Former Mayor Bloomberg: "rail yards... offer the next mayor opportunities to create housing" (but Vanderbilt Yard still awaits development)

In a New York Times guest essay, 9/8/21, Michael Bloomberg: How New York City Can Bounce Back, Again, the former mayor suggested a parallel between New York City after 9/11 and after Covid-19.

He writes:

The first is urgent: improving vital services New Yorkers rely on every day, including policing, transportation, sanitation and education... To keep residents and businesses in the city, the next administration must come out of the gate with programs and policies to bolster those same essential services. Funding will be tight, but manageable...

Sure, but part of the issue, as commenters pointed out, is that Covid is causing a large-scale societal shift toward working from home, and/or working from new locations far from major cities. That likely will affect future city budgets, if not the current one.

The second broad challenge, Bloomberg says, regards the future. He cites an understandably selective set of examples, such as canceling a planned subsidy for a new New York Stock Exchange headquarters--but he doesn't mention his failure to rescind the ever-growing tax subsidy for Madison Square Garden.

He writes:

The next administration may face similar demands for subsidies from companies that threaten to leave the city. But there are better ways to retain and create jobs than giveaways, especially by investing in critical infrastructure, starting with the subway.

Sure, but that's not necessarily what happened with projects like Atlantic Yards. And, as one commentator wrote, "How much indirect subsidy did you direct [developer Steve] Ross’ way with the Hudson Yards project?"

Where to build? (and an AY echo)

Bloomberg writes:

The next administration will have its own opportunities not only to recover from the pandemic, but to reimagine areas of the city. Of course, it’s never easy to take on vocal and powerful groups that say, “Not in my backyard.” But across New York, there are parking lots, warehouses, rail yards and other properties that offer the next mayor opportunities to create housing for all incomes and jobs for all skill levels.

That suggests he thinks that, for example, Sunnyside Yards should be ripe for development.

Of course if Bloomberg really believed that rail yards were places for development, he would've ensured that contracts regarding the Atlantic Yards project--which he supported to the hilt--guaranteed development over the MTA's Vanderbilt Yard on a timely basis.

Instead, we're still waiting for current master developer Greenland Forest City Partners to proceed with plans--announced nearly two years ago!--to build the first stage (of two) of a platform for the railyard. Each of the two platform blocks would support three towers.

The backlash

Some pro-density commenters thought Bloomberg was taking the easy way out. Tweeted Moses Gates:

NYC needs a deep reckoning w/ the fact that easy development sites are finite. There weren't enough in 2001 & nowhere near enough now. We have to accept "redevelopment" is outdated & grapple with the real tradeoffs necessary to meet our housing crisis.

This especially means examining current ideas of who we accept as "vocal and powerful" groups and how much deference we give them in the pursuit of citywide goals.

In other words, he and other commenters remember that Bloomberg downzoned certain wealthier neighborhoods that could've accommodated more density.