation by Bloomberg’s sustainability czar, Rohit Aggarwala, who has the task of preparing a 2030 blueprint by March, and had come to urban-planning experts for volunteer brainstorming. It turned out to be presumably not the brainstorming he was hoping for.
developing
Doctoroff Goes to Harlem, Gets Smacked
Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg’s all-powerful development czar, very rarely has his ass kicked in public. But at a Harlem symposium on Robert Moses’s legacy last night, Majora Carter, who runs the environmental advocacy group Sustainable South Bronx, did just that. As various bigshots praised the vital role of public input in today’s successful megaprojects — Atlantic Yards was never mentioned — Doctoroff contended that Team Bloomberg had buried Moses’s high-handed legacy. Carter, whose group has proposed a recycling facility where the city wants to build a 2,000-bed jail, begged to differ.
the morning line
One Day, Everything Will Be Named for the ‘Daily Show’ Host
• The Post has “Mob scion” Chris Colombo on tape waxing nostalgic about the days of former New York A.G. Dennis Vacco: “Spitzer is the worst. Vacco was the best. He didn’t care about anything. I had a hook in him.” Oh, the election ad that would have made. [NYP]
• So there’s JFK, La Guardia, Newark and … Stewart? With the Spitz’s blessing, the Port Authority is about to buy an underused airport 60 miles north of the city and turn it into the region’s fourth international hub. Pataki, apparently, hated the idea. [NYT]
• We suppose it was inevitable: The issue of how to list the names of WTC victims on the 9/11 memorial — alphabetically, at random, in weird associative clusters — is now fodder for hysterical TV ads running on NY1. [amNY]
• So there’s this $140 million police-radio system the MTA had been installing in the subways for ten years. It’s done, but the cops won’t use it: Everything sounds “as if you’re talking through a glass of water.” A $140 million glass of water. [NYT]
• And the Daily News somehow “learned,” unprompted by any recent developments, that Thor Equities is planning to redevelop Coney Island as a “glitzy playground” — a plan in the works for years. Let’s not tell the paper about the whole WTC memorial thing; it might upset them. [NYDN]
in other news
Give Me Your Kite Fliers, Your Pork Roast, Your Pot-Smoking Teenagers Yearning to See Bloc Party
Governors Island is a unique spot: It’s 172 acres in the middle of New York harbor featuring a shoreline facing Lady Liberty, landmarked forts, and small hills perfect for sled runs. And as the city and state plan to convert the new-abandoned military base into a public park, you’d like to think the Governors Island Preservation & Education Corporation could come up with an equally unique plan. You’d be disappointed. Last night Leslie Koch, who heads the city-state entity, announced five finalists for a landscape-design competition. The group includes Field Operations, which is overhauling Fresh Kills; Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Field Operations’ partner on the High Line redevelopment; and Weiss Manfredi, currently beloved for a riverside park in Seattle — which suggests we’re heading toward a Governors Island scheme that is perfectly competent but unlikely to be original. What uses should these designers have in mind? Koch proposes multiday music festivals, kite-flying, and cookouts. “Grilling,” she notes, “is illegal in most city parks.” Fair enough. But can’t we come up with some more thrilling plans? Here’s the best hope: The gossamer gondola that Santiago Calatrava sketched for the mayor’s office last summer remains under consideration. Public comment begins this summer. —Alec Appelbaum
Governors Island Preservation & Education Corporation [Official site]
intel
Gridlock Sam Certifies Meatpacking Traffic Jam; Civic Group Seeks a Way Out
The meatpacking district’s nighttime revelers don’t do much for area residents’ peace of mind. The two groups would seem to be natural enemies, but last night the new Greater Gansevoort Urban Improvement Project started seeking common ground to improve the neighborhood. The city plans to make Ninth Avenue one-way from 14th Street to 16th Street. So area stalwarts Jo Hamilton and Florent Morellet, the group’s founders, hosted a design workshop at Robert Fulton Homes to discuss what accompanying streetscape improvements everybody can endorse. Former transportation commissioner (and current transportation guru) Sam Schwartz presented a study confirming Gansevoort Plaza is overflowing: It seems 72 percent of all taxis and black cars there on an average night are double-parked. Block-association veterans then joined nightlife impresarios like Lotus owner David Rabin to suggest ways to make things better. By summer, Schwartz will parlay the ideas (submit yours to greatergansevoort@verizon.net) into realistic targets. Then Hamilton and Morellet will convene more workshops to harmonize residents, merchants, and bureaucracies. Seems impossible? Maybe not. During the workshop, Hamilton flagged down a DOT liaison to thank her agency’s “cobblestone task force” for upgrading the quaint corner of 13th and Washington. “We did?” the rep responded. Amazing the things you learn when people work together. —Alec Appelbaum