Corona convention center will now just be a hotel

From the Times Ledger:

When the Fleet Financial Group purchased the DiBlasi Ford Dealership in Corona for $17 million in December 2013, it announced it would build the borough’s first convention center. The $200 million project called for a 106,000-square-foot-complex that would “rival the Javits Center” and include a 25-story hotel, residential apartments and plenty of retail space.

Fleet Financial Group has modified its plans considerably. Instead of the LaGuardia Convention Center, the company will build The Eastern Emerald Hotel at 112-21 Northern Blvd. across the Grand Central Parkway from Citi Field.

“The reason we scaled down is because we are trying to take more consideration about the existing traffic conditions in the area,” Fleet Financial Group President Richard Xia said. “It’s no longer a convention center, but a conference hotel that will still take advantage of the proximity to LaGuardia Airport and all the highways in the area.”

Xia could not go into any great detail on the specifics of The Eastern Emerald Hotel because “the project is still in its early design phase” and he did not have a timeline. “Right now we’re doing an environmental cleanup, contaminated soil remediation, and then we’ll go forward with the land use process.”

A conference hotel would serve the Asian business community in Flushing, but Xia has his eyes on an annual event that brings nearly a million visitors to the area each year.

“The US Open is huge and you have all these corporate sponsors who have no place large enough to suit their clients,” he said.

Xia is also counting on other business from the $3 billion mega-mall and housing complex that is planned for Willets Point.

Doctoroff pushing hard for development of Sunnyside Yards

From the NY Times:

We are an undisputed leader in tourism, yet we lag badly in one important aspect: the huge convention and conference business. Nationwide, conventions add nearly $400 billion to our gross domestic product, and employment in the industry is set to grow 33 percent through 2022. Sadly, New York ranks 64th globally in this business, leaving tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars on the table — resources that could fund better schools, parks and affordable housing.

New York struggles for two main reasons. First, of course, is price. With the average Manhattan hotel room costing nearly $300 per night, we are pricing ourselves out of the market for many major conventions. Then there is the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Located on Manhattan’s Far West Side, Javits was unloved practically from the moment it opened. It’s too small for many events and can’t compete with facilities in other cities.

Fortunately, there’s a solution — one that would not only address our lack of competitiveness in the conventions and conferences business, but would also catalyze the transformation of two neighborhoods and make a meaningful dent in our affordable housing crisis. The best part is that we can do this all without costing taxpayers a dime.

The key is to replace the Javits Center. There’s been talk over the years of expanding it, but that won’t solve the affordability problem. Fortunately, the perfect undeveloped location for a new convention center exists at Sunnyside Yards, the more than 160-acre rail yard that carves a nasty scar through the heart of Queens.

Sunnyside Yards is adjacent to Long Island City, a neighborhood that has blossomed in recent years with new residents and businesses, including nearly 20 new hotels since 2007, with almost as many currently under construction or in the planning stages. The average hotel room rate in Queens is less than half that of Manhattan; a convention center on the border of Long Island City would go a long way toward solving the affordability problem that holds the Javits Center back.

Long Island City is also one of the most convenient, transit-friendly areas in the city, served by eight subway lines. The Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak pass through and park their trains there. Even New Jersey Transit stores its trains in Sunnyside. From my office one block south of Bloomingdale’s in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, I can get to Long Island City by subway in just one stop, and eight minutes flat.

Given the neighborhood’s many advantages, redeveloping Sunnyside Yards seems obvious — but the biggest barrier has always been the multibillion-dollar cost of building a platform over the train tracks that can allow the trains to run while accommodating large construction. The cost has always made the idea a nonstarter, but times — and real estate values — have changed. Stronger market conditions bring us closer to feasibility, but the numbers for building the platform still don’t add up unless we get creative.

That’s why we should relocate the Javits Center to Sunnyside, sell the extremely valuable property the Javits Center owns, and use the proceeds to pay for it.

And where will the conventioneers stay since we are converting all our hotels into homeless shelters?

Thanks, but no thanks

Suggestions for the new mayor on how to create "affordable housing" from New York Magazine:

Give Queens a skyline.
The lion’s share of affordable New York will be constructed outside Manhattan, because of simple math—there’s more buildable land, and it’s less expensive. Western Queens is the likeliest focus. (Brooklyn, too, but there’s more being built there already.) Vishaan Chakrabarti, the SHoP Architects partner and Columbia University urban-planning maven, puts it this way: “Queens Boulevard, Long Island City—there’s [property] ten, fifteen minutes from Manhattan by subway that still has one- and two-story buildings. Queens, clearly, to me is the future of New York in many ways. I wouldn’t limit it to Queens, though—there are areas in the Bronx that have good subway access, and then St. George on Staten Island.” And those 200,000 units De Blasio wants? “Almost a Co-op City per year. I’ve been on the battlefield—it’s not easy, and it’s a lot of progressive politics rubbing up against each other.” Racism, classism, NIMBYism, ageism, and every other ism will come into play. So will every tool the administration has at hand: tax incentives that tilt the economics toward building at the middle of the income range; subsidies for lower-end building; and rezoning even in the wake of Bloomberg's rezoning.

Quit making everyone build a garage.
Almost every new residential building, notes the urban-planning strategist Alexander Garvin, is forced by law to include parking. It’s a dated requirement from the early sixties, one that cannibalizes land and makes every building more expensive.

Tax the hell out of vacant lots.
In New York (as in most cities), land and buildings are taxed as one entity, meaning that developers can accumulate land for years, waiting for a booming market to put something up. “Split-rate taxation” taxes the land itself at a higher rate, encouraging developers to build something sooner rather than later.

Do more horse-trading.
Bloomberg’s 80/20 zoning—80 percent of units are market-rate, 20 percent for people of modest income—can be taken further. Chakrabarti and his colleagues are working on 50/30/20 buildings, where the 30 is middle-income. And De Blasio ally Bertha Lewis suggests we could flip the 80/20 ratio entirely.

Lower permit costs.
It costs twice as much to put up a building here as in Chicago. Some of that is the price of land, but a 2005 study by the economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko revealed the surprisingly large role played by permit costs. “I’d like to see just a quicker, easier permitting process,” says Glaeser.

Stop wholesale landmarking.
Individual landmarks should surely be preserved; ditto certain blocks or districts that are genuinely of historic value. But when historic districts are widely extended, they significantly reduce the buildable area of the city, argues Glaeser, meaning rents go up everywhere else.

Live at the Javits Center.
No, seriously, says Chakrabarti: “I would look at moving the Javits Center to Sunnyside Yards” and replacing it with apartment buildings as the No. 7 train extension arrives. “It’s a huge opportunity for a new neighborhood.”

Sell off Manhattan’s projects and build bigger, better housing in the boroughs.
It’d be close to politically impossible, but relocating 115,000 NYCHA residents to the outer-boroughs could generate enough money to build several times as many units of affordable and true project housing in less expensive parts of the city. Consider: The housing projects of the Lower East Side are bigger than Stuyvesant Town, which sold for $5.4 billion.

Concrete tester pleads guilty

From the Daily News:

A company that certified the safety of concrete at thousands of New York City construction projects admitted it regularly faked tests and made up inspection reports, authorities announced Friday.

American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories, and company president Alan Fortich, 45, pleaded to corruption charges for filing bogus tests over the last 10 years on an impressive list of high profile buildings. Five other executives admitted filing false documents.

They faked tests at Yankee Stadium, the Second Avenue subway, the Javits Center, a control tower at JFK Airport, the Port Authority bus terminal, the Lincoln Tunnel, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a Columbia University science center.

The city, the MTA, the Port Authority and dozens of private sector builders were all victims, and dozens of buildings had to be retested to make sure the concrete used was not going to fall apart.

All the buildings were declared safe, Vance said. It wasn’t clear Friday who paid for the retests.

The guilty pleas make clear just how pervasive corruption was in the concrete testing business — American Standard was hired in 2008 to replace Testwell Inc., another firm indicted for faking concrete tests.

In admitting to enterprise corruption, a felony, American Standard will likely be barred from bidding on public contracts at the agencies affected.

Because what Queens needs is a 3rd proposed convention center

From The Politicker:

...even though Mr. Doctoroff is no longer in command, might it still be possible to see a gondola stretch across the East River between Lower Manhattan, Governors Island and Brooklyn? Or a light rail line running the entire length of the waterfront from Astoria in Queens to Brooklyn’s Red Hook? Or, most audacious of all, tearing down the Javits convention center and moving it to yet another decked-over rail yard, this time in Sunnyside, where it would be surrounded by apartment and hotel towers and a sizable retail complex?

These were among the proposals Mr. Doctoroff put forward on Friday during a speech at the Municipal Art Society’s MAS Summit 2012. They were meant as examples for the next mayor to latch onto in order to “extend the achievements of the Bloomberg Administration by knitting new connections among emerging communities, amenities and institutions.”

Will this guy just go away already?

Competition for Aqueduct?

From the NY Post:

Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Aldelson wants to build a Las Vegas Sands casino-convention complex at the Javits Center — if New York ever legalizes gambling casinos.

“There’s a little noise in New York now, and we’re going to take a look and see if we can put something . . . maybe in Manhattan and be able to maybe do something with [the Jacob K. Javits Center] . . . and put our complex there,” Las Vegas Sands Corp. President Mike Leven told HotelNews.com.

LVS spokesman Ron Reed told The Post yesterday that the company is looking at building an “integrated resort development’’ that encompasses casinos and convention centers and other entertainment.

But opponents, noting New York’s record-shattering tourism numbers, say a casino on the far West Side is undesirable.

East Side Assemblyman Micah Kellner, who serves on the Racing and Wagering Committee, vowed to “do everything possible” to block a casino he said would “drastically transform” the West Side “in a way many don’t want to see.”

Meanwhile, the Legislature stripped from the budget Gov. Cuomo’s plan to have the state sell and raze the land in and around Javits to build a Battery Park City-like “21st Century Neighborhood” of homes, parks and hotels.

Business leaders want to keep Javits

From Crain's:

A major fear for the meetings industry is that the Queens project will upend a decades-old system of doing business at Javits, alienating show producers and attendees who may defect to other cities as a result.

“If Javits were torn down and I had a big show in New York, I would consider moving it to another city such as Philadelphia before I'd consider Aqueduct,” said Jeff Little, the former president and owner of George Little Management, a major tradeshow producer. Mr. Little recently formed a new company after last year's purchase of GLM by Providence Equity Partners.

Genting also faced critics who say that building a large convention center does not make sense when so many mega centers across the country are struggling to book shows.

Over the last decade there has been an enormous decline of attendees at conventions, said Steven Malanga, senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. What's more, he said that just 27% of the 2.3 million people who attended shows at Javits last year were from out of town.

“The rest were day-trippers,” he said. Genting, he predicted, won't be able to attract large trade shows because the industry is simply not growing.

Mr. Goode said there is no shortage of shows that want to come to New York but cannot do so either because they are too large for Javits or because the building is fully booked. At the same time, he conceded that it is not just the enormous events that attract 50,000 or more attendees that he is targeting.

Unconventional convention center thinking

From Crain's:

Executives in the tourism and trade show business have been lukewarm about a convention center in South Ozone Park, because of its distance from, and lack of speedy transportation to, Manhattan. They say that the appeal of coming to New York for a trade show is being in Manhattan. Shows held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, for example, draw up to 15% more attendees compared with other cities.

One scenario for the future might include a land grab by Genting for the adjacent racetrack, whose operation would move to the nearby Belmont track.

“We wouldn't oppose a move to Belmont,” said Mr. Goode. The governor has even vaguely hinted that Genting's expansion could affect Belmont.

“There has always been talk about consolidating racing at Belmont,” said Rick Violette, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, which represents owners and trainers at the Saratoga, Aqueduct and Belmont tracks.

“I'm sure Genting is interested in the land, but we would be very defensive against any initiative that would harm this industry,” Mr. Violette added.

And from the NY Times:

The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which is spearheading the Willets Point overhaul, did not respond directly to questions about the governor’s Aqueduct proposal. Despite that proposal, Jennifer Friedberg, a spokeswoman for the corporation, said, “our plans have not changed.”

City officials do, however, seem to be less wedded to the convention center as part of a reborn Willets Point. For example, officials take pains to point out that any convention center is years away from being built and is not included in the first phase of the project, which covers 20 of the roughly 61 acres. That phase imagines 400 apartments, 35 percent of which will be for people of limited income, a hotel and 680,000 square feet of retail space.

The corporation is poring over proposals for the first phase from a half-dozen developers and should select a winner in coming weeks. It is also close to acquiring 90 percent of the needed land and is prepared to condemn the rest through eminent domain.

Both Mr. Cuomo’s push for an enormous convention center in southern Queens and the convention center plan for Willets Point come at a time when the centers are losing their appeal.

Uh huh. Although a convention center was the main selling point for the project because of the jobs it would allegedly create, it was never a mandatory part of the Willets Point plan and is not part of phase 1. EDC has been at "90% of the needed land" for a long time... Oh, and phase 1 is more like 10 acres, not 20. Half of the acreage is a buffer zone.

Why doesn't anyone in this state talk to each other about the boondoggle projects they seek to inflict on the public?

Andrew still thinks convention center will fly

From the NY Times:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, stung by widespread doubts about his support for the privately financed construction of the country’s largest convention center at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, offered a full-throated defense of the proposal on Thursday, saying the only cost to the state if the project failed would be “an empty building.”

Dismissing concerns about the weak economic health of the convention business, Mr. Cuomo promised that the Queens project would “cost the State of New York bubkes,” while freeing up for development the valuable land underneath the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.

In an interview with editors and writers for The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo sounded frustrated about the skeptical reaction to the convention center idea, which he proposed during his State of the State address on Jan. 4. He said the proposed development — which would include hotels, restaurants and expanded gambling, as well as the convention center — combined with the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Far West Side, would generate jobs and significant tax revenues. And he voiced confidence in Genting, the Malaysian company that runs a gambling hall at Aqueduct and proposes to spend $4 billion on the convention center.

Mr. Cuomo dismissed concerns about its distance from Manhattan attractions. He said the complex would attract “more of a mass, blue-collar clientele that probably wouldn’t be going to the Broadway shows anyway,” and said many of those who patronized the convention center would be arriving by plane.

At times, Mr. Cuomo seemed to distance himself from the entire matter, saying that if he had been governor in an earlier time, he would not have supported allowing gambling parlors at racetracks, or casinos on Indian reservations, but noting that those forms of gambling already exist in New York. And insisting that taxpayers have no risk in the project, he said, “If we were investing money that we could lose, this could be a problem.”

Cuomo wants convention center at Aqueduct

From the NY Times:

One of Manhattan’s most desirable real-estate assets was at the center of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposal Wednesday to build the country’s largest convention center at a racetrack-casino in Queens.

A new 3.8-million-square-foot exhibition hall and hotel at the Aqueduct racetrack in Jamaica, Queens, would free up 18 windswept acres owned by the state overlooking the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan, a site occupied since the 1980s by the much- maligned Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

The land could fetch billions of dollars from developers, say state officials, urban planners and real estate executives. That could plug budget gaps and pay for expensive projects, like expanding Pennsylvania Station.

From the Daily News:

Before Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address Wednesday highlighted his vision to build the nation’s largest convention center at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, the plan had already taken a major step forward.

On Tuesday, the Cuomo administration quietly inked a letter of agreement for the project with the operator of the Aqueduct racino, Genting New York, a Cuomo source told the Daily News.

In the letter, the Malaysia-based casino operator pledged to invest $4 billion to build the 3.8 million-square-foot facility, the source said.

Genting already controls 67 acres at the South Ozone Park site. But the source said the state will help make adjacent Port Authority land available for the project, and turn existing mass-transit infrastructure into a “convention center” train.

Not everyone agrees that this is a good idea.

Bloomberg's $104M slush fund

From the NY Observer:

...in the Bloomberg administration's two capital budgets released since, an allocation for the Javits Center is still there, though not necessarily for any expansion plans. Instead, the budget line for the scuttled plans seems to serve as a parking lot for funds that will ultimately be spent elsewhere. In last year's mayoral budget, there was more than $150 million less allocated to the fund, with the money apparently moved elsewhere (it also could have been seen as simply being cut, as the economic development capital budget was decreased this year). And in the mayor's proposed budget released last week, the money listed for Javits was down another $93 million, apparently taken out and moved around elsewhere in the budget. (Perhaps those projects receiving the funding were Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, which appeared to get new funding.)

Previously, the mayor's staff has said money from the Javits fund would be used to fund Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island.

To a certain extent, there is some reasoning behind this: The money was once earmarked for economic development, so why not let it get reallocated elsewhere, even if the Bloomberg administration hasn't yet figured out precisely where to put it?

But the lingering $104 million listed in the budget comes at a time when the city's operating budget is being slashed, the capital budget has already been cut back and the Bloomberg administration is apparently scaling back spending on repairs and maintenance, per a report from the Citizens Budget Commission.

Paterson Approves Javits Center Expansion

NEW YORK (AP) -- The long-awaited renovation and expansion of New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center has been approved.

Gov. David Paterson said Thursday construction will begin immediately.

He says the $463 million project will create 9,000 construction jobs. It calls for a 100,000-square-foot expansion that will include new exhibition space. An earlier plan called for 500,000 square feet.

The center now has 790,000 square feet.

Activities at the convention center will continue during construction, slated to end in 2013.

The Javits Center opened in 1986. It is New York City's primary venue for major trade shows.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the project ``an important step toward addressing the demand for modern convention space.''

It was approved by the Public Authority Control Board.

Javits Center project approved

From the NY Post:

Once hailed as the most important job-generating project in New York, a dramatically scaled down plan to expand the Javits Convention Center was approved today by state officials who slashed more than $1 billion from the price tag.

The latest version of the expansion will create just 40,000 square feet of new exhibition space in a plain, pre-engineered structure that is a far cry from the elaborate design created several years ago by British architect Richard Rogers.

Project costs, once estimated at $1.7 billion for the larger expansion, have been slashed to $463 million, most of which will be spent to renovate the current convention center and replace its dark glass windows with clear, energy-efficient panels.

Photo from NY Magazine