Mega-Projects Dropping Like Flies
This morning Clyde Haberman has an op-ed summing up how a lot of New Yorkers feel right now about the city’s grand development plans: Most believe they’re not gonna happen anytime soon. For Brooklyn, the big maybe-never is Atlantic Yards, but there’s been a pileup in the past couple of weeks of other fading prospects:…
This morning Clyde Haberman has an op-ed summing up how a lot of New Yorkers feel right now about the city’s grand development plans: Most believe they’re not gonna happen anytime soon. For Brooklyn, the big maybe-never is Atlantic Yards, but there’s been a pileup in the past couple of weeks of other fading prospects: the MTA’s promise to extend service is on hold; Moynihan Station is looking to be a bust; and no one knows whether the long-planned Javits expansion will occur. But it’s not like New York hasn’t faced shattered visions before, and often for the better. Haberman quotes CUNY poli-sci professor John H. Mollenkopf as saying huge projects frequently go through several design phases over many years, and so, “‘New York will come back, and we will get another crack at all these things.'” On a related score, Metro’s Amy Zimmer reports on how there are worries that a stalled AY means empty space at the site will be used as parking lots for years to come. Councilmember Letitia James says parking lots are “a revenue generator and right now [land is] sitting fallow, arguing that Forest City Ratner should not allow the property, which is now attracting the homeless and illegal dumping, to be used in such a fashion.
As Builders’ Grand Visions Dissolve, So Does Our Faith [NY Times]
Visions of Parking Lots at Stalled Atlantic Yards Site [Metro]
Photo of demolished building in AY footprint by threecee.
Rock on Benson.
The boomers really gotta watch it. There is no civic unity in this city – just self interested parties looking to screw over anyone and everyone for personal benefit.
The NIMBY baby boomer is a historical anachronism, a relic of a decadent age of reckless individualism and self indulgence.
These anti-civic habits must be curtailed soon, otherwise they will be broken violently. The NIMBY dream is simply untenable for the future.
If they care at all for peace and prosperity in the future, they will work harder to accommodate our growing population. The reactionary resistance to change of the past decade will simply not work over the coming decade.
Instead of building project that would help everyone, greedy developers had this” Grand Vision”. These project was to benefit the rich, not regular people. Now the credit crunch is turning these things into mush. Atlantic Yards is dead Boy and Girls, dead and stinking! Maybe things will turn back to normal.
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
Benson – You manage to finger all of the wrong “culprits.”
Benson, don’t forget the squandered opportunity to build up the West Side for the Olympic bid. I kind of agree with you, though I hope you read the Moses book by Caro and relaize it wasn’t all brilliant, e.g. Cross-Bronx Expressway. Anyway, he was a creature of another era – the problem is that Ratner is a poor modern day equivalent.
Make all of it a park until someone can build on it.
Yeah Johnny, when a firm like Bear Stearns, which was worth like $20 billion last year, goes out things have gotten pretty amazing. Having to cancel a big project because it’s not going turn a profit or lacks investment dollars, is nothing compared to that. People who say “this is great, AY got canceled,” are likely very naiive and have another thing coming. If you bought in the last five years and financed 80% or more you’re likely to see negative equity in the next five years.
New York has just gone through one of its greatest runs of prosperity, and what do we have to show for it? Ground Zero? Still a hole in the ground. AY? Cleared so that we can have a parking lot right in the center of town. Javits expansion? Nope. New Penn Station? The plug was pulled on this deal. How about the new downtown transit hub on Fulton Street? Going nowhere fast. Anyone wanna bet that the 2nd Ave subway is really going to be completed? Any new major public infrastructure projects, beside the third water tunnel? Nope.
What the hell do we have to show for it? Thanks to the “community activists”, minor-league political hacks aka “Community Boards”, NIMBY’s, “affordable housing activists”, “Forgotten New York” Luddites, the only damn thing we have to show for ourselves is lots and lots of upscale condos. Why? because these damn losers and Luddites make it impossible to build anything else. They raise the soft cost of building anything to such a point that the only thing worth developing is luxury housing. Nice work, elitist, navel-gazing NIMBY’s.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this town needs another Robert Moses. HE knew how to knock heads together and get things done. The entire Henry Hudson Parkway and Riverside Park was built in less than 3 years. Compare that to the endless saga of the Brooklyn Bridge Park,and all the blather about “consulting” with the “stakeholders”. What drivel.
These folks have squandered a run of prosperity. Go have a latte in the “community” and pat yourself on the back.
Benson
True. But we won’t suffer from massive congestion, overbuilding and the fiscal effects of a $2 billion handout to Ratner. Woo hoo!
Wonder if Con-Ed’s AY-related price hike gets retroactively cancelled or if we’re all going to be paying increased rates for infrastructure not built.
What amazes me though is that a project the size and expense of AY was started with a firm that couldn’t weather something like this. I get the idea that capital market woes affect everyone to some degree but given FCR’s lack of real capital, we might be lucky that this mess got cancelled now versus when it was half done – all on the public’s dime no less.
It’s pretty short sighted to welcome a recession, one may look forward to benefits and then find unpleasant consequences. I don’t think than anyone really knows if AY would be bad or good in the aggregate, but this will give people the opportunity to think twice about it, and by people I mean the developers. My sense is that it took on a life of its own as a project, and whether it was going to work or not was subsumed by getting in done. And now lack of money may kill it as it’s currently planned. That may be a good thing; my guess is that a lot of people concerned about it will suffer in a lot of other ways becuase of the recession.