Finkelpearl allows panorama to be defaced for pipe dream

From the Daily News:

A gleaming "Silicon City" has risen in Queens, complete with a satellite campus of a top-tier university - but you'll have to squint to see it.

It is a pint-size version of a complex for tech innovation, rendered on a famous panoramic model of the city. Though small in size, the model is a nonprofit group's bid to push its big idea for transforming Queens: Bring a tech hub to Willets Point, the shabby warren of body shops near Citi Field that is poised for a huge city redevelopment project.

The Coalition for Change, clamoring to be heard, gave the Daily News an exclusive peek at its model, which will debut at the Queens Museum of Art today.

The museum's executive director, Tom Finkelpearl, said that adding the model to the panorama - built for the 1964 World's Fair - makes the group's concept "viscerally understandable, which is not the case on Google Maps."

Precedent, however, provides a bad omen: Only once before has the panorama featured structures that had not yet been approved, and that was for the city's failed bid for the 2012 Olympics.

Isn't the panorama supposed to show what's there NOW? Why is Finkelpearl allowing this? And why does that thing look like the Millenium Falcon?

Foreclosures added to panorama

From the Queens Courier:

During the next few months, visitors to the Queens Museum of Art (QMA) in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park will notice a new addition to the famous Panorama of the City of New York.

Hundreds of pink plastic triangles, symbolizing blocks that had three or more foreclosure filings in 2008, have been added to the 9,335 square foot model of the city as part of the Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center installation by artist Damon Rich.

Shea Stadium removed from panorama

From NY1:

With baseball season just around the corner, the Queens Museum of Art is updating its giant panorama of the city to include Citi Field, the Mets' new stadium.

The model of Shea Stadium is being taken out over the weekend and replaced and the new miniature stadium will be unveiled on Monday.

As for Yankee Stadium, the big switch will occur when the old stadium gets torn down.

Outdated model of City has its charm

From Lost City:

The museum worker I talked to said the money might be in place to bring the thing up to date in 2019 or so. That would be nice. Then again, the current model spares us almost everything ever built by Robert Scarano, Kark Fischer and the Toll Brothers.