Mayor Bloomberg On Transportation Priorities

In case you thought it would be a good thing for the City to control transportation projects, there’s this — Hizzoner paying a little too much attention to the wrong parts of the Power Broker:

Bloomberg said Friday that a week or two ago, developer Jerry Speyer expressed concerns about whether the city would complete the 7 subway line extension critical to the $1 billion project.

“If I were you,” the mayor said he told Speyer, “I would make absolutely, positively sure that we are going to build that subway before I put one dime of my own money in.”

The MTA’s announcement Thursday night that it had canned the Tishman-Speyer deal came without warning to the mayor, City Hall insiders said.

. . .

Neither Bloomberg staffers nor Tishman-Speyer representatives would discuss the outcome of the hour-long talk at Bloomberg’s London apartment Friday.

“The plan isn’t dead by any means,” Bloomberg said before the sitdown. “All these things go though many cycles.

“The No. 7 line is going to get done,” the mayor added, “and it will be so far along before I leave office that nobody’s going to be able to stop it.”

Plans for the site include thousands of units of housing, commercial skyscrapers, a school and parkland.

Oh, well as long as there’s a park — and a school! — Robert Moses would smile, since he popularized the “get as far along as possible and make ’em take it back down” philosophy of urban planning (recently embraced by Bruce Ratner, among others).

There Must Have Been A Film Shoot Scheduled

More NYC & Company overreach:

Tree-lined Henry Street was briefly turned into one long billboard, but Brooklyn Heights residents erupted after seeing commercial banners on the mostly residential street, so the city removed them.

On Monday, banners reading “Brooklyn loves to shop” were hung on lampposts from Clark to Montague streets — and locals slammed the commercialization of the strip.

“I absolutely detest them,” said Veronica Rylander, 48. “They’re so out of place here above all these houses. I feel like it cheapens the look of the neighborhood.”

For Liana Schwartz, 36, it wasn’t the aesthetics, but the practicality of the banners that provoked her disdain.

“I just don’t even get why they’re hanging here,” said Schwartz. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to put them Downtown or on streets where there are actually places to shop?”

After The Brooklyn Paper started asking local officials about the appropriateness of posting ads in a residential corridor, the banners were taken down and relocated to commercial Court Street on Wednesday morning.
Brooklyn Bridge Realty

The banners — which are sponsored by Greek natural skincare company Korres, which just opened on Montague Street, and NYC& Co., the city’s tourist board — also annoyed people who think tourism officials don’t get Brooklyn — or maybe get it too well.

“They put those signs on Henry because they know there are lots of cars speeding through here,” said one man.

West Side Gang Goes Down

The one-stop shopping and railroading may be dead after all:

Six weeks after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority selected Tishman Speyer Properties to build a vast complex of office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the railyards on the West Side of Manhattan, the deal has fallen apart.

Gary Dellaverson, the authority’s chief financial officer, said the negotiations foundered Thursday afternoon after Tishman Speyer insisted on changing the terms of the $1 billion development, which both parties had agreed to on March 26.

. . .

. . . critics of the deal said that it should never have been made, especially since the financing for a key element for West Side development, the extension of the No. 7 subway line, had not been resolved. At the same time, plans for the expansion of the nearby Javits Convention Center had collapsed. And given the sour real estate market, critics said the developer was getting an inexpensive development option.

“This deal was unhealthy from the get-go,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky. “It never met the needs of the M.T.A.’s capital plan. The 7-line commitments were never sustainable. And in the end, every single West Side project is in various state of collapse.”

In Case You Needed Further Confirmation That The Securitization Industry Is Kaput . . .

Law firms forced to slum it in Brooklyn:

The Atlantic Yards project may be falling apart on Bruce Ratner, but the developer released some big news for his Metrotech office complex Downtown: the Manhattan law firm of Weil, Gotshal is moving to Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner Vice President Mary Anne Gilmartin made the announcement at the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable on Tuesday that the 500-lawyer white shoe firm would soon relocate to Metrotech.

“It’s a paragon shift from back-office to more-discerning tenants,” she said.

Update . . .

Highlighting the importance of keeping up appearances (as in, the economy actually grew 0.6 percent last quarter so we’re doing very well, thank you very much), the law firm denies the horrible accusation:

The Atlantic Yards project may be falling apart on Bruce Ratner, but the developer released some big news for his Metrotech office complex Downtown: the Manhattan law firm of Weil, Gotshal is moving part of its office to Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner Vice President Mary Anne Gilmartin made the announcement at the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable on Tuesday, but said that the 500-lawyer white shoe firm would soon relocate to Metrotech. That turned out to be untrue, as a press release from the company said only some back-office staffers would relocate to 15 Metrotech, which is on the office complex’s commons, between Myrtle Avenue and Tech Place.

[Gersh, you’re killing me, buddy — here I am ready to sit down with a tall glass of scotch and then . . .]

OK . . . It’s Not Like, You Know, Your Name Isn’t The Company Or, To Be Fair, You Didn’t Get Where You Are Today Because Of It

A question? Kill it:

Nearly five dozen women now say they faced sex discrimination because they became pregnant while employees of the financial-news company Mayor Bloomberg founded — and the number of alleged victims is growing, a federal employee-rights lawyer said.

A class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg LP named three victims when it was filed in September. But that number has ballooned as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continues to interview women at the company, said EEOC attorney Raechel Adams.

At a court conference yesterday, Adams told Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska that 58 women have joined the case as her office continues to interview some 475 employees who took maternity leave since 2002, all potential class-action members.

The suit, filed in September, claims supervisors at Bloomberg LP sidelined women after they revealed that they were pregnant and systematically denied them promotions and demoted them.

William Dealy, a lawyer for the original named plaintiffs, said, “They’re encouraged because in unity there’s strength.”

Mayor Bloomberg blew up at a reporter yesterday when asked about the lawsuit following a budget presentation.

“What does this got to do with the budget?” the mayor snapped angrily. “I have absolutely no idea. You’ll have to talk to the company.

“And next time don’t bother to ask us a question. You stick to topic. Everybody else plays by the rules. You’ll just have to as well. Thank you very much.”

OK, so about that budget. What’s the deal with continuing a $400 rebate if there are multi-billion dollar deficits expected until the next Olympic Games? We should kill that, too:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, warning that the boom in real estate and on Wall Street has come to an end, unveiled a $59.1 billion budget Thursday that would virtually halt the growth in city spending for the first time since the economic downturn following 9/11.

Despite the darkening economic picture, Mr. Bloomberg called for preserving a popular $400 property tax rebate and a 7 percent reduction in the property tax rate, although he said he expected that the city would have to raise property taxes by July 2009.