Javits Center Expansion (& Cancelled Jets Stadium)

[ZippyTheChimp]

@BPC
I see your point, but the title does state cancelled, and anyone looking for information on the Westside stadium proposal can find a lot of information in the first part of this thread.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a private project. I mean that's why Cuomo is bragging, because it's supposedly got no public funding attached?

Are you saying that there is no involvement by the New York state government in the Aqueduct project? You couldn't be more incorrect.

Are we discussing a Convention center for NY, or are we talking about ways to generate revenues?

The titile of this thread is obvious. It 's about the specifics of Javits, whether it's renovated and becomes the only convention center, whether it co-exists with Aqueduct, or whether it is demolished. It involves NY politics and NY business. It has nothing to do with NJ.

Convention center in New Jersey helps the NYC tourism industry.

Fine. If you wish, start a thread in the Metro section. Don't hijack this thread.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Moved posts to the Aqueduct thread.

[lofter1]

Today I was up at the north end of the High Line for the first time in a few weeks and saw there's a rectangular concrete shell of a new building rising opposite the Javits, around 35th Street on the east side of Eleventh Avenue. What's that gonna be?

[scumonkey]

your talking about the building on the right in this pic correct?

it's gonna be a huge air shaft vent for the # 7

[lofter1]

aha! Thanks.

[John Q. Public]

The one fly in the ointment most likely to shut this dumb idea down, is the instance of Genting that NYS gives them an exclusive to an NYC casino, and I don't think can happen. The Sands, and also Steve Wynn, have already said that if Genting is to build here, they want to do so too. To rule otherwise would be a restraint of trade, as well as a potential loss of a lot of tax dollars.

On a recent NYC program, the Marriott in Times Square were quoted as saying that 20% of their revenue comes from shows at the Javits.

[ASchwarz]

The one fly in the ointment most likely to shut this dumb idea down, is the instance of Genting that NYS gives them an exclusive to an NYC casino, and I don't think can happen.

This is all wrong.

First, it isn't a dumb idea. Having an empty, small, deteriorating exhibition shed in Midtown , and right on the waterfront, is a dumb idea.

Moving that blight for millions of square feet of development, generating billions in city and state revenue, is in fact a very smart idea.

And building a huge convention center designed for revenue-positive out-of-state conventions, rather than an exhiibition center for revenue-neutral local events. is also a very smart idea.

And you're totally mischaracterizing Genting's postion. They want some assurances for casino expansion rights (obviously, since they're the ones putting up the money), but never insisted having exclusive casino rights.

Cuomo is an incredibly powerful and popular Governor, and should be able to push this through the ususal naysayers and anti-everythings.

[lofter1]

Only in NYC (or maybe only at WNY) would the re-clad Javits (problematic as it might be) be termed a "deteriorating exhibition shed" and an example of "blight"

[JCMAN320]

Lol so true Lofter!

[scumonkey]

[John Q. Public]

To the question of whether Genting want exclusive casino rights in NYC, Here's the NY Times on Feb. 21: "The Genting proposal is also inextricably linked to its lavish gambling hall at Aqueduct, which features 5,000 electronic slot machines and table games. With Mr. Cuomo also advocating legalized full-scale casinos, Genting, a major casino and resort operator in Asia and England, wants assurances that it will be the exclusive gambling operation in the city."

On the topic of how the Javits is used, it's not for local shows, but rather for ones that bring in professional people from across the country and around the world. The recent Toy Fair is one example, with visitors from 105 countries, as exhibitors and attendees.

Yes, the Javits has shows like the Boat Show and the Auto show open to the public, but this is a very small percentage of what happens at the Javits. The vast majority are listed for trade shows intended only for business professionals involved with that specific industry, and attendees come in from everywhere.

Many large shows that they would like to bring to a larger facility, won't come here anyway, because exhibitors want to set up and take down their own booths, and will only participate in the few remaining "Right to Work" States; they want nothing to do with the union costs of exhibiting in NYC, and we certainly aren't going to change that.

A recent meeting was held for the convention producers (see Crain's) and the audience were one hundred percent against removing the Javits. If that were done, and the larger facility in Queens failed, we could find ourselves without a convention center in NYC, apart from the small hotel ones.

[ZippyTheChimp]

A recent meeting was held for the convention producers (see Crain's) and the audience were one hundred percent against removing the Javits. If that were done, and the larger facility in Queens failed, we could find ourselves without a convention center in NYC, apart from the small hotel ones.

Anyone with experience in New York real estate knows its unrealistic to think that the Javits would begin demolition on day one after an Aqueduct center opened

A proposal would have to be developed as to what to do with the site, and it would go through a lengthy review process. Both facilities would co-exist for several years, enough time to let the market place determine which one is more viable.

[Merry]

The following article covers several aspects of West Side development, including section three of the High Line and Hudson Yards.


Feature> West Side, Ho!

After years of politics and planning, community building, false starts, and new beginnings, the transformation of the far Manhattan's West Side in the 30s is underway.

by William Millard


FXFOWLE's rendering of the renovated Javits transformed, transparent, and integrated into the West Side.
Courtesy FXFOWLE

Second Life for the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s January 4 State of the State message included welcome news for West Siders who dream of a day when the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center no longer dominates their neighborhood. A proposal to replace the 1986-vintage, 1.37-million-square-foot hall with a 3.8-million-square-foot facility in Queens wasn’t buried in the details of Cuomo’s address: It was front and center, the first item in his economic blueprint, promising jobs, tourist dollars, and, for the West Side, $2 billion in potential private-sector development along the Battery Park City model—minus the Javits.

It all sounded grand, except that it echoes the same expectations that gave rise to the convention center in the first place when it was expected to generate 16,000 permanent jobs, $38 million in city taxes, and some $832 million in revenues to the city. And while, two years after opening, it brought in $988 million, according to a report published in The New York Times, it remained a crystalline white elephant blocking integrated urban development on the far West Side.

The Javits was conceived by Governor Hugh Carey’s administration with the highest hopes and with the best talent brought to bear. James Ingo Freed of I. M. Pei & Partners (later Pei Cobb Freed & Partners) envisioned it as a 20th-century crystal palace where, according to firm descriptions, “the play of solidity and transparency in which the vast interior, flooded with natural light, combines indoor and outdoor views” makes the space, with its glass vestibule soaring as high as 150 feet, “a covered city square” rather than the industry-standard remote, windowless mega-box.

A vision of connecting to the waterfront with a retail and restaurant-lined galleria running from east to west and engaging the local population was never realized. Shortly before it opened, Paul Goldberger wrote in the Times of its contradictory nature, describing the exterior glass as forbidding and the use of concrete within as excessively heavy. “It seems to call at once for a Boeing 747 and for a string quartet,” he wrote.

A rendering of the interior of the Javits (left) and details showing New glass panels with larger dimensions allowing for less metal and no pillowing.

Apart from political penny-pinching and neglected maintenance, Freed’s design was also a victim of bad timing in several respects. In the 1980s, the waterfront was in an apparently irreversible state of dereliction, prompting the architects to turn the building’s back on the river. It faced limited material choices, too, according to FXFOWLE principal Bruce Fowle, whose firm is now partnering with Chicago convention specialists Epstein and an all-star engineering team on the convention center’s current $463 million renovation. Pei & Partners initially specified a reflective glass (also used in Boston’s Hancock Tower), which would have brightened the appearance. “When that suddenly went off the market, they had to change it to the best-performing glass they could find, which was dark bronze with a very reflective coating,” Fowle recalled. “Any hope of transparency in the building from outside was lost.” Since 1980s’ glass was less flat than today’s, he added, “each pane was pillowed, in effect, so you don’t really see a very pure reflection; it’s a quilted look.”

Inside, leaks were a problem, necessitating tarpaulin “diapers” with hoses hung from the ceiling to direct rainwater into barrels. Keeping the glass clean was also a challenge: Fowle noted that the “interior system of gantries and elevators [was] abandoned at least 20 years ago.”

However, Freed’s futuristic space frame is surprisingly well preserved, said Tian-Fang Jing, a principal of Weidlinger Associates (structural engineers on both the original job and the renovation). Fast-track scheduling left the original supplier of the casting nodes unable to maintain quality control, but cracked ones were later replaced by Japanese forged-steel nodes, which remain sound.

Now that the materials and technologies are available to complete what Freed and Pei started, Fowle believes that the building’s strengths outweigh its acknowledged limitations. The new Javits has a higher-performing curtain wall of flat, transparent, bird-safe fritted glass (Viracon VNE1-63) in 5-by-10-foot modules, not 5-by-5-foot ones (meaning less metal and a more open feel), with scaffolding and rolling gantries to ease maintenance. It will also be 26 percent more energy efficient, with a 6.75-acre green roof and high-performance rooftop HVAC units. Improved waterproofing using perforated acoustic decking to reduce corrosion, plus stormwater absorption by the green roof, a light variety with regional succulents planted in 1½-inch soil (easily supported by reserve load-bearing capacity, Jing said, since the frame’s design was more conservative than the code specified), ensures that the reborn Javits should be diaper-free. “This building’s already been standing there for more than 25 years” despite rampant water damage, Jing concluded, “so another 25 years shouldn’t [be] any problem.”


Aerial view of the West Side, today, with undeveloped Hudson Yards at bottom, Javits center at left, and spaghetti
strands of the Lincoln Tunnel access roads to the right. Courtesy Google Maps

Given the position that the casino developer Genting is taking on guarantees connected to the proposed convention center in Queens, replacing the Javits may well take a quarter of a century. In the meantime, advocates of its removal are wringing their hands in anticipation. The Regional Plan Association (RPA), the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association (HKNA), members of Community Board 4, and others have bruited various plans that sell off or demolish the Javits superblock. A 1999 proposal by the Design Trust for Public Space and HKNA, published in 2002 as Hell’s Kitchen South: Developing Strategies, envisioned a relatively small-scale neighborhood with waterfront access, a repurposed multi-use Pier 76, and an expanded Hudson River Park. Take the Javits out of the mix, suggested HKNA-affiliated architect Meta Brunzema, and “there’s an opportunity to create a really great open-space network that will tie into the High Line.”

“It’s fairly clear that the highest and best use for the land Javits sits upon is not Javits,” observed Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of Columbia’s real estate development program and partner at SHoP Architects. A new mixed-use neighborhood restoring the street grid and waterfront access “would transform not just the Javits site but some 60 or 70 blocks of west Midtown,”perhaps breaking the logjam of Hudson Yards, Moynihan Station, and other projects. An outer-borough convention center is a separate riddle, contingent on high-speed rail access.

“To be fair to all of the businesses and hoteliers that have come to rely on the business that flows from the Javits, you need to have some sort of smaller but significant conferencing facility in Manhattan,” Chakrabarti added, noting that the RPA’s suggested site, Farley Annex, is plausible. “None of these ideas are going to happen tomorrow, and money is needed to be spent at Javits to simply maintain the facility and keep it operating, so the mid- to long-term planning exercise of where our convention center belongs shouldn’t get tied up with the short-term needs of fixing the existing facility. But at the end of the day, it’s simply no longer the right spot for a convention center. The land is simply too important, not just in terms of economic value but social value.”
As its neighborhood sprouts new attractions, the era of an isolated, pedestrian-unfriendly Javits may be ending; a reevaluation may be in order. “People still think it’s the old Darth Vader building,” Fowle said. “That’s a mindset that they have, and until people see it, it’s not going to change.”

http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5990

[John Q. Public]

Late Friday Governor Cuomo announced on a radio show that the Genting deal is dead, to which I can only say let's hope so, and put a stake through its' heart so it doesn't come back.

Genting apparently were not getting the tax relief they wanted, were unhappy with "infrastructure," and then there was the issue of whether they would every get to build their casino with exclusivity in the five boroughs.

Still, Cuomo says he wants the Javits to be "adapted to other uses," and next year will open bidding amongst other developers. While he hasn't really been specific as to what for, it seems he still wants to move conventions to Aqueduct, which if he had bothered to consult Friends of Javits (the main trade show producers), he would have learned was the dumbest idea ever. How about a partial land swap with Hudson Yards?