How out of touch is Newsday from the world of news?
The New York Jets redesigned the Stadium back in March in order to appease critics who said it was too tall, , yet Newsday continued to run images of the original design. as if it were the current design. The original design was topped by wind turbines, which made the total height of the structure 30 stories. In the redesign, the turbines disappeared, so the structure was reduced to about twenty stories, when the roof was open. The sight line of the roof would move in when the roof was closed, making it appear about 16 stories.
So, how to explain the following in today's Newsday? What's more, the stadium - 30 stories tall - would have loomed over prime commercial and residential space near the Hudson River, blocking sun and water views.
Just plain wrong. Of course, Newsday still runs images of the original design on their web site as if they were the current design for the Jets.
I know Newsday's New York City staff is small, comparatively speaking, but can't they get simple facts right?
Editorial
June 12, 2005
Like a model built of Lego blocks that had worn out its welcome on the dining room table, another bold public-works plan got rudely swept away last week.
There will be no New York Sports and Convention Center on Manhattan's West Side - at least not as Mayor Michael Bloomberg had conceived it. And barring a miracle, there will be no 2012 Olympics in the city, which means another Bloomberg dream is dead.
So strong was Albany's distaste for the $2.2-billion New York Jets stadium that its executioners didn't even bother to cover their tracks. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Brunswick) killed it in broad daylight without the usual subterfuge.
Meanwhile, around Ground Zero in lower Manhattan - nearly four years after Osama bin Laden laid waste to the World Trade Center - the state has yet to order a single beam of steel for the new iconic Freedom Tower, as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted in a speech last month. And it has yet to draw up solid plans for a new rail line that will link downtown with Kennedy Airport and Jamaica Station.
We have dreamt big before
What's the matter with New York? Why did our creativity seem to pack up and head for parts unknown circa 1970?
This is the state that put together the Erie Canal, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge and Long Island's great network of parkways and beaches. But what great public works have we built lately?
The record is embarrassingly thin.
Now it is possible to make too much of what happened last week. Indeed, on the merits, Silver and Bruno were correct to bludgeon the stadium.
The arena would have put taxpayers on the hook for about $1 billion worth of subsidies in all. It was a bad idea, a reckless bet designed to bring us the Olympics, even though Paris had an inside track. What's more, the stadium - 30 stories tall - would have loomed over prime commercial and residential space near the Hudson River, blocking sun and water views. It would have cast a pall over the vibrant neighborhood that Bloomberg wants to build there.
But for all that, something is missing here. If only the public passion to plan and to build were as great as the public passion to delay and destroy. In a place that bristles with as much creativity as New York, things don't have to be this way. Yet they have been this way for what seems an eternity.
Whatever happened to Westway - the six-lane highway that was supposed to serve the West Side of Manhattan? It died in the late 1980s because, among other reasons, it would have disturbed the Hudson River's striped bass.
Whatever happened to the Second Avenue subway project in Manhattan? That one has endured more red signals than a rush-hour No. 1 Broadway local. It's moving ahead right now - but a tag team of gophers burrowing under the street could probably get downtown faster than folks from the cash-starved Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
And whatever happened to the urgency this region felt after Sept. 11, 2001 to rebuild lower Manhattan? So slow has the state been on some projects that Washington is making noises about taking back some of its money.
What's the problem here?
Were we so traumatized by the genuine excesses of Robert Moses, who reigned as lord of public works here for decades, that we forgot about the value of his genius and drive?
Did our society grow so litigious that it ultimately paralyzed itself?
Did our politicians grow so sensitive to the caviling of the NIMBY groups that they felt most comfortable saying no to everything?
Did the fiscal crisis of the 1970s make all new public-works projects sound like profligate ideas as the city fought just to rebuild its infrastructure?
Only this is clear: At some point, our political system - not to mention the media - started to emphasize the plight of the inconvenienced few at the expense of a taxpaying majority. The price of that mistake is obvious now.
Hosannas for change
In his speech last month to a group of city business people, Schumer broadly attacked what he regards as a "culture of inertia." He was met with a chorus of hosannas. Unsurprisingly, this notion grew to a crescendo last Monday after Silver and Bruno wrote out the death certificate for the West Side stadium.
"One of the great dangers," mused the mayor, as he reflected upon the worst defeat in his short political career, is that big-time developers are "going to get disheartened" and say they can't build anything in the city "because the politics always get in the way."
But here's where the story gets really interesting - because Bloomberg isn't necessarily right.
Today, happily, redevelopment plans are everywhere. There's the blueprint to remodel the old main post office in midtown as Moynihan Station. It will serve as a center for cafes and other amenities and also as a gateway to the trains that serve Pennsylvania Station.
There's the plan to turn Downtown Brooklyn into a district of offices, shops, homes and its own professional basketball team. There's the project to rework the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. These don't have the glitz of Bloomberg's West Side proposal, but neither do they have the drawbacks.
A sense of purpose
Yet here's what the New York region still lacks as it tries to get them done: As Schumer points out, it lacks a clear sense of purpose - from ordinary New Yorkers as well as from its media. With any major public works project, the press must do a better job of explaining not only the needs of a self-interested few but the needs of the larger community.
Do New Yorkers want to build things again? Well, how nice. But if they're serious, they need to unite and pressure the pols to make it happen. They could start with some of the red tape that is holding up Moynihan Station.
And hey, if Bloomberg is still serious about his resolve to redevelop the West Side, this could still happen, but "organically," without the help of a huge football stadium. The catalyst in fact could be Moynihan Station. When that project is done, it's not so hard to imagine high-end development spreading westward across the urban netherlands toward the Hudson just as Bloomberg had hoped.
Pick the right projects
As for downtown's laggardly pace of reconstruction, one business booster had this to say: "I think our indulgence of distraction is a serious problem."
The politicians are easy enough to blame for our inertia. But they shouldn't take the rap alone. To be effective, they need public support. They need money. And - Mr. Mayor, please note - they need to pick the right projects to push. New York can build anything it wants to build. But it needs the will and it needs discipline.
