I was late for the meeting called by attorney Arthur Schwartz, Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT), held in the large 5th floor conference room of the 1914 wedding cake-like Municipal building. As I walked into the packed standing-room-only event, HRPT CEO Madelyn Wils was finishing her catalogue of Pier 40’s 50 years of neglect and decay. She ended with the recent Sandy fiscal insults which prompted me to add, “And don’t forget the cars that were lost,” thinking about my flooded Odyssey, when Daniel Kurtz, HRPT CFO blurted out with acid contempt, “No cars were lost.” Oh wow, so it was going to be that kind of meeting. The HRPT hostility may have been trigged by what might be read as a pro-Douglas Durst, anti-HRPT article in the January issue of WestView by Arthur Schwartz.
I sat a few feet from this 3rd generation real estate developer who was standing with his architect and staff ready to make his presentation. That was what this meeting was all about – the Douglas Durst response to the proposal by the Pier 40 sports groups who, intent on keeping the million dollar AstroTurf field, had paid Tishman Construction and WXY architects $175,000 to provide the “optimum” solution – 600-800 luxury apartments and a 150 room hotel. Durst had dismissed this as not reflecting a real understanding of the real estate market, but there was perhaps more ego in his rejection – a lot more.
Durst cautiously read his introduction which reminded the audience that he and Ben Korman had responded to the HRPT Request For Proposal in 2003 with a plan which, as we learned later from Daniel Heuberger of Dattner Architecture, slightly modified was the plan they were presenting that evening. They (Durst and Ben Korman) were offering it as “interested citizens who care about the Hudson River Park – not as developers interested in building out this project.” He was matching and probably exceeding the sports dads in the cost of a proposal on how to develop Pier 40 with no hope of being the developer.
Here we begin to sink into the unreality of this contest.
Madelyn Wils is reported in the Post as saying that Pier 40 earns $5 million a year while costing $7 million to maintain. Prior to Sandy, the HRPT was experiencing negative cash flow – that is they were spending more money than they were earning from pier leases so much so they were eating away at the reserve fund which would be all gone in 2014. We assume that the Sandy costs have accelerated that drop-dead date.
However, neither one of these two proposals can be built unless the law that governs the length of the lease and the uses of the park is changed by the state legislation.
Assemblyman Dick Gottfried has been tapped to introduce this change to the state legislation in March and if it is passed, HRPT may – if they still have the money – retain a firm to write a new Request For Proposal and then send it out to see if anybody answers.
“You are invited to lease a 50 year old pier, but you must keep the sports fields and parking for 2,000 cars and spend $100 million to repair the corroding steel piles and the collapsing concrete roof and you have to start paying $10 million a year as soon as you sign and before you spend $500 million on whatever the community, which is the global epicenter of activism, will permit you to build.”
It would seem that the gleaming glass condo towers of the sports dads and the Durst Tech City are two shrilly-competing events on a Pier 40 Titanic.
