Matthew Schuerman

The state economic development agency and the private developers behind Moynihan Station have targeted an unlikely pot of money to help build the proposed $3 billion transit center in midtown west: homeland security dollars.

“This is a logical place for people to invest homeland dollars,” said James Dyer, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who is representing Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies, the two firms that formed a joint venture to redevelop the Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. “Anytime you have a station carrying more people through it that go through the airports at any one time, you obviously are going to have security concerns.”

The developers paid Mr. Dyer’s firm, Clark & Weinstock, $220,000 in the first half of the year to lobby the Department of Homeland Security as well as other more obvious targets, such as Amtrak and the Department of Transportation, according to federal lobbying records.  read more »

Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, knew from the get-go that in order to expand, he had to win over Harlem. He and his aides went to great lengths to get neighborhood leaders to see what a new campus could do for them.

Somehow, months or even years later, Harlem, or at least a vocal portion of it, is still not convinced. At a Dec. 12 City Council hearing, Mr.  read more »

The Associated Press is reporting that the opening of the World Trade Center memorial (now officially known as the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum) has been pushed back two years until Sept. 11, 2011.

In light of tomorrow’s expected City Council vote on Columbia University’s expansion plan, the Harlem group that is negotiating a community benefits agreement is trying to finalize beforehand a set of pledges for the school to make on issues such as affordable housing, education and job training.

The agreement, according to a source familiar with the negotiations, is all set except for one crucial element: the numbers were left blank.  read more »

Remember back when 86th Street looked poised to become a new boundary line of status thanks to the Mayor’s proposed congestion pricing zone? Mr. Bloomberg said that stopping the $8 fee at 60th Street would create a parking lot just outside the zone because drivers would try to dump their cars just outside the charging boundary and walk to work?  read more »

It makes sense that a movement that has focused as much on minute details, uncovered documents, and meticulously analyzed data as the opposition to Atlantic Yards has should find its highest expression in a trivia night. But here it is: the Develop Don’t Destroy edition of Trivial Pursuit, to take place Thursday, Jan. 17, at Rocky Sullivan’s pub in Red Hook.  read more »

Nick Sprayregen, one of the last property owners resisting Columbia’s expansion into West Harlem, has rarely had nice words to say about the university. But today, following a 50-minute meeting, it sounded like he had found new friends—or, more accurately, potential business partners.

“The subject of the conversation moved to my swap idea, and they were interested in discussing it, which was the whole point of them calling the meeting,” Mr.  read more »

Columbia University said today it was back-tracking on its plan to remove the Cotton Club at 656 West 125th Street and make way for a small park as part of its West Harlem expansion today after getting negative feedback. (Get it? Feedback?)  read more »

Nick Sprayregen and Columbia University, who have been staring each other down over the ownership of four properties in West Harlem, are going to talk again tomorrow, Mr. Sprayregen said.

It would be the first time in more than three years. At that time, Mr. Sprayregen made it clear he did not want to sell his properties to make way for the university’s expansion as long as Columbia was threatening eminent domain.  read more »

Once there was Yankee Stadium. Now there is Coney Island.

Once there was the West Side Stadium. Now there are the West Side rail yards.

Once there was Atlantic Yards. Now there is Moynihan Station.  read more »

Theodore W. Kheel, the labor arbitrator extraordinaire who negotiated on behalf of Mayors O’Dwyer, Wagner and Lindsay, is spending close to $200,000 on a study to show how to make New York’s subway and bus systems free. It is expected to come out in early January, just as the state’s commission on congestion mitigation is preparing its final recommendation.

“Congestion pricing is fine,” Mr. Kheel, 93, told The Observer by telephone today.  read more »

Critics of Atlantic Yards repeatedly argue that there is something about the 22-acre housing and arena complex in Brooklyn that does not jibe with the Bloomberg administration’s rhetoric about community participation in the planning process. In an article appearing in tomorrow’s Observer, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff basically agrees.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg, from China, sends his best for the proposed M.T.A. fare hike. From a press release that just came out:

Based on the information that my staff and I have received and reviewed over the past few weeks, I am now satisfied that the MTA budget is a responsible plan that includes important cost reductions. I agree with Governor Spitzer that this fare increase is necessary to maintain an adequate level of service and balance the needs and obligations of all who use this critical part of the region’s infrastructure.  read more »

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Governor Spitzer has nominated a bond lawyer to fill the vacancy at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey caused by Vice Chairman Charles Gargano's resignation: H.  read more »

For months, large metal boxes containing the energy of the future have been sitting around on the tops of a handful of buildings, waiting to be turned on. Now, they finally can be.

A rule published in the City Record Monday ends a moratorium imposed two years ago by the Buildings Department that prohibited residential and commercial building owners from using microturbines, which are natural gas-powered electricity generators that use the heat thrown off to warm water for showers and faucets. The Observer wrote about this hiccough in the city’s environmental agenda back in April. Since then, an interdepartmental task force forged an agreement that assuaged the Fire Department’s concerns about safety (there is a flame involved, after all).  read more »

People knew Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff would leave before the end of his boss’s term. The only questions were when, and where he would go.

The rumor mill said it would be this March, after things got squared away with the West Side rail yards and congestion pricing, and that his destination would be real estate development, or a return to the investment world, or some new venture of his own invention.  read more »

Jim Whelan, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s chief of staff, will become senior vice president for public affairs at Muss Development sometime in January, according to an informed source. He will be playing the role there that the late Harvey Schultz played—though people who knew Schultz, a legend in Brooklyn politics and development circles, say that no one will quite be able to fill his shoes.

Mr. Whelan got to know Josh Muss while director of the Downtown Brooklyn Council from 2000 to 2003. Mr.  read more »

The West Side rail yards competition has pitted some of the biggest developers in the city against one another in an intense race to win the right to build 12 million square feet of office, residential and retail space. But it is also pitting former senior officials of the Bloomberg administration against one another.  read more »

Any good development firm worth its salt has got to have a former City Hall staffer or two on hand to navigate the bureaucracy. Last month, Brookfield Properties sent its latest government hire, Joshua Sirefman, into a meeting to help present the company’s multi-billion dollar plan for the West Side rail yards to a joint city-Metropolitan Transportation Authority selection committee.  read more »

The same judge who ruled in favor of Sheffield57 tenants last March has delivered a similar decision for market-rate tenants of the Manhattan House, The Real Deal reports, blocking evictions sought by new owners who are converting the 583-unit Upper East Side landmark into a condominium building.

The city has changed its plan for downtown Brooklyn to eliminate the need to take a home on Duffield Street that had some connection to the Underground Railroad.

A spokeswoman for the city Law Department, Kate O'Brien Ahlers said in a statement,

"The city is pleased that this litigation was resolved in a manner favorable to all the parties involved, and is now looking forward to proceeding with its plan for commercial and residential growth in downtown Brooklyn, together with the Mayor’s initiative to commemorate the area’s abolitionist history."

A press release from South Brooklyn Legal Services, which represented one of the home's owners, Joy Chatel, is after the jump.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust will now pay four times as much for air rights over the Port Authority Bus Terminal than it would have under an earlier agreement abandoned four years ago, according to a deal announced today

“I’m sad,” Vornado’s Chairman and Chief Executive Steven Roth said after a press conference at the terminal this morning. “Let’s not talk about the past. But the answer is that what we are paying for the air rights is in sync with where commercial rents are.”

In other words, he can afford it. Otherwise, why bother renegotiating the deal?

Vornado and a partner, Ruben Companies, will pay roughly $500 million over the length of the 99-year-lease, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. The 1.3 million-square-foot building will rise 42 stories over the north end of the terminal, using air rights transferred from the south end, according to Frank DiMola, deputy director of development at the Port Authority. The exact height was not available.

The earlier deal, which newspapers have valued variously at $110 million to $130 million, was struck in 2000, but was called off in 2003, apparently because of the poor economy. Since then, the real estate market has rebounded and even Eighth Avenue, once the tawdry edge of Times Square, has become respectable.

The revenue will pay for renovations at the terminal--making the brick interior a bit brighter, improving pedestrian circulation, adding bus gates—as well as pay for part of a $545 million bus garage that the Port Authority wants to build somewhere on the West Side.

Mr. Roth said that ground would be broken in two years and the tower would be completed in 2013.  read more »

When City Councilman Hiram Monseratte said that land owners at Willets Point, Queens, did not think the city was engaged in “good faith negotiations” to relocate them, the president of the city's Economic Development Corporation took the opportunity to give out his phone number.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they tell you that,” Robert Lieber said at today’s City Council hearing on the subject. “I challenge any one of them to come up to me to tell me that to my face. I have talked to all of them. Let me also add that to the extent that they don’t think we are engaged, my number is 212-312-3511. Call me, because we are doing everything we can.”

After his testimony, as he was talking to a reporter outside Council Chambers, one Willets business owner stopped by to get Mr. Lieber’s business card—actually, three of them, to distribute to his friends.

People around the country seem to be having such a blast with these community benefits agreements--pacts between private groups and developers to provide affordable housing and other benefits--but in New York, they are turning out to be such chores. The one at Atlantic Yards has been faulted as a meek deal arranged behind closed doors by Astroturf groups. So people up in Harlem promised to create a truly representative body to negotiate with Columbia University over benefits that the school would offer local residents as part of its expansion, and it's started to unravel in the final crucial weeks.

Or maybe not. Today, three members of the local development corporation are announcing they will resign from the body in protest of being shut out of the negotiations. But the lawyer representing the development corporation is suggesting that the loss of those three members may hasten completion of a community benefits agreement.

“Our mission is clear, our vision is clear. We are going to negotiate a community benefits agreement,” the lawyer, Jesse Masyr, said. “I think that you could make the argument that two out of the three members never really intended to fulfill the mission of the LDC.”

Mr. Masyr would not name which two members he was talking about.

One of the three who resigned is Nick Sprayregen, who owns four storage warehouses that would be taken over by the university to make way for its expansion. He had been fighting this summer to hold onto his seat, but is now going to voluntarily give his position up. The two other members are Tom DeMott, a tenant who lives near the expansion footprint and represents tenant associations, and Luisa Henriquez, who represents tenants in a city housing program living in the expansion footprint.  read more »

One of the ongoing points of contention between civic organizations and the developers of the planned Moynihan Station complex is whether Madison Square Garden should be allowed to advertise on the Beaux-Arts façade of the Farley Post Office, which would serve as the Eighth Avenue entrance to the new arena. Today, a coalition of 17 organizations and elected officials, under the auspices of Friends of Moynihan Station, softened the hard-line preservationist approach.

The statement of principles (PDF) reads: “A limited amount of advertising as long as it is tastefully designed and managed, as it is in Grand Central.”

The Friends’ Web site actually shows a variety of advertising, including the banners in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Asked whether the banners should be allowed, Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, said, “The principle is that we are standing in front of a landmark here and the landmark has to be respected. Can there be some temporary signage for special events? Perhaps that’s going to be acceptable.”

Peg Breen, the president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which has taken a harder line on preserving the exterior but has nonetheless signed onto the design principles announced today, said, “The Garden is going to have opportunities, as I understand it, with kiosks at the corners, mid-block and Ninth Avenue corners. Everyone is going to know where Madison Square Garden is. We want people to know there is a Post Office and great train station inside.”

Is everyone clear on this?

Even the developers at a Municipal Art Society panel held Tuesday night seemed a little overwhelmed by the popularity of New York and its consequences—and these were developers, speaking on what could be called “Developers Night” in the series of programs held in conjunction with the Jane Jacobs exhibit.

Douglas Durst, co-president of The Durst Organization, declared that congestion was significantly adding to construction costs by delaying deliveries and complicating logistics. (Just you try to get that concrete to its destination before it hardens.) Greg O’Connell, the Red Hook developer, complained—if it could be called complaining—that his buildings were fully rented and he could no longer accommodate his retail or industrial tenants when they want to expand. At one point, New York Times reporter Charles Bagli, who was moderating, squirmed in his seat while recounting a lengthy trip through the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon. (“What an idiot I was…. And then driving back, we were like lemmings: We went back through!”)

Perhaps it says something that the one participant who seemed most gung-ho about the success of New York City spends a lot of time outside of the five boroughs: Eugenie Birch, a former New York City planning commissioner and current head of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. “Go to Philadelphia," she said. "It’s a wonderful city, but they would die to have the problems that we have.”

Um, we did try to go there once, but you know, as W.C. Fields said, it was closed.

After floating a number of multibillion-dollar plans to expand the Javits Convention Center, the state’s economic development agency is considering a drastically scaled-down version.  read more »

After more than six months of searching for the perfect candidate for the job (and after three people had refused offers), an ombudsman for the Atlantic Yards project has finally been found: Forrest R. Taylor, a communications and government relations consultant who worked as chief of staff to former City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and as deputy executive director for operations at the MTA. One word of advice to Mr. Taylor: Duck!

Press release after the jump.  read more »

The fight for Harlem’s Victoria Theater began back in December of 2005, when 11 developers submitted bids to convert the shuttered vaudeville house into a mixed-use cultural building. The board of the Harlem Community Development Corporation, which was chaired at the time by Democratic Assemblyman Keith Wright, narrowed the choices down to two firms.

But, according to The New York Times, the Pataki administration resisted, favoring another developer, Apollo Real Estate Advisers, which offered more money for the development rights and also happened to have strong ties to the Republican governor.

Mr. Wright lost his chairmanship a little while later—because of the dispute, according to an aide­­--but he ended up getting his way today. The Empire State Development Corporation, now controlled by appointees of the Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer, announced that one of the two firms selected by the Harlem Community Development Corporation, Danforth Development Partners LLC, had won the conditional right to redevelop the 1917 theater on 125th Street into a complex containing a hotel, 91 condominiums, and space for four arts organizations: the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Harlem Arts Alliance, the Jazz Museum of Harlem, and the Apollo Theater Foundation. (The complex will, at 317,570 square feet, require a pretty large tower on top of the current building.)  read more »

On Monday, as the City Planning Commission gave its nod to Columbia University, the school tried to give a little good news to West Harlem as well. Columbia promised to build another 160 housing units on its new campus to offset gentrification pressures its employees would bring to the surrounding neighborhood.  read more »

The state snaps up Regina Myer, the senior vice president for planning and design at the Hudson Yards Development Corporation (and before that, director of the Brooklyn office of the City Planning Department), to head up the stalled Brooklyn Bridge Park project. The position of president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation has been vacant since March, when the previous head was pushed aside by the incoming Spitzer administration.

Full press release after the jump.  read more »

Columbia University’s proposed expansion plan received the City Planning Commission’s approval handily today, but it wasn’t as easy as some expected.

For one, there was the constant heckling of the commissioners before, during and after the meeting.  read more »

The city Planning Commission voted early this afternoon to approve the expansion of Columbia University into West Harlem. The vote was 10 to 1, with one abstention. The plan next moves to the City Council for approval or rejection.

We'll have more on the Planning Commission vote very soon.

Atlantic Yards opponents, who have been trying to make the risk of terrorism an issue for the planned 22-acre complex in Brooklyn, finally got some traction this weekend when The New York Times picked up some of their arguments in Saturday’s edition.  read more »

The downside of all this idealistic talk about building “workforce housing” for the middle class is that there is no easy way to finance them. The Bloomberg administration has used tax-exempt bonds to fuel much of its housing program so far, but those, because of legal restrictions, only work when there is some low-income housing being built.

So, in seeking to finance 3,000 new apartments for middle income families at Hunters Point South (which was originally part of the Queens West site), the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has had to look for another way. It is considering setting up a new nonprofit corporation to issue them instead of funnelling them through the city. But that, according to one leading housing advocate, is a "back-door" way of doing things.  read more »

Just juddging from the early reaction among visitors to the exhibit space.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority found some extra money in its budget as it redid its books over the past few months and now says it will hold the base fare to $2. Other charges, such as monthly cards, commuter rail fares and bridge tolls, will go up, though less than anticipated, the MTA said.

The announcement came after Governor Spitzer formally called on the state agency to maintain the base fare after he "listened to the public's serious concerns about paying more, especially while times are tight."

The MTA's press release is after the jump.  read more »

The Tishman Speyer plan looks, in comparison to Extell’s eclecticism or Brookfield’s urbanism, downright conservative (or, if you prefer, stately). It is not enormously high (about 1,000 feet), and is almost perfectly symmetrical along an east-west axis. The towers grow progressively smaller as they move to the west.

Its edge comes from the money behind it: the Speyers joined up with Morgan Stanley in a 50-50 partnership, and the investment bank will own its own 3-million-square-foot building. That’s the one in the right rear in the above picture. The fountain area is called “The Forum”; in the foreground stands what Tishman-Speyer/Morgan Stanley is calling “The New York Steps.”

Having a bank as a main tenant is nothing like having an international, multimedia company around, nor even a sexy magazine publisher, but maybe that’s what people are talking about when they compare the greater Hudson Yards neighborhood to Canary Wharf in London. With just 3,000 apartments (300 of which are affordable) and 10 million square feet of office, Tishman Speyer’s proposal leans more heavily commercial than any of the others. Despite the fact that financial firms work around the clock, somehow this bid does not seem like it will do much for the nightlife along the Hudson.

The designer, Helmut Jahn, has done sweeping statements for Jerry Speyer before--consider the Sony Center in Berlin--and maybe he will here again, after the bid gets through committee.

“We think that by having our tenant and partner pretty much guarantees the success of the project,” Mr. Speyer said. “We have a tenant. We have the capital. We’re ready to buy the land and to do what needs to be done.”

Extell Development’s architect, Steven Holl, came up with the idea of building a very low suspension bridge over the West Side Rail Yards instead of a deck that would be supported by piers scattered among the tracks. That way, workers would only have to tinker along the north and south edges of the site, leaving the rail yards to function normally underneath them.

“I think we are the only project that is really minimally invasive with the Long Island Rail Road, with the MTA operations, and I think we will have a much lower cost of construction as a result,” said Extell’s founder Gary Barnett. “You know you don’t have to put a billion dollars or more into a platform up front.”  read more »

Brookfield Properties, a giant landlord that keeps a lower profile than some of the city’s single-engine developers, did not come into the West Side Rail Yards competition with an anchor tenant. It did, however, come in with a whole bevy of design firms—seven in all—that proceeded to break just about every rule or convention that was set out for them.

The result is a plan that—forgive the hypothetical—Jane Jacobs would like (online here). It reinstitutes part of the street grid on the two massive superblocks between 30th and 33rd streets. Hotels create a street wall along 11th Avenue where other plans prescribe a park. The intent, according to Brookfield, is to link the new neighborhood with the rest of the city—including with a parcel Brookfield is developing on the eastern side of 10th Avenue.  read more »

The joint proposal for the West Side Rail Yards by the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust is obsessed with getting people to the far West Side. The developers propose a subterranean “people mover” below 33rd Street that would carry up to 20,000 riders an hour from Penn Station to 11th Avenue (although it was not clear just who would pay for it); a pedestrian skyway that floats over the entire site and Hudson River Park; and a new headquarters for Condé Nast.

“We felt that we wanted to maintain the kind of porosity that we get in the best parts of the city,” said architect Rafael Pelli, who designed the plan along with FxFowle. “We are really trying to relate it to Union Square, Bryant Park or even a Times Square. We are thinking about how this is going to be a diverse and useful area and attract people from a greater catchment area rather than an enclave.”

The plan, one of five submitted to purchase the yards from the MTA, envisions four office or mixed-use towers, the tallest of which will be 1,205 feet tall. (It's online here.) The new Condé Nast headquarters would go at the southeast corner of 33rd Street and 11th Avenue. Overall, the plan is heavier on residential space than the other four proposals, with about 7,000 apartments, an unspecified number of which would be affordable.

A broad low-lying kunsthalle on the southeastern flank would house a cultural institution; its 120,000-square-foot floor plates, Mr. Pelli said, would be ideal for flower and antique shows (and, one might add, provide competition for the troubled Javits Convention Center expansion plan on the other side of 34th street).

The project, in keeping with Douglas Durst’s environmentally progressive reputation, includes a number of green features, among them a co-generation plant to capture the heat thrown off by generating electricity; a treatment plant that would allow the complex to reuse wastewater for plumbing purposes; and bris soleil, a type of awning that would shade out the summer light while letting in winter light.

Vornado, with its $18 billion in assets, is lending some financial heft to the bid.

“A lot will rely on the capital strength of the bidder,” Vornado Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Roth said. “I think it is obvious that this is an enormously complex project so the success of the project may ride and fall on the financial strength of the winning bidder; that will be a very important differentiating tactic.”

The Related Companies’ bid is all about News Corp., the running back the developer drafted to drive deep into the West Side.

“Because of the guidelines, everybody’s pretty much looks the same," Related’s chairman, Stephen M. Ross, said about the West Side Rail Yards proposals that were shown to the press Sunday (and are now on display to the public). “Nobody’s got real architecture yet anyway. So it’s really about the concept about what you are doing, why is yours more unique and how do we look at this.”

Related’s architectural model event sort of looked half-finished: it showed just the first 10 or so floors of the buildings’ bases. The reason was to show off the ground-floor experience. (Accompanying renderings do show the tops of the towers.)

But it was clear that Mr. Ross is not using pretty buildings and cordial landscaping to sell this bid anyway. He’s using Rupert Murdoch.

“It was important to us to see how we could meet their vision, their needs, how we could take their brands and make a great place,” Mr. Ross continued. “So, to give you some examples, we can have movies in the park here: with the river behind you, 20th Century Fox showing the premiere of their weekly movies in the park in the summer time. This is about how people will want to come here. We will have the studios over there, placing them in the right locations, using their brands, Fox Sports, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, taking these different things and using them to advantage, activating the space with them.”

MySpace would be there too, along with concert series (as pictured above). Pre-game NFL shows and presidential debates could also be shown on the big screen.

It was unclear whether he would scare New Yorkers or excite them with all this talk about giving Mr. Murdoch's companies such a, um, platform. But Mr. Ross scored big last time he invited a media company under his roof: Time Warner bought its space at cost, but gave Related the leverage it needed to win the competition for the Coliseum site. This time, Mr. Ross said NewsCorp. is getting a “great deal,” but would not be more specific.

The flagship tower, to be designed, like most of the commercial space, by Kohn Pedersen Fox, would rise about 1,100 feet high and include two million square feet, enough to allow Mr. Murdoch consolidate his New York offices. It would be located on 10th Avenue and have a large plaza on its western flank looking out onto an axis of open space that would reach to the river. Another building would house the first-ever Equinox hotel.

A number of other residential buildings (designed by Robert A.M. Stern) and office towers (designed by KPF and Arquitectonica) complete the bid. Some 440 apartments would be permanently affordable.

Probably never had so many of New York’s real estate elite crammed themselves into such a small space as happened Sunday afternoon at the press preview of proposals to develop the Western Rail Yards: Steve Roth, Stephen Ross, Jerry Speyer and his son Rob, Ric Clark, Gary Barnett, Steven Holl, Helmut Jahn and Rafael Pelli. S.I. Newhouse even dropped by, very casually dressed, as proof that if Mr. Roth’s bid won, he’d move Condé Nast west to 10th Avenue.

They all crammed themselves into a vacant storefront on West 43rd Street to show of their versions of New York’s future: towering buildings that will pack some 30,000 residents and workers into a six-square block area along the Hudson River, between 30th and 33rd streets. The architectural models themselves costs tens of thousands of dollars; the bids, submitted last month, ate up a few million, according to a number of developers.

Not surprisingly, the five teams talked a lot about how their particular plan creates a vibrant new neighborhood-- this, after all, is the retail version of the plans. No financials were disclosed, and the point is to try to curry favor with the public to create a popular favorite. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which, with the Bloomberg administration’s input, will choose the winner in the next few months--has got to pay more attention to how much money each team is offering, when they’d be able to pay it, and how likely they’d get it done.

“There are two or three of these that are done by teams that are really competent,” said Mr. Roth, “and in the end I think it's going to be the financial part of the deal that is going to differentiate them.”

Each of the plans profess to save the northern section of the High Line and promise to provide at least some affordable housing. The tallest buildings would stretch 1,000, 1,100, even 1,300 feet into the air. (The Empire State Building now clocks in at 1,250 feet.) The cost, according to a number of the developers, will likely come in between $10 billion to $20 billion, with completion anticipated in the early 2020’s

There were also plenty of wild and creative ideas, like, from Brookfield Properties, Diller Scofidio & Renfro's towers (pictured above) that are joined by a quarter-mile running track; mechanisms to reuse sullage for irrigation; patent-pending technology to create a better platform over the rail yards; a movie screen on which 20th Century Fox could premiere new films; and so on.

The exhibit of the five proposals, which includes architectural models, displays and videos, will be open to the public every day for the next two weeks, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting today (with the exception of Thanksgiving). The address is 335 Madison Avenue, although the storefront is really located at the northwest corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Comment cards will be available for visitors to give input.

The Real Estate will post synopses of the five designs throughout the day.

Extell Development Co.’s proposal for the Western Rail Yards, which is the first of five that the public and press can get a look at, really revs up the amount of green space on the ground by building tall. Really tall. The tripled-legged tower pictured to the right would stretch 1,238 feet into the air, rivaling the Empire State Building’s 1,250-foot height, and outdoing that icon in total square footage and the size of its observation deck.

Other buildings in the Extell proposal are quite a bit smaller, but still considerable: at around 700 feet tall, the so-called “sun slice” buildings proposed for 30th Street orient their narrow sides to the south to cut down on shadows cast over the open space behind them.

According to the plans (PDF), the footprints of all buildings will take up just 25 percent of the property, compared to 52 percent in the plans proposed by the city and the MTA, leaving an extra 7 acres or so of open space. Also, the plan would eliminate any discharge of storm water by funneling it into a reservoir that would run through the center of the park, and the plan claims to reduce energy consumption by 50 percent thanks to a geothermal cooling system and cogeneration.

The development company, led by Gary Barnett, also proposes a Long Island Rail Road station along 33rd Street between 11th and 12th avenues. After all, you never know how long it will take them to build this No. 7 line.