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May 31, 2005

Have you heard? Ground Zero is a mess and Pataki is an idiot. What a difference a year makes. This time last, the Freedom Tower was a highly contested and unresolved image failing to anchor the plans to revitalize the WTC site. There was an ugly dispute about authorship, control and the likelihood of resolution bespeaking of synthesis was remote. Now, everything is…

The story is so pathetic at this point, the ledes write themselves. And like any good craven self-interest, a story rich in conflict and failure makes for convenient journalism. Everyone writes about it, and the narrative is rigorous and consistent: The process is bankrupt, and Pataki seems incapable of both realizing or repairing the damage. Proposed alternates seem naïve, such as Goldberger’s call for housing -- by Calatrava no less -- or simply don’t exist.

For now we will be treated to the sad spectacle of nudging the Freedom Tower model back and forth forty feet to determine the optimal security configuration. Presumably this motion will also shake free any remnants of Libeskind’s folly, leaving the svelte, featureless office block Childs is so expert at manifesting. Its pristine form will be matched by floor after floor of unoccupied space. This would be perhaps the best possible outcome for those of us that find rebuilding a morally questionable gesture in the first place.

A friend writes and wonders if government workers will be drafted as the unwitting patriots. The irony of mandating relocation to symbolize freedom? Priceless. Better still, they could make it a Gulf War veteran’s facility. I look forward to the day a worker shows up with a bull’s-eye tee-shirt and is fired, or arrested. The myriad expressions of freedom are going to be a daily joy. Given that assembly will be prohibited, I wonder what other forms will be restricted? Can Reverend Billy perambulate the renovated site and recite the First Amendment? Can booksellers set up and offer tomes critical of Dubya? Will anyone, in the end, be allowed to do anything that is not proscribed and prescripted by the nebulous, Orwellian Freedom Center?

These are far too incendiary topics to broach. It is better to hide behind the tepid relevance of form, and the bizarre proclamations that a twisted tower that ascends to a mythical and irrelevant measure is manifestly different than one that unwracks itself and discards the finials and crenellations. Their programmatic similarity propels us into a bewildering echo chamber where competing voices comprised mainly of braying politicians in pursuit of the empty celebration of their ego or the blood-lust of developers who press forward without regard for decency or the will of the people (were that something that could be established with any certainty), blindly faithful that someday the need will return. The different plans they tout are sly mirrors of the same close-minded evaluation that presumes floor plates of ever-expanding girth to match the banal environs that surround cities across the county. We are led by fools who operate in the thrall of foxes.

Pataki promised a revised plan in a week, then a month, and then the LMDC announced everything was fixed already. Or maybe not. Perhaps my memory is occluded by the switch-backs and revisions, all of which are pointless, since we have yet to even be presented with the concept that was exposed as a failure even before its revelation.

When the smoke and smell that would not dissipate blanketed us all, hope seemed impossible, and negative cycle of despair seemed as permanent as the fires that could not be extinguished. For a hundred days we lived with the inescapable horror. Now, the site is nominally cleaned, and actual remnants are few, so the charades we witness each day cannot carry the same visceral weight. Thus it is essential to live with that memory and anger, to provide sufficient verve to assail the moronic machinations that continue to unfold. Silverstein should surrender his lease. Pataki should resign, or at least withdraw from the decision making. The PANY/NJ should cede authority. And they should apologize, for all of it. For they have taken from us what remained on the morning of September 12 -- dignity.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 30, 2005

Pianissimo. So has the Whitney succeeded, or failed? It’s hard to figure out, since the current decision challenges us to declaim our pessimist/optimist stance, the Landmarks Preservation Committee having handed down a Solomonic decree to cleave Renzo Piano’s proposed solution neatly in half, mandating that one of the ‘contributing’ townhouses be retained, while one ‘non-contributing’ structure can be removed.

The LPC got all academic, allowing that the rending be also a doubling, permitting the Whitney to shave off the back-half of the one-half that they must retain. Everyone is acting like this half-assed (sorry, it seemed too obvious) decision is a victory all around, one of those vaunted acts of compromise, without realizing that Solomon’s wisdom was not effected by actually bifurcating the infant. At least Chuck Close didn’t mince words, observing that the Museum of Arts and Design is allowed strip 2 Columbus Circle bare “while we're not allowed to take down one crummy brownstone.”

It’s a fair point, since the every time another act of preservation results in pinning a façade to an otherwise bland behemoth (take a walk down 42nd Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, where you can see the remnant of a theater that will be reconstructed as part of the Bank of America tower, or the Mohawk Atelier on Duane Street where the same is being done on a smaller scale) pretty much aligns the preservation movement with the intellectual bankruptcy of Disney. The Whitney would be better served by proposing a completely blank wall where they could get someone like Bill Viola to project the image of various ‘contributing’ structures.

The neighbors are still steamed, something about the big tower that will spring up behind the contributing façade ruining the character of the area, or something. Big buildings have no place in Manhattan, we know. If only we could bring back scurvy and indentured servitude, it would be a historically appropriate utopia. What no one is complaining about, not even the preservationists, which is odd, since the argument bolsters their position, is how bland and uninteresting the Piano scheme is.

Hmmm, let’s see. Museum with great character and a compelling form that actually relates to its entrance, what is the best way to expand? Well, slap a featureless warehouse addition on the side, and put a sliver of glass between it and the original. Studio 101. Hey, maybe the interconnections can be glass bridges! Ooooh. And when you get some really bad direction from a government bureaucracy, what do you do? Radically reexamine your concept? Nah, you just cut it down the middle, eliminating the one putatively reasonable argument for moving the entrance wholesale (circulation).

The plan provided (a surprise in these days of meaningless renderings) shows the original as none too inspired, one of the two entry points -- revolving doors -- sitting awkwardly under the corner of the tower above. It appears that the main stair of the existing building will still be a prominent feature, though the state of the existing elevator, a grand experience now, is unclear. The Times also thoughtfully translates ‘piazza’ for you. The revised version is simply an even more jumbled interpretation of the same, with the entry way stepping back in chunks, a result of the half a building that is now required.

All of this sits south of the monolithic party wall that terminates the edge of the current site, itself too historic for alteration. With the exception of the canopy that looks to peek past, the entirety of the new entrance will be obscured from any oblique view approaching from the north, particularly on the east side of Madison. The rendering doesn’t show if the bridge that leads to the current entrance will be modified in some way to indicate that such a formally descriptive signifier has been entirely divested of meaning. Maybe they intend to commission a clever aphorism from Jenny Holzer that involves ‘vestigial’. Or they can just pick from the list. Me, I’ll take “Ambition is just as dangerous as complacency” for today.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

What next, bottle service at TA mailing parties? I was very incidentally standing about what looked like the After-After Party for the Critical Mass ride [one of the participants called it 'pretty successful' as there were only about a dozen arrests, and most of the ride was peaceful with only two incidents of netting] at the Time's Up space on Houston, and I was rather shocked to find that an event that is completely free form and without leaders featured a velvet rope controlling entry! Commidifying our dissent! Heresy!

I'm sure it had more to do with the fact that their space is not a bar, and if they let just anyone in, that would probably include the vengeful NYPD, who can't rest until the scourge of unfettered cycling is put to an end. Many of you might not realize this, but in the same way that trees cause pollution, bikes are responsible for the pandemic of hit and run accidents over the past week. My proof? Well, no well-founded causation, but after 17 people are injured or killed by cars over the past week, what did the NYPD do to make the streets safer? They arrested some cyclists. Oh, they shot a bunch of people too. Bystanders and cyclists, the real enemy. My advice? Get in your car and drive as fast as you can. Safest place to be these days.

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May 25, 2005

Wednesday Lore: Neither city, nor subway, but Empire. I think of how my friends and relatives would chortle over a particular episode of Seinfeld and remark on how clever the writers were. After a few years of living here, I didn't doubt their creativity or skill, but I did come to recognize how some of the most effective gimmicks were in fact anthropological exposition. It's not as if they claimed otherwise, but I have found that people who have not lived here are surprised when you relate a real life version of a Seinfeld episode.

The one I usually told of was the episode where Elaine fakes her address to receive food delivery, because her apartment is redlined by the restaurant. Several years ago I lived on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 57th Street. The building had entrances on both street, with separate addresses. The River, a decent pan Asian restaurant on Amsterdam, would deliver as far south as 57th. A friend lived in the back half of the building, but had the Tenth Avenue address, which tipped the restaurant to its prohibited status (for the out-of-towners: starting north of 57th, Tenth Avenue becomes Amsterdam Avenue). My friend would order food and wait on our stoop for the food to arrive.

Any "classic" New York-based film or television show resonates as "authentic" -- The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, or All in the Family -- but that authenticity is more likely than not simply the accurate representation of a personal anecdote. One such moment in Die Hardest is when the Bruce Willis character meets up with Jerry, who drives a dump truck, and knows a little too much about Water Tunnel Number 3, and that Chester A. Arthur is the twenty-first president. Though his knowledge is convenient and moves the plot along, he also, at least to my twisted mind, seems more realistic than anyone else in the film. That's probably a result of a late night confab over a different hole in the ground, with a employee of the inscrutable Empire City Subway.

I spend plenty of time looking at holes in the ground, of any kind: the lengthy rift that precedes new construction, the temporary openings for repairs, the permanent ones that provide insight into the netherworld. Nighttime is best, because there are less restrictions to observation, and more holes. The steel plates that straddle crevices are removed, and secrets are revealed. Oh, and I'm often drunk.

One night, walking along Third Avenue, I came across a hole, one not exceptionally unique from a distance, attended to by an Empire City Subway truck. I had long wondered about this company: given the odd confluence of names, I wondered if it were simply an obscure city or state agency, sticking to an arcane naming convention. They turn up pretty much everywhere, without any apparent rhyme or reason, except to stand guard over and service holes.

So I stuck my head in, and came almost face-to-face with a man holding one hell of a telephone cable. I recalled an interview with Ridley Scott about giving directions to set dressers on Alien: he instructed them to make a section of the ship bridge "look like hair." This repair worker was holding a six-inch diameter cable that was an explosion of copper.

Normally I leave people to their jobs. Maybe he looked friendly, maybe I was really drunk, or my equally so friend was simply excusing my fetish and interest. So we asked. Turns out someone was taking a core sample (which involves basically drilling a pretty wide hole and removing the contents as a seamless chunk) but didn't call around to find if there were any existing services, and went cleanly through the cable. Pain though that was, they missed gas and water, and thus necessitated Empire City Subway.

I asked that too: turns out Empire "has held a franchise from the City of New York to build and maintain a conduit and manhole infrastructure in Manhattan and the Bronx" since 1891. If they come out for subways, or anything else, it's only because there is copper nearby. He wasn't as eloquent as the website, but still full of information.

I asked about the mess of wire in his hand. "About 2,000" strands ran through it, a trunk line, if I recall correctly. One of us asked if he would be knitting it back together.

"No, I don't do that. A splicer does that."

Is a splicer a person, or a machine? "A person."

We silently imagined a job that entails getting called out at 5AM to sew together 2,000 individual strands, intensified by a misunderstanding that each strand was unique, requiring finding its mate, but copper doesn't work that way.

I asked him who he worked for. "Verizon." I raised my eyebrows in appropriate surprise (though at the time I think it was still NYNEX). He then proceeds to tell us he can't find any evidence to this fact in public. Gets a check with the logo on it, that's all. He tells us he's scoured the 10-K for details. Nada.

Now, it's not the mystery it was then, being right there on the homepage, but I too did a scan of the 10-K, and right he seems. After all, monopoly rights for over a century is probably some solid cash flow. I don't know that wholly owned subsidiaries have to be reported as a line item, and really didn't feel like reading the whole 10-K. The way he talked certainly made it seem like they operate from a pretty cushy place, not counting the climbing in the ground at 5AM part.

We chatted some fifteen minutes or so about job satisfaction, monopoly control of utilities, and the his mysterious understanding of his corporate overlord. I doubt James Cramer could have given any better insight. All the while he was fussing with the conduit through which phone lines for a good three block chunk of the city patiently waited to be restored. Well before the Internet made such detailed research possible, and the fabled UPS driver/day trader, we still had street-level analysts ready were you to bother them for insight at sunup. He went back to his digging, and we stumbled off to breakfast, no more confident that some fool wouldn't blow up a building because they didn't follow procedure, but, provided they didn't, at the very least, those dispatched for remediation knew the score.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 24, 2005

Bohemia ascendant? The bohemian spirit -- or at least the tattered vestiges that pass for revolutionary urbanity -- reigned supreme last week in the Village, when the city backed down on their threat to make Washington Square Park a hardened facility. Perhaps staking out the same level of paranoid control evidenced in Tompkins (but oddly considered unnecessary at smaller locations, such as the recently renovated Tribeca Park) as a bargaining chip, it was determined that the current standard of pulling easily adjusted temporary barricades across the entrances was an acceptable compromise.

See, the Parks Department, like any nattering parent, is really het up about their curfew. You can tell they take it serious, since they allowed the NYPD to park an unattractive converted bus there as a ‘temporary’ substation sometime in the 1850’s. Then, in the nineties, they installed dozens of security cameras and lights. All of this has been highly effective in reducing drug sales and preempting NYU undergrads crucial late-night opportunities to discover love and a convenient place to exercise its dissolution. With such a high ratio of success so far, a permanent enclosure was deemed the next best solution. If that fails, the plan is to pave over the entire area and classify it as uniformed officer parking, insuring every inch will be covered by F-150’s all the time.

But no, they backed down, and and now the major entrances will seem as opening as welcoming as possible when enrobed in a four-foot-high fence (or it is four-and-a-half?). Most of the other major renovation plans were approved, including relocating and raising the fountain, leveling the humps and rebuilding the convenience center -- which includes a children’s only bathroom. How does that work? Are the doors only so high? Lastly, but significantly, they are removing many, if not most, of the chess tables, but this doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

I went and stood in the park last weekend to try and picture some of the changes, and was surprised to discover how wrong I was about a previous comment regarding the implied pathway of Fifth Avenue. Though the clear continuance of the vista as one approaches from the north is essential; however, I did not remember how off-axis the south approach is, the arch sitting nearly halfway between West Broadway/La Guardia Place (the major southern approach) and Thompson Street which is far less prominent. This implies a less symettrical plan, but the revised plan does well to provide a rational geometry that responds this condition. I don’t think the fountain relocation or raising is as crucial as revised paving, which did wonders for Tribeca Park. It will definitely improve the western end of the park, which now seems to be an undifferented mass of pathways. In such a small area, classic rules of composition will read best, and there is a nice bit of that. One thing not discussed anywhere I have seen is the penetration of the fencing. The perimeter fence is one issue, but where it becomes truly intrusive and destructive is when every green space is surrounded, as is the case in Tompkins. Such a pervasive approach will destroy the impact of the new paving, will seem unnecessarily restrictive, and destroy the sense of a park being a relief from the surrounding area.

This has been the most pernicious legacy of Henry Stern, evidenced in most major renovations (think Tompkins, the Sheep Meadow, etc.). Natural pathways are obstructed, the appearance of said fencing seems arbitrary, and if it is going to be permanent, throughways or entrances need be better marked. What we are left with is our moment of green interspersed by a haze of fencing, layers upon layers, and somehow we are to make sense the meandering pathways. The Parks Department uses Olmstead like a cudgel to justify every renovation while overlooking one convenient fact: he didn’t wrap every patch of grass with a ribbon of iron.

But it’s not all bad, all the time. The renovations at the East River Park are absolutely splendid. Though the promenade is still some ways from completion, the new ball fields and play areas, with decent grass, markings and such, provide the essential sense of amenity, not simply leftover land before Alphabet City falls away into the East River. A crucial gap needs to be addressed just south of the amphitheater, where two facilities interrupt the march south. Rather than making a substantial investment now, at the very least, the city could make wider the current path, and include some green space (all that would be required would be losing some parking area) before coming upon the promenade that continues to Pier 17. Though the fanciful plans forwarded by Rogers and SHoP may happen, this should not obviate finishing this path. The views of the bridges are amazing, and reviving the moribund South Street Seaport would be plausible if a clearly marked path that provide access to and from the East Village, LES, and the outer reaches of Chinatown, were established.

But even here, with many areas where fencing is practical -- to establish delimits of playing fields and such -- the impression is of a warren that is defined only by paved pathways. It is an unfortunate betrayal of notion of respite that drove the creation of Central Park. The current fencing in Washington Square Park is ugly, but unobtrusive, and effective enough. It can improved with becoming overwhelming, and we can hold on to a sliver of relief in a city where every outdoor space is harshly defined by vertical places.

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May 20, 2005

Freedom on the march. March. March. The LMDC unveiled the plans for the new Snøhetta museum complex for the WTC site yesterday, thinking a sexy rendering would distract everyone from their awful site planning, and total lack of interest in the Performing Arts facility. It didn't. Take a look here. They are certainly concerned about giving Calatrava’s glass hat the prominence it deserves, aren’t they? It’s not Snøhetta’s fault. They didn’t have many options.

They could, however, have avoided the overused and didactic scheme of building a big ramp. One would think, as Ourousoff notes, that perhaps a forced path is antithetical to the notion of ‘freedom’. And it a little hard to tell exactly where the Drawing Center is, sandwiched somewhere between the gaping atrium dictated by Calatrava, and the ramp to freedom that winds around the perimeter.

The failure of the ramp motif is due to the overbearing framing of the experience. One is constantly measuring their relative position from beginning to end, and given that culture is an almost undifferentiated commodity, consumption becomes the only way to assess our interactions. So everyone will feel like they must traverse the entire route, intensified by a mandate of responsibility to honor the victims and celebrate Patriotism.

That’s a shame because it appears (I have to note this because there apparently is something wrong with the Internet, making it impossible to publish a detailed or even readable plan of anything) that their handling of the entry is the most humane and interesting thing suggested since the rebuilding began. Of course, this might be a result of complete and total disinterest in security (or simply successful relocation). And if you think they won’t make you take your belt off to get in the symbol of freedom at the center of American immigration, let me buy you a ticket to the Statue of Liberty. A massive ramp that lifts off the ground with out soaring or imposing, it does something no other plan or concept shown so far has: it invites you to mill about, with direction or not, like, well a plaza should.

The building itself is a exercise in modernist skinning and computer pyrotechnics. Which is simply my curmudgeonly way of saying that I can’t quite tell what it is. It looks pretty, but since it lacks much detail in the way of assembly details, materials, or any articulation (if it hasn’t been made clear yet, seamless glass facades don’t do it for me), it's hard to have a fixed opinion. It looks like a great deal of wood has been used, and that should be helpful, up against Calatrava’s metal butterfly and the memorial, which, I’m sorry to say, looks like two construction pits in the renderings. The various views are different enough that it’s hard to determine how the glass will be treated.

Overall, the building is squat, and, based on the information Ourousoff provides, only going to get more ungainly in form. Again, Snøhetta can only be faulted so much. Because they had this misfortune of coming later, and not soaring enough (or winning the Pritzker), they are forced to eat a number of program requirements that seem ill-advised. That their building looks like a complete and freestanding concept, rather than one that services two important program requirements that the master of engineering couldn’t fit on his site (well, one, light, it an effect of siting).

It’s not great, yet, though it may well be. Once the actual Freedom Center has a program (you think they are going to share it with the public first? Oh, the irony will fill many a drunken nights of Marxist literary critics and Orwell fans. Disclosure: I am, of course, both), perhaps the ramp can be modified. I’m just speculating. Still far from execution, I’ll settle for saying this is the outline of a good thing, the first time that has happened for the WTC site.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Not that I want to be typecast or anything. Is it too early to be hatin' about Foster's new Hearst Tower? I'm just asking.

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May 18, 2005

No, now they have really won. This is a site that relishes superlatives and wallows in vitriol (or so some say). So it takes quite a effort to compel me to reach for loftier heights of derision, but it's a sad day when I have to. I used to think the worst example of callous, self-interested behavior I witnessed as regard the WTC came the day after, when I overhead two men, oblivious to the streams of people carting supplies from wherever they could to the depot at Chelsea Piers, discuss taking a ski trip in Argentina "because airline tickets will be so cheap now". Surely there were grander and most officious slights to follow, but something about proximity and indifference made this moment most acute. Now, to my dismay and fury, I must set the bar higher. I would say I expect it to be a threshhold that cannot be superceded, but it's only Wednesday, and who knows what this worthless human being will do by the end of the week. If anyone gets within arms' reach of this man, will you do me a favor and punch him in the face as hard as you can (aim low, he's short)? Not just one of you: all of you. Everyone.

Trump mentioned that he will draw attention to the proposal during this week's live broadcast of "The Apprentice." The model will "probably" be displayed during the broadcast of the highly rated show, Trump said, "so the whole country can see it."

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May 17, 2005

Donald Trump: Fuck Off. Remember back when Spy used to call him a "short-fingered vulgarian" and when no one mistook him for anything besides a two-bit loser who played developer with his daddy's money (among others)? The only proper response would be to simply ignore him, save this short request. I don't need to see his proposal. No one does.

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We'll call it stoner chic. Crain's NY (print) reports in their May 16 edition that Landmark West! (a group that sounds like they were formed about eight minutes ago -- not unlike this one -- but their website claims a far grander lineage) has hired The Advance Group, credited by Crain's as "the consulting firm that helped union workers at The Plaza Hotel rescue more rooms from condo conversion."

I guess they figure that a Historic Register designation would save all those union jobs doing exactly what, currently? Shoring up the cyclone fencing enveloping 2 Columbus Circle? Really, if we ever needed any more evidence that preservation is the province of the idle middle class, this is it. Though I doubt anyone, excepting the workers and their immediate dependents, thought the Plaza fight was primarily about jobs, it was one of those uncomfortable moments of 'alliance building' that we don't deserve in any case. If it weren't apparent that the converted condos wouldn't sell like hotcakes, or if The Plaza was bursting with patrons, we would have never ended up in that fight to begin with. But we get what we deserve, and in the end, a handful of jobs were 'saved' though I don't doubt for a moment that those braying about preservation would sacrifice every union job on the Upper East Side to keep their Eloise fantasy intact.

So their angle is going to be interesting, with no jobs to save, no prospect of investment from another source (yeah, there's a good idea, Bob: if you like the building so damn much, why not get Disney to buy it?) or even suggestions for reuse, this is going to be one of the more interesting struggles in preservation: a building that almost no one finds attractive, no one has any nostalgic attachment to, without any alternative plans, and decidedly unlike any notion of what a 'preserved' building looks like is supposed to win the hearts of New Yorkers (or, really, the LPC and Historic Register) enough to justify keeping it mothballed another twenty years.

On the flip side, Brad Cloepfil is doing his best 'aw-shucks' bit -- while also managing a nice shout out to his continental peeps (which Solomon misses completely, clearly not familiar enough with his CV, but that's because everyone looks provinicial from the fishbowl on 43rd). He talks like he has nothing to lose, probably because he doesn't. A small foothold in the city, pocketing fees with none of the complexities of actually building, and musuem commissions piling up all over the place while Holly Hotchner fumes at every biddy on the Upper West Side. He doesn't need to make it here, because he's already making it everywhere.

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Let there be light. Everyone gets their own personal Quixotic campaign. The sort of thing that provides a topic to proselytize about at cocktail parties, gets one mentioned in Public Lives, maybe even a needlessly long profile in the New Yorker ("His career as a critic began inauspiciously, when he told an secondary school instructor that if they could not come prepared with a lesson plan each day, then perhaps they should seek a career in food service"). A idea so crazy, it just might work.

[And, perhaps even a meta-Quixotic campaign inside of it: when referring to my travails, please refer to them as "Kee-hoe-tec" rather than the popular pronounciation. At very least, all you New School grads who spout off about "Ben-ha-min" because you read the synopsis of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"]

Anyway, here's the plan: get Macy's to restore the windows to the flagship store in Herald Square. Massively expensive? Sure. Reduce retailing space inside? Probably. Increase number of visitors who wander through with not intention of purchasing? Hopefully.

Regardless of the downmarket aura of the Herald Square area, and the vauge brand identity of Macy's, there's no reason they can't house themselves in a building that is visually striking beyond its simple girth (a friend once snorted derisively when he saw it from the Broadway side, commenting that it didn't seem so big, until I walked him a few feet south, so he could see it recede all the way to Seventh Avenue). And the facade is in reasonably good shape. The only reason it is so unattractive is the painted or walled up windows caked with grime.

Look what such an approach does for Saks, which gleams upscale retailer. And big box stores are invading the city, some which are being very aggressive in creating more urbane versions of their default template. Meanwhile, Macy's clings to an outmoded suburban ideal. Given that whatever failing department store chain controls them now might want to stake out a better position vis-a-vis Target's seemingly unstoppable ability to capture high and low end shoppers, it might be a good tactical maneveur as well. Think of all the residual good will possible from such a 'street-friendly' gesture. And legions of Simon Doonan acolytes will swoon at the increased oppotunity.

This campaign won't have a clever name, certainly not one with punctuation. It probably won't exist longer than this post, but that's what makes it so Quixotic. And it's not a half bad idea. So if you are having cocktails with the Federated people, or the May people, or whatever they are calling themselves these days, mention it. It they are dubious, tell them they could put a Starbucks or ten in there as well. Synergy. They'll love that.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 16, 2005

I don't see how 'roof of bones' won't be the inevitable epithet. Without being tiresomely self-reflexive, I do think it’s necessary to preface this with a comment about pre-existing prejudices. I have never liked Calatrava’s work. His stature has grown exponentially over the past five years, and has been on a steady climb for considerably larger. When I first saw his work, as a student, I remember a certain amount of excitement about the synthesis of engineering and what I could best call a formal virility, or virtuosity. The daring and striking forms he created were accepted uncritically as presumably ‘well-engineered’, using the yardstick that fell somewhere between the proverbial ‘engineers aesthetic’ celebrated by Le Corbusier and an actual assessment of efficiency in material that was nonetheless dramatic. The historic antecedents would clearly be Nervi and perhaps Eiffel.

But I’ve never heard evidence that his work is actually an economic and engineering marvel using the strictest of standards. In other words, are his soaring structural members simply a fashionable gesture that inspires the additional ‘expense’ (be it literal or simply a more complex design or construction to accomplish his soaring feats)? I presume there is some economy, and allowed myself the grudging respect that he has mastered the difficult craft of engineering while also bringing a particular sensibility to the visual execution. I say particular because I’ve never found it particularly evocative, though many have (and, yes, that I don’t know the answers to these questions in a substantive way indicate a lack of scholarship, diligence and engineer expertise).

This overlong preface is to arrive at a point about subjective formalism. Because Calatrava is all about that, much like the other near universally lauded ‘master’ Frank Gehry. In Calatrava’s case, his possibly entirely arbitrary gestures are given more credence initially because they are presumed to be an efficient or rational solution that is also appealing. Though it seems that Gehry likewise can do pretty much anything and suffer little critical or popular resistance, his work still garners opposition. Though in the end we prefer our architects as unquestioned geniuses dispensing brilliance with élan, it can take some work to get there. Calatrava has skipped ahead of much of those trials by producing highly subjective forms legitimated via dubious functionality.

We are about to get a big dose of his soaring and whatnot forms as the PATH terminal at the WTC moves inexorably toward construction. The lack of opposition is stunning, considering the magnitude of the project, physically and economically, one that could be characterized as an infrastructure engineering failure, making the hosannas to Calatrava’s skills and the Port Authority’s vision in commissioning him all the more inexplicable.

How is it a failure? First and foremost, it does next to nothing to improve transit interconnections. Early rebuilding plans incorporated a truly visionary, but none to impressively visually, concept of an underground transit mall that would provide a single level transfer node among four train lines (maybe even an airport connector) and the PATH. Almost as soon as it was sketched, it was discarded, excused for being excessively expensive. While this was going on, a temporary station was constructed, and plans were made for a grandiose follow up, to the tune of over $2 billion, with no outwardly promoted improvements in access or circulation. Basically, it’s a $2 billion door. Taking a page from the PATH playbook, the MTA in jumped with their own $700 million turnstile over on Fulton Street. They are promising some improvements on subterranean circulation, but otherwise, expect a lot of glass atop the existing warren that is the Fulton Street Station.

The planning is so acontextual that it manages to proceed even as the other major elements at the site remain unresolved. It will need to connect to the Freedom Tower, whatever sort of underground plaza that is created, a large amount of retail that no one wants to show plans for, and, presumably, the Memorial. I would add also the tenants of eight million square feet of office space, but, well, there aren’t any right now. Regardless of how this might impact circulation, the plans seem to have proceeded with little deviance from the original concept. One that seems driven mostly by a single, dramatic gesture: a large room surmounted by two fins that spread an incremental amount so that they ‘open’ What this feature will add to the cost is worth knowing given how abbreviated its impact will be.

Most unfortunate of all is the preferred mode of expression for all this energy: repeating bilaterally symmetric concrete members that read like nothing besides ribs. Take a look at the rendering available at Calatrava’s site (requires QuickTime): if you don’t think ‘roof of bones’ immediately and repetitively, you are far more imaginative than I. I am not ascribing malicious intent, and find biomorphic forms off-putting in most executions (too many H.R. Giger drawings as a teen? Maybe.), but in a site as loaded as this one, it seems shockingly clumsy.

The spatial effects that are impressive are completely disconnected from the form. Three expansive levels, which do not read as formally logical in any way, and are best understood if you are familiar with the existing and former stations, appear to be impressively broad spaces. But they also lack any signage or evidence of retail, security or public amenities. This is not unusual for renderings, but if we are going to bother to put a clearly identifiable BMW 325 in the film, how about a Hudson News?

And it’s impossible to determine if there will be anything to the cavernous spaces (which the former WTC station could seem like, particularly in off-hours) besides acres of white that are hard to maintain, and disconnected commuters standing amidst organic lumps of concrete. Any time a large room is made in this town, it gets a certain amount of credit, but for every Grand Central Station, you also get a Winter Garden.

Atop the various platforms, which are sure to change in response to whatever the rebuilding plan looks like this week, is the money shot, the glass hat that looks like it crawled off the set of a Ridley Scott film. We should hold a glass hat competition just for fun. Grimshaw, Foster, hell, find Helmut Jahn, just for kicks. They can all take turns. It makes the ‘hairdresser’ dig from MVRDV (who know how to do an engineering marvel without resorting to the obvious) all the more prescient.

In many ways, this project is the canary in the coal mine, indicative of how the Port Authority really does operate: with an aristocratic mien, and one that favors the unilateral presumption of expertise, even when presented with obviously contrary information. There is little critical opposition to this project, in part because very little can stop it, and because the ‘glory’ of Calatrava’s gesture is being used to paper over possible complaint regarding the lack of vision in design from the PANYNJ over the past four decades. It’s amazing what you can get away with when you append ‘soaring’ to your story.

A few images from the Project Rebirth site (the balance can be found both there and at Calatrava's site.)

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 13, 2005

The Magic Truffle. Some time ago I was eating with friends one of the more renowned establishments in town when we were presented with what one of them derisively called the ‘Magic Truffle’ trick. You’ve seen the scam. Server comes out and rattles off the impressive specials list, and at the end, in a particularly excited voice, shares a little tale about the chef, and maybe he was getting on the plane, when a gnome pressed a particularly impressive white truffle in his hand, as if truffle shopping was like heroin smuggling. And this truffle can be shaved on your risotto, or your toro, or your damn flan, for only fifty bucks a hit. And we are all supposed to ooh at our good fortune and pony up, when it is all an elaborate ruse from the word go.

Pataki pulled what was effectively the truffle trick this week, announcing with what I assume he hoped was proper gravitas, that we needed "a fresh commitment" (the Times interpretation) to fulfill our "solemn obligation" (his words). Are we all supposed to melt at his assertive leadership? Why is it that no one is bothering to point that he’s been in fucking charge for the past four years? Fresh start? That would be his resignation, not Kevin Rampe’s -- who is hardly a scapegoat. Rampe made off with $300 million of the remaining block grants for his new gig raising money for the Memorial, which seems like the sort of 'fresh start' we are so desperately looking for: take the man in charge locally, who managed to drive the entire process into the bedrock on which it sits, and give him a job trying to recover a failing fundraising project (which, let us note, was formally started over three years after the attacks, even though it aims to raise three times more than any memorial fundraiser in history).

If you want an abbreviated timeline of what an idiot Pataki is, let’s visit the wayback machine. Late last summer, Pataki came downstate to take a kayak ride, and after, announced that he would leave decision making on the West Street Tunnel to the local representatives (CB1, LMDC, etc.). Well, there has never been measurable support for the tunnel, outside of John Zuccotti (they kept doing phone surveys with local residents and changing the questions to drive towards approval ratings in the Bloomberg territory), but it kept trudging along. In the meantime, apparently both the NYPD and Goldman Sachs kept voicing concerns about security, all for naught. It was all tunnel tunnel tunnel, sounding like a damn Simpsons episode. Goldman had to go so far as to publicly withdraw their interest of the only sizable private commercial investment in downtown since September 11, because Pataki was sitting on his hands. Now he as the gall to say "You belong here" to Goldman? George, how about returning a phone call?

That’s the kind of wizardry we get from Albany. They can’t even get their press releases in synch. Pataki announces a that we will have in the coming weeks a new preliminary plan for the Freedom Tower, which is somehow supposed to incorporate Libeskind’s vision -- and let’s save a special place in hell for Danny, who has descended into being a sycophant par excellence, one so bad that his mealy mouthed affirmations of "vision" undermine his reputation as a designer who could physically interpret historic events with grace and dignity -- and then a day later the NYPD is ready to sign off on the revised plan.

Revised plan? Who designed that? In a week? If we could resolve the safety issues that were going to add over a year to the construction schedule in a week of furious sketching, why don’t we have a Freedom Tower design that is presentable to the public after two years of design?

And everyone keeps blathering about Libeskind’s plan, and its vision. I don’t want to be an fussy formalist, but maybe someone in Pataki’s office an dust off one of the boards and point to some element could actually be constructed at this point. The only one that would be even remotely plausible would be the "Wedge of Light", except, whoops, that was never a physically feasible to begin with.

Maybe I’m a little too heated to make myself clear. The events of the past week are not the equivalent of the adulterous husband coming clean about his dalliance with the daughter’s college roommate, and we all trod off into the future braced by our learning from a moment of moral weakness. This is Dad confessing his sins and then marching off to the bar for hookers and blow.

We are actually hitting the red zone of how urban planning fails. This is all prelude to the massively offensive failure to come. It’s necessary to construct this narrative of crisis (which is not news to anyone who lives here) so that the callous, thoughtless "revisions" we will get shoved at us will be done so under the rubric of crisis management. Just keeping saying over and over: he was always in charge. He broke it. He cannot fix it.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 10, 2005

This is the kind of thing you can't get on the 4/5/6. The ratio of muddy incomprehensible subway messages to those indicative of a sense of civic pride that makes them worth keeping is certainly steep. Hearing a subway message at all is worth noting on its face. And today I was treated to one of those subtle civil servant performances you can't get from a recording.

Starting a Delancy (on the F), I only noted two things: the clarity, and depth, of information he provided. With a present but not overbearing outer borough accent, he delivered in the perfect dry monotone, with very occasional modulation for effect. He reminded me very much of Walter at 100 Center Street: droll, full of interesting but perhaps unnecessary information, and girded by one hell of a pension. All things I aspire to.

The subtle wit became apparent as we approached Broadway-Lafayette. After he went very deliberately through the connections came this coda "And the 6 train, downtown only. Reason: unknown." I looked around to see if anyone noticed, but it was all iPods and poker faces.

Coming up on West Fourth, we were treated to this interjection: "Attention: Sixth Avenue is also know as the Avenue of the Americas". Also known as. Actually, it’s the reverse, LaGuardia having mandated the change in 1945, but there are some people who don’t accept change well, and clearly our conductor was one of them. As the train entered the junction just south of the station, we passed by an E train, and he dutifully reported that an uptown E was approaching on upper platform -- nearly useless information since you have to sprint upstairs to even think about making that connection. Going up Sixth Avenue, we are made aware of the naming confusion several more times (and advised that we had "A full 600 feet of train -- please use all available doors"), and finally were treated to a bit of advice regarding a bus transfer at 23rd Street: "Go upstairs, get yourself some fresh air. Take bus transfer." At that, he finally got a grin or two from some of the departing passengers.

Throughout the trip we were afforded amazingly detailed options for transferring to the 6 (V to 53rd, N to 51st, 6 downtown to Brooklyn Bridge), as if that mysterious non-connection was paramount to full ridership of the train. But I appreciate the rigor, and am pleased to be armed with official information regarding its absence: like any good post-modern quandary, it is unknowable.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 9, 2005

Balazs new holeytel.

Correction: Turns out Gluckman was only flashing us. Balazs doesn't even think people will stay overnight in art. And his flacks didn't even find it necessary to call (for that matter, nor did Gluckman). Turns out Polshek is designing the building. Via Curbed.

Original Item: Apparently Andre Balazs is confident that whereas people will stay overnight in art, he's not as confident that they will live in it (even at rather museum-like prices). Richard Gluckman has renderings (under the commerical section) of a new hotel project slated for the Meatpacking District. Located on the infamous Jean Nouvel site, it is more modest in scale, though hardly small, if the renderings are accurate. And it is far more striking than One Kenmare Place, the other project Gluckman has underway for Balazs, though that isn't necessarily much of an accomplishment.

Reminscent of a number of projects, such as Nouvel's own Hotel des Thermes (you'll have to dig though the links yourself) and several by OMA and Herzog and de Meuron, it falls cleanly in the late modernist aesthetic of defamiliarized form and scale via a patterned cladding that envelopes the entire structure. Though Nouvel's hotel is less about a relentless patterning (unlike his L'Institut du Monde Arabe), as the louvers are of room scale, it is notable as a relatively prominent and early example of screening the entire facade, an interesting formal gesture for a building type that is typically expected to provide views. The most recent and extreme exercises in this vein would be the forever pending Prada boutique in San Francisco. Provided Balazs' hotel goes through as designed, it would stand out as one of the more aggresive examples of contemporary design in these parts.

The handling of the High Line underpass (and, by the way, what happened to all the really sexy stuff in the DSR concept? No floating ampitheater, no pool -- I'd post about this at more length, but it seems a little too much grousing, even for me) is particuarly daring: a long cantilever that transforms what would otherwise be an absolutely typical form in a clever skin. The cut is repeated at a smaller scale on the upper portion, in what is likely to be the obgliatory roof top bar space. A detail shows four different patterning systems, but it isn't apparent how they relate to the larger images. They may be constituent elements that form the final image, though the main rendering appears simply to be one of the four patterns. It is also hard to imagine exactly what the materials will be. The screen will most definitely be aluminum or stainless (or perhaps one of the exotic metals that Gehry has been experimenting with), which presents in interesting maintenance issue. Nouvel's screen, when I saw it several years ago, was plenty dingy. It would be interesting if the material was going be 'distressed' in construction, or left raw, but this is unlikely. Given Gluckman's promise that his rather bland brick choice at Kenmare Place is supposed to glitter, or glow, or whatever (something I still haven't seen happen), this may be cause for concern. Maybe Balazs will have interns wipe it down regularly.

As interesting as this project may be, I can't help but be cynical about the disparity between this and the Kenmare Place project (which remains resolutely banal as it inches towards completion). It really looks like a quid pro quo: let me put your name on a middling apartment block and I'll let you build a really sexy hotel. It's also disappointing to think that it's either not economically viable, or a lack of confidence in home buyers, that there aren't residential projects with this much character. The Porter House from ShoP is one welcome antidote, but unfortunately too much in the minority.

Courtesy Triple Mint via Archinect.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

May 4, 2005

NY1 not interested in Childs interview any time soon. In a rush to demonstrate journalistic skills on par with a blogger, NY1 posted the breaking news that the Freedom Tower will be 'redesigned' and ended with this precious nugget:

The 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, designed by Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind, will be the architectural centerpiece of the redesigned WTC site.

The words "David" and "Childs" turn up nowhere in the article, alone or together. I wonder if Libeskind ever got his check.

Found always via this Permanent Link.

Wednesday Lore*. Like usual? Explaining some of the more odd rituals to those who haven’t ventured to the city is an interesting process. Not because for the exception of the ritual in the experience, but for what it signifies the absence of: exercising one’s ability to choose from the myriad, and instead settling for the repetitive and possibly banal.

The coffee cart is one: the ubiquitous corner cart, an amazing bit of engineering and commerce. I’ve only ‘had’ one, for a few months, and I marveled each morning at the speed and regularity of it all.

[For those who haven’t seen it, they are wheeled carts -- trailers, really, except the are barely larger than a person -- that appear on the streets around 5AM, offering coffee, bagels and donuts. Customers are regulars, and fiercely loyal. Most get the same thing each morning, and by the time your turn has queued you up, your selections are ready. There is a pile of money on the counter, and you make your own change, exchange some pleasant words with ‘your guy’ and move along. They sell out by 10AM or so, to be replaced by the lunch carts. Even with the proliferation of Starbucks, they hold on, by dint of economy, being by far the cheapest coffee in the city, and loyalty of customers]

The routine is embraced as a way of breaking off a small slice of the day and fixing it. With plenty more to worry about, and hating the inevitability of morning and the tardiness it brings, why bother with choice?

So we have any number of fixed events. I don't have a coffee cart anyone more, but I have had my hair cut by the same stylist every three weeks (four if busy) since I have moved here. Tipped both to the good deal, and the certainty it was one of those ‘New York experiences’ I struck out for Astor Place Haircutters the first time I needed a haircut.

Located, obviously, on Astor Place, it used to be a smallish storefront with 8 or so chairs on the street level. I went in, having heard a number of superlatives from friends, but stood somewhat confused at the averageness of the scene. All the chairs were full, and I stood, daft, trying to figure out the procedure. Someone jerked a thumb at a stair, and I descended to what was, and is, the largest hair cutting emporium I have ever seen -- and now is the entirety, the ground level given over to chain store hegemony.

Commandeering what appears to be the basement of the entire building that sits on the corner of Broadway and Astor Place (though there is evidence of a sub basement, which I am always tempted to sneak in), there are easily 50 chairs, each ‘owned’ by a particular stylist, with all the attendant personalization that one might find in a high school locker. Some are papered with celebrities photos that might imply possible cuts, possible customers, or possible cheesecake. Some are expert in particulars (the gentlemen near my chair seems to do a great deal of old school East Village dyeing), some I can’t tell what they do.

It’s a big, quiet room. In the city, I think can only think of a few: Grand Central Station, Katz’s, and Astor Place. Elementally New York places all. And each manages to provide a warm and comfortable envelope of privacy. Perhaps it is physical, but the disparity and obvious disjunction between privacy and the lived reality -- Katz’s and the harsh light, Grand Central and the rushing crowds, or Astor and its almost nonstop bustle -- make it something else, a cone of privacy that rings true to our notion of the anonymous big city. The faith that you can be anyone here seems fleetingly possible, mostly because you are no one at these places. The triumph of socialism in the form of anonymity.

My stylist has one of the simpler layouts, her name in press-on letters on the mirror, maybe a Russian language daily on the side, and then the bare minimum of implements. Her clientele seem to reflect this: mostly men, straight forward haircuts. That’s how I would characterize mine, since I haven’t had to describe it in seven years, because the our sessions usually proceed as follows:

I walk in, sit down, she drapes the bib on me and says, clipped, but cheerful, with a lingering Russian accent: “Like usual?” I sometimes say “Yes”, but as often just nod. She cuts my hair in silence, flashes a mirror at the end, and closes by saying “See you next time”.

It sounds more brusque than it is. After the first couple of years of this, I assumed that perhaps she simply liked to work in silence. I certainly do, and even as hair cutting is a vaguely social activity, it’s still a job, and some people don’t like to talk at their job. After September 11, we had the most awkward of greetings, certainly one of relief and joy at being able to return to this routine, but she intimated how unsettling it was, wondering if some clients simply stopped coming, moved, or far worse.

Somewhere around this time, I started to feel bad about our rectitude, worrying perhaps that it was me enforcing an unwanted silence. After all, this woman worried about my health and didn’t even know my name. Rather than expose my poor manners, I decide to take a roundabout route one day.

I asked her if she would know my haircut if I weren’t sitting there. It struck me once that given the welter of people she might service ‘Like usual?’ could encompass a hell of a lot. She said of course she would, and I asked how many regular customers she had -- 200 or 300 it turns out (making her unknowing after September 11 all the more challenging). I felt like I had made some headway in the way of civility, so I offered, slightly shamefaced, my name, appending that I felt bad after all these years of not introducing myself. She paused, and said in a friendly, but very particular, way “Oh, I’m not so good with names.”

That sealed it. I returned to my comfortable silence, and have barely spoken to her since. We chat if she has a pending vacation, or if she figures there will be a scheduling problem for other reasons. But we have settled comfortably back into the “Like usual?” routine, and I’ve looked forward to every hair cut since.

* Details at the beginning of this post.

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May 3, 2005

Now that the Times said it, it must be true. After rumblings over the past few weeks (minor rumblings, to be sure -- it was mostly us bloggers, until the doyenne got into the act), it finally broke big: the master planning at the WTC site is a fiasco. Not just as deemed by amateurs, cranks who were just paying attention and noticing how unlikely and imprudent it all seemed, but after the NYPD sniffed at the Freedom Center plans and gave an arch thumbs down, we can now say it loud and proud.

It is a pyrrhic victory, no doubt. I don’t enjoy gloating over the fact that no one is publicly willing to step up and defend the past four years and billions of dollars invested, to arrive at a point where it’s easier to simply argue for what is still right, since so much of it is wrong. Even given my predisposition -- that much, if not all, of the building plans should be abandoned -- it does not read as unreasonable to say that what is right is nothing.

Some have offered piecemeal alternatives, and that’s fine, but it plays into the myopic bureaucracy of the Port Authority (absolutely at fault, along with their patron, Curious George) that at this point incremental changes will be ‘considered’ indefinitely while the majority of the ill-conceived plans trudge along inevitably. And nothing can stop them. Though there is some public hand wringing about the recent report by the NYPD that the current plan is not as secure as they would like, as a quasi-governmental entity, there is next to nothing to prevent the PANYNJ from moving forward with either the plans as they stand, or even worse permutations to come. Some speculate that much of this finger pointing and delay is engineered to bankrupt Larry Silverstein, so he is forced to back out and then the process can be reopened for consideration. That is giving far too much credit to the organization that was responsible for the WTC in the first place.

The divide and conquer strategy that Ouroussoff outlined in the Times yesterday -- preventing the designers, who are all under contract to the LMDC/Port Authority, from speaking to each other or publicly, is an extension of the same logic. Issues are presented, but never with enough time or opportunity to consider the whole. This enables the LMDC to speak with complete authority, dismissing challenges by asserting that they are certainly considering any particular issue, but the inference is that only they can speak with authority, since the overall program is too complex, and somewhere in the bowels of the organization, the best and brightest minds are working to resolve it. But they aren’t. The center is a void, a curious phenomenon, since it mirrors the void of the site itself, which creates a symbolic symmetry. One -- which I would argue -- should be considered more rigorously as a response. But that is not in the plans, and this temporary interruption, regardless of the air of failure and incompetence that now looms, does not stop ham-fisted urban planning. It only adds to the certainty that the inevitable will be even less palatable.

So what does the leadership do? Well, the inestimable Kevin Rampe looks around, brushes his hands together and says “My work here is done.” Off to fund raise for the memorial and the mysterious Freedom Center, perhaps his last official act will be writing the check for $750 million to himself. It will certainly make him popular at his new job.

Curious George is playing coy with his re-election plans, which is politico speak for approval numbers that are only slightly worse than the Yankees current record. He has no national office chances, but he still has the funds to pay handlers to convince him he does. The sweet Guiliani-style money will likely be too attractive. He’s probably angling for some cosmetic position he can milk, like head of the Freedom Center, to burnish his fixer -- er, consulting -- gig.

Mike-Mike at least had the gumption to say the Larry Silverstein got his cake, and now he better eat it. But that’s only because every dime you can find in the carpeting at City Hall has to go towards the suddenly, strangely quiet dispute over on the west side. With less than 70 days to a decision for the Olympics (one can imagine Mike-Mike in Union Square, staring at the high-jacked art counting down, and imploring bystanders to assert their support for subsidizing powerful New Jersey families), and no real power in this struggle, he can shine as the voice of reason, something he is unable to muster further uptown.

Larry Silverstein, master of the largest unrented block of space in Manhattan, wants more money. How quaint. After investing a whopping $15 million of his own money, he has the temerity to suggest that his plans, which have proceeded without any real resistance, even as no one has endorsed them as the preferred solution (except for the soon to be departed Kevin Rampe, and a handful of downtown real estate guys who missed the train to midtown), should be publicly underwritten. Well that’s great. I’ve got a bunch of plans for affordable housing in my closet -- you think I can get a cut Larry?

Ouroussoff sees in all this opportunity: a drastic intervention into the planning process, so we can then get to the design flaws (some of which are explicitly the result of the poor planning). Unfortunately the figurehead who would best be in a position to turn the ship, Curious George, is the same captain who steered us into the rapids.

Just as I was trying to find some sensible way to conclude this, the news broke that Curious George is going to try and paper over his failure by taking control of the situation via eminent domain. Who is he going to serve papers to – himself? If anyone falls for this gambit, we absolutely deserve the resulting embarassement he is sure to foist on us.

Found always via this Permanent Link.