When? March? Nah. No one remembers March.

By admin | Published: August 3, 2005

What should cause for rejoicing across the city has instead produced a bit of badly crafted snark from the Times. After years of fighting, Rep. Jerry Nadler finagled $100 million for design and engineering fees to build the long discussed (back to 1893 — and you thought the Second Avenue subway plan was getting long in the tooth) freight tunnel for New York Harbor.

Aside from eliminating a great deal of truck traffic from Manhattan streets, adding construction jobs for five years, increasing employment in Brooklyn and distracting infrastructure junkies like me, the tunnel might also shore up a key part of our remaining industrial base. How’s that?

The short version (like I can do that) is this (most of this is pulled from this Daily News article): New York used to be the leading port on the East Coast, but now competes on pretty equal footing with the “Hampton Roads” area. Maersk, the European shipping behemoth, currently requires 40 feet of draft (the water depth required for the shipping channel and port area), but is moving rapidly towards 45 or 50 feet, to accommodate the next generation of container ships.

There is also the potential of an industry wide move of a hub-and-spoke model of distribution, which would mean that Maersk would want to have only one major port of call. Hampton Roads (via Newport News) has a slight edge already, drafting 45 feet, and also having more expansion opportunities on land. The Port of Newark just hit the 45 foot mark, and is spending over a billion dollars to go down another five.

Dredging is a nasty business. The sea bed in the harbor area is filled with two-plus centuries of muck of all kinds, including PCB runoff from the Hudson, more pedestrian offal, and, oh yeah, lots of bedrock. Every inch they take out of the Kill Van Kull channel (which already is only slightly harder to get in than Nobu) is solid rock topped with a dressing of carcinogens.

Additionally — and it may be hard to believe this — most of the Port of Newark area is wetlands, and most every bit of land not developed is protected. The Ports (Elizabeth & Newark) are operating at near capacity, and even if they get the channel depth Maersk demands, they couldn’t do much to handle additional traffic or storage.

So there wouldn’t be a simple alternative now, would there? Well, there is the Port of Brooklyn, which drafts from 65 feet at Red Hook down to 150 feet around 60th Street. Ships coming in wouldn’t have to traverse the Kill Van Kull, and last I looked, the light manufacturing base of much of Queens and Brooklyn was belly up, meaning there’s a big pool of reserve experienced labor and cheap warehouse space available.

Given all this, why did the Port Authority turn its nose up at the money? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that the PANYNJ is often more sympathetic to NJ than NY development, even though its members are split equally. One likely cause of this is weak leadership in the New York governor’s office, and the fact that the New Jersey reps are keener on protecting their interests, since the key properties impact Jersey disproportionately. Pouring money into rail connections and the Port of Newark delivers jobs directly to some Jersey residents, and provides the rest an easier ride to their jobs in Manhattan.

Over here, we get Curious George touting his ‘one-seat’ ride to Kennedy. How sad is that? Can that man even read? What, are you going to do, pick up your seat from the LIRR train that takes you to Jamaica and carry it to the Air Train connecting to Kennedy?

So why does the Times do such a poor job of laying these issues out? I can’t properly imagine the answer to that, aside from sheer incompetence, laziness, or a continued pressure to kowtow to every pet Bloomberg project to further the interests of their business partner, Bruce Ratner. Because their take on all this is sort of a “Huh, huh, look at Nadler. He went and got all this money for the Port Authority and they don’t even want it. Huh, huh.” They do a fine job of outlining the political issues regarding the potential barriers to using this money, but they take a sideswipe jab at the funding process, implying that Nadler was simply landing some pork, and completely ignore any regional analysis that might situate the odd reaction of the PANYNJ as unfairly biased.

They also blithely proclaim that there are ‘opponents’ (that’s plural) swarming. To prove the futility of Nadler’s pipe dream, we get this bit of soundbite pap — “We’re going to make central Queens the truck capital of North America if this occurs.” — courtesy “Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University”. That’s a clever bit of insight dumbed down for the people by the of high-falutin’ perfesser, right? Well it turns out the Times doesn’t always call Professor Moss by his upscale monkier. As recently as last August, he was called an “informal adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg”. That same Mayor who did an about face and stopped supporting the plan, a decision that — wait for it — the Times denouced in an editorial on March 13.

But that was sooo long ago. March. And they might not have heard of Google at the Times. Or even read the Move NY & NJ site in detail. Just link to it and not read the home page. That’s a good strategy. And consistent with the practice of seeming to form editorial opinion at random. Next week, the Times comes out in favor of reviving Westway!

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Pay to Pander.

By admin | Published: August 1, 2005

Last week, the Democratic-dominated City Council demonstrated why the party has such little credibility as an ideologically consistent, or even rational, body, and instead managed to recall only tired antics of someone like Speaker Peter Vallone, who ran the show for years before discovering that such efforts yield zero name recognition in the quest for mayorship.

Young Gifford Miller decided he needed some good press after he flubbed by 4,200% the cost of franking — the freebie mailings politicians get to keep you informed — so he engineered a vote to roll back a Bloomberg decision in 2002 to require parking meters be active seven days a week.

The patent ridiculousness of this fight centers around the glib catchphrase ‘pay to pray’ because apparently every church in the five boroughs is awash in metered spots (my recollection is most of them are fronted by no parking zones), and the new rules severely attenuated one’s ability to worship (provided they were the Christian sort) and drive in the same day. Or people couldn’t drive to church. Or it is the Lord’s Day. I can’t quite figure it out, but the upshot is some essential entitlement was ripped from hands New Yorkers, and Miller, lacking any other issues of note where he can distinguish himself from the mayor (apparently all the good ones like a useless subway searching regulations, or possible malfeasance on the part of the DA and NYPD during the Republican National Convention weren�t as sexy as� parking), rode to the rescue.

Unfortunately, such a campaign runs counter to any good traffic calming or air quality management plans. Only in the outer reaches of the minds of folk like Rush Limbaugh will you find a person who tries to refute the overwhelming evidence that when the costs of driving and storing a car are below the market value of land in a central city, personal car use and the average numbers of riders decrease, leading to increased congestion, longer commute times and increased pollution, all of it subsidized by tax payers. We are paying to help people drive into the city to make our day smoggier and more trying. And the Giff thinks this is going to help separate him from the bland pack of Democratic nominees. It certainly would, if suffrage was granted to New Jersey and Nassau. Given that he just spent $1.6 million mailing postcards, the $7 million this is costing might seem downright cheap.

There’s no hoping that people will be self-policing, or show restraint. Taxes are not simply revenue generating mechanisms, but incentives or disincentives to behave in a particular way. Smoking and drinking are very expensive; owning a home is subsidized, relative to renting. The city has had moments of disincenting car owners (garage-only structures are prohibited south of 96th Street), but by and large stands pretty by pretty meekly while the city is overrun with private cars. I know households that keep more than one car in the city. I have a car — I’d say over half the people I know do. Why? It’s cheap. I have to move it three times a week at most, and it usually takes about two minutes of my time before I leave the house in the morning (how’s that? I’m not telling you. Like any good, self-interested New Yorker, I’m not revealing where my cushy parking arrangement is). If the city made it any more expensive, I would have to reconsider the value of owning a car versus the alternates, of which we have many.

In the meantime, London — the largest city to institute congestion pricing — is looking to increase its daily fee by 50% (at current exchange rates, to about $20 to enter the congestion zone). Everyone predicted voters would push Ken Livingstone (who doesn’t drive and says openly he wants to ban cars) out the door, which hasn’t happened, alone with many other dire predictions of falling property values, and oh, other bad stuff would happen.

There’s not much excuse for not highly regulating cars in cities. Given our twisted governmental structure, most significant decisions (and even ones as minor as lowering the speed limit on a single street) must be approved by the state DOT, so we can only get so aggressive about innovation. And if this is the Giff’s idea of innovation, we can look forward to a slow-moving, crowded and angry future.

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Can you say Schadenfreude? I can barely spell it.

By admin | Published: July 26, 2005

Early last week, the state announced that Vornado and the Related Companies properties had been awarded the right to redevelop the Farley building, bringing the vision of late Senator Moynihan one step closer to reality. And the announcement also introduced the intriguing fact that after years of presenting the gleaming Quonset hut from SOM as fait accompli, it turns out very little was — and really, still is — settled about the project. Aside from New Jersey Transit chomping at the bit for additional platform space, the project seems as uncertain as ever. And it became readily apparent that the role of David Childs was perhaps the only thing that wasn’t, the twist in this case being that Childs, uber-fixer and institutional stalwart, had been usurped by the neophytes — in this market — HOK. Everyone’s pointed out how ironic, gratifying and whatnot such a development is, so I’ll pass over more gratuitous grave dancing.

But oddly, even though the story of the new station is as rich as the personal melodrama of its progenitors, it apparently was necessary to root out some additional controversy. Though most of it has centered on the superficial issue in the form another change that, hey, slickly corporate glass structures can look a lot alike, the Gutter has proffered some possible insight that, while not addressing the issues of primacy in design concept, nonetheless exposes the machinations that might transpire in the course of landing such big fish.

The renderings released look like, well, most anytime someone puts a glass roof over a previously open court, but some have claimed that HOK was cribbing from Foster project previously executed. There is some merit here, but no more than arguing that the concept is comes from the retro-historicist arm of the HOK juggernaut (the other half is Blade Runner-chic) and is a perhaps only an attempt to create a thin simulacrum of the old Penn Station (and, to be circular, maybe the Foster building was a riff on the same — or, while we are at it, the Crystal Palace or a Nervi structure?). So we’ll put aside for a moment both the juvenile glee at watching the previously impenetrable armor of David Childs take a solid hit, and the distraction of the mostly non-issue of the whether or not the glass roof idea is original enough and look at what the new vision might imply.

Vision is overstating things a bit, if only because, once again — insert boilerplate about how such large projects get discussed with far too little in the way of information, and the expanse of the Internet doesn’t encourage the government, press, or firms involved to present more comprehensive samples. Of course, the terrifying part is that this may be the full scope of what is available. Years ago, I toiled — well, more that I coasted along like an opportunistic barnacle — for a large firm that did ‘entertainment architecture’ (though I suspect they bristle at that designation now), and most of their larger concepts were presented as a single rendering, with no intervening schematic work, simple a furious day of hand sketching before passing of the result to a highly proficient watercolorist.

The treatment provided thus far only partially explicates the major programmatic shift. In the SOM scheme, the entry hall was further west, almost mid-block, while the courtyard closer to eight avenue featured a rather pedestrian inset grided skylight. Major entrances would have come to from the north and south of the insertion (dubbed my many as the ‘potato chip’).

The HOK version relocates the entrances to the perimeter of the Eighth Avenue side of the Farley building, likely utilizing the existing elements, and results in a form that is pretty familial to Grand Central. The courtyard is less corporate TW Center sleek, and more blatantly historicist, the gentle rolling roof as much a riff on the Foster plan as a much more dramatic barrel vaults that were a signature of late, lamented Penn Station. The rest of the interior looks to be Camden Yards-chic, but, if detailed well, is no worse, or better, than fussy over-detailing that SOM typically produces. HOK certainly has plenty of experience programming large and complex spaces.

The loss of the entry hall is lamentable because it is one of the better efforts of Childs’ career of late, and it did introduce to the program a more complex resolution than the typical big event focus. Grand Central is so grand because it several interlocking spaces of proportional scale are evident, even if your path doesn’t directly engage them. The HOK scheme appears diminished in this way, but the ticket hall, which will always be the primary space, no matter how grand the entry was, and the rendering we see so far is an incremental improvement. And Childs’ gesture was a triumph of client management and program development, not form, and one that was even questionable for its impact on circulation. The mid-block entrance wasn’t on a major pathway, and pulled intermodal travelers yet another half block west (making it nearly a three block jaunt for PATH or IND passengers). In practical terms, most people would have utilized entrances nearer to Eighth Avenue. Utimately, the truncation of the plan was at the behest of budget and program concerns, and leaving a compromised program in the hands of Childs, well, we’ve seen what that results in as of late.

The issue that is not represented in the renderings, but very much in the air, is how much futile security overreactions will compromise planning. We have seen what the ham-fisted efforts of the TSA have wrought on both the visitor experience and circulation of airport terminals. The civic experience of train travel, with its superior benefits of inner city access, and the prominent cultural role of their attendant termini, is still an unfettered signifier one of the most liberating advantages of being a city dweller. Air travel has been a frustrating, cramped and generally dehumanizing experience since well before 9/11. To degrade our rail system similarly would be an event far more sad than the loss of the great Penn Station. Hopefully the planner and agencies wringing their hands over the best way to look, rather than be, prepared, will see the wisdom of a freedom of movement that isn’t simply symbolic, but essential to who we are.

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A hundred million here, a hundred million there. Pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

By admin | Published: July 25, 2005

The Times continued their consistent whitewash of Forest City Ratner’s attempt to gain control of development rights of Vanderbilt Yards in Brooklyn. Like the tortured saga on the West Side (Hudson Yards), once again it’s hard to parse out the relative merits and costs of two competing bids — one a megalithic mixed use complex with a sports arena as the showpiece, and the other a last-minute submission that promises more cash up front and seems to cater more directly to the interests of the local residents ardently opposing the other bid, which seemed to arise from closed door meetings that we supposedly left behind. Kind has a funny ring, doesn’t it? Not to mention a slipshod approach to bid management from the avatar of good money management, the MTA, and an appraisal that leaks out almost the same day as the pending vote that reveals that both bids, in strict dollars, are substantially less than the internal valuation as determined by the MTA.

Whitewash? How? I’m quoting a bit out of context, but with roughly equal (being very charitable to the Times) reporting skill and access (even though the MTA ‘released’ details of the two bids, there is nothing on the MTA site, aside from the RFP document), see if you can spot reportorial slant in either of the two following snippets (from the Observer and Times, respectively):

A study by the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development estimates that the true cost of Forest City’s plan—including tax credits that the city and state offered under an exclusive agreement signed in March—might exceed $1 billion.

But Extell’s bid requires a subsidy of up to $150 million from the city and the state for infrastructure. The closing will not take place until after the company obtains the needed public approvals, a process that could take a year or longer.

That’s the Times trying real hard to not calculate apples to apples. See, the Ratner deal seeks several subsidies, including at least $100 million from the city and state, and they have a pre-existing agreement for double that, in addition to a sales tax exemption on materials, but the Times is trying to spin the Extell bid as somehow a government handout. This is likely because Ratner is their good buddy (who helped finagle a rather cushy PILOT deal from the city), and as a result, like to focus on immediate costs — which in this case, is not entirely clear that the Ratner bid even wins on — rather than total public cost/benefit. Not accounted anywhere is potential litigation costs (likely borne by Ratner, but which may pull in the city if the eminent domain disputes drag on, or if any leverage is found regarding the EIS), and the Times conveniently leaves off any projections about when Ratner is ready to start — if there are similar delays to his bid would make the sniping of ‘year long delay’ perhaps irrelevant.

Topping it off is the pesky detail that the city recently passed a law that would force the MTA (those folks who were out writing exclusive deals as noted above, well before someone asked if perhaps competitive bidding in the hottest real estate market in a generation might not produce more value for the city) to accept the highest bid. As the law is not effective until the end of the year, the MTA is in an uncomfortable position of pretty much flaunting their disregard of City Council — to say nothing of common sense — over a technical detail.

Since this pending law won’t change how the voting happens — next week, by some accounts — the failure to present a reasonably equivalent accounting of the offers is only slipshod journalism, but outright deception. The Real Estate makes the best go of it, noting that the press release Ratner releases touts a total value of $329 million, which includes the cost of the yard platform, the development cash, and long-term sales tax benefits. It’s not clear if the up to $200 million in state and city subsidies are netted against this number (meaning it could be as little as $129 million in total value, and a goodly portion of that would be sales tax that users, not Ratner, would contribute). Ratner’s organization is claiming they will only be taking half of what was previously promised, whereas Extell is taking $150 million from their bid. The sales tax exemption on materials is not included, but with 7.5 million square feet being constructed, allowing $80/sf for materials (I’m just making that number up), that’s an additional $50 million in direct subsidy.

The Extell bid presents more immediate cash, but the yard costs are not clearly delineated in the write-ups I’ve found, meaning that the $150 million could cover it, or they would be kicking in for those costs. If the former is the case, it’s basically a zero dollar investment on the part of Extell. Depending on how Forest City is massaging the numbers, their net offer may be less than zero. None of this gets the MTA the $214 million the yards, the number recommended by the appraiser’s report. It might be easier to simply stick a price tag on Atlantic Avenue and see if anyone steps up (for all their bluster, the Jets certainly didn’t, missing a deadline last week to submit a $50 million deposit required to keep their bid valid). In the meantime, don’t count on the Times to provide a clear assessment of costs to the city.

UPDATE: The Real Estate does the numbers in very helpful point-by-point format. In the end, it is still hard to come to a one-to-one conclusion, but we’re getting closer to at least seeing what the comparative value is.

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“The issue is what the public will accept.”

By admin | Published: July 24, 2005

These are the words of police commissioner Ray Kelly, arguing for the necessity of bag searches on the New York City subway, a practice, that, by the end of the weekend will be extended to most major transit systems in the region, although no plan has been proffered to address securing the largest bus fleet in the world — not an inconsiderable gap, considering that the combined ridership of the systems in question approaches 10 million daily.

The decision to execute on the searching plan, which came two hours after a failed second attack in London (and just before a far more deadly effort in Egypt), was “over a year and a half in the making”. It’s interesting to see the decision framed in such terms, considering that just two weeks ago, we were presented with the far more distressing news that $600 million allocated to the MTA had gone nearly unspent (aside from the proverbial consultants). It seems implausible that the money that lingered unspent while the MTA went its merry way, consumed by the usual retinue of graft and accusations of corruption inhibiting any clear planning while somewhere in a corner there was lengthy and introspective process about this new strategy.

It’s not that I believe the police are executing some master plan to restrict freedom. It looks mostly like more bumbling and irrational fear. Lacking the usual dynamics of control and machismo that are the hallmark of big city policing and faced with a supposed enemy of more cunning and ability than our protectors, they respond as one would expect: by more bullying of the innocent and mostly harmless.

The failure of this attitude was evidenced in nearly simultaneous tragedy of the Metropolitan Police in London gunning down what appears to be a hapless innocent who was only trying to run and catch a train. It had all the hallmarks of bluster and force, with no insight, an unfortunate recipe that is present in most unnecessary deadly force incidents: a man inadvertently throws football on a cruiser and ends up dead; a man reaches for his wallet and his shot 41 times; another is angry after being accosted by an undercover officer who is trying to elicit a drug deal and is shot. Each case shows a striking degree of indelicacy and lack of forethought on the part of the police. The London case is especially poignant and telling, as it comes amidst an argument about arming officers. The willingness to use deadly force on ‘suspected bombers’ was shown to be exceptionally broad: the man shot (five times, mostly in head, while he was prone) had none of the characteristics of the previous attacks. He was wearing a winter coat. If wearing unseasonable clothing makes for an itchy trigger finger in London, I fear for the inevitable tragedies arising from confrontations here.

And if you do not believe that the police are unable to accurately assess risk, note that of the over 1,000 arrests made at the RNC, an event that was purportedly filled with potential leftwing terrorists, almost all the cases have been dismissed without trial, there is more than a little evidence of perjury on the on part of the police, possible collusion with the district attorney’s office, and the wrongful arrest civil suits are seeking nearly a billion dollars in combined damages.

How to oppose this wrongheaded policy? Well, you can walk in the sweltering heat. I wouldn’t recommend challenging the legality of the order, since we have seen that it takes only one day for a tragic overreaction to occur. So I am recommending that most tiresome of civil action: tee shirts. Messing with a number ideas, I settled on one, which I think carries the appropriate amount of challenge with both rather wry and bleak humor, along with a more metaphoric message, which unfortunately is already outdated. The inevitability of both real attacks and mistaken identity have occurred, and I hope we are not counting down against another, but with ten million harried and hurried commuters standing in sweltering lines every day, I don’t see how it can be avoided. Some may argue that a slight imposition — or even the extreme tragedy of this past week — is a valid trade-off, but such a calculus is precisely what the attacks in London are intended to induce, and anyone who thinks they can speak with bluster and pragmatism about such a trade would likely cower were they asked to trade their father, brother, or son in such a senseless way.

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Is it safe?

By admin | Published: July 12, 2005

There’s no doubt that this question is at the forefront of in many minds over the past week, even as the answer is: no less, but no more, than it was the week before. The confluence of disaster film narratives and pervasive information and surveillance results in an ability — or the presumption — of instant feedback, and ever more granular analysis. We keep hearing about the 2,000 cameras that may result in data on the bombers in London last week. It may, but that data will have only a small causal effect on increased safety down the road.

It is rarely possible to condense the experience of terror or tragedy into a comestible event that can both be fully rationalized so that each step and misstep is logical and sensible and integrates itself into whatever hazy notion of self and reality we carry. And the repetition and myopic gaze of infotainment further occludes what is already a difficult process, seeking pat answers or insight that can be delivered in a news crawl under the latest update on Lindsay Lohan.

All of this makes it more difficult to draw conclusions about the seemingly random pieces of information that are identified and projected for the shock value or immediacy. Rarely are they entered into a wider analysis that might drive our understanding of what has happened, should happen, or could happen, leaving us feeling helpless and unable to contest the steps taken for ‘safety.’

So some disparate reports that have been brought to light this week, because they seem relevant in the context of the latest tragedy -– as well as being oddly congruent in some instances — but may well have been relevant well before, or perhaps are not at all. It is hard to say, because we have no framework for discussion or reference.

The most tangible was the recent failure of the FDNY to follow established command and control procedures regarding a pipe bomb found during a routine trash fire. I’m not an expert on the procedures, and have only been following in a cursory way the turf wars between the FDNY and NYPD, but this certainly undermines the FDNY’s complaint that they should be considered first responder to any major emergency (as it stands, I believe the NYPD has overall authority).

It would be good tabloid fodder regardless of the timing (the bomb squad arrived to the sight of a pipe bomb resting on a radiator –- which, it being July, was probably not heated), but this week it makes our emergency services look under-prepared.

But are things any worse than they were? One of the most quiet facts of 9/11 is that these very same command and control issues likely resulted in more firefighter deaths than would have occurred had a unified chain of command been established. But it’s a hard thing to bring up because it seems to besmirch the effort and sacrifice of those who died. But even as I thought of many of my firefighting neighbors as jerks before 9/11 (and I’ll admit more than once since), I have never questioned their commitment to their job. No one sees a rational calculus that results in thinking that if half the number had died they would have been half as brave.

The other major contributing cause to the communication breakdown both between agencies and among firefighters were radios with inadequate signal strength to reach those in the towers, a situation that still has not been fully resolved. And one of the pieces of information that came to light this past weekend was the failure of the MTA to allocate the $600 million they have been granted to increase security. One of their projects –- abandoned due to the assumption of technical complexity too great to overcome -– was the unification of frequencies for the LIRR and Metro-North. At a cost of $120 million, I have two questions: one, why is this so hard, and two, is this necessary? Whereas I can see a scenario in which the police and fire department should be in close communication, I have to wonder about unifying geographically disparate rail systems, or at least prioritizing this spending. Even as this ‘failure’ is underscored in a recent article, the same article doesn’t detail if there similar gaps in communication going unaddressed, such as those between the FDNY and NYPD (though the current imbroglio would not likely have been helped by radios).

So is it safe? Safer than 9/11? How could we know — would spending the $600 million have made us safer? To our great fortune (or perhaps, prudent planning), there haven’t been follow-up attacks. So by that very thin measure, we are. But what if we are less safe, even though there hasn’t been an attack? Now what should be doing?

The ‘problem’ is the lack of a coherent narrative, and the relentless effort of attention focused news outlets trying to bend every disparate snippet into a ill fitting role. Everyone wants a neatly packaged enemy with a one-dimensional motivation, so that we can dispatch some real-life version of Bruce Willis to attend to the evil doer with the just right combination of swagger and moral certainty, all of it ideally settled by the next commercial break. But the real world isn’t that neat, and terrorism will continue to exploit those areas least protected or considered. There will always be something. One expert pointed out that after dealing with the IRA for over a decade and installing cameras at a rate of up to 20 per resident in some districts, the attacks in London may well have been executed exactly as planned. It is far more likely that terror attacks fail due to any number of pedestrian causes — cold feet, bad timing, and slipshod planning — than the proverbial action hero swooping in to stop the ticking bomb.

So is it safe? Today, it was. Safe from terrorists, at least. Not so from the other myriad threats that we operate in both knowledge and willful ignorance of every day. Vigilance may be in order, but it’s not as simple — or offensive — as looking for dark-skinned men with packages on the subway. It is suspicion of those who preach the loudest while doing the least and understanding that the vested interest of most of our news sources is not necessarily our safety, but their success. Certainly they might not trade the former for the latter, but nor do they stop to properly knit together all the facts as the competition blares half-correct speculation that draws attention in the short-term. We are owed more careful consideration from our press, and from our leaders. Determinng the time to stand firm and demand it in terms so strident that it is open dissent is a challenge, and perhaps an impossibly tragedy yet pending. But for now, we are lucky, and safe.

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“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

By admin | Published: July 7, 2005

Images from the Flickr pool. The Guardian news blog (they have a forum for posting updates to family, but access is spotty). The BBC was reporting serious server load, but is currently up (9:00AM EST).

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Is that the Times editorial independence in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

By admin | Published: July 7, 2005

Y’all remember the scene in Willy Wonka when Gene Wilder, facing yet another selfish and petulant child doing something impermissible, says in a monotone “No. Please. Stop,” clearly uninterested in preventing another faux tragedy, or simply resigning himself to its inevitability?

That’s how I felt when coming upon the Times write-up of the Atlantic Rail Yards scheme by Ghery that some have the temerity to call development, though such an appellation for the dystopian vision presented actually manages to do a disservice to developers, something I didn’t think theoretically possible. Now I really understand why the Congress for New Urbanism chose to honor Frank Ghery. What is it about rail yards that inspires such ungainly and ill considered schemes? Too much space, too much time to oneself? We all suspect that to be an architect is primarily an onanistic endeavor, but I don’t know that we also thought that it was would be so obsessive and repetitive.

Ouroussoff derides Battery Park City as being uninspired, bureaucratic drivel, and, continuing a theme started last week, takes more potshots at Jane Jacobs (because she’s and her ilk have done so much ruin our streetscapes, with theri hammerlock on zoning and development decisions). But somehow shiny, sloppy glass baubles will prevent this from being the BPC on the BQE? Perhaps I just don’t understand the sublime well enough.

It’s notable that Ourousoff conveniently forgets the one consistent criticism that holds after a half century of ‘instant city’ developments — that homogeneity is the most dangerous threat to the urban experience. There cannot be found a single example in the country where ceding so much authority to one designer and developer has resulted in a compelling and attractive urban space. You have to remember, Ratner doesn’t give a shit about the life of the city. This is evident about 7.8 million times, in each square foot of the MetroTech complex, which did its damndest to turn Brooklyn into Tysons Corner. Somehow, though, a ‘conversion’ has taken place, this time it’s going to be all better. You know, it used to be that when one fucked up on a scale of that magnitude, the next effort would be expected to be a little more, um, modest.

But then, Ratner has friends in the right places. Namely, in his soon to be tower on Eighth Avenue, conveniently known as the Times Tower. If you were wondering if perhaps this cozy relationship has occluded the objective vision of the Times, well just take a look at the coverage of the surprise bid submitted on the last day by competing developer Extell Development. The first sign of this comes early, when a comparison is made to the Cablevision bid to usurp the Jets stadium. A valid comparison, if you erase from your mind that Extell is actually active in residential development, and that the creation of the plan was in conjunction with residents (and opponents to the Ratner plan), things the Dolan’s really have little interest in.

And then there’s the ‘oh aren’t they cute’ description of the designers: Certra/Ruddy, described as “a husband-wife architectural team who live in Brooklyn” which makes them sound a little bit like the have a drafting table in the kitchen. I’m not going to try and sell you that they are a firm of great quality, but they do have credible experience in designing residential projects in the city (including one that will be in easy view from Ouroussoff’s new offices). Lastly, the Times notes that they were given a little preview, but we don’t get a glossy multimedia show (which is hardly what the Ghery presentation is, but that’s what they call it). We don’t even get a single image. Given the potential for conflict, you would think they would bother pointing out that they weren’t able to get an image for publication, because one might think they were trying to downplay the proposal for their buddy Ratner.

So, for how long should the Times apply the disclaimer that Ratner is a development partner? That’s an interesting question, and perhaps it would take someone with more analytic skills to determine the value of his investment to the Times and the reciprocal benefit of good press. Half of the Times Tower is being developed on spec. meaning no major tenants were identified when it was initiated. Given the overall cost, this is not an inconsiderable effort (it is the largest privately funded spec development in the city, as the WTC development was funded by insurance proceeds). The ownership of the building is split, so the Times bore no risk on the spec half (and Ratner had not promise of revenue), but was guaranteed funding for their shiny Renzo Piano design. It seems like a ‘can’t-miss’ prospect. Though, given the whitewash he gets, I’m not so sure Ratner got the short end of the deal.

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Wednesday Lore: Does this bus stop at 82nd Street?

By admin | Published: July 6, 2005

There was a moment when the ‘Chinatown Bus’ had it’s hipster glory. Like most elements of hipster culture, the frisson of receiving an unearned entitlement — cheap transport — intermingled with ironic slumming made for a perfect storm of on-a-whim trips to places as far flung as Boston and Baltimore. Until, of course, everyone soon realized that there was a reason everyone just visited these places (and barely that), and that cheap, long distance bus transit was as unappealing as it was in the days of Kerouacian yore without even for accounting the increase in danger as a result of lax regulation.

This is well in-line with the history of bus transport, which, even as does create mobility for the least fortunate, is not on par with the Delta Shuttle. Given the lack of direct interstate route sales of any quantity, or the absurd route scheduling of Greyhound, it takes too long to get anywhere to make a getaway a frivolous exercise.

The trip to my hometown, only 420 miles west, is an eleven-hour journey, on a good night. By traveling any additional 70 miles west-ish, this can be reduced via a red-eye express from Cleveland that clocks in nine (with the added bonus of a single stop at some godforsaken truck stop in central Pennsylvania that sells only two kinds of periodicals: porn and gun magazines, side-by-side, with a complete lack of irony). I’ve made the trip only a few times: the first I was surrounded by itinerant prostitutes making the trip home to West Virginia (one brought their twelve year old daughter in what I can only hope wasn’t a work trip); the next, a man acting very oddly and carrying only a small cardboard box, who finally blurted out to his seat mate he was looking for a strip club, as he had literally just gotten on the bus from his release in prison in, wait for it, West Virginia.

It’s a shame, because the bus can be a democratizing transit option. But, like most models we idealize from Europe or some parts of Asia, the scale and relative lack of density of our country relative to, say, Denmark, create challenges that are rarely overcome by dissolute planners and car obsessed localities — a failing that can be fatal. And so we end up with a grey market of often essential options, but ones never seeming so palatable or glamorous.

I used to live on west, west 57th Street (which was odd because it is a recognized locale for relatives who have no concept of what Hell’s Kitchen is like), and nighttime travel used to take me through Columbus Circle, either for the train or for the park. I know it seems hard to believe, but Columbus Circle was mostly an abandoned, concrete plaza. Not quite so bad to merit a really negative adjective, but yet another one of those residual semi-public spaces that were at the tail-end of bad planning and the fiscal tribulations of the seventies. I know Bob Stern lives in some soft-focus recollection about its significance, but what I recall is the unattractive hulk of the Coliseum, which seemed to feature craft fairs and flea markets inside and out, a wide apron of bland sidewalk, and the even more dismal 2 Columbus Circle.

But, at night, late, it was oddly alive. I remember seeing, often, four or five buses lined up on the edge, with long lines of people waiting to board. I know that those who rely on buses for regional transit often hold to very inconvenient schedules, but seeing what looked like entire families boarding buses around midnight was baffling.

The scene was not unlike the proverbial departure for camp, though more restrained, what I assumed to be a result of the hour, and large number of kids. The riders seemed to be mostly not white, which is not unusual given the congruence between economic status and race, but more so disproportionately women. This I chalked up to the other sad convention of woman-as-caregiver. It seemed to be not exactly pleasant, but as good as getting on a bus at midnight could get, with all the logistical frustrations that would come with bringing a couple small kids to what was more or less a parking lot and standing around for an hour waiting to board.

I wondered about the location. It made sense physically, since the buses and lines of passengers needed space, and not much traffic was in the area at that time. It looked to be one of those vaguely unregulated events that had gone on for so long that everyone assumed that somewhere it was approved, but really it was the essence of any almost-legal bus service — necessary for marginal populations, so the city turns a blind eye, failing to provide what might be expected as a matter of civic responsibility.

Long after I left, and stopped seeing this ritual, and probably even after the construction of the glory that is the Time Warner Center, I discovered — incidentally, through an article in the Voice — the purpose: the buses were overnight transit to upstate prisons, in places like Albion, Dannemora, and Bare Hill. With visiting hours that start in the morning, the buses make round trip runs that deposit passengers just as they begin, and return immediately after. The steady increase in prison population, even without the deleterious effect of the Rockefeller Laws, has meant that this is a strong cash flow business, and this is a city where an opportunity is not passed on.

Turns out among those who work regularly in this community these services are well known (and why wouldn’t they be? So much so, even a film was made.). A friend who works with the Correctional Association told me what they were before the story was half done. And, like any seeming esoteric event, makes its way in the City section of the Times.

I wondered what happened to the Columbus Circle pickup. Even as it occurred well after hours, I really doubted that the corporate masters of TW would consent (even though, for a while there, it looked like the AOL merger might have necessitated some spouses getting familiar with the option). A review of the most recent schedule I could find indicates the pickup has moved a block south. I wonder if anyone walking out of Masa or Per Se for a postprandial stroll sees it now and wonders like I do. I doubt it. Given the entrance to the food court is on 60th Street, I’m sure their car service spirits them away before they have to think about how many of their neighbors are spending the evening.

Previous Lore:
060105: Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances.
052505: Neither city, nor subway, but Empire.
050405: Like Usual?
042705: The best thing ever.

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Live Blogging the Olympics Announcement: Yawn.

By admin | Published: July 6, 2005

I guess we don’t have to worry about pretending that we like visitors anymore, even if we had seven years to prepare. This was not reported from Rockefeller Center, and didn’t require any fancy remote technology. I’m not that diligent.

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