The planned ventilation structure at 69th St.is now the subject of a federal suit. (Image courtesy of MTA Capital Construction)

After months of wrangling with the MTA over changes to the planned Second Ave. Subway ventilation structures along the Upper East Side, a group of residents has filed suit against the authority in an effort to overturn allegedly illegal modifications to the design.

As Sarah Ryley of The Real Deal reported earlier today, the coop at 233 East. 69th St. has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the MTA did not follow proper environmental review procedures in changing the design for a ventilation structure on the neighboring lot. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction against work on this structure and ask for the court to order a proper environmental review, a process that could take up to a year. (For your reading pleasure, the full complaint is available here as a PDF and embedded below.)

Ryley has more on the lawsuit:

The co-op tower filing the lawsuit, 233 East 69th Street, would neighbor the largest planned structure, slated to cover the entire footprint of two lots currently occupied by five-story brick apartment buildings built around the turn of last century. Once the structure is built, eight co-ops would have their easterly facing windows entirely bricked up.

When the MTA presented its renderings of the utility structures at a community board meeting last November, it was difficult to restore order, said Mark Legere, a resident of the 69th Street co-op. “There was just a complete, like a cacophony, of ‘Oh my God, not that!’ sounds.”

The lawsuit hinges on the subway’s Final Environmental Impact Statement approved in 2004, which stated that the structures “would typically be approximately the same size as a typical row house — 25 feet wide, 75 feet deep, and four- to five-stories high, although some may be wider.” Referring to a four-story brick building with faux windows, the document says the structures “could be designed to appear like a neighborhood row house in height, scale, materials and colors.” …

The residents are telling the MTA to redesign the utility structures so they mimic typical row houses, as outlined in the original plan. “Otherwise, if the MTA insists on moving forward with this design change, then it must conduct an additional public environmental review, including a full analysis of the facility’s impacts on the buildings at 233 East 69th Street, and an evaluation of suitable mitigation measures or alternatives to avoid or minimize the facility’s impacts to the greatest extent practicable,” said the residents’ attorney, Michael D. Zarin of Zarin & Steinmetz.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to block the MTA’s planned modifications under federal environmental impact review laws. If successful, this challenge would result in more studies for the Second Ave. Subway. The MTA would have to prepare another Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to “study and mitigate the new significant environmental impacts of the modified 69th St. facility.” This study could take six months to a year to complete.

Despite this suit, construction shouldn’t be delayed along Second Ave. Based on its current schedule, the MTA will not begin soliciting work for the 72nd St. station and its ancillary structures until April 2012, and construction is not slated to begin there until December of the same year. Pending the outcome of the suit, there will be plenty of time to conduct further review.

As of press time, the MTA has yet to comment. I’ll update this post when I hear from them. In the meantime, the full complaint is available after the jump. Read More→

Phase I of the Second Ave. Subway is one expensive project. Designed as a three-mile extension of the BMT Broadway line north from 57th St. and 7th Ave. to 96th St. and 2nd Ave., this route is, as SAS commenter Alon Levy has noted, the most expensive subway under construction. It’s budgeted at approximately $1.7 billion per kilometers while similar projects in Paris and Berlin have checked in at $250 million per kilometer and a London Tube extension cost $450 million per kilometer.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve tried to ascertain just why this subway costs so much. While New York is a very developed city and the MTA is digging through some very old neighborhoods, Paris and London have both been around for centuries longer than the Upper East Side. Labor costs are higher in the U.S. than they are in Europe but not by that much. Could it be utilities work? Design and engineering? A combination of everything?

I was at a loss until a few weeks when the MTA published a quarterly report about the Second Ave. Subway work with the most comprehensive budget presentations to date. The report is available here as a PDF, and the budget chart is on page 15. I’ll summarize the Current Budget here. Clicking the thumbnail at right opens a larger version.

First, the MTA tackles component design costs. The Environmental Impact Statement cost $11.6 million; PE & FP Engineering costs are projected to be $228.9 million; and the final design costs will be $192 million. The next few lines concern construction. So far, the agency has awarded $734 million in construction contracts with $2.7 billion in contracts still be awarded. Those figures constitute the bulk of the project costs but aren’t broken out further.

After that line item, the chart delves into some detail. The agency is keeping $122.7 million on hand for contingency awards and will pay $96 million for control center modernization. In-house Transit labor will cost $33 million, and $70 million will go for an engineering force account. Phase I has a $6 million artwork budget and a $292 million real estate acquisition fund. Insurance policies will cost $172 million, and the agency has a reserve of $160 million. The total project cost checks in at $4.451 billion, but the agency has also added another $816 million in estimated financing costs. The final price tag: $5.267 billion.

So now we have the numbers, but we still don’t have the “why” of it all. We don’t know what costs so much and how the MTA could realize savings that would put the budget for the Second Ave. Subway in line with similar projects around the world. The ambiguous construction costs — $3.4 billion — are clearly an issue, but where does those construction costs go?

If I had to guess, I’d say the bulk of the costly work involves installing the tunnel boring machine launch box and relocating numerous utilities. Real estate acquisition amounts to nearly five percent of the project, and in the end, everything just adds up. That doesn’t mean that the MTA can’t save costs.

When New York built its first subway route, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company bid a cool $35 million in 1900. That amounts to less than $1 billion in today’s money, and that route stretched from City Hall to 145th St. and Broadway. Then, the subways reached through some emptier neighborhoods and employed cut-and-cover just below surface level. Yet, the connection into Brooklyn through some populous neighborhoods cost just $8 million, insanely cheap by today’s standards.

The Second Ave. Subway is deeper than the IRT and is being built in an era of high costs. As unsatisfying an answer that is, it simply might be the reason for the costs: It just costs more. But can the city really sustain three more phases of multi-billion-dollar construction or will we be left with just a portion of the Second Ave. subway? Time, obviously, will tell.

The current schematics for the 96th St. station along Second Ave. do not feature an entrance on the north side of the street. (Click to enlarge. Image via the 2008 CB8 presentation.)

Few streets offer up as a stark a dividing line between two neighborhoods as 96th St. does on the Upper East Side. Although gentrification has stretched the boundaries of the two areas, south of 96th St. along Second Ave. has been the Upper East Side while north has been Harlem. The two neighborhoods have tolerated each other over the last few decades, but they are quite different.

As the MTA has planned the station stops for the Second Ave. subway, we’ve seen neighborhood groups object to just about everything. Some groups complained about the station entrances; others targeted the auxiliary ventilation structures.

At 96th St., the complaints are similar. The current MTA schematics call for a northern station entrance on the south side of 96th St. Residents in Harlem, Dan Rivoli reported last month, are crying foul:

The proposed station will only have entrances and exits on the south side of the street, where the traditional boundary for the Upper East Side begins. East Harlemites will have to cross a busy intersection to access the new subway line.

Critics have also pointed out that Metropolitan Hospital Center, which occupies the area bordered by East 97th and 99th street between First and Second avenues, will be underserved. The hospital has 341 beds and saw more than 400,000 visits last year. “It’s a highly congestion intersection. There are safety considerations to crossing 96th Street or Second Avenue or both,” said Hunter Armstrong, executive director of Civitas.

The group, a civic organization focused on the Upper East Side and East Harlem, has called for added subway entrances. In June, Civitas published a study suggesting that a northern subway entrance is necessary to accommodate the 35 percent of station users who are expected to come from north of 96th Street. “It would be not only beneficial but prudent for the neighborhood to have an entrance on the north side of 96th Street,” Armstrong said.

For its part, the MTA says it can’t dig north of 96th St. due to preexisting tunnel infrastructure. A segment of the Second Ave. tunnel, dug out decades ago and planned for the northern Phase II of the project, is in the way. “The 96th Street Station will connect to an existing tunnel which prohibits the station from being moved further north,” agency spokesperson Kevin Ortiz told Our Town.

The community groups may have a point; in an ideal world, the 96th St. station would allow passengers to enter and exit on both sides of a busy two-way street. It is, however, hardly alone in limiting entrances to one side of the street due to station plans. The 96th St. stop on Broadway has entrances on only the south side of the street, and many riders have no problems crossing the street to head to and from the subway.

There are, of course, safety concerns whenever people have to cross the street, but here, the limits of engineering handicap the MTA’s ability to alter the designs. Harlem is the next area to enjoy Second Ave. subway access if and when Phase II is built, and for now — or in 2017 — straphangers will just have to cross 96th St.

Work continues below ground along Second Ave., but is the SAS a true megaproject? (Source: MTA Presentation to CB8, Nov. 30, 2009)

The Second Ave. Subway is not a megaproject. Phase I, the current line under construction, is a 30-block extension of a preexisting subway line that will cost nearly $4.5 billion and take nearly a decade of continual construction to complete. Then, the MTA will have to go back to the drawing board to fund and build Phases II, III and IV. Maybe by the mid-2020s, a subway line will span the entire north-south reach of Second Ave.

For the residents of Second Ave., local subway construction is a nuisance. Station entrances and unsightly ventilation structures make this project seem larger than it is, and a walk along Second Ave. does nothing to dispel the notion that building even part of a subway line is a major undertaking. Yet, the initial investment is small compared to true megaprojects, and the piecemeal approach makes for a project of good size in New York City. That, though, is because the city no longer builds much on a grand scale. Do we actually miss Robert Moses? Do we need someone to wield Moses-like power? Or are we doomed to a century of big-but-mega projects that run over budget and take to long to complete?

In The Times this weekend, Louis Uchitelle explored the end of the megaproject in the United States. With the Big Dig finished, no one is building a truly massive public work. As rapid transit goes, streetcars are the wave of the future. Elsewhere, the Metro in Washington, D.C., finished up earlier this decade, and the last major BART expansion in the Bay Area wrapped in 1997. Uchitelle — who notes that construction along Second Ave. “proceeds unhurriedly” — views this dearth of megaprojects through the prism of the economy:

So what are we missing, exactly? Huge public works — or more precisely, their historic absence — didn’t cause the recession any more than their renewal would quickly draw the country out of it. But their effect on the economy is almost always noticeable if not easily measured. Some economists argue that the continual construction of new megaprojects adds a quarter of a percentage point or more, on average, to the gross domestic product over the long term. Again, cause and effect aren’t clear, but the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.

If their absence creates a void, particularly in a recession, what can fill it?

His answer is a stimulus focused around megaprojects. He sees a country with high-speed rail stretching from coast to coast and with cities building again. Jebediah Reed at the Infrastructurist is pondered this very question. Why hasn’t America, without a Moses to dictate and bulldoze, to unnecessarily plow over homes, parks and neighborhoods, learned to build megaprojects? New York, in particular, is afraid of putting too much development power in the hands of one person. As the response to the Empire State Development Corporation shows, nearly fifty years after Moses’ reign of terror ended, we as a city still do not trust those who seek to build unilaterally.

But on the Upper East Side, though, we see the extreme response to decades of Moses’ centralized power. We see a project that might suffer from too much community involvement and definitely suffers from a lack of political leadership. Even Phase I, a rather meek northward extension of the Q line, still needs $1.5 billion in funding, and most New Yorkers think that it will open when it opens whenever that might be.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the original IRT line opened in just four and a half years. The city might have been far emptier and less built up than it is today, but things got done. What has happened to those great megaprojects and the drive and political will to build them?

With subway construction come neighborhood gripes. As the Second Ave. Subway continues what one reporter recently termed its “unhurried pace” toward completion, residents along Second Ave. are learning that life with subway construction and life with an eventual subway line isn’t as rosy as it first sounds. Today, we will explore two stories about life on the East Side and the real estate problems presented by the Second Ave. Subway. Part I, I examined the eight ventilation structures soon to appear on the Upper East Side. Part two focuses on station entrances.

The planned entrance at 72nd St. is one of two that have come under community fire. (All images via the SAS Task Force report to CB 8. PDF file from Oct. 28, 2008. Click to enlarge.)

When planning a transit route, the entrance points can be quite vital to the way a neighborhood forms or responds to new stations, and a trip through New York’s subways show no uniformity in exit points. Some are in the front of trains; others in back; still others in the middle. Still other stations have entrances in both the front and the back or at two mid-way points along the platform.

For the Second Ave. Subway, the MTA has tried to maximize the area served by one station. All of the new stations will include two entrances — one in the front and one in the back. For instance, the 72nd St. stop, seen above, will allow straphangers to enter at 69th St. or 72nd St., thus minimizing the walking distance for subway-bound pedestrians.

Yet, despite these conveniences, some Upper East Side residents weren’t happy with the MTA’s design process and the lack of community input during the initial planning stages. All’s well that ends well for these Co-Op Boards though, and as Habitat Magazine detailed, the MTA was willing to work with community groups to respond to resident complaints. Bill Morris tells the story:

The original plan called for two entrances where a reasonable person might expect to find them – at the northeast and northwest corners of Second Avenue and 72nd Street. But in fall 2007, the MTA decided to move the northeast-corner entrance to the middle of the block on the north side of East 72nd Street, between First and Second Avenues. Not only that, the MTA proposed two mid-block entrances pro-tected by soaring glass canopies. That got the neighborhood’s attention.

“We accepted that there was going to be a subway stop at Second Avenue,” says Valerie Mason, vice president of the co-op board at 320 East 72nd Street, a 40-unit building erected in the late 1920s. “Then, literally overnight, the station entrances were moved from the corner to the middle of the block. They looked like two huge soccer goals. The MTA said they had encountered some problems at the corner. What I saw was an attractive nuisance and a safety hazard.”

…Phyllis Weisberg, a partner at the law firm of Kurzman Karelsen & Frank, filed a lawsuit in state court on behalf of the co-ops at 320 and 340 East 72nd Street. Two co-ops across the street filed a similar suit in federal court. “The basis for the lawsuits was that under state and federal law, certain environmental impact studies have to be done and public hearings have to be held,” Weisberg says. “Five days after the [2007] public hearing, the MTA said they were moving the entrance. They did that without studies or a public hear-ing.”

As momentum grew, neighborhood efforts coalesced into a successful lobbying effort. Residents made their concerns heard at Community Board meetings with MTA officials and in correspondence with City Council members. In the end, the MTA’s Supplemental Environmental Assessment to the Second Avenue Subway Final Environmental Impact Statement, available here in full, focused around the original corner exits on 72nd St. The neighbors had made their concerns — design and safety worries and not NIMBY protectionism — heard, and the authority responded in turn.

At 86th St., the residents are waging a similar fight but with less organization. The MTA hasn’t yet determined the location of the entrance at the northern end of 86th St. It had been originally planned to include within the building at 305 E. 86th St. but has proposed moving it to the north side of 86th St. east of Second Ave. The federal government has found no significant environmental impact in this change, but residents are protesting.

No decision has been reached on that entrance yet, and the MTA is open to neighborhood imput. Only time will tell if the residents at 86th St. can find common ground as those at 72nd St. did.

With subway construction come neighborhood gripes. As the Second Ave. Subway continues what one reporter recently termed its “unhurried pace” toward completion, residents along Second Ave. are learning that life with subway construction and life with an eventual subway line isn’t as rosy as it first sounds. Today, we will explore two stories about life on the East Side and the real estate problems presented by the Second Ave. Subway. Please note that for all images, click to enlarge.

We start at the corner of 2nd Ave. and 97th St. with a ventilation shaft pictured above. It’s big; it’s ugly; it’s windowless; it will lead to the eviction of some residents and businesses; and the people who live near it are not happy. Can you blame them? Look at the thing.

Of course, it serves a functional purpose as well. Around the city, various properties are mysteriously vacant. There’s an old building on 96th St. between West End and Broadway used by the MTA, and the Greenwich Village substation is an obvious. The Second Ave. Subway, though, will feature something new. A train line for the 21st Century, the SAS will no longer subject straphangers to hot and sticky platforms. Instead, glass walls will keep out the heat and allow for air conditioning to maintain a semblance of normalcy in underground temperatures.

Of course, with air conditioning comes the need for ventilation, and the MTA plans to build eight of these ventilation shafts of various shapes and sizes along the current 34-block stretch that makes up Phase I of this subway line. Yesterday, The Real Deal explored residents’ reactions to these neighborhood eyesores. Some of these buildings, reports Sarah Ryley, are going to be up to nine stories high, and while others fit into the neighborhood, most stick out like sore thumbs.

Stanford Eckstut, an architect who helped PATH design its ventilation shafts, called the MTA’s versions behemoths with facades resembling “an improved parking garage.” He said, “These are buildings that are going to last forever; they should be contributing to the street scene. They should not just be a wrapping to hide mechanical things.”

Thomas Nobel, a co-op owner at 69th St. which, according to Ryley, is next to the largest of the structures, bemoaned them too. “It’s going to be a real detriment to the neighborhood,” he said. The MTA has yet to release renderings of the planned nine-story ventilation shaft for the 69th St. spot.

Still, Ryley continues, most Upper East Siders are willing to pay the cost:

Some Upper East Side residents are wary of locking horns with the MTA, fearing that a protracted legal battle would delay or kill the subway project. Instead — through elected officials, civic groups and the law firm Herrick Feinstein — they have attempted, with some success, to negotiate behind the scenes.

“People in the Upper East Side want this subway. When it’s finished, all in all, it’s going to be a great boon to the neighborhood,” said Noble, who is also an architect. “I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to have the process grind to a halt yet again.”

The fact that the structures need to be built is nonnegotiable — they are needed to house utilities, smoke evacuation systems and emergency exits, said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, noting that sidewalk grates now violate the city’s building code.

And indeed, as Ryley reports, the MTA has been very willing to negotiate on height. Some groups have gotten 50 percent reductions in the heights of these ventilation shafts, and the MTA that the renderings which I present below are simply plans. Nothing is set in stone, and there is still plenty of time for the MTA and the Upper East Side to work together to build community-friendly structures that don’t overwhelm the sidewalks.

In the end, some residents are concerned about property values, and one real estate assessor says these people have reason to be. He claims the few properties directly abutting these structures could see a decrease in value, but that overall, property values on the Upper East Side should increase by 15 percent due to the added convenience of a nearby subway line. That’s a trade off most should be willing to make.

After the jump, more images of the planned ventilation shaft. All are courtesy of the MTA. Click to enlarge. Read More→

Earlier today, I appeared on a story on Marketplace about the Second Ave. Subway and subway construction in general during tough economic times. You can listen to the story via the player at right or you can find it online right here. Jeremy Hobson and I spoke at length about the economics behind the Second Ave. Subway and the ongoing construction on the East Side, and his story explores why this economic downturn hasn’t yet killed the Second Ave. Subway as the downturn in the 1970s did.

To summarize my thoughts briefly, the issue comes down to both the politics and mechanisms of the current funding. Much of the money for the project was secured before the economy went south, and the federal dollars are specifically earmarked for the Second Ave. Subway construction. In the 1950s, the transit agency could siphon funds away from the project to invest in other areas of maintenance while in the 1970s, the costs were funded through a scheme that resembled a pay-as-you-go structure. The Feds ensured that the money would be there this time around, and the MTA can continue to work through a bad economy.

Additionally, the Second Ave. Subway, while not a stimulus-funded project, acts as one anyway. By continuing work, the MTA continues to employ contractors and construction crews. Constant investment in this decade-long project creates constant jobs, and to kill it now would be politically ugly and economically unwise.

In the end, as I said to Hobson, I am uncertain of the future of Phases III and IV of the Second Ave. Subway. Phase II relies on preexisting tunnel, and Phase I, I believe, will finish. But beyond that, the money and the timeline remains ever so out of reach. For now, though, construction continues apace along Second Ave.