Bang! Right after de Blasio suggested building 11,250 affordable apartments over the Sunny Side railroad yards in Queens a Cuomo spokesman said—whoa not so fast “the site was unavailable for any other use in the near term.” Hearing this, I thought, “what’s going on here?”
The February 12th Times sort of answered it with a front-page article Allies Perpetually at War: Cuomo and de Blasio. They reported that, while de Blasio’s people had talked with the MTA and Amtrak, which own the yards, they did not tell the Governor’s office until the night before.
The Times goes on to tell us that “a dozen senior officials with the transportation authority, long scheduled to meet with the city about the project on February 6, abruptly pulled out.” With the suggestion of course that they got calls from the Cuomo people.
The Times then catalogues Cuomo’s ego battles with de Blasio: like Cuomo opposing deBlasio’s proposed upper income tax increases and deBlasio curbing the expansion of charter schools, and, finally, Cuomo’s “expressions of respect for Patrick J. Lynch”—the pugnacious, diminutive police union leader who announced on TV that de Blasio “had blood on his hands.”
If de Blasio and Cuomo were from different parties, or if they both planned to run for President you could understand Cuomo’s hair trigger ego, but I believe we are dealing with a near pathologic ego in Cuomo. (This is the man who stuffed my mailbox with expensive flyers to defeat Zephyr Teachout, a first time candidate with not a chance in hell of winning—how could he be so frightened?)
Though I travel through Sunnyside Yards back and forth to East Williston for Sunday dinner at Doric’s house on occasion and note the waste of 200 acres with a continuous view of the Manhattan skyline littered with construction material between the tracks and only the most aggressive toxin-tolerant weeds, the bigger lesson to learn from this ego tussle is how to get anything done wearing the prickly overcoat of conflicting interests and egos that is called democratic government.
Which brings us to pier 40.
Who, I wonder, would make the final decision to allow a skilled developer to take out a half a billion dollar bank loan and build something on the Pier that would sufficiently attract users and generate enough money to pay off that loan and the millions in lease charges over a 20-30 year time span?
We have 13 HRPT directors—five appointed some time ago by the past Governor, five by the former mayor, and 3 by a Borough President. Unfortunately at least some of them want the job because they are aiding or protecting commercial or private interests. Most of them are real estate and sports lawyers and Wall Street types that do not appear to live in the West Village, with the exception of attorney Larry Goldberg, who does live at La Guardia Place and takes good care of the La Guardia statue.
Contrast this to the directors of the Central Park Conservancy who appear to all live on or within walking distance of that Park as well as contributing 85% of the operating Park funds.
We here in the West Village certainly don’t have the votes on the HRPTB board to say “stop this nonsense and let a for-real, real estate developer come in to save the pier from dropping into the river and at least restore some of the $5 million a year in parking revenue.”
There is simply no reason why the non-paid HRPT board should stick their necks out and vote “yes” on anything. (Remember that a lawyer’s advice to any question is “no” since if you take it he will never be proven wrong.)
This means there is no mechanism for getting a “yes” decision for inviting a developer to save and develop Pier 40. I don’t even think they have the money or will to get out another Request For Proposals.
Our only hope is default action— that is, if one of the roof slabs fell in on some parked cars and city condemned the pier, requiring all the cars with their monthly parking revenue to be driven off, like what happened when the Port Authority found the steel piles dangerously corroded. Then, the city and state would step in to fire the lot of HRPT management and put up the money to fix the pier.
The proof of this is the proposal made two years ago by Doug Durst—supported by a study conducted at his own expense—calling for a staged development starting with a program to encase the dangerously eroded piles, increasing parking and ending with offices for hi-tech companies wanting to be near Google on 15th and 9th Avenue.
They all listened politely and did nothing.
Durst tried, again at his own expense, to form a Business Improvement District in which buildings and businesses along the five mile park would agree to pay a monthly fee to provide maintenance for the Park. Then, secretly in the wee hours, Assemblyman Dick Gottfried passed a bill in Albany to sell the air rights and the Park improvement district went up in smoke.
But wait a minute—who REALLY cares if the Hudson River Park is making money? Only the HRPT management—they care if they get their paycheck every two weeks. As long as that is happening, there is no real need to do anything and hence nothing is done.
In the meantime, two leaders who could care—de Blasio and Cuomo—are too busy tussling to see who can get credit for same sex marriage or building a bridge to Diller Island.
