Somebody...

With the failed West Side Rail Yards project, the MTA is back to the drawing board having again reached out to Conde Nast among other developers who were originally a part of bid process. The sticking point on the failed deal was the delay of payment by bidders Tishman Speyer for the period of two years. Too much time for the cash strapped MTA. Bloomberg flew to London last week to meet with Mr. Speyer in an last ditch effort to procure a positive outcome, but it was not destined to be. Now Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn and MTA officials are scrambling to fill the developer void quickly as this project represents an important goal for all current administrations to create a new glass and steel business district in an area that has fallen into almost complete disuse. Some city residents and officials see this as a blessing in disguise as they say the TS proposal was boring and un-inventive, as well as a somewhat universal dislike for vulture developers in NYC anyway. Like this blog post from Will on NYT.

'Good thing they wasted two years trying to gift
this to the Jets, so they can now sell the land in the
middle of a Real Estate market dip rather than at a
peak. Like everyone else I am glad to see the T/S bid go
down in flames. The MTA should have told them to put
up or shut up a week ago. I don’t get why the city
loves to give these endless opportunities to
renegotiate to developer vultures.'

As much as I like Mayor Bloomberg, this represents yet another failure to either have an effective coalition against, or be able strong-arm opposition of his and/or city admin pet projects.

Either way hopefully there is more park in the winner of dev. the rail yards.