This is absolutely stunning. I especially like that they haven’t updated projects under construction, so I can fly around town in a simpler time, before the Sculpture for Living(tm) besmirched our fair town.
Criticism’s a beach.
I hate it when facts go and ruin a perfectly good screed. But being self-righteous means always finding new ways to gripe. This started out as a perfectly fine complaint about Nicolai Ouroussoff and practice of critics — online at least — who talk and talk about things you can’t see, but they can. I’m certainly guilty of that to a small degree (though I sometimes have a little help alleviating this), but I re-report a lot, meaning that I’m already presenting the most robust amount of information to be had, and I also get the feeling that my calls wouldn’t get returned as fast as the Times.
My point being that in this day of advanced presentation technology and cheap bandwidth we should be able to reasonably expect fuller access to the renderings referred to in texts, and gosh, if possible, see a plan once in a while. Today, while reading Nicolai Ouroussoff’s roundup of the East River waterfront redevelopment, it appeared he made several glaring errors. Given the viewpoints of some of the renderings shown — particularly this one — it looked as if there were something odd about the plans, namely that they were recommending rehabilitation of a park space that is already undergoing renovation (in the linked image it appears to be looking south from the Williamsburg Bridge, with the beach right about the current location of the amphitheater). I was all happy to point this out, since it was the only thing shown that really gave a sense of what was be proposed. I did do some cursory research to try and find source material, but came up only with a few. In simply trying to verify the name of the erroneous image (it would be Pier 42), I ended up at the City Planning site which features, would you believe it, the entire proposal. Now, I have a problem with this. I know big media corporations have complex linking policies. Sometimes they even probably make sense to lawyers or marketing folk. But just yesterday having read a detailed history of Suck which had some fascinating insights into how the use of links shaped their editorial voice, I find it a little frustrating that the Times won’t link to a government site hosting a more robust version of the data on which they present commentary. Or, worse, that they don’t know about it. So, yeah, I no longer have any cutting insight, since the image I referenced above is about 200 yards south (Ouroussoff could have cleared up all my confusion by mentioning it at all in his piece), where the removal of the storage shed on Pier 42 would enable the beach shown. But I do I have a point regarding linking. And, oh yeah, a beach? Look, I lived on a beach, not for real long, and as an adult, perhaps too far removed from the days when someone else worried about how my shoes would get washed and well after I learned that no matter how sexy the idea of going to the beach was to romantic prospects it presents logistical, um, irritation, and as a result, the beach doesn’t do it for me much (but that SHoP is trying to do for me does it for me a little). Considering how tiny the plot is, and the lack of beach-like accoutrement (outdoor showers, cabanas, etc.) makes me long for the days when building a park was simply a big swath of grass. The new East River Park doesn’t have a single large area of green that isn’t given over to some type of organized recreation. Can’t we have just a little lawn? I’m not saying that whole plan is a bad idea. The hard working folks over at SHoP have been pitching various ideas, in conjunction with Richard Rogers and Ken Smith, for the past year — and they don’t even have a contract (so Ouroussoff tell us, doing a little pimpin’ for the boys)! The range has been admirable: from the utopian flaky (put the whole of the FDR underground) to luxury condo hell (with towers spouting above the now left-in-place freeway), settling comfortably on pragmatic, community board-friendly parklets. It’s a little heavy on ‘events’ though perhaps this is an effect of a presentation. Again, there seems to be a hesitancy to celebrate the insertion of a long, uninterrupted green space, though that seemed to work just fine on the Hudson side. It may well be that this isn’t as possible, given the condition of the FDR looming overhead, but what ever continuity is possible will help. The long urban path provides a sense of respite because it frees us from the usual annoyances and intrusion, be it traffic, visual distraction, or simply a hard-to-trace route. Overall, it’s a nice plan, since it isn’t asking for anyone to wait around for the FDR to be buried or replaced by flying cars. This limitation implicitly acknowledges what I know to be true: the FDR is not that bad an intervention. Noise is far less in the elevated sections that surface level (certainly compared to West Street), and it could allow for easier access, particularly if we decided that a radical reconfiguring of South Street — a mostly unnecessary byway that could be severely constricted — was reasonable. Also, it provides a nice shady area to walk under while looking at one of the most arresting bridges in the world. The pavilion idea is fine, though it strikes me that Pier 17 is somewhat a big pavilion that looks a little underutilized these days, so the allocation of the new structures could perhaps be a little more creative than a new location for Lids. And, yeah, that skating rink looks a little ratty, even in its most ideal rendering. But see, that’s the beauty of hyperlinking: you can see for yourself. You don’t have to trust my hasty and strident opinion. If we could get the Times on board with this, think of the vibrant critical community we could create (and I could open comments, it’d be a syndicalist utopia).
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George Pataki, Curator: I know, the first show at the Freedom Center can be about censorship in the arts!
Is it possible to make a rational comment about this? Is it fair to force me to give up a Saturday morning to explain how absurd this is? That I need to point out that the specious politicking that purports to draw a connection between criticizing torture at Abu Ghraib is somehow to equivalent to dishonoring 9/11 victims is, ironically, exactly what those casting aspersions are decrying? I mean, did Karl Rove write the fucking playbook on this? Pataki got the latest edition ‘How to be a Republican Prick who Pisses All Over What it Means to Be American and Win Public Office’? How many times will some red state asshole get to come to town, bathe himself in the blood of dead New Yorkers and point fingers, claiming a lack of patriotism? Can’t we stop this? Oh, wait, we believe in freedom of speech, the Constitution, and thus Pataki’s right to be an unmitigated, incompetent, insensitive, useless coat holder. Enjoy it George. And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Dick.
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Come celebrate ‘I’m a Socialist for the Day’ Day.
It’s that semi-annual (or is it bi-annual?) time again. You know, when those people you know who never seem to have full-time jobs but own country homes — or maybe it’s the long suffering tenant who has been complaining about the quality of their kitchen since the Ford administration — take up in arms with their communist brethren and demand the maintenance of rent control.
[We all know that it’s rent stabilization, right? It is distinct from rent control, even though many conflate the two — rent control is one of those things that if you have, you know exactly what it means, and if you don’t, forget about it, because you will never get it. Rent stabilization was enacted in response to a declared housing crisis in 1969. Though various forms of rent control have been in place most of the century, it is this legislative moment that is the cornerstone of what we refer to colloquially as ‘rent control’.] Now, I’m all for rent control. I wish I had it. We all do. But I recognize that I want it because it would do two things: one, provide me with more protections as a tenant (which I do think is fair), and two, provide me with an excellent economic subsidy and incentive to grow my net worth (another admirable goal, but a pretty self-interested one). The problem is not the several highly articulate and dedicated groups who bang the drum of the impossibility of being a service or other low wage worker in this city and finding affordable housing. The problem is the people who wrap themselves in the flag of socialized housing solely to extend their egregiously skewed rent agreements when they do so for little else besides furthering their self-serving advantage. Look, it’s expensive to live here. But having the good fortune of moving here during a down year in residential markets is not always a highly rationalized economic decision that should be rewarded with terminally discounted rent. Many of the people living off the fat of that decision would have moved here anyway. And it’s not like many of them are doing anything besides living lives similar to the super-affluent for whom making rent is likewise a minor consideration: they spend time at movies and museums in the afternoon; they go to therapy a lot. They bitch incessantly about how the city is being ruined. Great work if you can get it — but this arbitrary endowment, like wealth, is not socialism. I make no secret of my belief that the value of New York centers exclusively on its extraordinary nexus of cultural, intellectual and, yes, economic production. I’ve carped about how the latter has skewed the delicate balance of these often competing interests by pushing the purveyors and serious supporters of the former to the margins. But pressure is also exerted from the bottom, where the usual ritual of moving to the city, finding a nasty but cheap apartment and suffering with it for ten or fifteen years is being depleted both by the nefarious efforts of Joe Bruno and the stultifying effects of the prior generations who have a deal that gets astoundingly more valuable each week. I know people with rent situations that are equivalent to six figure subsidies at this point. They aren’t going anywhere. And when they do, it will be at the tail end of a Herculean effort to disgorge them and then flip the apartment to a hedge fund manager. The issue now is what the concept of rent stabilization is supposed to provide. Is it socialized housing? Hardly. It applies to private property exclusively, does not provide subsidies for construction, does not deliver opportunities for ownership, and provides relatively little protection. It may seem that a rent stabilized lease is like tenure, but it is only the astounding greed of landlords, and the belief that a small dose of lobbying fees submitted to the Rent Stabilization Association is a better investment that renovations that would easily push any apartment into luxury decontrol territory. Socialized housing, by any reasonable definition, is a regional or national commitment to provide affordable housing regardless of income bracket or lifestyle, and one that by definition requires direct investment by government entities. Is it program that seeks to redress imbalances in income driven by the unique characteristics of our housing market (disproportionate numbers of high income earners within companies, and high income segments?)? Sort of. Luxury decontrol due to personal income came about only in the past ten years, and it’s a pretty cushy measure in any case ($250,000 a year). Is it some intrinsic right of middle class New York existence? Not at all. Though the various forms of rent control has enabled a pretty impressive run of generations of New Yorkers to live here when the market would otherwise exclude them, it has been inconstant enough, and unequally distributed, to merit status of entitlement. In any event, ask a smoker about the lack of permanence in any particular cultural touchstone. It’s not like that rent stabilization will go away wholesale anytime soon. The vacancy requirement is a red herring; there are over 15 million people in the metro region, and easily 10% of them would relocate to Manhattan and inner Brooklyn were the pricing reasonable and apartment available. We aren’t going to build a million new units any time soon. But the reason Bruno has slacked off on his chain a bit was the effectiveness of the vacancy decontrol provisions. The RSA will certainly continue to pursue it, since that is their job, but without any radical restructuring of the principles of rent stabilization, the image of hooting rent activists at meeting will go by the way of folkies lamenting the loss of the Bottom Line. What can be done to reinvigorate our notion of rent stabilization that won’t simply retreat into yet another diametric cleft between haves and haves not? There seem to be a couple, but none of them are likely to make the majority of either group happy: Means Testing. I won’t dwell on this, even as it is the most rational, because it smack most of true socialism. And like any progressive agenda, it would not simply be a process to write down rent for the poor, but possibly to place additional burden on those who can carry it. The limitations are determining means, and settling on the fairest break point. Even though most prudent economic models call for no more than 25% of gross income be allocated to housing, both renters and homeowners push to double that. An additional problem would be that landlords would try any means possible to cater to higher earners to maximize rent potential. But if enacted to some degree, it would weed out the most noxious beneficiaries of rent control, piling up second and third properties while still claiming that a loss of lease would make them homeless. New developer incentives. Mitchell-Lama was an amazing program when one considers the number of units brought to market, and their relative quality. 80/20 splits, or other vague transfer requirements have not resulted in substantial new construction. The $50 million they keep talking about downtown (but still not allocated or planned, after four years) as part of the WTC recovery (about a sixth of what was allocated to subsidize market rate rental incentives) will result in only 300 new units. 300. More clearly articulated subsidies. Rent control is a subsidy, no matter how you slice it. A better way to leverage the benefits of this subsidy would be to tie it to career choice or other cultural/social production. Teachers, for instance, could qualify for a rent controlled apartment as long as they were teaching. Though some might argue this might degrade the quality of teachers, it would likely have the reverse effect: the sudden economic impact of a housing subsidy would catapult the total economic value of teaching in the city above any other district, and would likely draw suburban teachers to the city. Other protected classes could be identified, and the subsidy could be applied on a sliding scale (police and fire personnel could receive a partial subsidy, as they have a better overall compensation profile). The basic logic here is to maximize the economic incentive that rent control should provide in the best of all possible worlds. Since it is not universally available, then if should not be allowed to stand as an arbitrary entitlement but yet be subject to the deleterious effects of scarcity. It’s true that any example of socialized housing results in some scarcity, but never to the degree one sees here. The other issues that might alleviate some of the more tendentious stresses would be to eliminate the provision for inheriting leases, and better enforcement of illegal sublets or other violations on the tenant side. Tenants are certainly put upon in this town, but I have a hard time accepting that after forty years of extraordinary benefit that your kids should stumble into an even more luxurious subsidy than you. If this seems like I’m beating up middle class tenants, it should be noted that I’m with Carnegie — who believed that inheritances should be, if not outright prohibited, then taxed upwards of 80% of assets. What’s broke about rent control has nothing to do with suffering landlords. If you don’t think you can make it renting in this town without a leg up from the government, sell your building and go invest in Phoenix. There’s no reason why we can’t look landlords in eye and say ‘tough’. They’re are generally a miserable lot who accomplish amazing feats such as making lawyers and real estate agents look good. What’s broke about rent control is we lack an effective language for framing what justifies what should be recognized both as a subsidy and an effective economic incentive for some segments of our population. It should work to both help them along the way, and push them gently from the nest. I’m all for the workers paradise, but that doesn’t describe the attitude of the majority in this town, even those who benefit mightily from the closest thing to it we have here. But if we don’t act effectively, it will go away, and we will be the worse for it.
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That she doesn’t have her own yet is another clear sign of the vast right wing conspiracy.
Two recent street sightings remind me what’s great about this town and that ‘street art’ isn’t simply something designed to end up on a Threadless tee shirt:
1. At Forsyth and Stanton (maybe Rivington), both the north and south crossing signals (east side) have stickers affixed to them that, upon the illumination of the ‘walk’ signal, transform into a Lucha Libre character (and different ones at that). Cut so they are wearing the prototypical unitard, the lights create suspenders and fill out the mask. Viewing angle is important for the full effect.
2. On one of the support columns of the Williamsburg Bridge as you travel down Delancy (right about Columbia Street) there is a hasty, sloppy testament to “Senator Chuck Schumer”. No context, no image, no additional message. Just in case you forgot, I guess, who is the senior senator from New York.
UPDATE: Some people have pointed out that I am little late on noting Item 1 above (and yes, the lineage certainly increases the likelihood of showing up at Neighborhoodies any second). But New York has yet to do a piece on politico graffito hagiography. Thus endeth the saddest attempt at insider baseball ever.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
A void.
The Times provides a by-the-numbers nostalgia piece on 130 Liberty Street (the Deutsche Bank/1 Bankers Plaza building). For a long time, much of their coverage of the WTC attacks evidenced a strong, restrained tone that was good reportage with a minimum of pap. Their commitment to publishing the stories of those who died and its execution was exemplary.
Now, like most everyone else, they have lost their way, producing mangled narratives of a middling sense of loss and ham-fisted telescopic observational rhapsodizing — the people who got up and left their breakfast, a stray business card, silent machines — dominate, best evidenced by the truly awful photo of the exterior framed with the obligatory flag billowing in the foreground. It’s a shame they couldn’t find a firefighter to hold a baby. Perhaps they were pressed for time. In the end, it reads like the CEO of Deutsche Bank wrote a ‘Lives’ column. To borrow from the tone they employ, the final chapter of 130 Liberty Street has yet to be written. Along with Fiterman Hall, the Manhattan Community College facility just north of the under-construction (and under-rented) 7 WTC, 130 Liberty Street is slated for deconstruction. Though many of the delays were bureaucratic (both involved insurance disputes), they were also a result of uncertainty about safety. Now, some four years later, the mixture of the two adds to the air of confusion and incompetence that pervades the site. The stark image of the WTC side of each structure bear painful witness to the power of the destruction, a gash the seems to run the full length of 130 Liberty, and a gnawing at Fiterman that makes it impossible to determine just how much of it is destroyed (when in fact, it was relatively little — contaminants are the considerable issue there). And the persistence of these two clearly hopeless and useless figures continues the sense that no one knows what to do next. The Times reports that many people consider them a blight. The reasons for this are obvious, but a very few people (if it is worth noting, most of them live physically proximate to the site) I know think that 130 Liberty Street is possibly the most fitting memorial, in its current state. Though I don’t enjoy looking at it, it is the only thing I am ‘comfortable’ looking to when near the site. Comfortable is a very loaded word, and my qualified use of it is akin to the experience I had first seeing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, an accomplishment that has the unfortunate additional burden of being a paradigm for memorial design ever since its highly contested genesis. Though it is without a doubt a striking, elegant object, it did not register as pure form when I first came it, because it is submerged in far more significant cultural meaning. The interventions of the visitors, their consistent presence, and the knowledge of its history diminshed the importance of its physical form. Though there are key decisions that enabled this (walking down into the center being the most crucial), the collective role of people and thing manifest a narrative that seems fitting and honest. And so, when I see 130 Liberty Street, I do not look away, embarrassed, angry or disappointed, as I do in so many other areas near it (though much of it is only implied, empty as it remains). It has an ugly dignity to it, and presupposes no attitude regarding how we should speak of the day, or the people, or the vast cultural conflagration it was both a result of and catalyst for. But that almost unmanageably large issue should be tended to, fought and — hopefully — resolved elsewhere. This place, those people were unfortunate, unwitting combatants. We pave over history, no doubt. Partly a result the exigencies of growing populations and sprawling cultures, and partly because we would grind down into an existential morass were we to sit and think hard of all the moments of suffering that led us to the here and now. How this is perhaps unique is the speed with which we decided precisely how this paving should happen. Though some might argue that months of hand-wringing and listening sessions and this and that led to this decision, it should be recalled that it was no more than days, days, before someone voiced the opinion of what exactly should happen, and, to this moment, that decision has hardly changed. A single person, with a highly compromised financial position, dictated our collective memory. It isn’t worth mentioning a name, since most in that position would have likely responded the same, for any number of reasons. The rest of us failed to oppose such a limited and, in the end, repugnant concept of honor, with words and actions eloquent and forceful enough to manifest another way. For now, dark and draped in the obvious but effective funerary shroud, 130 Liberty Street is alone it its testimony to the narrative of hopelessness that we have not fully addressed, instead busying ourselves with the shiny distractions we want to dot the site. And to avoid responding more directly, we now want to remove it, to erase the most compelling vestige of that void, and those questions.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Trash Talkin’.
After a spike in his approval numbers, a newfound love for outer boroughs, and this week’s flipping of the bird at City Council, it looks like hizzoner is making a play for the now apparenly vacant title of Iron Mike.
Fixing a steely gaze on the perpetually seeming like he is running Student Council Gifford Miller, the mayor vetoed the no confidence vote — in the form of a proposed zoning change which would have obviated the proposal — the Council delivered to Bloombergs’s proposed waste management plan. Miller presented an alternate, wrapped up in the expected rhetoric that Mayor’s plan dumped trash on the poor and less white regions of the city. The operative phrase for Miller was “I don’t think it’s ideal to locate any kind of a transfer station in such a residential neighborhood in the middle of a park”. Apparently the man has never been to 145th Street. But no matter, because his wealthy, white consituents probably haven’t either. See, Bloomberg was only projecting that one solid waste transfer station — that’s a fancy name for a place for where they will empty residential garbage trucks onto barges, to be sent to a poor, rural community that will be paid to bury our trash — be located in Manhattan. Ttaking the share the pain approach, every borough got one.
The rub? The only Manhattan site was square in Miller’s (rich, white) district. Miller must have not read the entire plan, because after a day of everyone pointing out that his spirited critique was driven by pandering to his base (which, to be fair, he’s paid to do) and looking for some traction for his mayoral campaign, he relented and acquiesced to a transfer station that would only handle paper collected for recycling. He also airly suggested that the rest of our exceedlingly complex waste management problem could be solved by building a couple of transfer stations further south, and nowhere near any parks. Except for the one that lines the West Side and would seperate the proposed stations from the rest of the city.
If you were wondering if such massive logistical concerns could really hinge on narrowly self-interested posturing, let us only look across the way at the Lil’ Borough That Couldn’t, Staten Island. Having cemented Guliani’s reelection margin, he repaid their support with two massively disproportionate decisions that have wreaked havoc on Manhattan and Brooklyn. The first is the one that resulted in the current travails, the closing of Fresh Kills — the massive city-owned landfill, now best known as the site of most of the remains of the WTC. Granted, something needed to be done, since the site was on track to become on the second human-made object visible from space (after the Great Wall). But the closing was a political decision, because Guliani never got around to developing an alternative beyond “Send it to Virginia” leaving the city with far more truck traffic as trash normally barged out to Staten Island was routed over and under the rivers. The second was the change from two-way to one-way tolls for the Verazzano Narrows Bridge crossing. Done as a sap to Staten Island residents yapping about how unfair the tolls were, they were changed to favor those exiting Staten Island, resulting in a massive surge of truck traffic able to exploit a series on one-way toll-free crossings to traverse the city, ending at Canal Street and the Holland Tunnel. Though the subsequent closing of the tunnel to truck traffic after 9/11 relieved this somewhat, we shouldn’t rely on terrorist threats to drive traffic planning.
So we are awash in trucks, a clear problem (of cost, quality of life and pollution) and Miller’s plan does little to alleviate that. Lacking a more detailed presentation, such as available from the mayor, one must rely on the most detailed version given, via the Times. Most everyone who offers a comment says that there’s no there there to the alternate. Leading with the line that the city dumps its nastiest facilities on the least fortunate population (abandoning the CNG plan for city buses and refusing to relocate the disproportionately dense collection of depots in Harlem anyone?) is pretty rote for Democrats, who haven’t done much to help the situation. Miller doesn’t really say much about the propriety of transfer stations not in his district — meaning, are the poor getting screwed again or does he think the other three locations are fair? Aside from seeming to dump this plan on his leading challenger, it should be noted that Bloomberg puts his trash where his house is — East 91st street isn’t all that far from hizzoner’s ceremonial and functional homes.
The mayor deserves a little more credit for this effort than he was demanding for his misguided Stadium fetish, so Miller should not descend to knee-jerk politicking about such an important issue. It’s a mess of a issue, one that potentially encompasses major shifts in city infrastructure, reaching all the way down to the mundane of how responsible we may need to be about the trash we store in our homes. And with a tertiary relationship to other still-tabled issues, such as the Brooklyn Rail Tunnel (a plan to connect Brooklyn to the mainland via a rail tunnel, enabling the underutilized Brooklyn port facilities to be competitive with the next generation of deep water container ships and potentially providing a way to transfer large amounts of waste without carting it over land), sniping over who gets stuck with the transfer station is awfully short-sighted. We are creaking along towards the completion of Water Tunnel No. 3, an essential addition to our infrastructure that took a good half-century to realize. As long as the Midwest is mired in the economic doldrums, we can stagger along without a viable solid waste plan, but trash is the sort of thing that will cause even the most hardscrabble community to eventually turn up their nose. And once they figure out just how poorly prepared we are, it will get far more pricey to buy our way out of this mess.
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You are already dating someone? Well, do you have a sister?
It seems New York really is the ‘can-do’ town that every seems to imagine we are. Sure, after ten years we still can’t seem to Penn Station on track, and Governor’s Island languishes while we remain starved for green space, but we did redesign two of the largest pending projects in the area in under a week. First it was the Freedom Tower going from hopeless to fearless in seven days (well, it was end of the semester), and now the Olympic Dream went from “No Plan B” to “Queens 2012” almost overnight.
The Times has a nice piece on the Borough of Sloppy Seconds, and everyone seems to relish the pouty air Bloomberg has been wearing all week. It’s a shame he’s suffered from bunker mentality these past few months, because it undermines his (perhaps misguided) quest for Olympic glory, and it has certainly hindered the possibility of rational planning both here at the center of the universe and out in the hinterlands. The plan, if you missed it, and you have, since it involved both Queens and the Mets, is a retread of the Atlanta Plan: build a baseball stadium, and piggy-back on some Olympic doodaddery. In Atlanta, it was all fresh and then they tore it down to make way for Chipper Jones and Buckhead racists. This time Fred Wilpon & Co. — who are going to actually spend money — will use the stadium for a couple of seasons before vacating for the 2012 season to accommodate the Olympics. Avoiding for a moment the fact that any Olympics on this continent over the past three decades have either been a boondoggle or dust bowl bland, and Mike-Mike’s nose holding presentation of the concept, it should be noted that there are interesting and valid reasons for a Queen’s-centric Olympiad. The most obvious is the incredible diversity of the borough, a fact unnoticed in any significant way until John Cracker of the Atlanta Braves opened his mouth. It can be reasonably argued that Queens is the most diverse agglomeration of cultures over a compressed time frame (say a little more than a century) of any significant scale ever. This creates myriad opportunities for a borough-wide approach to integrating the games and the attendant visitors. It is impractical to salt the entire area with mini villages, but the need for other forms of itinerant housing (USOC and IOC reps, media, and games visitors) and support services could prompt development nodes along the 7 line. Logistically it makes sense as well. The 7 line provides an easy link between Manhattan and Queens, and the distribution of culture and event will be easily managed. Though the Olympics is a big event, the numbers won’t stress the transit system. And sporting events are largely inward focusing events that don’t engage communities. When people want to eat or find other entertainment, it can be far removed from the venues. There isn’t a surfeit of space in Queens, but many of the extant venues being considered for reuse or new construction are there, as is the proposed Village. Lastly, the community there is likely more enthusiastic at the prospect of a large, diverse sporting event. The lifeblood of soccer in this city is not Manhattan. Our baseball teams aren’t located here. Except for perhaps softball or running and cycling (or any other ‘fitness’ associated sport), the centers of interest will be in the outer boroughs. Rather than face a bunch of sniveling hipsters and dismissive dowagers, our Olympic guests can be treated to rude and embittered outer borough types. It will be a far more accurate experience of the prototypical New Yorker. And given the continued hubris of the IOC in the face of a declining relevance and fading imperial inability to respond to the massive change globalization has wrought, we shouldn’t be turning so many cartwheels to please them. We can get a damn stadium built, and even if our opening ceremony is in Staten Island, they should feel privileged to select us as host city. Maybe it isn’t that Queens is good enough for the Olympics, but the Olympics aren’t good enough for Manhattan. The slapdash manner in which this alternate plan was presented does create some questions: given the EDC just closed a round of RFEI’s for Willets Point, will this mean that the firms that submitted are given advanced consideration, or is their work simply discarded as the city looks for new development partners (which also raises a heretofore mostly quiet issue: how is all this development being distributed)? The Mets claim they are committed (and to HOK, of course) either way, so their role in the wider development is limited. The Willets Point development isn’t crucial, but if it isn’t done, they will have to erect a rather large wall to hide it. Take a look at the map: leaving this lie is passing on a key opportunity. Assuming it moves forward, what about infrastructure improvements for the 7 station? The relocated stadium will be further from the station, which could stand a substantial upgrade for any number of reasons, not the least of which will its role as the preeminent access point for the Olympic stadium. In the end, I’m skeptical about the Olympics in general. Or at least the continued effort to host them in the largest urban areas. Spectacle does seem to provide a focus and occassionally is viable as legitimate economic development. But the Olympics seem best suited for emerging economies or regional centers (Atlanta was actually a good host site, but unfortunately is the blandest large city in this country), and, in this country at least, the lack of adequate regional planning makes their impact more expensive and unwieldy with each passing year. So the tepid enthusiasm likely won’t play very well with the vestigial aristocrats at the IOC, but if it all goes as planned and we do become friends of friends of strangers, or whatever that campaign is promising, but don’t like the results, we can simply continue our practice of ignoring Queens with little visible impact.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Leavin’ on a jet plane; don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Do you hear that? Quiet. Well, not really. There’s still plenty of complaining and veiled threats, the usual din of a New York morning. But it feels different here. Aside from the unseasonable heat, what makes today special? Well, when you talk, or just think, about how you live in a town that’s different, a place where great men have accomplished great things, where your worth is measured directly by gumption and sweat (and if you believe all that, we’ve got this great bridge for sale), a place unlike Balitmore, or Charlotte, or Seattle, or just about anywhere, you are, for the day, correct. We will not be pimping ourselves for some rich asshole who wants a sports stadium to line his pockets and ego at your (and my) expense.
Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver got together and demonstrated the just how much this state is still run like a machine hall, by turning their nose up at Bloomberg’s plan by ordering their aides de camp to abstain on the vote at the Public Authorities Control Board, effectively stopping the Hudson Yards project in its tracks (the obviously metaphors are preferred around here). See, Bruno and Silver don’t actually do anything, they just whisper commands and others do the leg work (unless it’s rent stabilization, and then Joe Bruno starts looking like Kruschev at the UN). Silver make a big noise about stalled development downtown, Bruno, who was previously just doing his usual bit and demanding a dollar north for every dollar south Shelly was angling for, took the high road, making the very reasonable request that the vote be contingent on the IOC (a board whose arrogance makes state politics looking like a hippie love-in) actually awarding us the Games. The big losers in this current turn are Dan Doctoroff and Curious George. Doctoroff, if the press of the past four years are to be trusted, will spiral down into a depressive funk, forgetting that there his is still in charge of several other large, exploitative interventions displacing small businesses and profiting his rich friends. They better schedule an intervention, stat. Curious George managed to lose much more, his national office dreams pretty much sailed down the Hudson, as it was pretty effectively proved that no matter stern and authoritative he’s tried to be on several points over the past month, he is as ineffectual as we’ve ever thought. Somewhere, Andrew Cuomo is gleeful — but because it’s Cuomo, also uncontrollably angry — that he was proved right. It’s well too familiar territory to list my reasons for opposing the stadium (and I presume they are also obvious and correct), but as a matter of ‘what now’, it’s worth nothing that Silver’s no vote is a potential wedge for much of the continued efforts on the West Side, since his stated opposition was pretty much a letter-perfect read of the RPA’s analysis: rapid development on the West Side would unduly hinder redevelopment downtown. The expansion of Javits has near-universal support (which means it isn’t getting done, a fatted calf wherein everyone tries appends a completely hopeless side project — say, a stadium — as a condition of execution), but other plan elements may still require over support from Silver. Given that it’s easy to play populist when a opposing a stadium, it seems that he can’t take too hard a line, and continued friction may result in revisions to the plan that would be welcome. Given that the only concrete element to any of the plans for rebuilding downtown or on the West Side was the stadium, and now that it looks pretty conclusively dead, it will be real interesting if any, you know, vision will result from this. The West Side is still a tremendous opportunity, and downtown is still a disaster area. If Mike-Mike stops pouting, he can pretty much bury the entire Democratic primary slate, who were united only on this point, by rising from this failure to build a comprehensible plan for these two trouble areas. You always claimed you weren’t a politician Mike. Now is your chance to demonstrate that, and maybe even do some good for the people of the city. That would be truly un-politico like.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
I’m not going to write about the design of the Freedom Tower. It’s not because I’m resigned or too depressed. Rather, plenty has been written, and penning my own diatribe would be redundant, when Adam Greenfield and Nicolai Ouroussoff have done the job so well. But yesterday’s presentation serves as the best interim site plan available in some time, effectively displaying the myopic vision of the LMDC, and underscores a few questions that are unaddressed by the limits of the rendering.
First, I have to wonder about the untorquing of the tower and its relocation. The major concern over security was vulnerability to a vehicular bomb attack, and thusly was the tower ‘set back’ 90 feet. Except that 90 feet is the average. Tell me, do you think a truck bomb attack will be effected statistically? The nearest distance is the only one that matters, and so the building is set back 65 feet, not 90. And the restored Fulton Street runs directly in front of the south entrance, and, presumably, Vesey on the north, meaning the building is not set back at all. Presumably these streets will be vehicular access controlled — the current master plan available from the LMDC is, well, an exercise in irony at this point (look at the cover shot for my reasoning), and provides little clarification. So either the streets are not being restored for traffic, or the site need not be moved back 90 feet, since the hardening of the base was satisfactory for security purposes. Why the previous incarnation could not have simply been wrapped in a layer of concrete I don’t understand. One useful bit of detail is the consistent representation of the additional office towers, which are shown in all their useless glory. As a presentation convention they are show in faceless grey, which is apropos, since that is probably as interesting as they will get and are likely to remain empty. But what is important is to note how they, with the Millennium Hilton, affect the PATH station. The site overall is not as Cartesian as one might think – the convention is to make Vesey Street a true East-West axis, when in fact it is offset some 30 degrees. This, along with the bulk of the adjacent towers, means the amount of direct light available will be far less than the sunny renderings Calatrava prepared, and perhaps the dingy atmosphere implied in this rendering, which was done to foreground the Freedom Tower, may be close to accurate. And no one is talking about the amorphous, squat form squoze into the space bounded by the Lack of Freedom Center, the Freedom Tower, and Freedom Tower 2 (has anyone considered nomenclature? Since the outlying buildings at the WTC were WTC2, WTC3, etc, can’t we expect the same here? Maybe it should be the Freedom Plaza), which is ostensibly Performing Arts Center. Considering its budget woes, a possibly recalcitrant Ghery and the recent announcement that HUAC will be reformed to curate all the cultural facilities, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was nixed altogether. I mean, the Joyce Theater might want to stage The Crucible or something similarly anti-American. It’s also interesting that even though one of the stated challenges was fitting such a large and complex program into the envelope -– the previously more prominent siting, if my recollection is correct, mandated it –- but now that it’s pretty much the loading dock of the Freedom Tower, why not allow a larger volume? It’s not like you will be obstructing any views from the Freedom Tower. Or 7WTC, which sports it own bunker base (and ironic inversion of Giuliani’s $15 million aerie). All of which leads me to a rather gruesome and blunt question. I know everyone is worried about the appeal of the FT as a terrorist target. Since it’s been rechristened in a less megalomaniacal way (though, certainly, no less incorrectly), perhaps it will be less appealing. But if one were a terrorist who was being more pragmatic or interested in symbolism (or had just watched The Siege), wouldn’t the collective, $4 billion worth of glittering art and hope — in the form of the Performing Arts Center, the Memorial, the Freedom Center and the PATH station — surrounding the Freedom Tower present targets just as attractive and effective? Or are we going to wrap the entire site in a 200-foot concrete wall? Or the island? The country?