Sign up now to subscribe!
Buildings, Brickbats and Breakfast
City Hall hosted its first On/Off the Record breakfast March 8, with City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr. The questions at the event focused on land use, asking the comptroller to weigh in on the Hudson Yards, the Atlantic Yards, how he invests city pension funds with developers and how developers invest in his election account. Some of the questions and answers on the menu in the on the record portion:
City Hall: Is there a recent project or development in New York which you would say has gone well, as best as it possibly could?
William Thompson: Is there a project that has gone well—a development project in the city of New York that has gone well? I don’t know that anything moves that quickly on a development basis … I think the Atlantic Yard project in downtown Brooklyn, while not necessarily moving quickly has moved along, and that is something that will, both for the size of it—and I’m a Brooklyn resident—both for its size first as well as for the mix of housing and the inclusion of a large percentage of affordable units in it—I think that is a project that everyone can look at as something that is different, something that I think you’re going to see more of in the future, and just as far as scale and size and hopefully focus on affordability. As well as, I think, if you look at the—and it’s not to keep a Brooklyn theme in this—but Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront, both looking at land that used to be manufacturing, and the manufacturing has long since disappeared, but is going back in rezoning, making use and making sure that as part of the discussion there is also access to the waterfront but you’re rezoning, you’re going to be building and increasing your density dramatically—you’re kind of going up over there but also, as part of the trade-off, again an affordable component that was part of it.
CH: New York has developed a reputation for being a place where big development ideas come to die—in a way—people have grand projects that don’t get built after a lot of discussion. Do you think it’s become too easy for community activists to stop up big development ideas?
WT: I think that if you look at New York City, it isn’t that big projects aren’t going to get done any longer. I think that if you look at the West Side there will be big projects and development on the West Side and on the Hudson Yards. We’ve moved forward on financing and putting dollars aside to be able to do that. I think that is, if you want to use the stadium as an example of big projects failing or not moving forward because of opposition, I think you would have to look at the project. The disagreement on whether a stadium made sense on the West Side is based on who you spoke to—whether it was the economic generator engine for the West Side and West Side development, I don’t know that there are many people other than the mayor and a few others who thought it was. So, to be able to look and say, well then you can’t do major projects or big development or soaring entities in New York City, isn’t true. If you look we’re in a construction boom probably unlike the city has ever seen.
CH: What do you see as the future of Ground Zero?
WT: You had so many people involved in and looking at a World Trade Center site. For development I think that’s what some of the problems were, and then what should go there. The vision that I’ve heard that probably made the most sense was probably the one that’s been put forward by the mayor, which talked about mixed usage—commercial, retail, some residential, as well as a destination, a performance space, and being able to make that more of a 24 hour location also.
CH: Aesthetically speaking, do you like the current design of the Freedom Tower?
WT: That’s things I’m not getting in the middle of again and it is the discussions of design and should this and should that and I don’t like this; there are more people who have been involved in the discussion of this—great design—just move forward. I think that’s something right now, let’s move forward.
CH: You’re a Brooklynite. How do you feel about the argument that the Atlantic Yards threatens Brooklyn’s character, and how it has been worked into the way the project has come about so far?
WT: Atlantic Yards doesn’t change the flavor of Brooklyn. If you look at—the tallest building in Brooklyn was the Williamsburg Bank Building, 1 Hanson Place. If you don’t change, if you don’t move, if you don’t adapt, your city stops growing. New York City’s always been able to grow and reinvent itself. Is it different? Yes it is. More than anything the commercial units, or the commercial space, is a good idea. The stadium there is a great transportation hub. But the truth is the biggest sell in all of this is the residential units. And the biggest component of it, or a major component of it, is probably I guess now probably a third to 40 percent of the units is affordable across an income spectrum. That’s important. So the city has needs, Brooklyn has needs. You don’t want to turn your back on that and say to people, well, good luck. You’re not going to be able to stay in Brooklyn, you’re not going to be able to afford to live in New York City.
CH: The Atlantic Yards is using eminent domain. Are there projects or developments you see in the city currently which misuse eminent domain?
WT: No, I think that eminent domain in the city of New York is, if you see it, if it occurs, then you say something about it.
CH: Your office considered investing in the proposed but failed tenant buyout of Stuyvesant Town. How much of the pension funds are invested in developments or real estate, and how do you make those decisions about which ones to invest in?
WT: The question of how you would make a determination, what’s invested in development, particularly in New York City, and then how do you make those decisions—first we probably have about $1.2 billion in New York City in real estate. We probably have about $200 million in the Tishman-Speyer Sidecar Fund—that does not include Stuyvesant Town. We have about $450 million in the City Investment Fund, which is really being run by the Fisher Brothers and Morgan Stanley … That’s $5 billion for us so, a billion in New York City is about all that, as far as risk, is about as much as we want to entertain.
CH: Are you accepting campaign contributions from developers for your unspecified 2009 campaign?
WT: It’s a little strange. We haven’t. Part of where you’re at on raising dollars is the people in the comptroller’s office have no idea what gets raised outside so you maintain that separation. The one thing and probably the only person who tries to track, the one thing you try not to do is anybody who’s in front of us either just, or afterwards, you try not to take contributions from those individuals. But right now, it’s, given the nature of public finance in the city of New York, and I think it is, New York City having a great public finance structure, it limits the ability of anybody to really have influence.