Sketch of Willets Point redevelopment

With Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan for a convention center near the Aqueduct in Queens grabbing headlines, the New York Times checked in on the status of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan for a similar, albeit smaller, convention center in the borough.

The Willets Point convention center is still in the works, the Times found. It’s a curious development — two centers within miles of one another — considering the general appetite for convention centers has faded with the growth of the Internet. [more]

Seamless, which runs take-out and food delivery site Seamless.com, combines two industries that power New York City — take-out and technology. And the company has just opened a new headquarters in the Big Apple, overlooking Bryant Park at 1065 Sixth Avenue, according to a statement from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, whose “digital roadmap” for the city, unveiled this May, urges an expansion of New York City’s technology sector.

The food ordering service, which facilitated over $400 million worth of food orders last year, will locate more than half of its total employees in its new 28,000-square-foot home at 40th Street, the statement said. [more]

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has pronounced any new property taxes proposed by the Bloomberg administration for the next fiscal year “dead on arrival,” in a Monday interview with New York Post reporters.

As rumors swell that the city plans to increase property taxes to fill its projected $2 billion budget gap, the City Council Speaker wants Mayor Michael Bloomberg to know that a tax hike is not on the table. Sources told the Post that the mayor’s aides are trying to convince him raising property taxes is preferable to drastic cuts in services. [more]

From left: Culture Shed model and a rendering of the Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking District

If the city has its way, New Yorkers will be able to walk along the High Line from the Whitney Museum, take a few stops at Chelsea galleries, and continue to a Hudson Yards arts center called the Culture Shed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the arts center, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week would host Fashion Week, would be home to theater performances, traveling exhibitions and community events. The city hopes to have a clear plan for the center by next summer, including funding and a non-profit organization to lead it. [more]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and 305 Seventh AvenueThe nation’s first gay senior center is being planned for Chelsea and will be among eight specialized senior citizen facilities opening across the five boroughs that benefit from $3.5 million in city funds, the New York Post reported. The center for the city’s estimated 100,000 elderly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people will open at 305 Seventh Avenue, near 27th Street, at the headquarters of SAGE, the leading advocacy group for the demographic. It will serve about 130 meals a day.

Other centers, dubbed super centers, will cater to vegetarians, seniors from East Asia and the visually impaired. [more]

From the September issue:

Click chart to enlarge

Over the summer, New York City crossed the three-quarters mark on the way to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal of churning out 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014. In his announcement of the milestone, the mayor boasted that the number of New Yorkers ultimately benefiting from the plan will exceed the total population of Miami.

Of course, Bloomberg has never been short of lofty ambitions. But he picked a challenging time to wager a piece of his legacy on real estate development.

In the midst of the financial turmoil over the past few years, few construction projects have made it off the ground. Bloomberg’s proposal, dubbed the New Housing Marketplace Plan, was launched in 2003 to spur the development and preservation of subsidized housing for low- to middle-income New Yorkers through a variety of funding programs and tax incentives. But it has already been altered to remain viable in today’s climate. [more]

Urban design firm Terreform One has a radical plan for the Brooklyn Navy Yards that fits perfectly with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vision for a tech-heavy New York, but the firm won’t bother bidding to redevelop the site, the Brooklyn Daily reported.

The eco-architectural firm’s 12-by-8-foot prototype shows one large building with a roof made of mushrooms that slants further and further down until it becomes part of a “Super Dock” consisting of five docks. One would house three-dimensional printers that spew out entire fleets for the river, another would be a testing ground for scientists and another would produce electric scooters and solar panels.

“This is a large, heavy manufacturing site,” said Terreform One architect Maria Aiolova. “We want to preserve it, but bring in startups to share resources and experiment with new technologies.” [more]

Affordable housing projects by area

The city invested $1.25 billion during fiscal year 2011, which ended June 30, to create 3,873 units of affordable housing, and preserve 11,771 more for existing tenants, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials announced today. That investment is part of the $8.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan initiated in 2004 to build and preserve some 165,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2014. The city is now more than three-quarters towards that goal, having invested in 124,510 affordable homes, 41,556 of which are newly constructed.

The initiative also created 120,000 full-time equivalent, construction-related jobs. – Adam Fusfeld Comments

Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed a 50-year resident of city public housing to fill the newly created Resident Board Member position on the New York City Housing Authority Board. The appointee, Victor Gonzalez, has served as the president of the Residents Association at the Rabbi Stephen Wise Towers near Columbus Avenue and West 90th Street on the Upper West Side since 2003. He spent 33 years working for United Parcel Service before retiring in 2005, served five years in the U.S. Air Force and has a Bachelor’s degree from Mercy College. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

From left: Rendering of the Harlem Children Zone’s Academy and the DREAM Charter School in Harlem

As charter schools increase their presence in the city, they’re acquiring land from an unexpected source: the New York City Housing Authority. Crain’s reported the authority is selling the land in order to preserve public housing.

The agency has been cash-strapped since the Bush administration ceased allocation of federal subsidies to the authority, but still owns a “huge chunk” of the city’s valuable land. According to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer the agency operates at a $42 million to $64 million budget deficit, and so it has begun selling its land for money to preserve affordable housing. The agency said that in its efforts to pursue “financial returns, socioeconomic impact and environmental sustainability” it has sold some of the land to the charter schools [more]