1982: City makes first push to renew Times Square
The Koch administration announced long-term development plans for Times Square, the storied and seedy Crossroads of the World, in April 1982. The plan called for the construction of four commercial skyscrapers on 42nd Street, a new merchandise center for the Garment District, a luxury hotel and the rehabilitation of several theaters. To further spur development in the area, the city enacted a six-year, 20 percent zoning bonus on Seventh Avenue and Broadway so developers could build higher. All told, more than 4 million square feet of office space were to be added to 42nd Street, with the towers slated to be designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. And then the redevelopment plan for the area, dubbed “Times Square Center,” slowly died over the next decade, as office vacancy rates in Manhattan soared and the construction of commercial space became less and less attractive. Finally, in the early ’90s, a cluster of lease signings and development plans — including Viacom taking space at 1515 Broadway, the Walt Disney Company’s plan to reopen the New Amsterdam Theater and the Durst Organization’s announcement that it would build a 1.5-million-square-foot office tower at 4 Times Square — paved the way for Times Square’s revitalization.
1967: City planners fear Staten Island becoming overdeveloped
Forty years ago this month, city planners were airing concerns about Staten Island’s future. There was no master plan for the development of Staten Island, and planners feared the borough would be overrun by haphazard, shoddy development. The city’s director of Staten Island development, Holt Meyer, wanted to spare the borough the overdevelopment he believed blighted much of Queens. More than 12,000 homes had been built in Staten Island since the start of the ’60s, and more people were moving there following the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964, part of the so-called “white flight” from the inner city. Still, thousands of Staten Island’s acres were untouched by construction, and the area boasted untrammeled natural resources unique to the city. The City Planning Commission finally adopted a zoning measure for the island in 1973, which resulted in the construction of more housing in Staten Island’s interior and southern sections, easing the crush of housing in the borough’s northernmost section.
1947: City releases first billion-dollar budget
In 1947, as now, real estate taxes played a huge role in the city’s budget. That April, Mayor William O’Dwyer’s proposed budget topped $1 billion for the first time in the city’s history. The budget, which totaled $1,029,120,314, called for a property tax increase of more than 9 percent. In total, real estate taxes were expected to pad city coffers by nearly half a billion dollars. The tax increase drew cries of protest from the real estate community, since rent ceilings had been frozen by the federal government in 1943. The perceived enormity of the budget was front-page news for weeks. It represented a sharp rise over the preceding couple of years: In 1945 the budget was around $760 million, and in 1946 it was $860 million.
1917: New transportation lines spur jump in Queens land value
Manhattan land values have always outpaced Queens’, but that was even more true 90 years ago, when the average parcel in Astoria or Corona was valued at a tenth of the average price of a same-sized plot in Manhattan. But Queens values increased quickly in April 1917, as the city added rapid-transit lines to new areas of the borough, spurring population growth and ever-greater demand for housing. A train line servicing Woodside, Elmhurst and Corona opened late that month. Meanwhile, an elevated line was in the midst of being extended deeper into Queens; by the end of the year it would run through Woodhaven, Richmond Hill and Jamaica. Finally, a train line that connected Astoria with Manhattan began operating in February 1918.