Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox?

New office space would be closer to subway lines and Google’s new headquarters across Ninth Avenue
Construction wouldn’t be inefficiently split between sites at opposite ends of an 800-foot long block
None of the new construction would be built over the interior court that now brings natural light to Chelsea Market’s retail concourse
The cost of cantilevering part of a tower over the High Line would be avoided
No appreciable shadows would be cast on the High Line, and it wouldn’t be robbed of light and air
The shape of Chelsea Market’s neighboring Caledonia apartment building, sculpted by zoning to step down to the existing height of Chelsea Market at Tenth Avenue, wouldn’t become a multimillion dollar irrelevancy
Scheme B would provide all the dubious benefits - none of which actually warrants a zoning change - which Jamestown claims for its own scheme: creating jobs, letting current tenants grow in place, and increasing customer traffic for Chelsea Market’s retailers. The High Line would still get its full payout from Jamestown, a contribution of about $19 million dollars, from a formula based on the total square footage of the building addition. Scheme B would also respect Jamestown’s phony case that its proposal spares mid-block character by directing area toward the avenues. Even if Chelsea Market had a low-rise mid-block context rather than a 25-story housing project on one side and hulking loft buildings on the other, avoiding the middle of the block to build over a park is like swerving to miss a dog and running over its owner. Clearly, something other than responsible urban planning is behind the city’s certification of Jamestown’s proposal, which is consistently based on such ridiculous and plainly self-serving arguments. Everything points to a back room deal between a few key players: Robert Hammond, co-founder and president of Friends of the High Line, is apparently desperate for the $19 million Jamestown would pay into a High Line maintenance fund in return for the floor area bonus it needs to add onto Chelsea Market. This follows on his failed effort to have the community close the gap in the park’s operating costs with a tax on those living near the High Line. Hammond is now reduced to letting an opportunistic Jamestown gouge the park and the community just to keep the High Line in fresh paint. His support for Jamestown’s proposal gives it all the credibility - and perhaps all the viability - it has. If this is his financial plan for the park, one has to wonder how long it’ll be until the next fire sale. Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commission chair, must surely view the High Line as a major piece of her legacy. She may so identify Hammond with the park as to deem its resources his to parlay. This would be a big assumption, given that $112.2 million in city funding and $20.3 million from the federal government built most of the park, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s website. The High Line open space Jamestown would privatize and cash in on was enriched with tax dollars as part of a public process intended to create a park. Jamestown Properties sold Google its new headquarters, the full-block building at 111 Eighth Avenue, for $1.9 billion and then bought out its partners in ownership of Chelsea Market, where Google also has offices, across Ninth Avenue. Jamestown, first and foremost an investment firm, would have a gold mine in space over the High Line that might be turned into office floors with views up and down New York’s hottest new attraction and over the Hudson. It has a ready, deep-pocketed tenant in Google. Jamestown’s promotional material suggests that its tenant needs more space: “As Google looks to occupy 100% of 111 Eighth Avenue, and Chelsea Market’s office floors remain fully leased, Jamestown is looking to capture the neighborhood’s dynamic growth and ensure that current Chelsea Market tenants have the option to grow within the complex.” Jamestown’s frequent reference to an emerging multi-block “technology corridor” might well be code for a Google campus stretching from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in Chelsea. When Sergey Brin cut the ribbon on his company’s new Chelsea Market offices in 2008, he shared scissors with no less than Senator Chuck Schumer. Google is catnip to politicians, especially the tech-smitten Bloomberg administration. As reported in a recent New York Times article by David Chen about Jamestown’s plans:A Bloomberg spokeswoman, Julie Wood, called the proposal “an important economic development project,” saying it would prompt additional development along the High Line, and attract more technology firms to a neighborhood that is already home to Google’s New York City headquarters and that will be the temporary home of Cornell’s new applied sciences school.
Google might not only afford the top-dollar rent on space above the High Line, but use views from it to further its well known practice of luring talent with perks. Don’t look for the City Planning Commission to reshape Jamestown’s proposal into anything like Scheme B. Clearly, responsible zoning isn’t the issue. There’s every appearance that the deal, from the start, has been about selling off a prime piece of High Line open space. If not, why would City Planning even have certified Jamestown’s proposal to build above the park? Powerful parties get what they want. Anyone naïve enough to ask whatever happened to democracy gets a horse laugh. If Google’s name opened doors for this, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture: city government complicit in taking a public amenity from its people to dangle before a private corporation it holds in higher regard. Google wouldn’t have to do any evil to get its private High Line skybox. That would all be taken care of. If memory serves, when a corporation threatened to leave the city unless it got a tax break in the 1980s, Mayor Koch replied: “Go ahead. When you leave New York, you’re going nowhere.” If this city isn’t a big enough draw for Google, our leaders shouldn’t respond by making it less attractive to everyone else. Technically, Jamestown’s proposal is still in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, known by the dyspeptic acronym, ULURP. In practice, the review process is a charade of public participation, a rigged game serving mainly to dignify deals already sealed by the time the “review process” is triggered by City Planning certification. As proof, only one project in memory has been certified but not built: a redevelopment of the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory, rejected in 2009 under atypical circumstances. Although local community boards get to weigh in on projects during ULURP, resignation reigns. Board members feel that if they flatly oppose a project, it will get built anyway and they’ll lose a place at the table to bargain for concessions or offsets, so they vote “no, unless” or “yes, if” concessions are made. These typically amount to side deals, like Community Board 4’s vote to reject Jamestown’s plan unless off-site affordable housing is provided. This vote opened the door for Chelsea’s City Council Member, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, to support the proposal without overruling a flat “no” vote by her board. Speaker Quinn is the only one whose vote can now kill Jamestown’s proposal. Chelsea residents feel betrayed by their Community Board's vote and are outraged at having their neighborhood made more like Times Square to benefit the High Line and corporate fat cats. Speaker Quinn is caught between responsibility to her constituents and a pro-business stance essential to her campaign for mayor. Maybe there’s a third way: vote against Jamestown’s proposal without conditions, pointing to solid land-use reasons and the many ways in which Jamestown’s proposal is egregious, deceptive and predatory. It’s not like there’s any lack of evidence. Is no business bad enough that opposing it would mean Quinn is anti-business? Would she rather be known for betraying her constituents and letting rich corporations pillage the public realm?