BY SAM SPOKONY | Recent actions by New York state officials toward selling major development rights to fund the Moynihan Station project have been called calling an “unwelcome surprise” by local electeds — who are now calling for transparency and adherence to process, as the project goes forward.
Overall, this two-phase plan — run by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), the state’s chief economic development agency — involves constructing a new Amtrak train hall. Named for late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, its location inside the state-owned Farley Post Office Building (421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets) would create an extension of the adjacent Penn Station. Phase One, which consists mainly of underground work, began in 2010 and is expected to be completed in 2016.
In a step toward funding Phase Two, which would transform much of the Farley Building’s interior into a Grand Central-esque terminal, ESDC released a Request for Proposals (RFP) on February 6, seeking a broker for sales of the building’s 1.5 million square feet of unused air rights. Those sales could lead to more dense development in an area just blocks away from the forthcoming Hudson Yards and Manhattan West projects, which will, respectively, create 17 million and 5.5 million square feet of new mixed-use development.
All responses from potential brokers were received by March 6, and the state plans to choose the contract winner before the end of March, according to the RFP.
The problem is that ESDC never informed local elected officials or community board members about that February RFP, leaving them all to learn about it weeks after it had been released.
“It was just wrong for them to send that out without telling any of us,” State Assemblymember Dick Gottfried told Chelsea Now, “and I think they should hold off on proceeding with this until they have consulted with the community.”
He called that lack of communication a “significant departure” from ESDC’s relatively good record on gaining local input during earlier stages of the Moynihan Station project.
“I really hope this is not a sign of a new pattern, or a new way of dealing with the community on their part,” Gottfried added.
The assemblymember and five other electeds — U.S. Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, State Senators Brad Hoylman and Adriano Espaillat, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Councilmember Corey Johnson — sent a March 5 letter to ESDC explaining their strong disapproval of the surprising RFP launch. In that letter, they also expressed concerns about the potential for a lack of community input once the Farley Building’s development rights are eventually marketed and sold.
By law, ESDC has the ability to transfer air rights without regard to local zoning laws or the wishes of local stakeholders. But Gottfried and the other electeds called on the state agency to put any air rights transfers through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) — which would allow for direct recommendations from Community Boards 4 and 5 and the borough president, as well as requiring approval from the City Planning Commission and the City Council before the transfers could go forward.
“Given the volume of air rights available, we strongly believe that community members and urban planners must be included in the earliest stages of identifying appropriate receiver sites [for the air rights],” the March 5 letter read.
The elected officials’ primary concern is that a lack of such inclusion could lead to increasing and unwanted overdevelopment in the area around Penn Station. And alongside their request for ULURP, the local electeds also asked the state to include provisions in its plans that would spread the Farley Building’s air rights outside that immediate area.
The state’s February RFP did not say that future transfers of the development rights will go through ULURP.
In a March 7 email, Johnson pointed out that while that RFP does not involve the actual sale of those air rights, it “sets the stage” for how those transfers will be made. The councilmember declared that he and the other electeds firmly “expect” the state to agree to go through ULURP.
Christine Berthet, chair of CB4, shared the same sentiment in a March 7 email to this newspaper.
“The transactions and the projects receiving these rights must be subject to the ULURP process and the community scrutiny,” said Berthet.
But that still remains quite unclear, as neither ESDC nor Governor Cuomo’s office responded to questions about whether or not they will agree to that as the process moves forward.
This newspaper also contacted Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office to ask if the mayor will call on the state to go through ULURP, but they also did not respond.
Amid all this uncertainty, Hoylman told Chelsea Now that he is “optimistic” about a favorable resolution for local stakeholders.
“I don’t think this means that the Moynihan Station project has gone completely off the rails,” Hoylman said in a March 7 phone interview. “I think we can get it back on track if [ESDC] focuses more on making it a community-driven process.”
