Results tagged “westsidestadium”

After his $500,000 donation to NY State Republicans was revealed, Mayor Bloomberg explained why he did it to reporters while attending a Mayors Against Illegal Guns conference, "I've said repeatedly, I will help those who help us. They have stood up for the city a number of times — when we needed to have a voice in Albany and we didn't have that voice from the Assembly or from the governor, whether it was the last governor or this governor."

The City Council voted 40-3 to end the tax breaks Madison Square Garden has enjoyed since 1982. It's estimated that the city has lost almost $300 million in potential revenue in subsidies to the "World's Most Famous Arena."

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who was in charge of Economic Development and Rebuilding in the Bloomberg administration, announced he would resign by the end of the year. The Post called the news "stunning," but we'd like to call it "classic," because his new job will be president of a little company called Bloomberg LP. At a City Hall press conference, Mayor Bloomberg said, "As a result of Dan's efforts, we've allowed for the creation of...

A storefront at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and 43rd Street (across from Grand Central) may be a window into the future of the West Side Rail Yards. The MTA unveiled an exhibition of the five proposals to redevelop the rail yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan, and the public will get a chance to see the models every day (except Thanksgiving) through December 3. And what's more, the MTA wants the...

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Quinn urged the State Assembly to pass a bill authorizing the marine transfer station at the Gansevoort Pier. The MTS, part of the city's Solid Waste Management Plan, would handle recyclable paper, metal, glass and plastic and would help to ease garbage truck traffic. Bloomberg said there would be "a disaster" if the plan doesn't pass.

Our neighbors to the west broke ground today on a new stadium for the Giants and Jets at the Meadowlands. Rather, officials officially broke ground today, since it's obvious to anyone that's been to the Meadowlands that construction on the new two-team stadium has already started. The $1.3 billion stadium will be jointly owned by the two teams and make both feel at home, unlike Stadium, which irritates the Jets and their fans.

Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver is putting his mark on the Mayor's congestion pricing plan by not doing anything. Today he said on the radio, "It's unlikely we [the Legislature] can take action within the next week," and then most of Albany has a recess starting June 21. Silver did suggest that the Assembly could discuss the matter when they come back in August,which is when a plan would need to be approved so the city can still get up to $500 million in general grants.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: unstable scaffolding at Manhattan's 265 West 37th St., a police car multi-vehicle accident at Thomas S. Boyland St. and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and a suspicious package at East 161st St. and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.
• How could the McGreevey saga get any more strange? Maybe if Jim McGreevey decided to join the priesthood. He told WNBC that he is entering a seminary to become an Episcopal priest.
• Politics makes strange bedfellows: the lobbyist most responsible for killing Bloomberg's beloved West Side Stadium project is now a major backer of his beloved Congestion Tax proposal.
• The sister of the Brooklyn woman accused of killing her newborn child by dumping it with the trash on her family's back porch is claiming she didn't know there was a still-alive infant in the pile of bloody towels her sister gave her to throw away.
• The New York Times features a slideshow of the United Palace theater, the 1930s baroque movie palace turned evangelical church hall turned current music venue.
• The Bancroft family rebuffs Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy the Wall Street Journal and other properties, and Dow Jones employees all exhale in a giant sigh of relief.
• The Dolan family is taking Cablevision private in a move certain to attract even more of the blame if the Knicks' woes continue next season.
• Meet New York City's new generation of preservationists.

• 90-floor hotel at the Javits Center? That'll be great for the West Side Stadium - oh, wait
• Huh: Kean University hires former NJ Governor James McGreevey to teach ethics, law and leadership - we sort of understand it because they're just paying him $17,500, but STILL
• He's ready: Suspected sexual attacker Peter Braunstein was found mentally fit to stand trial
• Former Montessori school headmistress Lina Sinha's 14 year sentence for seducing a student is one year more than the student's age at the time
• Biggest non-shock: Duane Reade being ranked #7 out of 7 pharmacy chains surveyed
• It's Brooklyn "zipper pin" designer versus the Gap; maybe she can complain about the Williamsburg jeans while she's at it
• 11 Spring Street is busy getting buffed
• The Department of Transportation may tear down or renovate the Kosciuszko Bridge because it has "narrow lanes, insufficient shoulders and limited sight distance"
• ...and in other DOT news, Streetsblog has the agency's plans for Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza - which makes you wonder why the DOT can't put them up on their site for the public to see (Streetsblog also looks at what the Grand Army Plaza Coalition's ideas are)

The hard-hitting polemical film, , lucidly articulates and amplifies the movement to stop Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan. Directed and produced by Isabel Hill, the film portrays the AY project as an outrageous scam to be perpetrated upon hoodwinked Brooklynites. Numerous interviews with critical residents, planners, critics, and elected officials portray a scenario in which a cynical developer and corrupt State agencies have hired gullible community allies and a star architect to conceal their true motives. The politics of the Brooklyn-based coalition, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), are evident in the film, although the work was independently created and funded by Hill, a former city planner.

It’s another defining week for the Atlantic Yards. On Wednesday, the 8 million square-foot project faces one of its last hurdles: approval by the Public Authorities Control Board, the state oversight body that monitors Albany’s fiscal commitments to projects like the Yards. PACB votes have derailed large-scale projects before, most notably last year when Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Joseph Bruno, the Senate majority leader, killed the West Side Stadium plan. Of course, it’s no secret how Pataki, who also has a vote, will go.

The Cablevision Dolans are planning to sink their claws into another Manhattan space: The Beacon Theatre. A long-term lease has been negotiated between the theater's owner and MSG Entertainment - one that has MSG paying much more than the current tenant, which may mean the Beacon's ticket prices would go up even more.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is probably turning in his grave right now. Plans for the Moynihan Station have been "derailed" as plans to discuss it have been postponed. Officials had been hoping that the Public Authorities Control Board would approve the project this year, so it would happen under Governor Pataki's term. But with opposition to and many questions surrounding the project, the NY Times reports "the Pataki administration took the proposal off the table again yesterday rather than risk a vote against it." Hello, brinksmanship!

Both the Observer and the NY Sun look at the slow development process for the Moynihan Station, a project long discussed but stuck in development hell. We think the Observer's sub-headline says it all: "Silver Stops Projects, And There’s Not Much Putzy Governor Can Do; Gargano in Full Gear; Snarled by Property Shuffle With Vornado and Related." To translate: Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver is delaying the project, and since Governor Pataki is a lame duck, he's pretty much toothless in this fight. Enter Charles Gargano, head of the Empire State Development Corporation, who has been trying to get organizations to lobby Silver to stop his delays.

And once again Moynihan Station has hit a bump in the road. The Times today has a story on the newest set of roadblocks for the oft-delayed station. After years of delays the problems plaguing the station can still be summed up in one word: Politics.

Check it out! The Mayor Bloomberg, hoping to make Hudson Yards lemonade out of failed Jets Stadium lemons, along with West Side Stadium opponent City Council Speaker Christine Quinn have offered the MTA $500 million for the West Side Railyards. The two officials sent the MTA an "unexpected" offer letter, which has the city paying $300 million for the "Western Rail Yard" (where the Jets Stadium would have been) and $200 million for the Eastern Rail Yard. The $300 million is already $50 million more than the Jets offered for that parcel and is in line with what the MTA wanted last year, but the MTA appraised it at $923 million. Speaker Quinn said, "Together the city must work to create a mixed-use commercial and residential district, one that protects existing residents, businesses and manufacturers while also creating new employment opportunities, affordable housing, and parks." In other words, let's jampack Manhattan with everything while the iron is hot.

People are wondering why City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is so quiet about the Atlantic Yards project. The Observer points out that Quinn was instrumental in leading City Hall opposition to the West Side Stadium, with the suggestion being that Quinn is thinking about running for Mayor and will need to keep certain people happy. Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's Daniel Goldstein tells the Observer, "It would not be a principled position for her to support it as it is currently proposed," while City Councilwoman Letitia James, whose district will be affected by the project, says, "We’re still negotiating with the Speaker’s office. She definitely remembers that I was there for Hudson Yards.” Oh, yeah, Hudson Yards - that's what the West Side project was called.

They say that history repeats itself, but this is re-dunk-u-lous. Moynihan Station, the long-planned Penn Station expansion into the Farley Post Office that is intended to make up for the destruction of the late, great, original Penn Station (above) hasn't even been built yet but developers are already vying to build a new Madison Square Garden on top of and around it. And yes, this would be MSG number 5 for those of you keeping count at home.

State Assembly members met with various parties involved with the World Trade Center rebuilding yesterday to discuss development progress. Or, rather, the lack of progress. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky even said, "I wouldn't do any more groundbreaking right now" as a zing to all the ceremonies, photo ops and public puffery but little actual work getting done. And what's more, WTC leaseholder and developer Larry Silverstein says that insurance companies may not pay out all of the promised $4.6 billion now that the Port Authority will take control of Freedom Tower. Oy. The Port Authority and Silverstein are asking the insurers for reassurance that payments won't be taken away because of the Port Authority's involvement; it'd be a pretty bad public relations nightmare for the insurers not to pay for the rebuilding of Ground Zero, but with hundreds of millions at stake, you can't blame them for trying.

This is a dis on a grand scale (to NYC tourism, at least). Or it's a blessing in disguise. The U.S. Olympic Committee is not visiting New York City when it visits potential cities for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Cities the USOC is visiting: Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. One could say that the USOC already visited NYC before it selected it to be the 2012 US Olympic city bid, but, hey, it's a whole new ballgame, with no hope of a West Side Stadium, a probably most-completed Ground Zero, and a huge tract of land in Greenpoint ripe for development.

- Support of legislation to provide financial incentives to produce affordable housing for New Yorkers.We're all for affordable housing, giving working families more educational choices, protecting the city and creating lasting infrastructure, but how about getting NY State to pay the city the billions it owes for the school system? Anyway, people are skeptical that donors will actually change their mind about who they support because of these cards, but they probably appreciated the free lunch.

easy to imagine the Mayor saying that in his somewhat whiny monotone.

So this had already been kinda mentioned, but in case you were worried what Bloomberg and Dan Doctoroff were going to focus on next now that the West Side Stadium and the Olympics are dead (and assuming Blooms wins the election) the Daily News has the answer for you: Governors Island.

Mayor Bloomberg wasn't kidding about wanting a bigger role in the redevelopment of Ground Zero: He made sure the Daily News could tell World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein that Bloomberg wanted him to "Butt out, Larry". Gotta love the tabs and how they cut to the chase. Bloomberg told the Daily News Editorial Board, "It would be in the city's interest to get Silverstein out, [but] nobody can figure out how to do it yet. And can you imagine the stink if you gave him half a billion dollars or a billion dollars in profit to get him out?" Not if it's your own money, Bloomberg!

- The new plaza at 55 Water Street will host 12 public events a year

We're still reading the NY Times story about Mayor Bloomberg's businessman's approach to running the city, but it seems pretty positive. Sure, he's had politically polarising problems with the West Side Stadium and the NYC 2012 bid, but the article makes him out to be a pretty reasonable guy, if you call things like "appointing his commissioners based on expertise and giving them nearly free rein to determine policy regardless of political consequences" reasonable. While it's great that Mayor Bloomberg has made progress (with even more Democrats supporting him), we really long for something stupid to come out of him, so we'll wait for his new press op. In the mean time, we're amused someone thought they'd get dates by saying they are the "Mayor of New York City" in a NY Times personal ad.

Mayor Bloomberg wants the city to play a "bigger role in rebuilding at Ground Zero". Oh, so a bigger role than showing up for photo ops and nodding along with whatever Governor Pataki says? Of course this announcement si totally political: By not really taking an active role in Ground Zero (aside from wanting the Freedom Tower to be safer, really), the Mayor has avoided criticism that he's helped the project go to the toilet. On the other hand, the Mayor does have the snafus of the Jets West Side Stadium and NYC 2012 Olympics bid on his side, but as monumentally harebrained they might have been, they are still peanuts compared to a city planning project that has so much baggage. We can only hope the Mayor uses his wooing-big-companies charm to continue to bring business down there... though we imagine he'll be asking them if they want some space on the West Side, too.