Second Ave. Sagas

Category: 7 Line Extension

  • City, MTA officially kill planned 7 stop at Tenth Ave.

    The Tenth Ave. station is no longer.

    The MTA has scraped plans to build a station stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. as part of the 7 line extension to the Hudson Yards area. Let’s not mince words: This is a terrible mistake.

    NY1 has the story:

    Transit officials dropped plans to build an additional 7 subway line station Thursday. Officials eliminated the plan to build a station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street when they were unable to obtain the $450 million to complete the project.

    The Bloomberg administration said a station is not necessary since the neighborhood is already developed…

    In a statement, the MTA said, “While we would prefer to include a station at 10th Avenue, it is not critical to the success of the overall project. If funding is identified at a later date we will revisit the issue.”

    I have long advocated for the inclusion of this station in the final project. If the city is going to spend the time and energy expanding west, they should be as inclusive as possible. To omit this station now would be to give up on it forever. Just ask proponents of the Second System.

    On many levels, this news is dismaying. First is Bloomberg’s dismissal of the station because the neighborhood is already developed. The purpose of subway expansion isn’t to spur on to development but rather to offer public transportation to neighborhoods currently lacking in that regard. The area west of 8th Ave. in Hells Kitchen needed this station. Drawing Bloomberg’s logic to a proper end would result in our questioning the need for a Second Ave. Subway too. After all, the Upper East side is “already developed.”

    More alarming is the cost of this project and its ultimate result. The City and the MTA will now be spending a few billion dollars to extend the subway one stop. At a time when the system is falling apart, when maintenance projects are being deferred, when expansion plans are slowly crawling to a halt, spending billions of dollars simply to placate some real estate developer in charge of a project at least a decade away from completion doesn’t strike me as the best use of funds.

    Update 3:00 p.m.: CityRoom has a more detailed story up about this news. This William Neuman piece features a statement from Senator Chuck Schumer: “Failure to build a full 7 train extension is a huge missed opportunity to promptly realize the complete potential of the Far West Side.”

    Well said, Chuck. Well Said.

  • As Tishman deal collapses, Schumer and Bloomberg spar over development

    As the Tishman Speyer deal for the Hudson Yards collapsed completely on Tuesday, tempers have flared over the fate of development along the West Side. In one corner, we have Sen. Chuck Schumer fighting for Moynihan Station and office space in and around Penn Station. In the other corner, we have Mayor Mike Bloomberg, 18 months away from heading out of office and in search of a lasting New York City legacy.

    The stakes in this political death match are high: They start with the 7 train extension and end with nothing short of a radical alteration of the Manhattan landscape west of Midtown. How it will end is anyone’s guess, but with Tishman Speyer out and the MTA back in negotiations with other potential Yards suitors, the battle has just begun.

    The troubles started when talks between the MTA and Tishman Speyer collapsed late last week. While the Bloomberg administration put pressure on the two groups to keep trying this week and even promised to have the city cover the cost overruns for the 7 extension — but not necessarily that controversial station at 41st and 10th Ave. — things died for good today.

    With this development, Schumer, long skeptical of the 7 line funding, took this opportunity to push for a project that he considers to be more viable than the Hudson Yards plans. Speaking on Monday at a Crain’s Business Forum, Schumer renewed his calls for Penn Station-focused development:

    Mr. Schumer, in laying out his vision for the area at a Crain’s Breakfast Forum, said the mayor should stop funding a $500 million boulevard on the far West Side and instead build a second subway station on the extension of the No. 7 line. (Emphasis added.)

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s push for a 16-million-square-foot project at Hudson Yards, strongly encouraged by the city, suffered a setback last week when talks with its chosen developer, Tishman Speyer, broke down. Although Mr. Schumer said, “I am enthusiastic about Hudson Yards,” he said no one would build office space there until the No. 7 extension is in place.

    Instead, he said, government should push for more office space by Penn Station, which has one-sixth as much as the Grand Central Terminal area despite serving more commuters.

    Schumer and I are on the same page in regards to the 7 line extension, but Schumer and the Mayor disagree over the role of the Port Authority. The Senior Senator from New York would have the Port Authority assume control of this plan. Bloomberg, meanwhile, will have none of it because the Port Authority can’t even seem to get its act together in Lower Manhattan. It’s a grand ol’ political war of words.

    On the MTA front, the agency will in all likelihood push hard to wrap up a deal with another suitor. They need the money for their capital budget, and Charles Bagli at City Room reported that Douglas Durst, Stephen Ross and Steven Roth, three other developers interested in the space, are now back on the table. While Durst would have once offered up just $39 million less than Tishman Speyer, that figure is sure to drop, leaving many to wonder why no one raised red flags with Tishman’s offer before it was accepted. The demands that eventually quashed the talks were not new.

    Photo of Moynihan Station via Moynihan Station on flickr.

  • Tishman Speyer deal for Hudson Yards collapsing

    Well, this latest Hudson Yards development is not very good news for the MTA.

    In a turn of events that one could call shocking or not shocking at all, the $1 billion deal between the MTA and Tishman Speyer for the rights to the Hudson Yards has fallen apart. The word first broke via a press release issued by MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin:

    Late this afternoon, negotiations between the MTA and Tishman Speyer over the development of the Rail Yards on Manhattan’s Far West Side reached an impasse. The cause of the impasse was Tishman Speyer’s attempt to change a central deal term in an effort to postpone the closing on the Eastern Yard until the Western Yard was satisfactorily re-zoned. This demand changed the economics of the proposed deals and the certainty of payments to the MTA. The MTA remains committed to developing these unique and very valuable parcels of land.

    For those who have been following progress on the negotiations, this collapse came just short of a month after the two sides missed a deadline for a conditional agreement. Now, while a Tishman Speyer deal remains a faint possibility, it’s back to the drawing board for an MTA facing the prospects of a significantly lower dollar amount for the rights to the Hudson Yards space.

    Charles Bagli of The Times has all the details. From the prospect of Tishman Speyer, this deal was fraught with problems from the get-go. The real estate and development company could not find any tenants for their five planned office buildings, and they were not sure of the fate of the cost overruns of the 7 line extension, a frequent topic here at Second Ave. Sagas

    Meanwhile, this deal could spell more fiscal problems for the financially-troubled MTA. Bagli reports:

    But if the authority reopened negotiations with another bidder, it would almost certainly mean that it would get less money for the rights to the property, real estate executives said.

    Developers who a year ago would have gleefully bid any price for a building or a project are now delaying or abandoning projects in New York and elsewhere as the economy has slowed and many lenders have balked at financing real estate projects in the wake of the credit crisis.

    At the same time, the sudden setback in the development of the railyards is a very public embarrassment for everyone involved, including the developer, whose reputation may be at risk; the authority, which was counting on the money for its capital budget; and the Bloomberg administration, which had made the transformation of the once-industrial West Side a centerpiece of its two-term mayoralty.

    On one hand — the very obvious hand — this collapse is bad news for the MTA. They will lose out on another $10 million a year, and the fate of the Hudson Yards is once hazy. They’re in the middle of constructing a 7 line extension to, literally, nowhere without a stop in the one area that’s actually populated and needs a subway stop at 41st St. and 10th Ave. The Bloomberg Administration is bound to put pressure on both parties to work out a deal since part of Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy rests on it, but it won’t be that easy.

    On the other hand, some good could emerge from this impasse. First, the MTA should be pressure on the Bloomberg Administration to guarantee all funding for the 7 line extension. That should include any cost overruns and a fully functional station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. Building a shell now will only lead to higher costs in the future.

    Next — and this won’t happen — the MTA should consider whether or not the 7 line extension is worth it now if the land rights are up for grabs again. The MTA could use the money being spent on that extension on Second Ave. or even on routine maintenance. While I know the city is funding the part currently under construction, having a subway line go nowhere will help no one.

  • With the 7 on the way, a swan song for a Times Square platform

    The old platform on the lower level at Times Square will soon be lost to the 7 Line Extension. (Photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

    Astute subway buffs know where to look for the tell-tale signs of the mysterious lower level underneath the 8th Ave. IND platform at 42nd St. Stand on the northern edge of the uptown platform and look all the way across the tracks. If you look closely, you can see another level of subway tracks beginning a mysterious descent seemingly to nowhere.

    Well, it’s not quite nowhere. Those tracks lead to the long-abandoned lower level platform that, for a few decades from 1959-1981, was home to the Aqueduct Express. The tunnel feeds into the lower level E platform at 50th St. and terminates with a merge, now out of service, in between 42nd St. and 34th St. on that IND line.

    In Sunday’s Times City Section, Alex Mindlin writes about the waning days of that lower level platform. It is currently in the way of the 7 line extension and will soon to lost to the ages:

    But the platform endures, gathering dust and grime. And it has seen more activity this year than in the previous few decades. Workers are preparing to demolish part of the platform so that the extended No. 7 line can cut across the space on its way westward. Other sections of the platform will be turned into electrical and hydraulic rooms; the rest will be walled off. The work should be complete in about four years…

    Several films have been shot here; the track walls bear some “47-50” signs that, at this 42nd Street station, must have been intended for a movie. In the best-known scene shot at the location, from the 1990 film “Ghost,” Patrick Swayze stands on the empty platform and learns from another ghost how to move objects with his mind.

    This great photo at NYCSubway.org shows how the station signage was cannibalized by Hollywood for those movies.

    What Mindlin’s article misses is the amusing story behind the origins of the platform and its original purpose. After it was built during the construction of the IND lines in 1932, this lower level platform sat idle and unused until those Aqueduct trains started running 27 years later. Joseph Brennan’s abandoned station page for the platform speculates that the platform could have been used to hold Queens-bound trains at 42nd St. without impeding other trains along the 8th Ave. line.

    But I prefer the theory set forth on the station’s NYCSubway.org page:

    An oft-repeated story offers this as a reason the lower level was built: The Independent subway was being built by the city to compete directly with routes owned by the IRT and BMT companies. The #7 crosstown IRT line terminates at Times Square; it is said that the bumper blocks of the #7 are directly against or very close to the eastern wall of the lower level of the 42nd St. IND station. The construction of the lower level therefore blocked any potential extension of the #7 line to the west side of Manhattan. If this is true, it would have been done only in the spirit of crushing the competition, for the IND had no plans to construct a competing crosstown line.

    This now-decaying station won’t impede westward progress any longer, and as the 7 line inches its way west, this platform will be lost to the annals of New York subway history. While the West Side 91st St. station and the famous City Hall stop exist through subway windows, this lower level platform will end up a legend of the subway, perhaps built to stop progress and now destroyed in the name of progress.

  • On the precipice of a construction funding problem

    December’s groundbreaking ceremony for the 7 Extension may have been a bit premature. (AP Photos)

    Ah, remember those glorious days in December when hope sprang eternal and the City and MTA broke ground on the 7 Line Extension?

    Let the nostalgia wash over you because here comes the bad news: That 7 Line Extension project — and the Hudson Yards — development is in financial jeopardy. Surprise!

    In a lengthy piece on the future of Moynihan Station and the Far West Side, Daily News reporter Brian Kates drops in this five-paragraph bombshell:

    In his State of the City address last month, Mayor Bloomberg said the No. 7 extension was so crucial that the city “refused to wait for the MTA” and in December “broke ground on the first new mile of subway track the city has funded since the 1950s.”

    That’s the rhetoric. The reality is less optimistic.

    To begin with, the city puts the cost of the expansion at a deceptively low $2.1 billion – a figure it set in 2003 and hasn’t budged from despite skyrocketing construction costs. The MTA, which considers the proposed Second Ave. subway line a greater priority, has refused to pick up the tab.

    A $1.1 billion tunneling contract has been awarded, but to save an estimated $450 million, the city abandoned plans to put a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave.

    That means the line will run from Times Square to 34th St. and 11th Ave. without a stop – a decision that “puts at risk several million square feet of potential commercial and residential development” in the Hudson Yards, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “Development follows mass transit.”

    For a while, I’ve defended the MTA from a monetarily focused City. The City wants this 7 Line Extension; the City offered to pay for it; and then the City reneged on its promise. Considering the cost and the practical value of the extension, the MTA can spend its billions of dollars elsewhere for projects that would benefit more New Yorkers.

    But the news gets a little worse if we dig deeper. In a weekend Subchat post about planned renovations at the Shea Stadium 7 stop, a Subchatter noted that steel prices are at all-time highs. He says that New Yorkers should “expect cost over runs and cut backs on all [construction] projects.”

    So the cost of materials is skyrocketing, and the MTA and City are still using budget projections generated during our economy’s rosier days. Forget the 7 line; I want to know how this will impact the Second Ave. subway. The future cannot be bright for that project either.

    To bring this all back home, congestion pricing seems more important than ever to the MTA. While we can — and have been — debating the traffic-calming aspect of the congestion plans, the MTA will draw in much-needed revenue from a congestion pricing plan, and right now, they need the revenue. They need the revenue for operations; they need the revenue for capital projects. And as the tales of the 7 Line Extension show, transit is very closely related to the development of New York’s last frontiers. The future of the city — and the subways — is hanging in the balance.

  • Doctoroff: Let’s go halfsies on the 10th Ave. 7 line extension station

    westwardho.jpg

    I bet tourists would be really confused by this sign if it were still there. (AP Photos)

    When last we checked in on the 7 Line Extension at the project’s groundbreaking, Senator Chuck Schumer had just called upon the City of the New York and the MTA to resolve their differences concerning cost overruns for the $2.1-bilion one-stop extension to 34th and 11th Ave. As we know, the plan originally called for the city to fully fund a two-stop extension with one station at 41st St. and 10th Ave., but increasing costs led the city to say they would fund just a shell of a station. Six weeks before the groundbreaking ceremony, even higher-than-expected costs led the city scrap the plans for that station altogether.

    Now, after a long stand-off between the City and the MTA, the City may be willing to negotiate a settlement of sorts concerning the station at 10th Ave. that should be built now; it will only get more expensive in the future. The first offer of a settlement is coming from none other than the man who first told the MTA they should cover cost overruns. Departing Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said the City would be willing to pay for half of the second station if the MTA were willing to pick up the other half. Even just half of this project could cost the MTA up to $575 million. Patrick Arden of Metro has more:

    The offer represented a change of heart for the Bloomberg administration, which had balked at spending more than the $2.1 billion it had budgeted for the project, a key part of its plan to develop the Far West Side. To cut costs, the 7 extension had become a one-stop line to 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue, because “commercial tenants will not move” to the Hudson Yards without the 7, Doctoroff explained at the project’s groundbreaking ceremony earlier this month…

    MTA chief Elliot Sander told a state Assembly hearing Thursday he’d consider splitting the shell’s cost, but it depended on the MTA getting more money from Albany. “Under the current [capital] plan, we do not have the resources,” he said.

    Now, this is something of a red herring from Doctoroff. When the City worked out a deal with the MTA to fund the 7 Line Extension, the City was originally on the hook for the entire cost of this project. It was, after all, part of Doctoroff’s ill-fated plan to draw the Olympics to New York and a new stadium for the Jets to the Hudson Yards area. The MTA stands to gain very little from this extension. Why should they pour their hard-to-come-by capital funds into this project anyway?

    New York politicians, criticizing the MTA for its fare hike on Wednesday, rushed to the agency’s defense on Thursday. “It would be a grave error for the MTA to even consider it,” Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said.

    Brodsky, along with Schumer, the City Comptroller and other state and federal officials sent a letter to the city yesterday urging the Bloomberg Administration to foot this bill. The letter noted, as had been previously reported, that the city could pay for the station if they ditched plans for a tree-lined promenade in the yet-unbuilt Hudson Yards development. Seriously, a subway stop at 10th Ave. and 41st St. far outweighs some hypothetical trees that a private developer could probably afford to plant.

    While the Mayor’s office, in a wonderful show of politicking, called upon Schumer and the Washington pols to send money to the MTA for this project, the city just should pick up the tab. They’re trying to renege on a promise, and it will become more expensive to correct this mistake as time wears on. This sure isn’t the last we’re going to hear about the station at 41st and 10th Ave., and I still think that, when all is said and done, the 7 line be making two stops when the construction is complete.

  • As the 7 line heads west, Schumer urges a fully-funded project

    westwardho.jpg

    34th St. and 11th Ave. still seems like the middle of nowhere to me. (Source: AP)

    We are now in the middle of a golden age of subway expansion. For the second time this year, the MTA celebrated a groundbreaking as city, state and agency officials gathered in the Times Square station to launch the 7 line westward to its eventual new terminus at 34th St. and 11th Ave.

    The project, set to be completed in 2014, will cost the city — and not the MTA — an estimated $2.1 billion. Supposedly, this money will come from the tax revenues from the as-yet-realized Hudson Yards development. (For more on that development, check out Curbed’s top-notch coverage.) Officials were, of course, patting each other on the back yesterday.

    “My administration is committed to ensuring the vitality of our state’s critical infrastructure as it contributes to fostering continued economic development,” New York’s Governor Eliot Spitzer said. “The transit system is the lifeblood of New York City, and the 7 line extension will bring an underutilized part of the city to life as a vibrant residential and commercial center.”

    The Mayor, one of the driving forces behind this extension, spoke well of the project too. “Nothing better exemplifies our commitment to transit oriented development than the fact that we’re providing over $2 billion for the extension of the 7 and working with the MTA and the State to realize this vital component of our development plans,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “The development of the Far West Side simply couldn’t happen without this extension, and because of it we will see this area give rise to a vibrant and exciting neighborhood with needed housing, office space, commercial and cultural venues, and parks and open spaces.”

    But what just a minute. As I’ve detailed in the past (here, here, here and here), the 7 line extension we’re getting is not the one we want or need. When the city and the MTA originally agreed to the project, the plans called for a stop at 41st and 10th Ave. and one at 34th St. and 11th. But rising costs quickly scuttled those plans.

    The city balked at spending a few hundred more million dollars beyond than the $2.1 billion they had originally planned in spite of an estimated tax windfall of $60 billion from the Hudson Yards development. The MTA proposed a shell station at 41st and 10th that could eventually be turned into a full station when funds were available. When the city tried to force the MTA to cover the cost overruns of such a shell station, the MTA balked, and those plans were simply scuttled. Thus, the city is screwing over a neighborhood and the MTA. Once that work is complete, it will forever be significantly more expensive to build that station.

    But as long as the drilling and detailing work is still east of 41st and 10th Ave., there’s hope yet. Enter Senator Chuck Schumer. Over the weekend, Schumer sent a strongly-worded letter to New York leaders urging them to include the second station at 10th and 41st even if that meant cutting down on some of the more useless parts of the planned Hudson Yard development. William Neuman at The Times reports:

    Mr. Schumer asked the city to postpone plans for a costly tree-lined pedestrian boulevard west of 10th Avenue and to direct money toward the station project, which was canceled because of escalating costs…[City spokesman John Gallagher] said about $560 million would be spent on land for the first phase of the boulevard and portions of the subway line, including a new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue…

    But in an interview, Senator Schumer said the city still had time to change course. “It seems so obvious that a second rail station is more important than a boulevard for economic development,” he said. “It’s not that the boulevard is a bad thing. It’s just if you’re faced with a choice, when there’s limited funds, you first do the infrastructure.”

    I don’t have much to add to what Schumer had to say. The man is completely, 100 percent right. The city, if they’re really expected $60 billion in tax revenue, should be able to fund another subway station on an extension they wanted built in the first place.

    While city and MTA officials claim they may yet try to work something out, their responses to questions about potential overruns and future plans were vague at best. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg outright dismissed Schumer. “Senator Schumer is never critical about anything. You must have confused him with someone else,” he said in response to Schumer’s letter. That’s not really the response I would expect from someone who could personally fund this entire 7 line extension.

    Meanwhile, as construction goes, so goes politics. I’m sure this groundbreaking isn’t the last time we’ll hear about that stop at 41st St. and 10th. Hopefully, someone will come to their senses about it and just fund the whole thing. The city sure could use it.

  • 7 extension groundbreaking set for 11 a.m.

    Officials from the MTA and New York City will gather in the Times Square station to break ground on the 7 line extension this Monday. The planned extension, set to be completed by 2014, will see the 7 line terminate at 34th St. and 11th Ave. While plans call for a shell of a station at 41st. and 10th Ave. as well, the future of that station is very much uncertain. [amNew York via The Tracker Blog]

  • Board approves 7 line extension

    The MTA voted today to approve the 7 line extension. Only Andrew Saul, also the lone dissenter on the MTA’s finance committee, voted against the one-bid contract, and MTA CEO Elliot Sander said the board would take up the issue of cost over-runs in two years. [Cityroom]

  • MTA board, hearing opposition, to vote on 7 extension today

    Generally, when an expansion plan receives a contract bid and this bid is sent to a governing committee for approval, the approval is generally a sure thing. While those in charge — in this case, members of MTA’s finance committee — may voice objections during debate, the end result is generally an all-or-nothing vote. But the 7 line extension plans are proving to be a different beast as MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul voted against approving the bid and sending it to the full board for a vote.

    In the world of the MTA Capital Construction, this is a very big deal, and while the truncated 7 line extension will probably still pass today’s full board vote, the session promises to be explosive. NY1’s Bobby Cuza has more on Saul’s decision:

    Even though there was no competition, agency negotiators announced Friday that they were happy with the price they worked out for the tunneling work – about $1.1 billion, or just barely over budget. But the agency didn’t expect board members to criticize the deal at a committee meeting Monday.

    “I can’t, for me as a fiduciary here, sit here and go ahead and approve a contract for over $1.1 billion of state money, or city money, or both, without having competitive bids,” said MTA Vice Chairman Andrew Saul.

    Saul, the lone member to vote against approval for the contract, was not alone in expressing his dismay. Andrew Albert, not an MTA board member but a vocal transit advocate nonetheless, was none too pleased about the plans to eliminate the station at 10th Ave. and 41st St. entirely. “More [need] exists now around the 10th Avenue station than around the Javits Center station. Are we saying that conventioneers are more important than our own residents? I hope we’re not saying that,” Andrew Albert, of the NYC Transit Riders Council, said to Cuza.

    But while the MTA board debates the contract today, City officials are working to secure funds for that station at 10th Avenue. Maybe we shouldn’t lose hope yet for this plan. According to Eliot Brown of The New York Sun, Mayor Bloomberg will try to cajole the state into forking over another $450 million to secure the station shell at least. Even this month would drastically reduce the cost of building another station on the extension in the future.

    So now we wait. In an ideal world, the MTA board wouldn’t approve a contentious contract for a project that received just one bid. But in reality, that outcome seems unlikely, and we’ll be left with a flawed contract and an incomplete extension that will bypass the area that needs a subway station the most. Who goes to the Javits Center anyway?

    As for a completion date, don’t expect the 7 line extension to materialize over night. Newsday reports that the line is due for completion in 2013 while NY1 says 2014. Anyone want to bet that something pushes this date back further into the 21st Century?