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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From left: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and a rendering of NYU’s plans for 370 Jay StreetWhile many New Yorkers were celebrating Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s selection of Cornell University to build a science school on Roosevelt Island, Brooklyn politicians were pinning their hopes on another phrase the mayor uttered during the press conference.
According to the New York Daily News, Bloomberg said he was still in talks with three other universities and could award grants for another graduate science school. Brooklynites hope that award goes to NYU so it can build a school at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. [more]
Williamsburg retailers are up in arms about partially shut down service on the L train on a dozen weekends since July, reaching out to community leaders and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to work out alternatives. The shutdowns have resulted in massive drops in sales for many of them, Crains reported, most dramatically on Black Friday, the stores’ biggest day of the year.
“Nobody was here,” said William Norton, owner of an apparel store Peachfrog in the vicinity of the L closure. “I lost 80 percent of my business, compared with last year.”
Since 1998, the L train’s ridership has increased by a massive 141 percent thanks to development of the now-trendy Williamsburg area, but local businesses are now suffering so much from the unreliability of commuters’ lifeline to the neighborhood that something must be done, they said.
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From left: State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and renderings of the Apple store in Grand CentralThe sweetheart deal that Apple got to open a store in Grand Central Terminal has caught the attention of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, according to the New York Post, and he’s launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was overly generous with the lease terms.
Apple is paying less rent than most other tenants, including neighbors on the balcony, and is the only of the 100 retailers in the terminal that doesn’t have to share its revenue with the agency. [more]
The cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority presented Apple with an unusually favorable deal to take 23,000 square feet of space in the Grand Central Terminal, according to the New York Post.
Not only is Apple paying just $60-per-square-foot, while other tenants, such as Shake Shack, pay upwards of $200 per square foot, but Apple is also under no obligation to kickback a percentage of its sales to the MTA, as all other Grand Central tenants do. The Post said retail analysts believe the store should generate at least $100 million in sales per year. Real estate executives interviewed by the Post expressed some measure of surprise that the agency wasn’t able to recoup some percentage. [more]
While the New York City construction industry has been stable in 2011, drastic job and spending cuts are in the cards for 2013, according to a report released today by the New York Building Congress entitled “New York City Construction Outlook 2011-2013.”
Construction spending is expected to total $27.7 billion this year, just shy of the $28 billion spent in 2010, but 11 percent below the $31 billion peak in 2007. The Building Congress expects spending to be about the same in 2012, before plummeting to $23 billion in 2013.
Similarly, the average number of construction jobs will fall by 4,900 this year to 106,900. And after a 5,200 uptick in construction jobs next year, the Building Congress expects the number of jobs to plummet to 91,800, down 40,000 from the 2008 peak. – Adam Fusfeld [more]
