This a.m.’s Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC discussed the disagreement between Governor George Pataki and Mayor Mike Bloomberg over the development of lower Manhattan. Along with New York Post state editor Fred Dicker and WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein, Lehrer rehearsed the dispute and then elicited some interesting insights into the dispute:
1. The current real estate market does not favor the Pataki program. Bernstein noted that World Trade Center 7 is now complete and open for occupancy, but is hardly getting any attention from the business community. That is 1,700,000 square feet that are open and ready for business with nary a renter aside from American Express and Larry Silverstein (the developer) himself.. The market is suggesting that while we might need some commercial space downtown to maintain the business feel of the neighborhood, we don’t need millions and millions more of square feet.
2. While the Lower Manhattan Development Board (LMDB) is more amendable to the concerns of Albany than it is liable to the influence of City Hall, Bloomberg might be planning mini-filibusters (enacted by his new appointees to the board). What Bloomberg cannot achieve by sheer force he might attempt to affect by raising such a fuss that Albany has to cede some ground and allow more housing in lower Manhattan.
3. Dicker proposed that what is driving Pataki’s plan to develop lower Manhattan is the presidential election in 2008. If he does not deliver the promised goods and get construction underway, Pataki’s pretensions to national office will be damaged. Once he is out of the governor’s office in 2006, his bridge from Albany to Washington will be 9/11 and the rebuilding of lower Manhattan. In the next year real construction has to begin and it has to begin based on Pataki’s plan. If not, he will be soon forgotten by the Republican National Committee.
In an update on the lower Manhattan development story, Silverstein is looking to get $3.3 billion in Liberty Bonds to finance the construction on the WTC site. The Daily News editorialized today that Pataki and Bloomberg need to make sure that these bonds are 1) conditional on a very strict schedule for construction and 2) conditional on Silverstein giving up some control over the development of the site. Gotham Gazette’s Wonkster wonders if this news will signal a break in the deadlock downtown. Too early to tell, but it is not too early to tell that the Silverstein plan, which is all about commercial office space, is not the best plan for NYC.
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