(IND) Going Out With Building Boom, Mayor Pushes Billions in Projects

The Bloomberg administration has been pushing through more than $12 billion worth of real estate projects in its waning days, trying to solidify the mayor’s claim to having transformed the face of New York City and lock in plans before Bill de Blasio takes over Jan. 1.

The gusher of projects recently approved or on track for approval in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s final days include an outlet mall and a giant observation wheel on Staten Island, totaling $580 million, and a relatively modest $16 million building in Manhattan with 55 experimental micro-apartments, as well as a $2 billion residential complex on the Brooklyn waterfront and the country’s largest indoor skating complex, to be built in the Bronx.

Mr. Bloomberg has sought to remake the city’s landscape for the 21st century, pushing for higher-density development and higher-quality design and opening up the city’s vast waterfront to new residential, recreational and commercial uses. Nearly 40 percent of the city has been rezoned during the mayor’s 12 years in office.

The man spearheading the efforts, the deputy mayor Robert K. Steel, and other officials have made it clear to the City Council, as well as to the real estate and construction industries, that they are determined to finish public reviews for a number of “legacy projects” before Mr. Bloomberg leaves office.

The projects, which will begin construction well after Mayor-elect de Blasio takes office in January, also bind the new mayor to the old mayor’s agenda, at least for a while. By Dec. 31, some projects, like a $1.2 billion Hudson Yards office tower and a $1.7 billion Hunter College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center complex, will have reached the point that they cannot be stopped or modified.

Others, like a soccer stadium in the Bronx, a Coney Island amphitheater and a residential complex at the former Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn, could still be halted or changed. The Domino project has won widespread support, but Mr. de Blasio has expressed “serious concerns” about a proposed $350 million soccer stadium near Yankee Stadium because the Bloomberg administration planned to provide the soccer team’s wealthy owners with public resources, including tax exemptions.

The Bloomberg administration has also granted tax breaks worth tens of millions of dollars for the first phase of the $3 billion Willets Point project in Queens, for a proposed office tower on the West Side of Manhattan and for the outlet mall on Staten Island.

“They made no secret about the fact that they’re working very hard to lock in a number of major projects for the future,” said Brad Lander, a councilman from Brooklyn. “De Blasio said everything will be reviewed. But some things can be reviewed and changed more than others.”

For his part, Mr. de Blasio, who was the city’s public advocate before being elected mayor, opposed few projects during the Bloomberg era and embraced the notion of high-density development near transit centers. But he has made it clear that he will drive a harder bargain with developers to get the best deal for taxpayers. During his mayoral campaign, Mr. de Blasio also vowed “wholesale reform of our city’s tax incentive policies that give hundreds of millions of dollars to office towers on Park Avenue and unaccountable one-shot subsidies to companies who can do without them.”

Real estate developers and investors, who had a familiar ally in Mr. Bloomberg, will be watching for early signs of Mr. de Blasio’s agenda. A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, Lis Smith, said he would “review every project with an eye toward maximizing affordable housing, good jobs and value for taxpayers.”

Only one so-called legacy project — the rezoning of 73 blocks surrounding Grand Central Terminal for taller towers — failed, when the Bloomberg administration could not win the Council’s support last month.

Even though the Council approved the Willets Point proposal to build a retail mall and housing next to Citi Field in Queens, the project still has critics, and Mr. de Blasio could make it difficult for developments like Willets Point by slowing approval of construction permits or delaying the use of government funds.

The Bloomberg administration has also pushed many small initiatives that critics contend should have been left for the next administration. The city recently solicited bids from private developers for a commercial complex within the Bedford Union Armory in Brooklyn, committed $51.5 million in public funds to the restoration of the Loew’s Kings Theater, which has been largely vacant for decades, and directed $50 million to a cultural center at Hudson Yards that has yet to be designed.

Mr. Bloomberg has laid the groundwork for the transformation of New York by aggressively rezoning more than 12,000 blocks, almost 40 percent of the city, primarily for dense high-rise development. The Council recently approved the administration’s 124th and last rezoning, in Ozone Park, Queens.

Many projects are rooted in the early days of Mr. Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure and were steered by his first deputy mayor and chief development architect, Daniel L. Doctoroff. More than once, Mr. Bloomberg has said that Mr. Doctoroff, and by extension himself, had a “greater impact on this city, I think, than Robert Moses.”

New York mayors have traditionally rushed through favored projects in the closing days of their administrations, and rarely has a new mayor upended his predecessor’s work.

Before leaving office in 2001, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani signed a secret deal to build new stadiums for the city’s two professional baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets. Less than a month later, Mayor Bloomberg effectively scuttled the agreement, citing the city’s more pressing civic needs after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

But the Yankees and the Mets did get new stadiums, replete with city subsidies worth tens of millions of dollars.

Mr. Giuliani himself railed for years about Mayor David N. Dinkins’s last-minute deal to build a new stadium at the National Tennis Center in Queens. But he did nothing to stop the project, other than bar his senior officials from attending the U.S. Open there.

“We haven’t tried anything wacky at the last minute,” Mr. Steel said. “We’ve worked hard to get a lot of things done. My focus, and the mayor’s focus, has been on jobs and housing. And lots of private money.”

Besides, Mr. Steel added, “there’ll be lots of things that we began that the next mayor will reap. Projects we put in the oven will come out with the next administration, like Domino.”

The City Planning Department has certified for public review a $1.5 billion plan by Two Trees Management to transform the former Domino Sugar mill on the East River into an 11-acre residential complex with office space, a park and 2,100 apartments, 660 for moderate- and middle-income tenants. There may be some additional bargaining over concessions from the developer before the Council votes on the project.

Mr. de Blasio, who has named only a few of his top officials, has yet to announce who will serve as his administration’s point person on economic development.

Source: The New York Times