Consolidated Edison Inc.

Despite the hype about green roofs; despite the rampant branding of luxury residences with names lik  read more »

Patience seems to be wearing thin at the Council today.

While Con Ed was getting the welcome treatment in the Council chambers, the chairman of the TLC was next door in the Committee Hearing Room jousting with Transportation Committee Chairman John Liu over the issue of "illegal street hails" of livery cars.

TLC Chairman Matthew Daus was asked how big the problem was.

Daus said he didn't know and that it's difficult to calculate.

Liu, who's kind of a numbers guy, suggested pointedly that the solution was "not rocket science."

Daus: "To have a crystal ball and a magic wand, and to have a satellite photo and to try and guess how many, you know, cars are picking up illegally is just simply, that's ridiculous--"

Liu: "Commissioner, let me give you a simple way to do it. Just send an inspector to observe various street corners or subway stations, unannounced, and just count."

You can listen to the exchange here, a portion of which is below.

-- Azi Paybarah

Here's a clip of Councilman Peter Vallone laying into a representative from Con Ed New York City Economic Development Corporation after it finally delivered a long-awaited report -- just minutes before today's hearing about last year's blackout and Con Ed's preparedness for spikes in usage this summer.

"You know, we're used to this double-talk from Con Ed," Vallone said at one point, "but we did not expect that today."

-- Azi Paybarah

On a recent Sunday morning in Greenwich Village, a half-dozen patrons of Think Coffee waited in line  read more »

Barack Obama reached out to one of Hillary Clinton's backers: Carl McCall.

Obama leads Hillary in a new poll from New Hampshire.

John Edwards recently sold his Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million "after it had languished on the market," the Washington Post reports.

Con Ed could face $9.3 million in penalties for last year's blackout.

Mike Bloomberg warned against fining Con Ed for because the cost would be passed on, ultimately, to consumers.

A Brooklyn state Senator will introduce a bill to prevent Spitzer from easing access to driver licenses.

Spitzer's spokeswoman said they would review security concerns before changing requirements needed to get the license.

Joining Joe Bruno on his trip to Florida was a member of the board overseeing horse racing in the state.

The Daily News looks at some of the state comptroller candidates.

Spitzer might create an ethics czar to police state lawmakers.

Most of the city's job growth in the last three decades comes from people who are self-employed, according to a report from the city comptroller.

-- Azi Paybarah

A meeting of the directors of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will be held at One Liberty Plaza.

A news conference will share findings from the New American Exit Poll - the first to focus on immigrant voters - at the New York Immigration Coalition.

The Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment and Con Edison hold a conference called "The Sustainable City" at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams addresses the annual Friends of Sinn Fein Dinner at the Sheraton.

A new documentary produced by the Touro Law Center, Hitler's Courts, is screened to remember Kristallnacht in Huntington.

Update: The Village Independent Democrats is presenting Amy Goodman, "On The Role of Independent Media in time of Elections and War" tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South. —Nicole Brydson

Liz does the math and figures there are 18 lobbyist per lawmaker in Albany.

Hillary explains when torture is okay.

Evan Bayh responds [pdf] to Mark Warner's withdrawal from the presidential race.

Con Ed says the blackout in Queens was not their fault. Queens Assemblyman Mike Gianaris and other electeds respond [link fixed].

Long Island Rep. Peter King is in a statistical dead heat with his challenger, Dave Meijas.

Jerry Skurnik sees parallels between Karl Rove and Joe Torre.

Andrew Cuomo gets endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters.  read more »

And pictured above is Mark Warner.

-- Azi Paybarah

GEORGE: It’s funny, I was feeling rather low, and then Hilly walked into the waiting room and  read more »

GEORGE: It’s funny, I was feeling rather low, and then Hilly walked into the waiting room and my s  read more »

The AP reports a power outage in the Bronx this morning affected 6,000 people.

Con Ed spokesman Alfonso Quiroz emailed to say the outage lasted from 7:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. and affected "1,600 customers."

Where should that thank you letter be sent?

-- Azi Paybarah

It’s been almost 10 years since Consolidated Edison decided to sell off its nine prime waterfr  read more »

It’s been almost 10 years since Consolidated Edison decided to sell off its nine prime waterfront  read more »

The number of Con Ed customers experiencing power outages is now up to 3,500. Here, according to Con Ed spokesman Alfonso Quiroz, is the latest breakdown:

Manhattan - 406 customers Brooklyn - 272 customers Queens - 963 customers Staten Island - 6 customers Westchester - 1431 customers Bronx - 425 customers

Again, "customer" can mean family home or big building -- it doesn't refer to individual people affected.

Mayor Bloomberg has addressed the situation, so far, by making an appeal at a pre-scheduled press conference in the Office of Emergency Management headquarters for people to conserve energy.

And about those subway rumors , here's what Quiroz said:

"The rumors are not based on fact. I plan on riding the subways home to Queens tonight."

No word on when the power's going to come back on.

--Jason Horowitz

So this NY1 poll released last night at least begins to answer our questions about how the mayor's gentle treatment of Con Ed's leadership after the blackout would affect his popularity.

Despite disapproval of the mayor's handling of the blackout by a 2-1 margin -- and in sharp contrast with the hammering he's taken in our comments section since his "thanks" to CEO Kevin Burke -- Bloomberg's overall approval ratings remained nearly unchanged from last month, registering at 58-29 among residents and 60-28 among registered voters.

-- Josh Benson

On Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped to the podium in a brightly lit Long Island City  read more »

Trash Talk    read more »

We join our newly cohabitating lovebirds in the swank office of their therapist-confessor.  read more »

On Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped to the podium in a brightly lit Long Island City  read more »

We join our newly cohabitating lovebirds in the swank office of their therapist-confessor.  read more »

Trash Talk  read more »

In the spirit of the "Burkey, you're doing a heckuva job," jokes flying around after the mayor's "thanks" to Con Ed, we bring you some recent comments from the original Burkey, former FEMA head Michael Brown, who is interviewed in August's Playboy magazine. (We read it for the articles.)  read more »

Here is Brown on Bush's infamous "heckuva job" comment:

"That didn't mean anything to me. It's typical of the president. He's a cheerleader. You know what that comment did? How many people in the world do you think have ever called me Brownie? His name's George W. Bush."

And here he is on Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor, who once said that Brown lacked the ability to handle Katrina:

"He can just bite me."

--Jason Horowitz

Based on this morning's news, you might think that after a brief, dark scare in Staten Island, the city's power grid is back to normal.

But just as we were preparing to start talking about this week's blackouts in the past tense, Mike Gianaris tells us that there are still "isolated pockets" of powerlessness in the western reaches of Queens.

This morning he is set to visit blacked-out butcher shops and fishmongers on 30th avenue who are still struggling to refrigerate their stores.

"A lot of the businesses are literally in danger of going out of business," said Gianaris, who added that all the areas exposed wires and shredded concrete gave it the look of a "war zone."

Next week Gianaris, and Councilmembers Eric Gioia and Peter Vallone Jr will announce a proposal calling on Con Ed to refund more than the $350 they have promised to affected residents. In addition, the lawmakers want three months of free electricity for everyone in the affected area.

Meanwhile, there is concern throughout the borough that the mini-heat wave expected in the coming days might wreak havoc on Con Ed's jury-rigged wiring.

The mayor's aides, we're guessing, are glued to the weather channel.

- Jason Horowitz

The Citizens Union Foundation will call for more qualified bilingual election day workers, announcing their latest effort to recruit multi-lingual poll site workers on the steps of City Hall.

Assemblywoman Adele Cohen celebrates the groundbreaking of a wheelchair-accessible greenhouse in southern Brooklyn.

Nassau County Police Benevolent Association President Gary DelaRaba will discuss Nassau County Police Department cutbacks at the Nassau County Press Room in Mineola.

The City Council's Consumer Affairs Committee will hold a public hearing on the power outages in Queens. Christine Quinn, Peter Vallone, Jr., Eric Gioia, Leroy Comrie and ConEd representatives are expected to testify.

—Nicole Brydson

In the Observer, Jason Horowitz looks at Mike Bloomberg's coldly apolitical reaction to the blackout and Con Ed, and finds energy wonks to be the only people applauding.

Queens pols Eric Gioia, Mike Gianaris and Joe Crowley still can't seem to make sense of it. And -- as anyone who watched the Spitzer-Suozzi debate last night alredy knows -- the attorney general has declared himself "stunned" by the attempts of his "good friend Mike Bloomberg" to defend Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke.

Any guesses as to what are the next polls going to say about Bloomberg's approval ratings? And whether or not the anger against him will ultimately prove to be localized, like the blackout, within parts of Western Queens?

-- Josh Benson

Where's the mayor going with this?

From today's press conference on blackouts and Con Ed:

"I think Kevin Burke deserves a thanks from this city. He's worked as hard as he can every single day since then, as has everybody at Con Ed. And it's easy to go criticize but once this happened, Con Ed has been doing everything they can to bring it back. And I don't think that I could have gone in and done any better."

Maybe we don't know enough about the substance of what went wrong to know the extent to which Con Ed ought ot be faulted for the blackout and the pace of recovery over the last few days.

But it seems well-established, at the least, that Con Ed's initial, ludicrously low estimates of the number of affected customers resulted in a slow and inadequate response to what has turned out to be a really serious problem.

So what are we missing here?

-- Josh Benson UPDATE: Yoda has a theory.

For some people in New York, the only story today -- still -- is the blackout.

Eric Gioia, whose week has been fairly consumed with servicing his beleaguered constituents in Western Queens and the media, says he spent the morning walking around his district in Woodside and Sunnyside and "didn't speak to one person" who had their power fully restored.

Interestingly, despite the excruciating way that the problem is playing out - it may have claimed its first fatality over the weekend - the issue of who to blame has remained scrupulously un-politicized.

The criticism so far from Queens Democrats has largely spared Mike Bloomberg, who first played down the problem, and has since taken a soft line on Con Ed.

Here's Gioia's assessment of the mayor's performance, for example: "I'm happy he's in Queens everyday now, which is a good thing. The past few days the city has responded really strongly. But it's clear that he response was inadequate and slow at first. I blame Con Ed for that. Con Ed deceived each of us into believing this was not as serious as it was."

-- Josh Benson

A small sign that life is returning to normal in Queens:

My cousin Danny Kane said that he just got power back on in his place on 35th Street in Astoria, but only after spending Tuesday, Wednesday and the better half of Thursday struggling through the sweltering darkness.

So, even as the mayor pronounces himself annoyed that Con Ed underestimated the number of people affected by about 50 times, things finally seem to be improving somewhat. And Danny, a structural ironworker by trade, learned a lesson to boot:  read more »

"I'm one of those guys who always believed, for some reason, that when a lamp is plugged in really close to the outlet it should work better, all my appliances are close to the outlet. I'm right by Con Ed, so I guess that isn't the case."

-- Jason Horowitz

It's not a stretch to suggest that if the blackouts affecting parts of Queens all week had taken place in Manhattan, they would have been treated with considerably more urgency by the administration. (To say nothing of the media.)

It took until yesterday for things to tip about the significance of what was happening, with the mayor finally deciding to make an appearance at the scene of the power outages.

Mike Gianaris, a proud son of Astoria who's been screaming about the blackouts for several days now, said this morning he was "shocked by how long it took people to get focused on the problem out here," and said he suspected that the mayor in particular may have been slow because he trusted Con Ed about the limited effects fo whatever went wrong.

(It turns out, as we now know, that the number of affected residents and customers is in the thousands, not the hundreds, and that it could take until the end of the weekend to get power back on for everyone.)

So now that this has finally become a major event, will there be any political consequences for the mayor?

Gianaris says it depends. "How much damage is done to him remains to be seen based on how this concludes."

-- Josh Benson

The Municipal Art Society sent us this postcard "to inform ... of the untimely passing of the Greenpoint Terminal Market, the Long Island City Power House and the former Con Edison Power Station .... They are survived by the endangered Domino Sugar Refinery, Sohmer Piano Factory and, in gravest danger, the Austin Nichols & Co. Warehouse."
The M.A.S. wil hold a memorial on Tuesday, June 27, at 6:30 p.m. "to memorialize the lost and discuss the precarious fate of the remaining." Let's hope they sent an invite to City Councilmember David Yassky.
-Matthew Grace  read more »

On Wednesday night, Community Board 4 strongly endorsed Community Board 6's proposal for the former Con Ed property east of First Avenue from between 34th and 41st streets. While the board's recommendations are strictly advisory, C.B. 4 packs a wallop thanks to its land-use committee's chair, Anna Hayes Levin, who was instrumental in the Hudson Yards rezoning.  read more »

GEORGE: Hilly’s paying half the rent. That’s another positive. Aren’t you?  read more »

The Post's story on the Mayor reviving plans to build an office tower on Robert Moses Playground has United Nations officials denying any knowledge of it.

Fritz Reuter, the U.N. Assistant Secretary General for the capital plan, told us that he had no knowledge of any such idea. "Someone just e-mailed this to me. I have no idea where it came from," he said of the story.

The playground proposal has been around for a while: build a new 35-story on 1st Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets as swing space while the Secretariat building is renovated. But Reuter said it was never the U.N.'s idea, and once the state Senate blocked funding for it in 2004, the international agency settled on a plan that would put a new structure on the lawn to the north of the Secretariat. In February we uncovered Sheldon Solow's interest in dooming the playground tower, and Bloomberg's renewed push cannot be good news for the developer's plans for the old Con Ed site to the south, because yet another tower would make the neighborhood awfully congested.

"The U.N. has been for about a year on renovating the Secretariat under its capital plan," Reuter said.

The Mayor's siter, Marjorie Tiven, is the head of the city's Commission for United Nations, Consular Corps & Protocol, so his interest in the matter is not insubstantial. And the Post's Kenneth Lovett suggests there is something in it for the city:

The Bloomberg administration plans to argue that the project will not only create construction jobs, but will ultimately free up two city-owned buildings at 1 and 2 U.N. Plaza that eventually can be sold for big bucks.

-Matthew Schuerman

On March 28, there will be a scoping session at which the public can comment on plans for the former Con Edison Waterside plant between 34th and 41st streets east of First Avenue. Two plans, one from the East River Realty Corporation and the other from Community Board 6, are up for discussion. It'll be held at 4 and 7 p.m. at the Schottenstein Cultural Center, at 239 East 34th Street.

To help you all out, here's a chart that details the differences in the respective plans. For the full 197-C plan from Community Board 6, go here (pdf).  read more »

-Matthew Grace

In late 2004, the real-estate developer Sheldon Solow was wrapping up his $600 million purchase of t  read more »

Matthew Schuerman uncovers what Sheldon Solow did to stop the United Nations from building a tower just north of the Consolidated Edison site where he is planning a mega-luxury-development.

In Manhattan Transfers, architect Emilio Ambasz is not too busy with his MoMA show to try selling his $31 million townhouse once again. Adam Lindemann continues adding inventory to the luxury market. And, a hungry Wilf takes a bite out of East End Avenue.

If you think that Brownstoner guy has some crazy home renovation stories, Choire Sicha, and his racist Czech cleaning woman, will blow your mind.

And Moira Hodgson chows down at Philippe.

Adam Victor maps out a nightmare scenario: Yes, New York City does get the Olympics, but the swimmin  read more »

New York Underground , by Julia Solis. Routledge, 251 pages, $35.  read more »

The end of summer has ushered in a subtle change beneath New Yorkers' hurried feet: All across Manha  read more »

There are those for whom being "in the zone" means diets or Britney Spears albums.  read more »

This was supposed to be a bad year for Entergy, the New Orleans–based company that owns the Indian  read more »

NYPD Hammers At East Siders' Fears While the federal government was a bit slow to accept the serious  read more »

The ringing of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Sept.  read more »

Bear, Stearns and Company has built a new corporate headquarters ready for the worst New York has to  read more »

At 9.2 acres, it's one of Manhattan's biggest mysteries: acluster of four properties along the East  read more »

Dear Old GrandmaTo the Editor:  read more »

While the litany of outrages perpetrated against the public-school children of New York City is endl  read more »

Heat is hot .  read more »

Con Ed's Nuclear BlunderGiven that the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant is just 35 miles north of  read more »

When word leaked out just after New Year's Day that a development team led by the venerable Fisher B  read more »

Maybe you can't go home again, but me?  read more »