Justin Davidson’s New York Magazine Review Of Hudson Yards Echos Concerns Raised By NNY, But Does So Without Mentioning Obvious Atlantic Yards Parallels

This week’s New York Magazine presents us with Justin Davidson’s “exclusive preview” of Hudson Yards:  From 0 to 12 Million Square Feet, published Oct 7, 2012.

That well worth reading article manages to raise a number of points that echo issues Noticing New York has been writing about, including a concern Noticing New York revisited and featured in an article posted here the day before Davidson review.  This concern was highlighted in the teaser caption leading into the Davidson review (“In a few weeks, construction begins on New York’s largest development ever. Hudson Yards is handsome, ambitious, and potentially full of life. Should we care that it’s also a giant slab of private property?”) and Davidson further zeroed in on it with the two concluding paragraphs with which he buttoned up his four page review of the coming project: Should we worry that  this “Mega-metropolis” is private property of a single owner?:

The plaza is the node where the site’s conflicting forces reveal themselves: the tension between public and private, between city and campus, between democratic space and commercial real estate. Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of Zuccotti Park last year pointed up the oxymoron inherent in the concept of privately owned public space: You can do anything you like there, as long as the owners deem it okay. Childs hopes that his client’s insistence on premium-brand design won’t make Hudson Yards just the province of privilege. “We want this project to be laced through with public streets, so that everyone has ownership of it, whether you’re arriving in your $100,000 limo or pushing a shopping cart full of your belongings.”

The plans include drop-off lanes, so the limos are taken care of. But if the shopping-cart pushers, buskers, protesters, skateboarders, and bongo players start feeling too welcome at Hudson Yards, Related’s security guards will have a ready-made argument to get them to disperse: This is private property.

Here is Noticing New York’s last meditation on precisely that subject: Sunday, October 7, 2012, Will The “Daily News” Plaza at the “Barclays” (LIBOR) Center Be A Public Space For Free Speech?: Police Issue A Directive To The Contrary.)

The thing to note is that all the valid concerns in the Davidson review, including this one, respecting the 26-acre Hudson Yards project also apply (and get focus on from Noticing New York) in terms of Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly but there is no mention of this by Davidson.  In fact, the language of the Davidson article is frequently written in a way that seem to imply that the sister mega-project Atlantic Yards must not even exist, this right at the same time as all the current hoopla accompanying the opening of the first Atlantic Yards building, the so-called “Barclays” Center, and just weeks after Davidson’s own New York Magazine review of that “Barclays” Center in an issue if the magazine featuring a cover story about the arena’s debut.

The New York Magazine description of Hudson Yards as a “Mega-metropolis” is reminiscent of Noticing New York’s regular description of Atlantic Yards as a “mega-monopoly.”   Compared to the 26-acre Hudson Yards, the Ratner mega-monopoly, placed atop the converging ganglia of Brooklyn’s most important subway lines, consists of 50+ acres.  Most of those Ratner acres are contiguous, a contiguity achieved through government assistance; eminent domain abuse for their acquisition by Ratner and subsidy for his continued ownership.  At the Atlantic Yards site itself there are more than 30 contiguous Ratner-owned acres.  The Atlantic Yards site itself is nominally just 22 acres, but that doesn’t change the fact that with the adjacent property already owned by Ratner when he decided to wipe out competition in the neighborhood (via eminent domain), it’s 30+ contiguous acres all together.  And the Forest City Ratner overall plan concerns the entire 30+ acres.

The other thing that makes the Ratner mega-monopoly comparatively more extreme is the immense jump in density preferentially assigned to the Ratner-owned property over that of his neighbors.  Not so with Hudson Yards: Hudson Yards is only slightly more dense than its surrounding neighborhood.*  The Hudson Yards density is odd because the greater density the neighborhood ought to be the property closest to the subway lines, but the oddnesses are not so nearly as odd as the extremely preferential density being granted Ratner with an override of city zoning that was not subject to traditional public review.

(* What is considered dense in midtown areas relative to other midtown areas may start changing:   The Bloomberg administration recently unveiled plans to almost double-- starting in 2017-- the density of Manhattan’s already very dense Midtown business district surrounding Grand Central, from 39th Street to 57th Street on the East Side.) 

I have presented Noticing New York criticisms of Hudson Yards but in many ways the government handling of Hudson Yards is significantly superior to Atlantic Yards.  Hudson Yards was subject to a fairly careful competitive bid: Atlantic Yards was not.  The MTA got what was probably the best price that could be gotten for Hudson Yards, given the way the request for bids issued was structured: Not so Atlantic Yards where there was what was essentially an escalating giveaway by the MTA to the developer on multiple fronts.

In terms of design caliber I also thought that the Related Companies proposed design for the Hudson Yards site was one of the better designs. . .  Not the best— I thought that the design presented by Brookfield Properties* was the best— but better than the poor design of Tishman Speyer, the company that first won the right to Hudson Yards acres and then defaulted on fulfilling the terms of their bid.

(* Ironically, since we are speaking in key respects about free speech in essentially public space that winds up subjected to privatization, it is impossible not to note that in a universe that is growing absurdly small in terms of the identifiable 1%, Brookfield is the nominally “private” owner of Zuccotti Park without whose participation there couldn’t have been an eviction of Occupy Wall Street’s 99% from that park.)

The better attributes of Hudson Yards notwithstanding, I have been critical of the Hudson Yards plan in several respects, going back a number of years.  For one thing it's too dense.  My major criticism is that rather than bidding out the site as a whole to one developer years ago (and have it lie fallow for so long), government should have prepared the site itself, then bid out subdivided parcels to multiple developers:

If the government (as opposed to a private developer) was preparing the site it would not be necessary to postpone the site’s preparation at this time. Site preparation during the current economic downturn might even be cheaper. As it would be a public work, it would arguably be in the running for funding through federal stimulus, an important part of that being that the prepared parcels would later be bid out. But stimulus money cannot be given to a private developer already signed onto the deal because it would totally change the equation based upon which the developer bid to pay the public a low amount for the site. Used that way, the money would eliminate the risk developer assumed and constitute an award of enormous private benefit to the developer without bid.

Just the way that real estate developers create value by subdividing property, had the government subdivided Hudson Yards (and Atlantic Yards) like what was done with the Battery Park City site, the cumulative amount government would get for the acreage it sold would be far greater.

Speaking in larger terms that applied to this and multiple other projects being championed by the Bloomberg administration at the time I said:

Strip things down to their core and you find that something is being sold. What is being sold is what belongs to public. Sometimes it is referred to as the “public realm.” That means such things as the right not to have our streets and avenues closed and sold off, the right to our historic neighborhoods, the right to good urban design, livable density and the right not to have our parks or amusement areas like Coney Island given away for development or speculative purchase.

Davidson, in his Hudson Yards review, presents his misgiving about the single developer approach in design terms: The potential for the possible “thrilling coherence” of “auteur” style development versus the risks of  “a place of oppressive uniformity, where each aesthetic miscalculation is multiplied many times over.”   Or, as Noticing New York has written, from a Jane Jacobs perspective, will we, with the single ownership of mega-projects, experience the banes of regimentation and monotony?  Davidson notes that the Related Companies were responsible for the Columbus Circle Time Warner project (rather mall-ish in Noticing New York’s estimation) and offer the none-too-encouraging observation that Hudson Yards could be that Columbus Circle project writ large:

 . .if you imagine the complex blown out to five times its size, you begin to get a sense of what’s coming at Hudson Yards. . .   But massive as it is, the Time Warner Center is dainty by comparison.”

Net Net: By subdividing properties like Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards to be bid out and developed by multiple developers the public gets: 1.) Faster development, 2.) more money for the land it is selling, and 3.) better design.

In addition to what's said about free speech in public areas that have been "privatized," Davidson’s article is filled with other statements that cry out for a refrain of “What about Atlantic Yards?” in response:

    •    New York has no precedent for such a dense and complex neighborhood, covering such a vast range of uses, built in one go.           

            What about the bigger and more intrusive Atlantic Yards?

    •    $3 billion in taxpayer-funded improvements encircle the Related fiefdom—not including city tax abatements. “Where else have you ever seen this kind of public money for infrastructure to service a whole new development, in the heart of the city, with that much land and no obstacles?”           

            What about the huge amount of subsidy going to Atlantic Yards?  It’s hard to do apples to apples comparisons but $2-$3 billion in subsidies are going to Atlantic Yards.

    •    [On squeezing suitable public open space in amongst oversized skyscrapers] That’s a spectacular challenge; there are few great models for a European-style piazza within a ring of skyscrapers.

            What about Atlantic Yards?  Its towers too will be inordinately belittling to their interspersed public spaces.  Davidson quotes Thomas Woltz, the landscape architect charged with the challenge:  “In an open space next to 1,000-foot towers, our tallest tree is going to be like an ant next to a tall man’s shoe”

    •    Bloomberg hoped to draw the 2012 Olympics to New York with promises of a West Side stadium. The fact that London won the games was a disappointment to him but a stroke of luck for the West Side, scuttling what would have been a disastrous stadium plan, while at the same time calling attention to the value of the real estate above the tracks.

            What about Atlantic Yards that jammed a sports arena into the middle of conjoining brownstone neighborhoods and overriding city ordinances that should have required at least 200 feet of distance between such an arena and residences.  The West Side stadium wouldn’t have done that.

    •    The site as a whole is a yawning pit, not so much a blank slate as an empty socket, surrounded by amenities and infrastructure just waiting to be plugged in.

             What about Atlantic Yards?  Don’t people need to be reminded that the Atlantic Yards footprint, by comparison, wasn’t “an empty socket,” that 60% of it was a neighborhood that was a mixture of valuable historic buildings, busy business, and a lot of recent new development, all of which was scooped out and thrown away to make way for Ratner?

The Davidson article is full of good points and presents much to mull over, but as with so much in life what isn’t said may be more important than what is said . . .  Interesting in an article that buttons up its ending with concluding statements about the value of free speech when its exercised!

Kennedy Is Not Senator: New York Magazine Suggests Because Mayor Misbehaved on Term Limits and Times City Staff Is “Emboldened”

So Caroline Kennedy is NOT the new senator from New York. We twice wrote about the prospect of Ms. Kennedy becoming senator. Although an enormous amount of press generated a high level of expectation that Governor Paterson would appoint her to the post, she suddenly withdrew. Both our Noticing New York pieces mentioned concerns about Mayor Michael Bloomberg in connection with Ms. Kennedy’s appointment and brought up Mr. Bloomberg’s highly objectionable “billionaire maneuvering on term limits” as “antithetical to fair play and respect for the rules by which the elected officials are supposed to honor and be accountable to the public.” (See: Monday, January 12, 2009, The Prospect of Caroline Kennedy as a New York Senator and Wednesday, January 21, 2009, Caroline Kennedy, in Our Defense Against Eminent Domain?: The Way it Might be.)

We mentioned another very good piece being read at the time (Wayne Barrett’s Village Voice: Bloomberg Maneuvers to Crown a Kennedy: Who's Caroline's daddy? January 13th 2009). That piece similarly dealt with concerns about Mr. Bloomberg, doing so extensively, and brought up term limits as negatively emblematic of concern.

Post Mortems

We may never know why Ms. Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration right before the moment she might have been appointed. Two long articles this week, one in the New Yorker and the other in New York magazine, offer post mortems on Ms. Kennedy’s campaign for the senate seat each taking note of Ms. Kennedy’s predilection toward privacy (perhaps not so coincidentally she is the co-author of book on the legal aspects of privacy). Neither article offers clear insight or a convincing answer to the question of why Ms. Kennedy may have withdrawn at the last minute. (See: respectively, Ms. Kennedy Regrets, She’s unable to be in the Senate today, by Larissa MacFarquhar, February 2, 2009 and The Zany Adventures of (Senator) Caroline Kennedy, In which the most private of persons decides to go public, only to learn that mother always knows best, by Chris Smith, Jan 24, 2009.)

Term Limits & Emboldened New York Times City Staff

While neither article tells you why Ms. Kennedy withdrew, the New York Magazine article offers the fascinating supposition that Mr. Bloomberg’s maneuvering on term limits undermined success that Kennedy’s campaign might have had. Unlike our Noticing New York analysis that Bloombergian billionaire maneuvering on term limits was bad and that it was therefore bad for Ms. Kennedy to be associated with Mr. Bloomberg, the New York magazine inserts one extra link into the chain of connections: That Bloombergian maneuvering, including Bloomberg’s strategizing to procure editorial page support from the major dailies, particularly the Times (before a news analysis or reporting had occurred), resulted in blowback in the form of an “emboldened” new York Times city staff. (See page 4 of the New York Magazine article.)

Kennedy also smacked headlong into a newly emboldened Times city staff. “We’ve grown a pair of balls, and I’m amazingly proud of the paper,” says a Times reporter. “The turning point was the editorial page’s rolling over for Bloomberg on erasing term limits. The reaction from the reporters and editors is that we’re the last line of defense—we’ve got to hold the line.” Not for or against any particular politician, that is, but to stand up for small-d democracy. After inflating her candidacy by making her simple declaration of interest in the job the lead story of the day, they compensated by hitting her hard.

We have pointed out that the New York Times editorial page has its work cut out in terms of catching up with Mr. Bloomberg’s misconduct (Saturday, November 15, 2008, The Mayor, The Times’ Timing, and a Proper Ordering) and that the Times’ editorial page’s misstep in prematurely endorsing Mr. Bloomberg’s third term aspirations is a big part of the problem.


Time(s) to Catch Up?

We believe that New York magazine’s observation that the Times city staff is recently emboldened may be on the mark. We can only hope that this continues and that the Times and its city staff are around long enough to take on many of the other New York City (and particularly Bloomberg-related) development issues that need to be addressed and to correct the harm already done to the 2009 mayoral campaign by virtue of the term limits extension that was allowed to pass with the Times editorial page support. We observe that there is scary talk that the New York Times might stop publishing (perhaps as early as May). The Times poor, recently downgraded, credit rating and the $250 million loan at 14% interest from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu are certainly troublesome. (Links below.*)

* (Stop The Presses: The Atlantic Wonders If The New York Times Could Cease Printing in May, by Matt Haber, January 6, 2009 and Slim's Pickings: Will Carlos Slim use the New York Times to bolster his reputation? By Andres Martinez, Jan. 20, 2009 and Brian Lehrer, Times of Trouble, Tuesday, January 27, 2009 and Saturday, January 24, 2009, New York Times criticized for a deal with (Mexican) tycoon; could those criticisms apply to its deal with Ratner? )

Our Reasons to Love New York Magazine and Elected Politicians

We are going to start this piece by saying a few appreciative things about New York magazine and the proceed with a segue to discuss what will be necessary for us to say appreciative things about our New York politicians.

New York Magazine: Loving Something They Love

In one of its end-of-the-year-round-up special issues New York magazine just featured 59 “Reasons to Love New York.” As has been widely reported, one of those reasons, (#14- the Valentine Numbers?) is the non-building and non-success of the proposed Atlantic Yards megadevelopment. (For the original NYM piece see: 14. Because Sometimes Immense, Gratuitous, Noncontextual Acts of Real-estate Ego Don’t Pan Out . . . by Robert Kolker Published Dec 14, 2008. For some of the reporting on it the article see: No Land Grab: December 15, 2008, Reasons to Love New York 2008, New York magazine, by Robert Kolker, Tuesday, December 16, 2008, NY Mag: "Because Sometimes Immense, Gratuitous, Noncontextual Acts of Real-estate Ego Don’t Pan Out…" and The Brian Lehrer Show / December 18, 2008 / He (Hearts) New York. )

Some of New York magazine’s thoughts about why this is a reason to love New York:

They say New York is the place where your greatest dreams can come true. Of course, it’s also a place where those dreams can die on the vine. Take Atlantic Yards. Lending new meaning to the term noncontextual, Bruce Ratner’s $4.2 billion, 22-acre combination of residential towers and office buildings, anchored by a basketball arena for the Nets, was supposed to completely transform downtown Brooklyn—with seemingly little thought given to what it might do to the already paralyzed intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues.

* * * *

. . . Ratner has reportedly laid off workers, and he’s admitted he won’t build anything other than the arena without an anchor tenant for the tallest building. Five years ago, Gehry said what he really wanted was the chance “to build a neighborhood from scratch in an urban setting.” At the moment, the old neighborhood is winning. Score two points for entropy.

Pursuing all the 59 reasons to love New York, this was the only one we could spot that was based on something that is NOT happening. Maybe the closest to it is reason number 3, which is that New York is taking back its streets for pedestrian use. (See: 3. Because Robert Moses Would Have a Coronary If He Were to See Our Streets Now, By Justin Davidson Published Dec 14, 2008.) In this regard we should note that if Atlantic Yards were to happen as proposed, its design involves a strike against the public in that the developer would be taking over for his private benefit public streets, avenues and sidewalks.

New York Magazine as a Resource

New York magazine is a great resource. They publish a wide range of views. The reliability of their guidance may be undermined by a tendency to go for quick, snarky comments, but in the end they contribute valuably with some comprehensive reporting. For instance, we found they provided valuable resources when we were evaluating the World Trade Center site redevelopment. (See: Tuesday, August 5, 2008, TWO, AND FRO?)

Two examples of the snarkily-off-base are in the same list of 59 reasons to love New York: the overly-clever suggestions that Mayor Bloomberg is to be loved as a masochist or that his baseball stadiums are to be loved as example of ill-considered multi-million excess and squandering. (See: 12. Because Our Mayor Is a Self-Regarding Masochist, by Chris Smith, Dec 14, 2008 and 27. Because Our New Stadiums Are Perversely Perfect Symbols of the City Right Now by Chris Smith, Dec 14, 2008 )

New York Magazine’s Greatest Atlantic Yards Service

We can’t write about the value of New York magazine without writing about the cover story they did on Atlantic Yards for their August 7, 2006 issue, with their “Ratzilla” “Battle for the Soul of Brooklyn” cover. (See: Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood, Manipulative developers, shrill protesters, and a sixteen-tower glass-and-steel monster marching inexorably forward. What the battle for the soul of Brooklyn looks like—from right next door, By Chris Smith Published Aug 7, 2006.)

This cover story was where some people, including ourselves, were introduced to our first credible account of the Atlantic Yards tale. I was still responsible for legal affairs at the state finance authorities. We subscribe to New York magazine (basically since it was in its fledgling incarnation as part of the World Journal Tribune) but I had not read the story. It was brought to my attention in the office by other agency professionals. It was brought into my office noting that I would almost certainly find it a cause for alarm. Even then I did not read the story right away. When I did, I was quite concerned. It got may attention. I kept researching afterward. And there was lots worth researching. There is no better site for deep research on the subject than Atlantic Yards Report. The New York magazine piece was a wonderful initial introduction and overview.

While there was some alarm on the part of professionals at the agency, there was another point of view available. From a technical standpoint the project seemed so harebrained that it could be predicted that it would never succeed. Harebrained, yes, but I think this pont of view could have been more of a protective denial mechanism against ever having to worry that, as a public servant, one might become responsible for something so publicly damaging. I, for one, suffered enormous angst and hoped that a new gubernatorial administration would come in with greater sense to put things on track. Thankfully, the project never came before the staff of the agencies before I left public service and we never had to deal with the project as public servants.

A Pre-PACB Approval Conversation with Councilman David Yassky: New York Times Vs. New York Magazine

One regret I had after the New York magazine article led me to become better informed was that I missed the opportunity to give our representative City Council Member David Yassky timely advice on the project. I remember being at a party one December long before the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) and other approvals were in place. Councilman Yassky was earnestly looking for advice and reactions to the project. We discussed it with him briefly as a constituent and neighboring Brooklyn Heights resident. Unfortunately, all our information about the project up until then had come from the New York Times, which was inadequately reporting the reality of the project. The Times has still not caught up with its responsibilities and though it has occasionally run some good stories since it has a lot to make up for. It is not only a question of whether you report the news well, but when you report it well. The most important time for the Times to have been reporting well about the project was before initial approvals like the PACB’s were in place.

It was also unfortunate that we assumed that other public servants who were working on Atlantic Yards were adequately performing their jobs. That was an incorrect assumption.

As such, we did not sound the alarm with Mr. Yassky. We expressed some concerns about how bad sports arenas are for central city locations (cf. Madison Square Garden) and wondered about the exact location being picked for the arena, but mostly we missed the slew of issues that should have been brought up. The Times let us down and we, in turn, let down Mr. Yassky. Thank you, New York magazine for doing the job the Times did not do.- - Just a little too late.

We have since that time been vigilant in keeping Yassky apprized of where he should be in terms of Atlantic Yards.

Yassky and Atlantic Yards this Week

This Monday evening we had another conversion with David Yassky about Atlantic Yards when we ran into him. We told him that we want to do a Noticing New York interview with him on the subject of how people can make up for the fact that the City Council term limits extension vote is a net negative and setback in terms of properly ending Atlantic Yards. Yassky with his affirmative vote on the term limits extension is importantly among those responsible for this setback. (Our mention of an interview was actually a reminder because we had previously left a message with his office to this effect.) As it was, we began to discuss the subject right then and there.

Councilman Yassky suggested that some confidence could be put in the notion that Atlantic Yards was no longer a threat because the economy was killing it. I expressed concern that until it was truly killed there was continuing concern and that the developer, Forest City Ratner, would no doubt be trying to lure the Obama administration into the grave mistake of finding funding for this project. (We think that the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment is representative of the kind of thing that caused the current economic crisis and is certainly not its cure. More on this later in another piece.)

Yassky asked us why we thought the term limits vote was a problem for Atlantic Yards. We said because Bloomberg is a problem for Atlantic Yards. (We didn’t mention Marty Markowitz, who is less of an issue compared to Bloomberg.) Yassky suggested that Bloomberg had little to do with it. He suggested that Governor Paterson should be exercising his ability to pull the plug on the project. We disagreed that Bloomberg is not central to the problem. We pointed out that, if Bloomberg were not supporting the project the plug would already have been pulled. For instance, the project can’t go forward without housing subsidies. I noted that the state agencies (where I used to work), while they are state not city agencies, would never give subsidies to a project to which the mayor was opposed. The same is true about the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) the agency accountable to Paterson that can now easily pull the plug on Atlantic Yards.

What Yassky should have told me is that earlier that morning he was at a meeting where Forest City Ratner was making a plea to a collected group of elected officials for a redirection of housing subsidies in order to shift affordable housing to earlier phases of the project. (Developer of Atlantic Yards project delays condo plan, by Jotham Sederstrom, Tuesday, December 23rd 2008.) The housing subsidies Forest City Ratner wants can also come from the city housing agencies such as the New York City Housing Development Corporation. In fact they may probably come from the city agencies if they are awarded. The mayor has substantial control over what those city agencies do. Ergo, back to our original point. The term limits extension vote and Bloomberg are a problem in putting the stake in the heart of Atlantic Yards. (BTW: A “delayed” building of the condos doesn’t mean that fewer condos and more rental housing would be built, only that in a poor economy Ratner wants to more subsidy diverted to him sooner.)

We still want to do the interview with Councilman Yassky about how the negative effect of the term limits can be countered. (Bloomberg is a problem on other things too: Not only on the 30-35 acre monopoly Bloomberg wants Forest Ratner to have in the Atlantic Yards area, but also the swaths of the city Bloomberg is handing out in other areas like Willets Point and the West Harlem Neighborhood being given to Columbia.)

The Daily News story that reported on the Monday meeting of elected officials with the Forest City Ratner officials looking for a handout ended with a Yassky quote:

"I don't believe the project approved by the state is going to be going forward anytime soon," said Yassky. "Forest City Ratner should return the taxpayer dollars, and start talking about what actually can be built."

Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn commenting on that article, said, “We second that thought Councilman Yassky.”

Reclaim the Project: No Entitlements

We do not wholly second the Yassky thought. While we do think that "Forest City Ratner should return the taxpayer dollars,” we do not think it should be up to Forest City Ratner to be “talking about what actually can be built." It is up to our public officials to be talking about what should be built. The plug should be pulled. The project should be taken away from Forest City Ratner and a properly conceived and designed project that is actually bid out should be built by multiple developers, preferably, Forest City Ratner not among them.

Atlantic Yards Report ran a story today about how Forest City Ratner is speaking in terms of its being entitled to build Atlantic Yards (and by definition being entitled to a decades-long 30+ acre monopoly on this section of Brooklyn). (See: Wednesday, December 24, 2008, Who's in control? Forest City and the indirect subsidy value of its "entitlements.") Fact is, no one is proposing to build what was ever “approved,” there are no commitments from Ratner and there are no entitlements. (In fact, “entitlements” is a just a made up term. It stands for nothing legal and, at best, a claim upon politicians not the public.) The plug ought to be pulled now and the public funds should be retrieved just as Mr. Yassky says. Then perhaps Mr. Yassky can, as a candidate for City Comptroller, subsequently as City Comptroller Elect and then as City Comptroller start plugging those figures back into the city budget so they can be spent appropriately.

Getting out your squeegees! A quick reference

New York Magazine frequently runs good features offering a handle on trends in New York real estate and urban design.

Offered for your reference and mulling over is Glass Stampede, by Justin Davidson, published Sep 7, 2008.

The article is a great resource for thinking about the rush to build in glass. It includes 54 before-and-after slides of new glass buildings recently inserted into New York’s built environment. These are perhaps be best viewed and appreciated on line.

Brian Lehrer followed up with a discussion with Justin Davidson (and an accessibly abbreviated slide show) last week.

We like glass buildings: They can be glorious and sometimes perfect for certain situations, but things have gotten out of hand and so many are so perfunctory. And transparency can also have its drawbacks. Back in the ‘70s I had a friend who bought up a whole floor in 860 United Nations Plaza (the west of the two towers). He loved to take in the sweeping views unimpeded. He ignored the co-op rules requiring everyone to have identical white curtains: Whenever the co-op called, his curtains were always “at the dry cleaner.” Many original glass buildings have only just recently aged sufficiently to be eligible for landmarking. An interesting factor when the Landmarks Preservation Commission considers them is going to be the extent to which the visible interiors, original lighting schemes and such should play into considerations of the experience to be preserved.

Anyway, look and make up your mind about the Glass Stampede and maybe listen to the Brian Lehrer segment.