I.M. Bland, Stark

Sooner or later everything can be landmarked:

When New Yorkers talk about landmarking, they often think of genteel townhouses on tree-lined streets or distinguished cast-iron buildings. But concrete high-rises built in the 1960s?

Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to schedule hearings on preserving I.M. Pei’s Silver Towers, a modernist courtyard of concrete high-rises that towers above Greenwich Village.

“Even though this tower in the park superblock model was for the most part a failure, this was one of the most sensitive and well-designed ones,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has pushed for protecting the structures for five years. “The complex weaves itself more sensitively into the neighborhood than most, and it is one of the few superblocks in the country designed by one of the greatest architects of his era.”

. . .

“A landmark is something that was built years ago, that is historical,” said a longtime local resident who would only give her name as Dorothy. She added that she has lived in tenements in the neighborhood “for 80 years.”

“They look presentable enough, sure, but what were they built, 30, 40, years ago? That doesn’t sound like a landmark to me.”

Yet Another Reason Not To Extend The 7 Train To A Convention Center That Doesn’t Even Need It . . .

Spending $157 million for a brand new vacant lot. Which is probably the point of the MTA pitting Lower Manhattan against West Side redevelopment proponents (and who is that exactly now that Dan Doctoroff is gone?):

Soaring construction costs could force the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to scrap plans for an architecturally ambitious glass-domed subway station in Lower Manhattan and lead to more than $1 billion in cost overruns for the authority’s major expansion projects, officials said Monday.

The rising costs could slow progress on the three so-called mega-projects needed to expand the capacity of the public transportation system, including a Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central Terminal, a westward extension of the No. 7 subway line and the first leg of the Second Avenue subway.

The news represents another setback for the subway station project, known as the Fulton Street Transit Center, which was envisioned as a central element in the recovery of Lower Manhattan after the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

. . .

Several underground portions of the Fulton Street subway project have been completed or are close to being finished, including a renovation of the platform and mezzanine serving the Nos. 2 and 3 trains.

The authority planned to finish the project by letting out a contract to cover the construction of the entrance building and oculus and several remaining pieces of the underground work.

But the authority received only one bid, of $870 million, far exceeding the $370 million the authority had budgeted for the contract.

Mysore L. Nagaraja, the authority’s president of capital construction, said the authority rejected the bid and would now split the project into smaller pieces, in the hope of attracting more bidders and greater competition.

He said the underground portions of the work could be completed by late 2009, which will make the connections between subway lines fully functional for riders.

But officials said that it was unclear now what would go on top.

“I’m sad to say that we cannot build the transit center as currently envisioned in this market with the budget that we have,” Mr. Sander said.

As it is, even without a station building, the project will reach a total cost of about $930 million, which is nearly $30 million more than the authority has in its overall budget for the project.

It is not the first time the project has run into budget trouble. The cost of acquiring real estate to make way for the project rose to $157 million from an early estimate of $50 million.

The authority has already razed several buildings at Fulton and Broadway to make way for the project, and Monday’s developments raised the prospect of the site’s remaining virtually vacant above ground for an extended time, or of a much more modest entrance building.

The Tyranny Of Physics

Funny thing about engineering, that:

A landmarked 1872 cast-iron building is looking strangely similar to the Tower of Pisa, leaning precipitously to one side after the demolition and excavation of an adjacent site. Engineers have placed long wooden supports against the wall to keep the building, on 287 Broadway, from tipping over.

“It’s terrible. One day you own a business and the next you are out of business for nothing that you did,” said David Jaroslawicz, the lawyer for the Yenem Corp., the group that owned a basement diner in the building. “It’s only in New York that you build big buildings and no one pays attention to these details. It’s like capitalism has taken away humanism.”

Settlement over time caused the building to lean slightly to the south by approximately four inches, according to city buildings officials. After John Buck Co., a Chicago-based developer, began excavation work on the neighboring property to develop a 20-story residential tower, monitors installed on 287 Broadway recorded further movement of between 3 and 4 inches. In November, residents and businesses were told to vacate the building.

Today, the diner looks like it belongs in a ghost town residents evacuated.

Few Will Have The Greatness To Bend The Span Between Queens And The Bronx

I can understand the park (even if “Pataki Park” sounds totally wretched) but a big old ugly bridge? Apparently he would have been happy with a bridge:

It has been an enduring wish of the Kennedy family that the Triborough Bridge be renamed in honor of Robert F. Kennedy, the former New York senator who was assassinated almost 40 years ago.

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Governor Carey in 1975 said he was planning to permanently attach the senator’s name to the bridge until the proposal was scuttled by the man responsible for its construction, Robert Moses. Governor Pataki, the younger Mr. Kennedy said, considered the idea but never acted.

A month ago, Governor Spitzer called Mr. Kennedy and told him that he would grant the family’s wish and launch an effort to rechristen the monumental complex of water crossings, a viaduct, and 14 miles of approach roads that connects Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. The bridge also serves as a pathway to the airport named after RFK’s older brother.

“He would be really, really happy that the bridge was going to be named in his honor,” Mr. Kennedy, 53, told The New York Sun yesterday.

. . .

Mr. Spitzer is expected to announce the plan tomorrow in his annual State of the State address to lawmakers in Albany.

Originally, the Democratic governor intended to use the speech to publicize his intention to rename another important New York site, a source in the administration said. Early drafts of the speech highlighted a plan to name Hudson River Park, the yet-to-be-completed span of walkways and bike paths running along Manhattan’s West Side, after Governor Pataki.

Mr. Pataki, a Republican, won’t be attending the address, a factor that apparently led to removing mention of the plan from the speech, according to a source.

Location Scout: Triborough Bridge.

It’s Easy — Just Keep Telling Yourself, “The Verrazano-Narrows Is Not Tacoma Narrows,” Even Though They Both Have “Narrows” In Their Names And The Concept Of “Narrow” Is Terrifying In Itself And Don’t Get Started On Interstate 35W . . .

Staten Island is not the best place to live if you’re terrified of bridges:

The Verrazano-Narrows bridge has been called a study in grace.

For Jan Steers, it was a study in terror.

Even thinking about driving across the 4,260-foot suspension span made her start to feel dizzy, made her heart race, her breath tightening into short rapid gasps.

Mrs. Steers, 47, suffered from a little-known disorder called gephyrophobia, a fear of bridges. And she had the misfortune of living in a region with 26 major bridges, whose heights and spans could turn an afternoon car ride into a rolling trip through a haunted house.

Some people go miles out of their way to avoid crossing the George Washington Bridge — for example, driving to Upper Manhattan from Teaneck, N.J., by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, a detour that can stretch a 19-minute jog into a three-quarter-hour ordeal. Other bridge phobics recite baby names or play the radio loudly as they ease onto a nerve-jangling span — anything to focus the mind. Still others take a mild tranquilizer an hour before buckling up to cross a bridge.

The Tappan Zee Bridge, rising more than 150 feet over the Hudson River, appears to inspire particular panic — so much so that New York State offers the skittish a chauffeur who will transport them across the span.

Similar rescue measures are provided in other places around the country with especially fearsome bridges. Authorities at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, for example, will dispatch a tow truck to pull panic-stricken drivers to the other side. The Mackinac Bridge, connecting Michigan’s Lower and Upper Peninsulas, provides a transport service like the Tappan Zee’s. Mrs. Steers’s phobia was so severe that she was virtually trapped on Staten Island for 13 years. She missed her brother’s wedding in Brooklyn. She sent her husband and two children off on family vacations without her. She had never seen her sister’s house at the Jersey Shore.