For months, we have been criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for not stepping in to save St. Saviour's. Well, now we know why he hasn't. He sent his former CAU Commissioner, Patrick Brennan, to the Parkside Group (which represents the St. Saviour's developers) so that he may work on his presidential campaign. It all came out yesterday in NY Magazine:[Patrick] Brennan now works at the Parkside Group, a political consulting firm on Nassau Street. For most of the past year, he’s traveled the country researching ballot requirements in each state. In mid-December, Brennan met for three hours in an Austin hotel with a partner in a major ballot-access firm, a company with broad experience in gathering thousands of petition signatures in a hurry.
...Lawyers and accountants have been lined up to fight the inevitable legal challenges to the 1.9 million valid signatures needed nationwide; the signature drive is expected to cost between $11 million and $20 million. Brennan met a second time with a representative from the petition firm in mid-January, this time in his New York office. “We’re ready,” the ballot-access operative says. “All we need is to hear a two-letter word: Go.”
...Patrick Brennan is on his way to Florida, pouring more of the foundation for a presidential run. Assembling a campaign structure, even stealthily, is relatively easy compared with what may lie ahead. The cost to Bloomberg could be far higher than a billion dollars if he ends up playing the spoiler or, worse, appears to be running for president out of sheer vanity.
So it's no wonder that Mr. Bloomberg is allowing St. Saviour's to be sacrificed. He's in with Parkside. The church will be knocked down and then the application for the denser zoning change will be resubmitted, and Bloomberg will order city planning to push it through. Bloomberg also apparently has one of OUR deputy mayors working on HIS campaign on OUR time. How incredibly selfish, disgusting, scandalous and sad this entire thing is.
Photo from City Hall News
