For all the attention Governor Andrew Cuomo directed towards a new convention center in his State of the State address yesterday, there was little mention of the $500 million renovation New York City’s current convention center, the Jacob Javits Center, is undergoing. Now, the Wall Street Journal reported, the future is unclear for the building Cuomo said is harming the state’s economy.
Cuomo’s plan calls for turning the 18-acre Javits Center, at 655 West 34th Street, into a mixed-use building that would include housing, hotels and office space.
It would instantly become the largest development parcel in the city – larger than the United Nations and the World Trade Center – and would join Hudson Yards, Moynihan Station and Manhattan West as a major component of Manhattan West. Cuomo envisions a transformation that follows the lead set by the Battery Park City Authority, which signed long-term land leases with private developers, and lures $2 billion in private investment.
But that all hinges on successfully completing a deal for the 3.8 million square-foot convention center at the Aqueduct, the Journal noted. And until that happens, the structure that has struggled to find profits or a new chief executive for the last three years, all while spending half of a billion dollars to reinvent itself, is in limbo. [WSJ]
