Community Groups Seek Javits Expansion Redesign

Several civic groups knock a new design for the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion. Also, programs in New York and New Jersey are bolstering brownfields redevelopment efforts.

Critics Aim at Javits Center Expansion Plan

Several New York community advocacy groups are opposing a $1.7 billion expansion plan for the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's Far West Side, claiming it will block waterfront access.

The Municipal Arts Society, a nonprofit organization focused on cultural affairs in New York, has joined with the American Planning Association's New York Metro Chapter, Citizens Union, Friends of Hudson River Park, Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association, New Yorkers for Parks, and the Waterfront Park Coalition to author a letter urging Gov. George Pataki and the Empire State Development Corp. to redesign the expansion.

The new center, designed by London's Richard Rogers Partnership, Chicago's A. Epstein & Sons International, and New York's FXFowle Architects, will increase the total exhibit space from 790,000 sq. ft. to 1.3 million sq. ft., and extend the complex northward to W. 40th Street. The opponents argue that the expansion will limit New Yorkers' access to the waterfront with a "massive barrier" six blocks long, conflicting with a city goal to redevelop Manhattan's West Side waterfront with an emphasis on public use, primarily through Hudson River Park.

The letter also states that the design would impair access to water transit in Manhattan. The groups suggested that the architects revise the plan to reduce its scale and open up access to the waterfront.

In addition, the arts society and the Hells Kitchen association filed a lawsuit this spring against the Empire State Development Corp., the agency overseeing the Javits Center expansion, claiming that a broader 2.45-million-sq.-ft. development plan proposed in April, which includes areas around the center, was not examined during the original environmental impact statement review. The existing EIS covered an earlier design of the Javits Center expansion prepared in tandem with plans for a $2.2 billion football stadium to the south that would have been home to the New York Jets, a project that was scrapped last summer after state officials blocked it.

According to the arts society, the revised Javits development plan would overburden the area with noise, pollution, and traffic. It is calling for the completion of a new EIS.

Brownfields Redevelopment Aid Planned

New York City received $600,000 of $69.9 million awarded by the federal government nationwide for brownfields redevelopment efforts.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded $200,000 for the cleanup of contamination in Staten Island's Mariners Marsh Park, a large brownfields site that the city will transform into a six-acre sports and recreational complex and a 101-acre natural area featuring wetlands, upland habitats, and ponds. The cleanup would await an assessment of the site by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, due early next year.

In addition, the EPA awarded $200,000 for the assessment of sites with petroleum contamination and another $200,000 to sites containing deposits of heavy metals and other hazardous substances around the city. The specific sites for review would be determined with input from city agencies and economic development groups.

The grants are part of the federal Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act enacted in 2002.

EPA brownfields grants currently underway in New York include:

• a $750,000 revolving loan fund grant that leverages other private investment in the existing New York Metro Brownfields Redevelopment Fund

• a $400,000 assessment grant to the N.Y.C. Department of Housing Preservation and Development for two sites in Brooklyn

• a $270,000 assessment grant to the city parks department for investigation of Mariners Marsh

• and a $200,000 investigation grant for brownfields citywide.

Additionally, the National Brownfield Association recently launched a pilot program in Mantua Township in New Jersey's Gloucester County that implements the Site Technical Assistance for Municipal Properties program, which provides technical assistance on brownfields redevelopment using EPA funding.

The association's teams - which during the pilot program at the Struthers Dunn site in Mantua have included a developer, a real estate broker, a planner, an environmental consultant, and an insurance expert - will visit sites and suggest strategies for best use and feasibility. The teams will advise Mantua and other municipalities about launching brownfields redevelopments.

$300 Million for Affordable Housing

An institutional real estate manager and a New York City owner and developer are acquiring $300 million worth of rent-stabilized apartments in all five boroughs.

The partnership between Principal Real Estate Investors of Des Moines, Iowa and New York's Dermot Co., has already committed $100 million in equity and closed on the first acquisition - a 121-unit, two-building complex in the Astoria section of Queens.

The two companies anticipate contracting for unit improvements after their purchases. Sonnenblick Goldman, a New York-based independent real estate investment banking firm, arranged the deal.