West Side Story

NYABC members Daniel Gutman,
Danielle J. DeCerbo, Joe Restuccia,
Meta Brunzema, Anna Levin and
Anthony M. Borelli,
in front of the Javits Center

I’m sitting in a white-tiled makeshift boardroom in the basement of an apartment building at 454 West 35th St. in Manhattan. Around the table are six members of the New York Association for Better Choices. The 1,000-plus-member group, headed by a few dozen local movers and shakers, formed last May with the sole purpose of keeping a stadium out of the far West Side.
    “No one has ever thought a stadium was an appropriate economic development tool in this area,” says Anthony M. Borelli, district manager of Manhattan Community Board No. 4, sipping coffee from an oversized mug. “Never has anyone looked at it and said, ‘This is a good place for a stadium.’ ”
    The immediate neighborhood, which stretches roughly from West 28th Street north to West 42nd Street along Manhattan’s Hudson River shoreline, is riddled with warehouses and vacant storefronts yet also includes the gleaming Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and new bike and jogging lanes snaking along the water.
    Most residents call it Hell’s Kitchen, a relic of the area’s long-ago reputation as a haven for gang activity. Residential developers in the ’70s and ’80s began using the more family friendly name of Clinton. The city bureaucracy often refers to it with the dry geographic tag of Midtown West, while commercially minded forces have recently dubbed it Hudson Yards, for the sprawling lines of idle subway cars kept on a large and valuable parcel here. Each name represents a different vision and a different voice in a cacophonous debate over one of the last major underdeveloped areas in New York.

A neighborhood reborn?
The city released the following plans last spring, which would cost billions of dollars if all go forward as planned.
    " Expand the Javits Center from 720,000 to 1.5 million square feet of exhibition space and from 25,000 to 235,000 square feet of meeting space. Financing was approved in December, and the project might be done as early as 2010.
    " Build a 75,000-seat stadium just south of the Javits Center and over the rail yards, for use by the New York Jets football team and as an additional 180,000 square feet of exhibit space. Assuming the necessary approvals go forward, groundbreaking is hoped for later this year, with a projected 2009 opening.
    " Add a 1,500-room headquarters hotel north of the Javits Center by 2012.
    " Rezone 59 blocks to allow 12,600 apartments and 28 million square feet of commercial space. The Department of City Planning expects the rezoning to be approved this month.
    " Extend the number 7 subway line (which runs east-west along 41st Street and now ends at Seventh Avenue) over to 10th Avenue and then south to 34th Street and 11th Avenue. Digging should begin this year, with an estimated completion in 2010.
    " Create a network of public parks as developments are completed.

BIG APPLE, BIG PLANS

“We’re in a period of renaissance,” says Cristyne L. Nicholas, president and CEO of NYC & Co. “We will look back at this era and marvel at the amount of development that is taking place.”
Indeed, the city’s pipeline is full of ambitious projects. Among them:
    " Improved airport transit. NYC & Co. is pulling for a “one-seat ride” on public transportation to and from JFK Airport; currently, passengers must switch from the AirTrain to a subway or the Long Island Rail Road.
    " New arena action. Along with the proposed 75,000 seat stadium for the Jets, expect a renovated Madison Square Garden, a new Yankee stadium and a new Nets basketball stadium as part of a mixed-use development in Brooklyn. If New York City is granted the 2012 Olympics, a 12,000- to 20,000-seat velodrome will be built.
    " Hot new venues. The Museum of Modern Art reopened in November after pouring $858 million into renovations. Other glitzy new venues with event space include Jazz at Lincoln Center, some performance spaces in the Time Warner Center and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, glassy and gorgeous after a $65 million revamp.
Governor’s Island, a former military base, might open up to educational meetings. NYC & Co. is calling for a hotel/conference center to grace the grounds.
    " Neighborhood activity. The rebuilding of Lower Manhattan is a focus of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. By late 2006, construction will begin to transform the World Trade Center site and public transportation terminals in the area.
    " Convention space race. The Javits Center won’t be the only expanding facility in town. Pier 94 likely will grow, with a hoped-for completion in late 2006.
    The Queens Chamber of Commerce recently saw the results of a feasibility study that found a market for a convention center with 120,000 square feet of exhibit space and 40,000 square feet of meeting space, to be paired with a 200- to 250-room hotel. The QCC hopes to begin the planning process this year. -- J.V.

The Javits expansion
In an era when some new and expanded convention centers across America are sitting nearly empty, the Javits expansion invites skepticism. Yet, practically everyone in the city hoteliers, meeting planners, residents and the management of smaller exhibit halls that technically are the center’s competition favors it.
    With good reason. The Javits Center runs at 81 percent occupancy, one of the highest in the nation, yet its meeting space is so minimal that it can’t host meeting-heavy conventions.
    “We lose roughly a million dollars a day by not having an appropriately sized convention center,” says Cristyne L. Nicholas, president and CEO of NYC & Co., the city’s convention and visitors bureau. “We have to turn business away. Groups want to come here but can’t get dates at the Javits Center.”
    The expanded center will feature vast, column-free exhibit halls, a river-view ballroom with a capacity of 6,000, and 22 acres of green space on the roof, five of which will be available for functions. It will be able to accommodate some of the largest conventions in the country.
    However, nothing in New York happens simply, and thus the funding for the expansion stalled last summer in the state Senate, due to limited support from outside of New York City. In December, however, the plan was approved.
    The sticking point in the city’s far West Side plan is the stadium, which will cost the Jets $800 million for the building, while New York City and state would pay $600 million for the base (a platform over the rail yards) and a retractable roof to make the venue usable for conventions.
    The stadium is the main topic at hand in the basement meeting at West 35th Street. “We doubt that the space the stadium would afford is the kind of space that Javits wants,” says Anna Levin, who also is a member of the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association, a block association with some serious political savvy. “They need more meeting space. They don’t really need this vast exhibition hall that the stadium would give them.”
    “Our phrase is, ‘Javits yes, stadium no,’” says Joe Restuccia, executive director of the Clinton Housing Development Co. “In the abstract, it’s a beautiful proposal, but it’s fitting a square peg into a round hole.”
    “Or a round peg into a square hole,” Daniel Gutman, a New York City-based environmental consultant, chimes in.
Name that stadium
    The stadium plan has floated around city government for more than a decade, going by as many names as the neighborhood it’s planned for. First it was to be a Yankees stadium, a plan that failed years ago. Then the idea arose for a Jets stadium. With the concept that it would double as convention space, it became the Multi-Use Facility.
    “They called it the MUF,” says Restuccia with some exasperation. “Then they added retail and called it the New York Sports and Convention Center.”
    In its current form, the NYSCC is being bundled with the Javits Center as the Convention Corridor. One begins to understand that the names are no accident; if an idea doesn’t fly in New York City, it simply needs to be renamed and presented as something brand new.
    L. Jay Cross, president of the Jets, says the continued opposition is frustrating, as his architects have done everything in their power to please naysayers. The plans, in their current permutation, call for a mix of restaurants, a community theater and environmentally friendly components such as wind turbines to generate electricity.
    “When we say, ‘It’s not just a stadium, it’s a sports and convention center,’ they say, ‘We don’t believe you,’” says Cross. “They’re already on record in favor of the convention center expansion. Rather than say they’re against the convention center, they say, ‘We don’t accept your definition of what this project is.’”

Is it feasible?
Various city offices and organizations, including the New York Association for Better Choices, have sponsored a war of feasibility studies on the stadium, regarding traffic, pollution, utility to meeting planners and cost to the city. Predictably, the results depend on whom you ask. For example, regarding whether the stadium will generate enough to pay off the city’s $21 million-per-year debt service, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office cites an Ernst & Young study, sponsored by the Jets, that says the stadium will generate $35.2 million in city tax revenue every year.
    Meanwhile, NYABC funded a study by Chicago-based HVS International that sets the figure at $15.3 million, which would place a $6 million burden on the city every year. And the city’s Independent Budget Office released its own take that, in a best-case scenario, puts municipal profits at $28.4 million.
    The main variable between these studies is the number of conventions the New York Sports and Convention Center will attract. The Ernst & Young study claims the new facility will hold about 38 conventions per year, whereas the Independent Budget Office thinks 20 is optimistic. HVS settled on 15.
    The reason: According to HVS, the three operating stadium/convention centers in the United States in Atlanta, Indianapolis and St. Louis average just 11 conventions per year.
    “Event planners basically told us that they rarely utilize those spaces,” says Paul Sajovec, senior vice president of HVS. They complained about heating and air- conditioning costs, difficulty managing sound and lighting, security problems, and conflicts with football games during move-in and move-out days.
    But other planners, including Jeff D’Entremont, Indianapolis-based show director for the Cleveland-based Powersports Group of Advanstar Communications, disagree. D’Entremont has used the dome in Indianapolis and says it’s a functional space. And though even a midsize trade show would be cramped in a stadium like the one proposed for New York City, it would make good overflow space for large shows.
    In Indianapolis at least, the stadium-cum-convention center seems to work. Although officials plan to demolish the stadium to make room for a convention center expansion, they say they’ll erect a new stadium right next to the old.
    In the Big Apple, demand already has started building. Trade show organizers, meeting planners and NYC & Co. alike say New York defies all probability in terms of how much demand the city can generate.
    “In New York, you don’t have a lot of choices for large venues,” says Ken McAvoy, senior vice president of operations for Reed Exhibitions, based in Norwalk, Conn. He adds, “A lot of people against the stadium really don’t know the convention business.”
    Meeting planners who work in New York City feel a little more mixed on the issue, not because they think the stadium can’t work but because of traffic and security concerns on the city’s already tightly packed streets.
    “I’m absolutely against it,” says Richard Aaron, CMP, CSEP, president of BizBash, a New York City event planners’ resource. “I think the traffic is already horrific coming and going to work.”
    Aaron also opposes the stadium because it would put meeting schedules at the mercy of football games. “I think we should put meetings above any other consideration,” he says.

The Copacabana nightclub, a popular postconvention party spot, is one of the few businesses in the area.

Stadium alternatives
If the city chose not to put the stadium in the far West Side, that still would leave the Jets looking for a new home. NYABC isn’t concerned with this, though the group says Queens is a fine place for it, as is New Jersey, where the New York team plays now, embarrassing as that might be for New York-based fans.
    Cristyne Nicholas is firm about NYC & Co.’s preferences. “A stadium in Queens will do nothing to enhance New York City tourism. It will do one thing: create traffic jams. New Jersey fans will drive through Manhattan to get to Queens.”
    It’s possible, however, that supporters are adamant about a Manhattan stadium because offering any other possibility would slow the gargantuan momentum required to get the far West Side redevelopment off the ground. “The city doesn’t have a number-two location,” says Anthony Borelli. “They would say this stadium couldn’t work anywhere else.”

Goliath in David’s clothing
Through October, the Jets already had spent approximately $3 million in marketing the stadium to residents and elected officials, largely through television advertisements and feasibility studies, according to Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
    Meanwhile, media giant Cablevision and its subsidiary, Madison Square Garden, had spent about $8 million to oppose it. With 20,000 seats, Madison Square Garden is the largest seating facility in town. It comes as no surprise that Cablevision opposes the Jets stadium.
    But it might be surprising to note that much of Cablevision’s antistadium funding is siphoned through the New York Association for Better Choices.
“You’ve got to understand everyone’s agenda,” says Jets president L. Jay Cross. “Cablevision has nothing against sports or conventions. But if you want to put more than 3,000 people in a room, right now, they control [that market].”
    It seems like just another of New York City’s marketing tricks that NYABC is fully funded by the stadium’s only potential competition, but the group says it isn’t a Cablevision mouthpiece. Prior to revealing its name to the public in May, NYABC had been together for 18 months as the Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance, a collaboration of community groups working not just on blocking the stadium but also on shaping development and fighting for affordable housing in the area (the Alliance still exists to address nonstadium issues). When Cablevision offered to give the Alliance a little more exposure under a new name, the group jumped at the chance, even while realizing some would interpret it as a deal with the devil.
    “NYABC took us to another level,” says the group’s Anna Levin. “That’s the level we have to participate at, considering the forces on the other side.”

What the future holds
Now we’ve left the boardroom and are walking the two blocks to the Javits Center, past a faded brick apartment building, a FedEx delivery center and Splashlight Studios, a minimalist special-event space. “This will all be demolished,” says Borelli.
    I ask how they hope to block the current plan from being carried out. They have been approaching politicians, petitioning the City Council to block the rezoning they have even filed a lawsuit based on environmental concerns. The group is hoping to stall the project until July 6, when the International Olympic Committee decides who hosts the 2012 Olympics. If New York City is not selected, perhaps momentum for the stadium will slow down.
    However, it will be a tough battle. The Empire State Development Corp., the state entity overseeing the stadium’s funding, approved the plans in November, setting the stage for a series of what promises to be extremely contentious public hearings. “But that’s a formality,” says Levin. “The concern is they’ll go ahead and build it anyway.” Whether the project receives the support of state lawmakers is still in question.
    “Everybody has their opinion,” says Gary Sims, general manager of the three Sheratons in Manhattan. “If both sides give up a little bit, it’s good for the city. Not everyone will be 100 percent happy, but at some point somebody’s got to draw that line and say, ‘Let’s do this.’
    “If this was any other city, it would probably be under construction by now,” Sims adds, “but nothing happens quickly in New York.”

These rail yards, for which Hudson Yards is named, might soon lie underneath a stadium/exhibit hall.