Monday, February 07, 2005
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Rush hour passengers on the Lexington Avenue line are the regular prey ofself-declared homeless entrepreneurs, who arrive with a bag of sandwiches,offer them to the needy and make a quick pitch for donations, departing tothe next car in a hurry. Time is money. It was therefore a surprise thatthe most recently encountered solicitor, a big bald bullet-headed man oncrutches, took his time to make an impassioned speech against addiction (hewas a disabled Viet war vet, who threw away his post-disability youth ondrugs), Wall Street bigtimers who snort cocaine, and politicians who do notsupport the veterans and want to close health care facilities, such as theVA hospital on East 23rd Street. He ended with good words about the copsand firemen and 9/11 volunteers. The speech was sincere, painfully made,the people, mostly the young and immigrant types, responded with bothdollar bills and and change, as the man, worn out by his effort, slowlyhobbled out of the car at Brooklyn Bridge, collapsing on the platformbench. This man could get elected, think of Gov. Ventura.
His speech also reminded me that I had not made my year-end visit to GroundZero, and I promptly got off, at Fulton Street.The WTC site is still a huge hole in the ground, the bottom can be seenfrom the Southern exposure. Tourist buses surround it, and little smilingKorean maids mix with the crowd, speechlessly offering a souvenir pamphletfor sale. A row of licensed souvenir t-shirt, cap and food wagons is keptoff the site at the South-East corner, on Liberty Plaza. The faded darkhistory boards attached high on the heavy wire fence, surrounded byreaders, are showing their age, with the plastic film peeling off here andthere. People still place fresh flower sprays in the niches of the cyclonewire.
The atmosphere is dignified, and a story-teller receives respectful attention, as he roams around, handing out free maps, reciting the storiesof the buildings and explaining how he was saved by having to take hisdaughter to school that fateful morning. The black-covered damaged DeutscheBank skyscraper at the South end is still coming down, slowly, floor byfloor, to protect the subway tunnels below it, while at the North edge,the replacement of #7WTC, the last building to collapse, is growingpractically as we speak.
Something positive, while the redevelopment of the entire WTC site is slumbering, overtaken in newsworthiness by the currentstrife between Mayor Bloomberg and the Madison Square Garden worthies, over whether the 59 blocks west of T&V Country should be rezoned for a $1.4billon stadium, to serve the Jets and the dreamed-of 2012 Olympic Games.The City Planning Commission has given the plan its blessing, with onedissent from the Public Advocate Betsy Gottbaum's representative. The rezoning has been the subject of lengthy discussions and messages fromCommunity Board 5, barely mentioned in the dispatches from the battlefront.
As you have read here in the CB5 reports, the effort involves us a lot, with an expansion of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, extension ofthe #7 subway line, huge new office construction (26 million square feet),20 acres of parks and 13,600 new housing units, sort of like a newStuyvesant Town and then some. The Jets will pay $800 million of theStadium costs, with the city picking up the balance of $600 million. Whatoptimists! The CPC chair Amanda Burden projects a revenue flow from theproject of 1.6 billion, and 200,000 private sector jobs, apart from thethousands of construction jobs over a decade and more.
This plan is a huge remake of our city, per Ms Burden, the most ambitious since the grid of 1811 which laid out the future map of Manhattan. Itshould have a huge resident and public interest organization input, andexposure. The NYTimes,who had been treating the project in its litefashion, as a personal bumping match between the Mayor and James Dolan,head of Cablevision, the MSG owner, has now come out with an editorial,damning the Stadium as financially unsound, following the lead of theRegional Plan Association. The latter offers a futuristic alternative ofroofing over the rail yards, and building on top of the roof.
But the Stadium juggernaut rolls on. So much for the value of neighborhoodopinion and respect for the wishes of the people directly affected by therehabilitation. Neighborhood objection to projects is an automatic, butthis protest has merit. An underused an ugly Stadium (eight home games ayear) engine drives a monster rehabilitation project that has some good andcost-effective parts, and should be considered piece by piece, slowly anddeliberately. Maybe the three rulers of Albany, Messrs. Pataki, Bruno andSilver, will slow down the process, but I would not count on it
Rush hour passengers on the Lexington Avenue line are the regular prey ofself-declared homeless entrepreneurs, who arrive with a bag of sandwiches,offer them to the needy and make a quick pitch for donations, departing tothe next car in a hurry. Time is money. It was therefore a surprise thatthe most recently encountered solicitor, a big bald bullet-headed man oncrutches, took his time to make an impassioned speech against addiction (hewas a disabled Viet war vet, who threw away his post-disability youth ondrugs), Wall Street bigtimers who snort cocaine, and politicians who do notsupport the veterans and want to close health care facilities, such as theVA hospital on East 23rd Street. He ended with good words about the copsand firemen and 9/11 volunteers. The speech was sincere, painfully made,the people, mostly the young and immigrant types, responded with bothdollar bills and and change, as the man, worn out by his effort, slowlyhobbled out of the car at Brooklyn Bridge, collapsing on the platformbench. This man could get elected, think of Gov. Ventura.
His speech also reminded me that I had not made my year-end visit to GroundZero, and I promptly got off, at Fulton Street.The WTC site is still a huge hole in the ground, the bottom can be seenfrom the Southern exposure. Tourist buses surround it, and little smilingKorean maids mix with the crowd, speechlessly offering a souvenir pamphletfor sale. A row of licensed souvenir t-shirt, cap and food wagons is keptoff the site at the South-East corner, on Liberty Plaza. The faded darkhistory boards attached high on the heavy wire fence, surrounded byreaders, are showing their age, with the plastic film peeling off here andthere. People still place fresh flower sprays in the niches of the cyclonewire.
The atmosphere is dignified, and a story-teller receives respectful attention, as he roams around, handing out free maps, reciting the storiesof the buildings and explaining how he was saved by having to take hisdaughter to school that fateful morning. The black-covered damaged DeutscheBank skyscraper at the South end is still coming down, slowly, floor byfloor, to protect the subway tunnels below it, while at the North edge,the replacement of #7WTC, the last building to collapse, is growingpractically as we speak.
Something positive, while the redevelopment of the entire WTC site is slumbering, overtaken in newsworthiness by the currentstrife between Mayor Bloomberg and the Madison Square Garden worthies, over whether the 59 blocks west of T&V Country should be rezoned for a $1.4billon stadium, to serve the Jets and the dreamed-of 2012 Olympic Games.The City Planning Commission has given the plan its blessing, with onedissent from the Public Advocate Betsy Gottbaum's representative. The rezoning has been the subject of lengthy discussions and messages fromCommunity Board 5, barely mentioned in the dispatches from the battlefront.
As you have read here in the CB5 reports, the effort involves us a lot, with an expansion of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, extension ofthe #7 subway line, huge new office construction (26 million square feet),20 acres of parks and 13,600 new housing units, sort of like a newStuyvesant Town and then some. The Jets will pay $800 million of theStadium costs, with the city picking up the balance of $600 million. Whatoptimists! The CPC chair Amanda Burden projects a revenue flow from theproject of 1.6 billion, and 200,000 private sector jobs, apart from thethousands of construction jobs over a decade and more.
This plan is a huge remake of our city, per Ms Burden, the most ambitious since the grid of 1811 which laid out the future map of Manhattan. Itshould have a huge resident and public interest organization input, andexposure. The NYTimes,who had been treating the project in its litefashion, as a personal bumping match between the Mayor and James Dolan,head of Cablevision, the MSG owner, has now come out with an editorial,damning the Stadium as financially unsound, following the lead of theRegional Plan Association. The latter offers a futuristic alternative ofroofing over the rail yards, and building on top of the roof.
But the Stadium juggernaut rolls on. So much for the value of neighborhoodopinion and respect for the wishes of the people directly affected by therehabilitation. Neighborhood objection to projects is an automatic, butthis protest has merit. An underused an ugly Stadium (eight home games ayear) engine drives a monster rehabilitation project that has some good andcost-effective parts, and should be considered piece by piece, slowly anddeliberately. Maybe the three rulers of Albany, Messrs. Pataki, Bruno andSilver, will slow down the process, but I would not count on it
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:10 PM 
