Second Ave. Sagas

Legal woes plaguing Second Ave. subway

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

A little over one year ago, in June of 2008, Christopher K. Bennett, the vice president of the DMJM+HARRIS join venture tasked with designing the Second Ave. subway, issued a progress report about the subway construction project. On page 13 of the report (PDF), Bennett wrote that the tunnel boring machine for the Second Ave. subway was “expected to arrive on site in June 2009.” Three months after this date, we know Bennett’s report was overly optimistic, and over the last year, the due date for the Second Ave. subway has been pushed back from 2015 to late 2017 or even 2018.

This week, we learn that more delays of the legal variety are plaguing the project. One source concerns the stability of buildings and the MTA’s need for a blast permit while the other is a follow-up from last week’s relocation saga. Both present the possibility of even more delays for this troubled project.

We start with the blasting permit problems, first reported in Our Town nearly two weeks ago. Dan Rivoli writes:

The June evacuation of two buildings encompassed by the Second Avenue subway construction zone will delay some aspects of construction for an indefinite amount of time.

The MTA was set to conduct blasting underneath Second Avenue in the East 90s, with a blast test scheduled for the first week of August. Orange signs were placed in the area to warn residents of the blasting. But the Department of Buildings ordered residents of 1766 and 1768 Second Ave., at East 92nd Street, to evacuate because the buildings had pre-existing structural problems that made construction unsafe.

Now the Department of Buildings, which is working with the building owners on a plan to stabilizing the structures, is demanding that the structures be shored up before permits are given for any blasting, which makes tunnel boring easier. “When the partial stabilization is completed and accepted by [Department of Buildings], we will move forward with the controlled blasting program,” said Kevin Ortiz, an MTA spokesperson, in a statement.

The MTA decilined to offer Rivoli a comment on either the “start date for building construction or how long such work will take.” In the words of David Rosenstein, chair of the Friends of Ruppert Park, the project is “stuck.”

Today, the The Times offers up news of a legal challenge to the MTA’s relocation plans. Last week, I explored how the MTA had, according to Upper East Side residents, not provided relocation options that were “comparable housing.” Now, Upper East Siders are heading to court, and a State Supreme Court judge wants more information from the MTA. Michael Grynbaum reports:

Justice Walter B. Tolub of State Supreme Court in Manhattan told lawyers from the authority to return in a week with written details about the agency’s plans to provide assistance to the tenants, many of whom are elderly and living in rent-regulated apartments.

The authority is hoping to receive final approval this month to acquire the four residential properties along Second Avenue, which will be converted into ventilation shafts and other infrastructure for the $4.5 billion underground line, scheduled to open in 2017.

Under eminent domain law, tenants must be given assistance to move to a comparable new apartment in a similar neighborhood, but some of them say the authority has encouraged them to leave the Upper East Side and consider moving into affordable housing, including one building opposite an on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. (The authority says no one is being forced to leave the area.)…

[Lawyer Anthony P.] Semancik described a complicated formula used to determine how much rental assistance can be provided to rent-regulated tenants moving to a new, presumably more expensive apartment…But the authority could not produce a written version of [their relocation] formula and admitted that the formula had not been published except for presentations to community groups. Justice Tolub adjourned the proceedings for a week, until the authority could provide written documentation.

And so it goes. The MTA needs its blasting permits in order to dig the hole for the tunnel boring machine. The MTA needs these apartments on the Upper East Side in order to build infrastructure for the new subway. With these two aspects of the project in limbo, we will just keep waiting for the Second Ave. subway to arrive. Who will still be here to ride it?

Comments

16 responses to “Legal woes plaguing Second Ave. subway”

  1. Alon Levy

    Minor correction: the opening date has been pushed back from 2012 to 2017, not from 2015.

    Reply
    1. Benjamin Kabak

      At the time of progress report in June 2008, the target date was 2015. But yes, overall, the SAS was originally slated for a 2012 Phase I opening date.

      Reply
  2. Anon

    Well, if your gonna get all technical, it was originally slated for 1938

    😉

    Reply
  3. Building 11

    And today is the 80th anniversary of the official release of the full plan for the second phase of the IND, containing the original proposal for the 2nd Avenue line.

    Reply
  4. Boris

    Under a less socialist housing system than New York’s, dilapidated rent-controlled buildings would be the exception, rather than the norm. Moving closer to a market system would encourage turnover and construction of mid-income housing rather than luxury highrises. This isn’t really a transportation issue, but a reflection of New York law in general.

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      Under a less socialist housing system, most people in New York would be living in public housing. In Hong Kong, 50% of the population lives in public or otherwise government-subsidized housing. In Singapore, it’s 85%. Those countries compete for the title of most free-market system in the world, but when it comes to housing, you can’t trust the market to deliver results in a supply-constrained city.

      Reply
      1. petey

        thank you alon. furthermore:

        “dilapidated rent-controlled buildings would be the exception, rather than the norm”

        this is wrong two ways. specifically, buildings aren’t rent-controlled, apartments are. generally, if in place of some regulation and oversight we had a truly free market, then we’d have the kind of unsupervised construction that collapses regularly in places like naples and turkey, with loss of life.

        Reply
    2. Woody

      What about decontrolling rents would encourage the building of new, middle income housing? New housing is decontrolled now, and has been for many many years. So where is the new middle income housing that you believe will magically appear if the rules are changed on the maximum rents for existing housing? Sorry, Ayn Rand’s ideology is Fail when confronted with the real world.

      I do agree that some regulations need to be changed or eliminated to reduce the cost of building new middle income housing. One step would be to eliminate the requirement for indoor parking for all new buildings within a few blocks of subway lines. For years, the City has required that all new apartment buildings must contain indoor parking. And the owners intend to charge rents high enough to recover those costs — whether the tenants will ever own a car or, like the majority of households in NYC, not.

      Reply
      1. Alon Levy

        Even away from subway lines, there’s no need for parking minimums. For a neighborhood with little transit and high car ownership, the upper limit of density is about 6,000-8,000/km^2, as is typical of Eastern Queens. Those areas have off-street parking minimums, but their street grids provide enough capacity for two on-street parking spots per house.

        Reply
        1. Andrew

          I don’t understand the need for parking requirements in the first place. Anywhere.

          In the absence of regulation, developers will provide as much parking as is needed to maximize their revenues. In Eastern Queens (or at a typical suburban mall), that may be a lot. In Downtown Brooklyn, it may be very little or even none at all.

          What do minimum parking requirements gain us, aside from more parking than is appropriate for the conditions?

          Reply
    3. Jerrold

      If we did away with rent control and rent stabilization, the number of homeless people and homeless families would skyrocket. Rich landlords already have too much power in this city. You want to give them MORE power?
      Vacancy decontrol was the biggest mistake ever that the landlords managed to squeeze out of the politicians. It gave the landlords a strong incentive to harass tenants out of their homes and to let buildings deteriorate so that tenants will have to move out.

      Reply
      1. Alon Levy

        Jerrold, the same incentives to harass tenants exist in general rent control laws, too. New York rent control is intended for people who’ve lived in the apartment for a long time, much like Prop 13; this encourages landlords to create more turnover by kicking out tenants after each year’s lease.

        Reply
        1. Jerrold

          Therefore, we need a strengthening of rent control and rent stabilization laws, NOT an elimination of those laws.

          Reply
          1. Alon Levy

            Fat chance. The main constituency behind rent control is middle class long-timers who think they’re entitled to pay $1,200 a month for a SoHo loft. Any reform that would decouple rent control from length of tenure would threaten this constituency’s cheap rents.

            A good rule of thumb in New York is that every current major regulation is intended to help some middle-class special interest, rather than the poor or the working class. (Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why the city has the same minimum wage as the rest of the country, no universal health care, and no tuition-free higher education.)

            Reply
  5. Ben G.

    A man was hit by a car in the intersection of 93rd Street and 2nd Avenue, and is waiting there right now with a crowd around him as the police are arriving at this moment. For sure an ambulance will be called.

    Why is there not adequate traffic and pedestrian control and lighting at the intersections of this multi-billion dollar construction site? A few weeks ago, I wrote here that crossing the street around the construction site is treacherous, a few days later some signs were put up, and signals installed. Well intentioned, but not enough to ensure safety. At this point, it seems to me that honest to goodness traffic safety engineers need be called in to remedy the situation.

    I hope someone with authority cares enough to do something about this.

    Reply
  6. Maloney slams SAS and MTA inspector general investigates :: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog

    […] to secure a blasting permit due to two shaky buildings on East 92nd St. I first tackled this issue two weeks ago, and the MTA has remained in a holding pattern since June. Although the agency says the delay in […]

    Reply

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