CBRE's Bob Alexander and Hudson Yards rendering
Luxury retailer coach has expanded its presence at Hudson Yards, the New York Post reported, and agreed to purchase an additional 150,000 square feet on top of the 600,000 for which it already signed. Under the terms of its agreement with developer Related Companies, which is down to “paper details,” Coach can add another 100,000 feet to bring its total to 850,000, or one-half of the forthcoming 46-story building’s 1.7 million square feet. [more]
A rendering of the East Side Access concourse
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is currently considering an option to outsource both the management and operations of the East Side Access concourse and has paid a consulting firm $600,000 to see if the plan is possible, Crain’s reported. The agency will also issue a request for proposals next month to have private companies manage the Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan. [more]
370 Jay Street
The Transport Workers’ Union is not pleased about the recently announced deal to turn 370 Jay Street, an office building in Downtown Brooklyn that houses Metropolitan Transportation Authority offices and equipment, into New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, NY1 reported.
Members of the union packed a meeting of the MTA board in today, urging them to vote down the deal to abandon the agency’s former transit headquarters in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood. [more]
The site of the crane collapse
Construction on the 7 train extension resumed yesterday afternoon, according to city officials, DNAinfo reported, for the first time since a crane collapse at the West 34th Street and 11th Avenue work site last week killed one construction worker and injured three others. A cable snapped, the second such incident in the last three months, on a crane which was owned and operated by Yonkers Contracting Company, prompting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to suspend work at the site. [more]
347 Madison Avenue (credit: Propertyshark)
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, always strapped for cash, will be issuing a request for proposals for its Midtown headquarters spanning 341, 345 and 347 Madison Avenue, Reuters reported.
“We expect to vacate possession of these buildings to a developer in 2014 at the latest,” Jeffrey Rosen, director of real estate for the agency, said at a finance committee meeting for the MTA, according to Reuters. The sale of the buildings has been planned since last year, but the RFP had not formally been issued. [more]
The former building at 194 Broadway (credit: PropertyShark) and a rendering of the Fulton Street Transit Center
Not only did the Metropolitan Transportation Authority undervalue a Lower Manhattan building it demolished to make room for the Fulton Street Transit Center, but a State Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the agency owes the tenants of the building damages for fixtures it lost in the condemnation. [more]
Revenue from taxes on property sales in New York City has plummeted, to $982 million in 2010 from $3.3 billion in 2007, making budgeting extremely difficult, Bloomberg reported.
The city’s Independent Budget Office, a non-partisan entity, said the decline in sales volume has translated to a deficit for dependent agencies, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA, a state agency, has raised its fares on subways, buses and commuter rail operations in recent years. [more]
A rendering of the Fulton Street Transit Center
Work on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s four major New York City projects hasn’t slowed down, despite major budget deficits in 2011, GlobeStreet.com reported. The 7 subway line extension, the Fulton Street Transit Center, the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Long Island Rail Road access are all on schedule for their planned completion dates, according to the MTA. Work on the Lower Manhattan Fulton Street Transit Center is more than 50 percent complete, with all the structural work on the mezzanine level for the A and C trains now finished, GlobeStreet.com said. [more]
In addition to easing travelers rides to the airport, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s AirTrain to Kennedy International Airport has played a big role in reviving downtown Jamaica (note: correction appended).
According to the New York Times, before the suburban exodus of the 1950s and 1960s, Jamaica was the city’s third largest shopping district, but rapidly deteriorated in the years since. While most AirTrain passengers use Jamaica only as a transfer point, enough of the 3.9 million people that pass through the terminal stay in the area to support at least three new hotels and a growing number of brand-name stores and restaurants. [more]
Yorkshire Towers at 305 East 86th StreetResidents of the Yorkshire Towers who filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year against a variety of federal agencies as well as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority saying the MTA had “arbitrarily and capriciously” chosen to place new subway entrances on their blocks and failed to properly assess the environmental impact of the mid-block entrances, are out of luck, Second Avenue Sagas blog reported.
A judge earlier this month granted a motion to dismiss the complaint by the residents of the building, at 305 East 86th Street at Second Avenue, based on a legal technicality (see the decision below). The residents waited eight months beyond the statute of limitations, and therefore the station entrances will go ahead as planned. That suit wasn’t the first one Yorkshire Towers filed against the MTA.
In a related case last year they sued the MTA over a Freedom of Information Law request.
The MTA has faced other criticisms as it continues in the first phase of the four-phase project. Residents near the construction complained at a community board meeting a couple of months ago that the work is causing them health problems. [Second Avenue Sagas] and [Second Avenue Sagas]
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