Sources: Men Arrested Trying To Repaint Bedford Bike Lane
Video: Sad Subway Rant
Call to Ban Carriage Horses, Close Stable
VIDEO: Cycling Activists Repainting Bedford Ave. Bike Lane
Oh D'Oh They Didn't! TSA Posts Airport Screening Manual On Web
As if there weren't enough disagreements over the West Side stadium, the Regional Plan Association, a private planning organization, released a report yesterday saying that the plan to build a new stadium for the Jets should be scrapped. In its place, the RPA suggested the area should be rezoned for high-rise commercial and residential development. Their report also said that the expansion of the Javits Center should proceed as planned and that the stadium would repel development and not attract it as city officials claim.
This location is ideally suited for high-density residential development that would take advantage of its waterfront location and Manhattan's persistent demand for new housing locations. The design should include public open spaces, walkways and connections to Hudson River Park that will draw city residents, office workers and tourists to the western edge of the district.
Officials from the city and the from Jets, however, maintain that the stadium will help develop the West Side. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff called the RPA plan "flawed" and "a halfhearted recipe that will not produce significant change on the West Side." There's nothing quite like a debate over land use.
All this talk of commercial and residential spaces has Gothamist thinking of Sim City. Clearly, city planning isn't as easy as clicking on the bulldozer icon and demolishing blocks of land, but it would be kind of fun to destroy rail yards with the click of a button.
Read the full report from the RPA (.pdf file) and Gothamist on the West Side stadium.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
speaking as an urban planner, yeah, it's pretty hard. but funny, it is actually easier sometimes to explain to people what i do starting with the 'sim city' game as an intro to my profession rather than just talk about what planning is :/
the current administration is just really proactive about new development, and 2012.
I think the stadium will be an asset to the city. Particularly when you consider how few Jets home games there actually are. It will expand the Javits center, redevelop an otherwise neglected area and bring in private money to help do it. I think it is sad that the city has now swung hard in the direction of anti-development. 50 years ago it was a tough fight to stop development, now it is impossible to develop any large public project – even when it is a true benefit to the city (the westway and the now stadium). Now we always have a a few special interest groups fighting against any type of great public work. All those ads you see on TV questioning the deal are paid for by cablevision which owns Madison square garden… I wonder why they would be against such a project… LOL.
simon, technically, the stadium and javits are two projects that tend to get grouped together.
from the times:
The controversy surrounding the stadium has even ensnared a bill providing for the $1.4 billion expansion of the adjacent Javits Convention Center, which has nearly unanimous support. The bill, which was sponsored by Gov. George E. Pataki, ran into stiff opposition last month because, critics said, it contained language linking the convention center to the stadium.
The stadium proposal from a common sense perspective will never make money and even if it did the likely hood of any bnefit translating to the adjacent community would be scant. Just look around the country at other 'brilliant' attenpts at using stadiums as a quick fix urban planning tool. Having visited Detroit quite a few times it's still hard to tell which has made the most impact there, the stadium or the casino's. There's still the same ammount of abandon buildings surrounding each. What New York desperately needs is a world class convention center connected to a hotel complex and an upgrade to Laguardia. Conventions bring the real sustained money sports could never match. Cities like Vegas, Miami and Indianapolis have done well in this respect.
Stadiums were just big money pits in Sim City. I always unwisely put them in just for the novelty, and no one would go to the games and the tax revenue was negative. If you want to take the Sim approach to urban development, screw the Jets.
No thanks for the meathead magnet. Keep those fucks across the river. This was just a real estate scheme cooked up by Bloomy and his mega-buck buddies. Use the public money to build more schools and fund hospitals. If they want a stadium, they should build it themselves.
people are too anal about spelling on this blog
well, john, since there is no spellcheck in movable type (there's no 'e' in that), it would be hard to spell check my headlines. but it's fixed now, happy?
if you want to see an "abandoned" area, look at the area in question. Also, MSG did not create a ghostown (though I wish they did not tear down penn station). btw, there is a direct correlation to the javits expansion and the stadium when you consider there will only be 10 home games in a season and the facility will be multiuse. Also, the far west side has been in the shape it has been for decades, there is no private incentive or even interest to recreate that area without NYC planners giving it a boost. I really hope NYC doesnt lose out like it did in the westway project in the 70s/eaerly 80s where the fed govt would have fully paid to put the wastside highway under the hudson and leave the entire shoreline open as parkland. I think bloomberg, who has nothing to gain by this other than thinking it is right for the city, is right to push this project as an investment in the city's future.
It cant drain any funds when it doesnt come out of the city budget. It is an infrastructure project that will be paid for by issuing bonds for the city/state portion. It doesnt take a dime from city resources and as long as it makes more than it's intrest payments (which is does by the most conservative measures) it will actually add money to the city budget for other things.
The future superbowl champions The New York Jets should get a weststadium. It brings more to the center of civilization. All the world does business here. This is where you can walk five blocks and hear twentyfive different languages. Smell thirty different cuisines. See some of the tallest buildings. Many of the greatest museums, broadway shows, galleries. The finest shopping. The Statue of Liberty. Sone to be The Freedom Tower. This brings everyone some of the time, but most of the time it's us. Right here the 17 million or so resedents of nyc. We are the people that keep things churning when there not here.
Build us a stadium, bring it here!
And they will follow...