Empire State Development Corporation

It seems the second blight study commissioned for Columbia University's planned West Harlem expansion did not come at extra cost to the state, as the Empire State Development Corporation's spokesman confirmed today that Columbia picked up the report's $217,000 tab.

The state's major development agency, ESDC, yesterday declared the 17-acre expansion footprint as blighted, a necessary step before using eminent domain. Prior to yesterday, it was unclear whether a blight study the state commissioned would have run into legal obstacles, as a state appellate court earlier in the week was critical of the state's use of contractor AKRF to complete the study.  read more »

The state's main development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, kicked off the public process for eminent domain for Columbia University's 17-acre West Harlem expansion today, starting a final chapter in the approvals for the contentious $7 billion initiative.

In announcing the process, ESDC President Avi Schick unveiled two unexpected nuggets of news surrounding the plan: yet another concession package from Columbia and a second blight study.

The concessions, which come on top of two multi-million dollar concession packages negotiated last year with Borough President Scott Stringer and then with the other local elected officials and members of the community, included $20 million for community development initiatives, $1 million for CUNY, a mobile dental center, and undergraduate scholarships.  read more »

The major landowner fighting Columbia University's expansion, Nick Sprayregen, today came out victorious over the state's Empire State Development Corporation today in an appellate court ruling on a case involving the Freedom of Information Law.

The case concerned the release of documents and correspondences between the state and its contractor AKRF, mostly surrounding the creation of a blight study (slated for release Thursday).

Mr. Sprayregen, represented by attorney Norman Siegel, defeated the state at the first level last year, with the court offering criticism that the same contractor, AKRF, was used for both the blight study and the environmental review.  read more »

Just when news started to slow for the summer on the development front, New York's Empire State Development Corporation dropped this bombshell in the agenda for its monthly meeting [PDF]: Columbia University "Land Use Improvement Project and Civic Project Findings."

Translation: the state will unveil the blight study, the first step in the use of eminent domain for Columbia's 17-acre West Harlem site.

The one major holdout left in the footprint is Nick Sprayregen, owner of Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, which has numerous properties in the area. Mr. Sprayregen has bankrolled much of the opposition to the project, particularly on the legal front, and has previously vowed to challenge the use of eminent domain.  read more »

Lots of shuffling at the state’s major development agency: Ken Schoetz, currently the upstate COO of the Empire State Development Corporation, has today been named acting upstate CEO, according to one person with knowledge of the situation.

Mr.  read more »

Governor Paterson has named the CEO of Buffalo-based M & T Bank, Robert Wilmers, as the new chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, according to two people familiar with an announcement expected this afternoon.

Updated 4 p.m.

Mr. Wilmers, 74, will take a new consolidated role as chairman of the state’s major development agency, which oversees incentive programs and projects such as Moynihan Station, Atlantic Yards, and the Javits Center expansion.

Mr. Wilmers, who will not take a salary, is a major political donor and served on Eliot Spitzer’s transition team just after he was elected governor. Campaign finance records show he gave $40,000 to the Spitzer-Paterson campaign between 2005 and 2006, and $50,000 to the state Senate Republicans earlier this year.

He has served on numerous boards and organizations related to business and economic development, and has been a strong advocate for the revitalization of the upstate economy. He has supported the group Unshackle Upstate, which has blamed Albany’s inattention to upstate for economic problems in the region.  read more »

The upstate chairman of the state’s major development agency has resigned, Governor Paterson’s office announced this afternoon. Taken with the resignations of downstate chairman Pat Foye and downstate president Avi Schick in March and May, respectively, the Empire State Development Corporation has lost its top three officials with no new leader yet announced.

Unclear to us, for now, is whether the departure of Dan Gundersen, the upstate chairman, was his choice or that of Mr. Paterson. Mr. Paterson said in early May that he was planning to reverse the Spitzer administration and consolidate ESDC to only have one chairman (i.e. Mr. Gundersen would suddenly have a new boss, assuming that the one chairman wasn’t him). The structure was criticized as the three leaders frequently clashed.
 read more »

Governor Paterson is moving closer to picking a chief for his main economic development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, a body that has sat without a clear leader since its downstate chairman under Governor Spitzer, Pat Foye, announced his resignation two months ago. The agency oversees many of the state’s large, high-profile development projects including Moynihan Station, Atlantic Yards and the Javits Center.

A committee of mostly business leaders and led by Sandy Weill is due to recommend a new chairman to Mr. Paterson in one to two weeks, at which point the governor will have the final say, according to multiple people familiar with discussions.  read more »

Renowned architect Richard Rogers has left the architectural team to renovate and expand the Javits Center, a move that comes four months after the state finalized a decision against any large scale expansion, an Empire State Development Corporation spokesman confirmed.

The Pritzker Prize-winning Mr. Rogers was brought on for the project by Pataki development chief Charles Gargano in part as a means to draw public support for the project. Mr. Rogers designed, among other projects, Paris’ Centre Pompidou museum with Renzo Piano.  read more »

Some changes don’t last long.

Reversing a structure that former Governor Eliot Spitzer put in place last year, Governor Paterson wants to reunite the state’s development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, under one chairperson, ending a 17-month experiment with two chairmen on equal footing—one upstate, one downstate.

“We had come to the conclusion in our discussions that the bifurcated system—taking economic development and dividing it up between two people around the state—that it wasn’t working,” he told reporters yesterday. “I’m sure one person can be sensitive to the issues all around the state.”  read more »

Almost every time I’ve called Assemblyman Richard Brodsky about a story in the past few months, he interrupts me in my first question.

“You wanna know the story you should be doing?” he states, then goes into a diatribe on how the billions in initiatives on the far West Side are an unstable set of dominoes, all liable to topple.

My response—while the projects seem on shaky ground, there’s not enough hard figures or examples to show that things indeed are going to hell—may soon become invalid.

Now Mr. Brodsky, the chairman of the Assembly committee that oversees state authorities and corporations, is taking legislative action to provide more transparency with these projects.  read more »

While much of former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s economic development agenda seems to be on hold or in flux (e.g. Moynihan Station, for one), his once controversial plan for the Javits Convention Center has outlived his tenure.

The Paterson administration is trekking down the path of a renovation and modest expansion for Javits, with plans for an additional 50,000 square feet of exposition space and a truck storage area. The budget, at least as of a few weeks ago, was $1.3 billion for the whole ordeal, $300 million or so less than the amount approved for a much larger expansion and renovation under the Pataki administration (which the Spitzer folks later found to have a true cost of more than $3 billion).  read more »

Property owners and tenants filed an appeal late yesterday in U.S. Supreme Court for their case contesting the use of eminent domain in the $4 billion-plus Atlantic Yards project, an action that legal experts have said is likely to be the final chapter for the federal lawsuit, first filed in late 2006.

Even a favorable Supreme Court ruling for the plaintiffs (which would require a decision by the Court to hear the case in the first place) would not necessarily stop the use of eminent domain—it would only allow for the case to reach the trial phase.

If the lawsuit is dismissed, Matthew Brinckerhoff, attorney for the owners and tenants, said that there would still be an option to file an eminent domain case in New York State court.  read more »

Here’s a copy, in full, of Empire State Development Corporation downstate chairman Pat Foye’s resignation letter to Governor Paterson, dated yesterday:  read more »

Patrick Foye, the state’s downstate development chief, has resigned from his post, following Governor Spitzer out the door. Mr. Foye oversaw a wide array of development initiatives, most notably managing the mega-projects underway that dot the city, from the Javits Center renovation to the proposed multi-billion-dollar redevelopment and expansion of Pennsylvania Station as part of the Moynihan Station project.  read more »

No shakeups at the state’s development agency for now.

Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, confirmed this afternoon that Patrick Foye, downstate chairman of the state agency, isn’t following Governor Spitzer out the door.

Mr. Foye works at the pleasure of the Governor and has no plans to leave his job, Mr. Johnston confirmed.  read more »

The city is looking for developers to renovate and operate the landmarked, long-derelict Loew’s Kings Theater—“the Kings” as locals called it back in the day—on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Designed in 1929 by Rapp and Rapp Architects, the 3,769-seat movie palace modeled after the Paris Opera House is the only one of the five “Wonder Theaters” Loew’s built in the city that has not been renovated or converted into a church.

Rehabilitating the majestic, rotting Art Deco building will not be cheap. It has remained shuttered since 1978—the city took it over in 1983—and the city's Economic Development Corporation estimated that the project would cost a minimum of $70 million in the request for proposals it issued this week.  read more »

Governor Spitzer’s plan for the Javits Center is drawing fire from a whole bunch of angry advocacy groups and officials, and that could spell a whole bunch of trouble for Hudson River Park, Governors Island, and a downstate affordable housing plan. (I wrote about other troubles in Hudson River Park in this week’s print edition.)

The dissent about the Javits plan, and its relationship to the parks and housing program comes not so much from the expensive renovation and modest expansion at the convention center, but rather the plan to sell two parcels on either end of the facility is raising hackles—so much so that a users group plans to meet today in Albany to lobby against it.

Facing a $4.4 billion budget gap and a desire to increase government programs, Mr. Spitzer wants to sell the two parcels for about $900 million, tying the sale to the capital funding of initiatives such as readying Governors Island for development.

Selling the land would preclude a later horizontal expansion on the site, and also move a truck marshalling yard inside the convention center. With the two acts taken together, now criticism seems to be coming from all sides.  read more »

More than a year into his term, Governor Spitzer seems to have settled on a plan to modestly expand the Jacob K. Javits Center, bringing toward a close a months-long imbroglio that began with a quixotic desire to better a Pataki-era expansion plan.

The downstate chairman of New York’s Empire State Development Corporation, Patrick Foye, told The Times on Friday that the state would go ahead with a $1.6 billion plan to renovate the existing facility and add a modest 100,000 feet of exhibition and meeting space. The renovations could cost about $800 million, though the plan will fit within the existing $1.8 billion budget approved in 2006.

The Observer broke the news in December of the likelihood of renovations instead of significant expansion.  read more »

Looks like any updates on the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station (to be known as Moynihan Station) will have to wait: We just got back a Freedom of Information request we put in to the Empire State Development Corporation for a whole bunch of e-mails between state officials and members of the two Moynihan development companies, Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies.

The results: a whole bunch of opaque black marker over text.  read more »

Spitzer’s downstate chair of the Empire State Development Corporation is taking his time on the likes of Moynihan Station and Atlantic Yards.  read more »

For years now, Democrats in state government (especially former Comptroller Alan Hevesi and Assembly Member Richard Brodsky) have been complaining about Empire Zones, fast and loose geographic areas around the state where companies can get tax credits in exchange, ostensibly, for creating or maintaining  read more »

Mike Petralia, the state official overseeing the increasingly convoluted Javits Convention Center expansion, is leaving his job by the end of the month, according to sources. Appointed by the Pataki administration less than two years ago, he was not expected to last long once Governor Spitzer took over, especially given the fact that the new Governor is pushing for a new design of the $1.7 billion expansion.

Mr. Petralia's boss, Patrick Foye, the co-chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, said he would not comment on personnel matters, nor did Mr. Petralia return a telephone message left at his office on Friday.

- Matthew Schuerman

Location: What’s the value of living near a New York City park?    read more »

Blood on the Brokerage Floor: Corcoran Heavyweights Jump to Brown Harris Stevens    read more »

Blood on the Brokerage Floor: Corcoran Heavyweights Jump to Brown Harris Stevens    read more »

The Empire State Development Corporation flipped one of the seven floors of the office condo it bought at 125 Maiden Lane for an 8 percent profit in four months, co-chairman Pat Foye said on Thursday. Under the Pataki administration, the ESDC sold its office condo at 633 Third Avenue in midtown in November and purchased the lower Manhattan one, saying that would be cheaper.

The new buyer, the Guttmacher Institute, paid $10.2 million.

Mr. Foye said after the agency's monthly meeting that he had not decided whether or not ESDC would move into the remaining six floors at 125 Maiden or try to buy back its current location from its new owner. He also said the 8 percent profit did not take into account the expense of renting its current location. (The ESDC had been subletting at 633 Third, and had not yet moved into 125 Maiden.)

He did say, however, "We don't want to move twice, once to Maiden Lane and then again to the Freedom Tower. And I think there is something to be said about being in proximity to our colleagues in state government" that are staying on in 633 Third.

- Matthew Schuerman Correction: An earlier post gave an incorrect sales price that Guttmacher paid.

9:30 a.m. The Empire State Development Corporation Directors will have a meeting at 633 Third Avenue.

10 a.m. Attorney Susan Lask details a class action complaint against makers of the sleeping pill Ambien at the Centre Street steps of the Federal District Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street.  read more »

11 a.m. Transportation Alternatives and community groups launch a campaign to combat parking permit abuse at the northeast corner of City Hall Park, Centre and Chambers streets.

Stonewall Reopening; Will It Be ‘Disruptive’?    read more »

Stonewall Reopening; Will It Be ‘Disruptive’?    read more »

Pat Foye, the new downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, is expected to visit the Atlantic Yards site in central Brooklyn on March 22. The tour, made at the request of City Councilwoman Letitia James, comes after a dubious construction start by developer Forest City Ratner that cut off water to some residents who don't even live in the footprint. The ESDC authorized the arena-and-housing project, and is acquiring property for it via eminent domain.

"It's for the ESDC to familiarize themselves with the area and meet some of the stakeholders," said Kate Suisman, chief of staff for Ms. James. "They still have leverage and we are hoping that if they see the area, they will know what they are talking about when issues come up in the future."

- Matthew Schuerman

Today was the day the Empire State Development Corporation was supposed to name the preferred developer for the Javits Convention Center hotel, a supposedly sought-after trophy that no one much ended up caring about. Even though there are but three bidders--Joseph Moinian, Gary Barnett and FaulknerUSA--agency spokesman A.J. Carter told The Real Estate it will be a little bit longer before the winner is announced.

"Responses to the RFP are still being evaluated," he said. No new deadline has been set.

- Matthew Schuerman

The state economic development agency is paving the way to get a hold of the Farley Post Office as soon as next month, a crucial part of the Spitzer administration's new strategy for building a new Moynihan Station and revamping Pennsylvania Station.

Shortly after coming into office in January, Pat Foye, the new downstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, extended the option to buy Farley, but just until the end of March--an optimistic target, it seemed at the time, for wrapping up a huge real-estate deal that would have involved moving Madison Square Garden a block west, to the back end of Farley, opening up Penn Station to the sky, and erecting huge office towers around its edges on the Eighth Avenue superblock where the Garden now sits.

But it is increasingly clear that Mr. Foye will not wait until that superdeal gets worked out before buying the post office. And having control of some of the property involved would put the state in a better position to negotiate with the private developers who own Penn Station's air rights over who will pay how much to redo the station.

At a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, the ESDC board agreed to seek a bridge loan or an advance from the developers that would give the agency the few million dollars it would need to close the post-office deal next month. After the meeting, Robin Stout, the president of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, a subsidiary of ESDC, told reporters that the agency could purchase the post office before wrapping up the larger negotiations. Neither he nor Mr. Foye would say, however, when that would happen.

"A closing date has not been scheduled but we are committed to moving forward as quickly as we can," Mr. Foye said.

A public hearing on the loan comes March 12. The state Public Authorities Control Board could then approve the general project plan--the same one, it turns out, as was rejected last October--before the end of the month, when the option expires.

Will Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver veto it this time around?

- Matthew Schuerman

Stop what you're doing: The Empire State Development Corporation has released its financial projections for the Atlantic Yards project! Brownstoner has them, and, apparently, they conform to the speculation of project opponents:

"[A]t first glance they do not paint as profitable a picture as many opponents suspect, generating a mediocre [internal rate of return] of 9.6 percent. The biggest thing that jumps out at us is that they show that Forest City Ratner is planning to cash out out most of the pieces of the project in 2015."

- Tom Acitelli

Private School? Play Here! Public School? Wait Over There!    read more »

Private School? Play Here! Public School? Wait Over There!    read more »

Calling it a state and a local matter the federal government should abstain from, a federal magistrate recommended on Friday throwing out the eminent-domain case brought by tenants and property owners opposed to the Atlantic Yards project. The plaintiffs, including those who live in the footprint of the 22-acre project in central Brooklyn, want to stop the state from using eminent domain to seize property.

The U.S. Court for the Eastern District of New York still makes the final decision on the federal lawsuit, but the magistrate's recommendation can't help matters for the plaintiffs. The defendants include developer Forest City Ratner, Mayor Bloomberg and former Governor George Pataki.  read more »

The full recommendation from Magistrate Robert M. Levy after the jump.

- Tom Acitelli

• Following Tom Robbins' expose, the state Comptroller will begin an audit into the Empire State Development Corporation. Did Charles Gargano funnel state funds to pay rent for his nephew? That would make him a bad leader--but an excellent uncle. [Real Deal]
• Why is England such a grander country? Whereas our richest streets have boring names like Park and Fifth, theirs are titled The Vail, Mulberry Walk, and Cottesmore Gardens. Even better, their wealthiest areas have had the lowest property-value increases since 2000, which keeps things balanced. [Mouse Price, via Luxist]
• Where do Village starlets get their mail? Sarah Jessica Parker, Patti Smith, Famke Janssen and Lucy "Warrior Princess" Lawless all head to MacDougal and Houston, where a chatty old man has his Something Special store. We always knew Sarah was too good for the post office. [Villager]
• New Yorkers who live in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods have much lower body mass index levels--but they have shriller complaints about shrinking sidewalks and subway construction. [Medical News Today, via Daily Intelligencer]
- Max Abelson
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The Empire State Development Corporation used to send out meeting notices to the press that read:

Meetings are open to the public for observation, but not for direct participation.

Earlier this week, the state economic development agency sent out one for Thursday morning's board meeting--the first under Gov. Sptizer's co-chairmen Patrick Foye and Dan Gundersen--that read:

The meeting is open to the public for observation and comment.

And indeed, before every vote, Mr. Foye would ask if the public had any questions. For an agency that had gained a reputation as one of the more inscrutable deliberative bodies, well, that's worth a blog post at least.

Also, Mr. Foye said he would try to attend the public hearings on ESDC projects in person as much as possible. In the past, just staff would attend and relay the gist of it to the board members, who were the ones voting on this stuff.

(By the way, no one did have any questions at Thursday's meeting. Only three members of the public actually showed up.)

Let's see what happens when something controversial turns up on the agenda (which, by the way, ESDC hopes to post on the agency's Web site three days before each meeting.)

- Matthew Schuerman

The Spitzers administration's keen interest in moving Madison Square Garden (a not-very-well-kept secret) came out into the open on Thursday morning.

The board of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state economic development agency, allocated $500,000 for a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Moynihan Station project that would consider the implications--in terms of traffic, historic preservation and whatnot--of moving the basketball arena from its present home at 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue a block west, where the Farley Post Office Annex now resides.

A bigger, better Pennsylvania Station (along with a whole mess of skyscrapers) would rise in the Garden's current location and the front end of the post office would be turned into more train station.

Once the "scoping document" comes out in the next two or three months, we will learn more about what the Garden and the private developers behind the move, Vornado Realty Trust and The Related Companies, want to do back there. It will be another two or three months for a draft general project plan, and then another two or three (or more) months before reaching the final approval stage that the old Moynihan Station plan had reached last October, when it was unceremoniously dumped by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

"There are two fundamental issues on Moynihan that are threshold issues. One is the transportation issues," ESDC Downstate Chairman Patrick Foye told reporters after the meeting. "The second fundamental issue relates to ... how any overages are treated. The state and ESDC are not willing to sign on to unlimited liability and are going to be looking for participation, probably from the state and the city, and from the project developers as well."

- Matthew Schuerman

On Election Day last November, Vishaan Chakrabarti, the name and face of the private developers that  read more »

The short-list of potential developers for the Javits Center hotel was supposed to come out on Monday (PDF), but considering that only three bidders had submitted qualified proposals by the Jan. 12 deadline anyway, the Empire State Development Corporation decided to forgo the formality.

Otherwise, however, A.J. Carter, the agency's spokesman, said that the process was still on track to select a winner by March 1.

- Matthew Schuerman

Governor Spitzer will announce today that Daniel Gundersen, an economic development official from Pennsylvania, will be the upstate chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation. - Matthew Schuerman

This we missed: Newsday business columnist A.J. Carter will join the Spitzer administration as chief spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation. - Matthew Schuerman

The Pataki administration failed to hold onto the Farley Post Office in the last moments of 2006, but negotiations are continuing, this time under Governor Spitzer's purview. In late December, Charles Gargano, then-chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, announced a last-minute blitz to renew the option that the state had to buy the building as part of its Moynihan Station conversion.

Robert Anderson, a spokesman for the United States Postal Service, said no agreement had been reached by the Dec. 31 expiration date, but that there were no plans to try to sell the building to anyone else.

- Matthew Schuerman

While the Port Authority is gingerly studying how to beef up Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, Governor Spitzer took a bolder stance during his State of the State address on Wednesday.

"We must have the vision to expand Stewart Airport to become the fourth major airport in the tri-state region and to serve as an economic engine for the Hudson Valley," he said.  read more »

Spitzer also said the Wicks Law had to change; called for more affordable housing; and reiterated other points he had made in the campaign. See after the jump for details.

- Matthew Schuerman