By Henry J. Stern
July 18, 2006

While the world is rightly preoccupied with the war in the Mideast, some decisions are being made here in New York which will have significant economic and esthetic consequences.
 
The New York State Public Authorities Control Board is scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon in Albany to decide whether to approve a $1.7 billion project to expand the capacity of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's west side, between 34th and 39th Streets, and Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues.  The current estimate for the job is $1.7 billion, but with construction costs rising at one per cent per month, the likelihood is that the project will cost closer to $3 billion before it is completed in 2010, itself an ambitious date.
 
In our judgment, the design of the expansion is seriously flawed and should not be approved as submitted.  It is supported as is by the usual build-anything crowd, construction unions and contractors.  Their interest in these issues is limited to the economic benefits they themselves can expect to receive.  They are scarcely disinterested parties.  Their polar opposites are the banana crowd (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody).  They are bananas.

The hospitality and tourism industries, frustrated at losing conventions to other cities and the acknowledged inadequacy of the current Javits Center, also support the expansion.  They would be better served by a more practical and attractive design, which would attract more conventions.  Sadly, a few months delay is just a speed bump in the evolution of this project.

The lame-duck Pataki administration is anxious to let the contracts and reap whatever benefits and good will accrue when decisions involving the expenditure of billions of dollars of public money are made by agencies that are responsive to their wishes. 
 
Of the three board members with veto power, the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Assembly Speaker, the only holdout may be Speaker Silver, whose representative, along with Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's designee, voted against the proposal in an earlier meeting.  In this case, the two dissenters are acting in the public interest, and we hope they are not intimidated by the pressure that we assume is being applied.
 
We are in mid-July, 2006.  The Pataki legions have had twelve years to expand the center, which was too small the day it opened in 1986.  The Empire State Development Corporation, headed by Charles A. Gargano, has been managing the project without interference since December 2005, when Governor Pataki fired his friend, Robert E. Boyle.

Boyle had strongly opposed the plans that Gargano is now submitting to the PACB.  He had been brought in by the governor in 1995, Pataki's first year, to clean up the convention center, which had a shady reputation for high costs, extortion and union domination.  The facility was not popular with exhibitors, who saw themselves as victims.  Boyle was regarded as a skilled manager, and was given credit for improving conditions at the center.  When he was dismissed last year, the cost estimate for the proposed expansion was $1.4 billion.
 
It is our belief that, as July wanes into August, the governor who will be nominated in September and elected in November should have the right and the responsibility to make the irreversible decisions on size, design and location that are about to be made prematurely.  If there were no controversy over the building it would be possible to speed up the process by acting now.  But there is substantial opposition to the proposed design, from disinterested civic organizations who support the center but not the Hudson River wall, as well as an environmentally based lawsuit.
 
The Municipal Art Society, Citizens Union, the Friends of Hudson River Park, American Planning Association's New York Metro chapter and other groups have protested the plan as submitted.  A couple of these groups have sued on the ground that the new plan violates environmental standards, and that no EIS (environmental impact statement) has been submitted covering the expansion.  Their lawsuit is pending in New York State Supreme Court. 
 
MAS president Kent Barwick wrote an essay stating the case against the current plan.  The article is well done, and we quote a few paragraphs:

“As Hudson River Park nears completion, new development is rapidly moving into the Far West Side, and New Yorkers are already being drawn to the light, air and magnificent views of one of the city’s greatest assets — the waterfront and the Hudson River. But the current, ill-conceived plan to expand the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center northward would do the neighborhood and the city irreparable harm.

“The Javits Center currently isolates Midtown and West Side residents from the Hudson for more than four blocks from 34th Street to just short of 39th Street. Expanding the center northward to traffic-choked 40th Street would only serve to make a bad situation worse. It would lengthen the massive barrier to six solid blocks — more than a quarter mile — and would force area residents to walk even farther to gain access to the waterfront park.

“Neighborhood safety is also a concern. It’s important to remember that on 9/11 and during the 2003 blackout, waterborne transportation provided the only reliable way of getting into or out of Manhattan. Water transport remains a central part of the city’s emergency preparedness plan and is cited in all contingency plans during transit strikes. A six-block wall along the river is not conducive to a quick escape or rescue.

“Perhaps the most irrational consequence of this northward expansion plan would be its blockade effect on the sparkling new ferry terminal that just opened at 39th Street. The new terminal has drawn rave reviews and crowds of commuters. Why obstruct a big success with a big mistake?

“The good news is that viable alternatives to the proposed northward expansion exist. It is not too late for the talented architectural team selected for this project to design a facility that achieves program needs, environmental objectives, river access and community desires. New York’s civic and environmental communities stand ready to assist with making this vision a reality.

“Governor Pataki has been a great champion of Hudson River Park since its inception. Because of his critical role in the state-led expansion of the center and his affection for the park, the Municipal Art Society has joined with seven other civic organizations to urge him and the Empire State Development Corporation to take action now to ensure that misfortune does not befall one of his greatest legacies.”

Another proposal, made by the Steven L. Newman Center for Real Estate at Baruch College, would turn the Javits Center from a north-south to east-west axis, using space over the railroad yards west of Penn Station.  This proposal conflicts with the city's plan to buy the air rights to the yards from the MTA, but it would have the advantage of opening up the Hudson River frontage to residential or commercial development.  "Mr. Gargano, take down your wall," is the request of Henry Wollman, director of the Newman Center.

Without evaluating the Newman Center plan, and aware of the fact that we have not spent millions of dollars studying this issue, our modest conclusion is that the Javits expansion, as currently designed, is not the best plan that this great city's talented architects can offer.  There are issues peripheral to the center which we believe can be resolved if people of good faith sit down to reach agreement.  Of course, once a plan is approved, there is no need to sit down with anyone except the contractors, who will build anything you ask them to, at a price, of course.

There is an old tradition in politics of midnight judges, appointed just before midnight, the time a public official's term will  expire, the time when pardons are dispensed to some, and robes to others.  New York does not need a midnight building, whose blankness will mar our view long after the sun has risen.