Chef Marc Murphy of Landmarc.

Tribeca is known for big-bucks lofts, celebrity residents and fancy food. The Taste of Tribeca, started in 1994, is a great way to pig out on glamorous grub from eateries like Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Grill, Bouley, Landmarc, City Hall and many others. The family-friendly event benefits the neighborhood’s public elementary schools P.S. 234 and P.S. 150, and thus features a play-all-day Kids Zone. And for the parents: a New York State wine tasting.

Hudson Street, 11:30am-3pm, tickets from $45. 

The MTA has been saying it would have the subways up and running within two hours of getting the power back, but they're not there yet, apparently. Though the subways were supposed to be a priority, power above ground does not necessarily mean power below. "We're not expecting anything right now, but I also wouldn't count it out," an MTA spokesman said. So the subway wait continues.

Not your average cesspool. (windfucker/Flickr)

It seems that trash, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder if two studies of New York’s street cleanliness are anything to go by. Travel + Leisure recently released a much-publicized list that found New York to be the dirtiest city in America. In an effort to try and rebut this filthy scarlet letter, the city's Independent Budget Office dug into the Mayor's Management Report, released the following week, that found 95.5 percent of the New York City's streets here are "acceptably clean."

The IBO collated information from the 2012 fiscal year, which found that the vast majority of streets in New York only have scattered litter here and there. It is a far cry from the results of the magazine’s survey, which apparently sees the place as one giant trash heap. This makes the city’s $81m investment in street cleaning measures seem pretty futile. Oh, and the other $570m spent on curbside garbage collections. The pricey debacle takes blowing money on trash to a whole new level.

Not even the technological wonders of 450 mechanical brooms could help clean up the disparity in perceptions between the two conflicting sources. Each year, the mayor's office asks community boards to rank local services in order of importance, with street cleaning coming in at 17th. This placed above the likes of services for the homeless and economic development initiatives, reinforcing just how selfless the good people of New York really are. Why spend money helping those without a roof over their heads when your taxes can go towards funding a mechanical broom? At least we can all agree on that.

A few feeble ‘explanations’ have been offered up in order to elucidate the gulf in public and municipal opinion, namely that the mayoral rating scale was drawn up some 40 years ago and probably doesn’t reflect our diminished tolerance for dirt. Let’s not forget that Donny Osmond was also acceptable in the 1970s, so that period of LSD addled disarray may not be the best indicator of contemporary opinion.  Operations staff has promised to update the system accordingly, so only time will tell if the new ratings will be as amusingly shambolic as those currently in place.

No wonder Mr. Rhea found himself on the firing lines recently. The Daily News carried out a campaign that had readers believing Mr. Rhea was an incompetent hack who was sitting on a billion dollars in unspent money while tenants suffered in conditions worthy of a Dickens novel.

As Mr. Chaban’s excellent report noted, the real story of Mr. Rhea’s tenure at the Housing Authority is, well, a little more complicated than critics acknowledge.

The Housing Authority truly is a city of its own. Accommodating 420,000 tenants in 178,000 apartments in 334 housing projects is almost, by definition, an impossible job. There always will be a repair that needs to be made or a condition that requires immediate attention. None of this happens with a simple phone call.

Mr. Rhea was a banker before he agreed to take on the thankless job of heading a troubled agency—his critics seem to regard private-sector experience as a negative, but then again, they would, wouldn’t they?—and he has drawn on his expertise to find creative solutions to the Housing Authority’s perennial budget woes. The authority is dependent on federal funds, and it has been a long time since Washington was particularly interested in public housing.

What’s more, Mr. Rhea has tried to spend money wisely, even if that means not writing checks as soon as he has the money. For example, Mr. Rhea suspended the expenditure of $42 million on security cameras until he was satisfied that the cameras actually were useful in combating crime. That was a prudent decision, but bear in mind that it takes no small amount of courage to put a hold on spending in any public agency. One City Council member, Rosie Mendez, noted that she didn’t like Mr. Rhea’s decision at first. But, she acknowledged, “it was the right thing to do.”

Mr. Rhea also had to answer the Daily News’s charge that he had a billion dollars sitting around doing nothing while tenants lived in squalor. It turns out that nearly all of the money has been allocated, and while about half of it hasn’t been spent yet, it takes time before money actually changes hands between Washington and New York. And, by the way, sometimes it’s a good thing to actually think about how money is being used, rather than simply handing out checks.

John Rhea has been asked to turn around one of the city’s largest and most complicated agencies. He is doing so by paying more attention to problem solving than in cultivating political alliances. That’s not a bad thing at all.

The bike is in better shape than its rider... and the law. (Streetsblog)

As if we needed another reminder about the need for the NYPD to investigate deadly vehicular accidents in New York City, Streetsblog recounts the tale of an accident earlier this week in East Harlem where a cyclist died. Not only was there no investigation, the NYPD’s own press shop was handing out conflicting reports to various media outlets.

Accounts differ as to how the crash unfolded. DNAinfo reported that, according to NYPD, the cyclist “was heading east with traffic on 108th Street,” and the cab driver “was traveling on 108th and had the green light … when the cyclist entered the intersection and was struck by the cab.”

Information provided by NYPD to both Streetsblog and Gothamist, however, indicates that the cyclist was traveling westbound on E. 108th (which is one-way eastbound) when he was hit by the cabbie, who was southbound on Park. The spokesperson we talked to described the crash as a “t-bone situation.” The cyclist’s age was reported by Gothamist and DNAinfo as 19, while NYPD told Streetsblog he was 18.

The victim of the accident was 19, and whether or not he was responsible for what happened, it will come as no comfort to the family that they will never know because the police department is not about to put their resources behind finding out.

And it seems unlikely they will any time soon. The mayor has been trimming the department more and more over recent years, and while he and Commissioner Ray Kelly deserve—and loudly proclaim—credit for keeping deaths both vehicular and otherwise down, the fact remains there is not enough money to go around.

If the decision is between more beat cops to keep 3- and 4-year-olds from getting hit with stray bullets and figuring out why someone died at an intersection, which course of action is the department really going to take?

Maybe if the media stopped covering these deaths as though the victims were reckless and at fault, public sentiment might turn in their favor, and thus the police would follow suit. But until that begins to happen, the victims, and their families, appear doomed to their anonymous fate.

Ain't she a beaut': 49-51 Chambers Street.

In his ongoing push for efficiency, efficiency, efficiency in city government, Mayor Bloomberg announced a plan during his State of the City address in January to consolidate city departments downtown.

The proposal not only helps co-locate agencies, improving collaboration, but also saves the city money on operating expenses, as much as $100 million over the next 20 years according to the city’s projections as it vacates three historic buildings around City Hall. The Bloomberg administration is further enriching the city’s coffers by selling off the properties to private developers.

Borough President Scott Stringer has complained that the property is not being put to better use, as public land has elsewhere in the five boroughs has been, and so he has voted against the sale of the buildings as part of the public review process for their disposition.

"Lower Manhattan is one of the nation’s premier central business districts, but it is also experiencing a boom in its residential population," Borough President Stringer said in a statement. "I believe the City should strive to provide the infrastructure necessary to support this new population."

This morning, the borough president's office sent their recommendations to the Department of City Planning as part of the ULURP process, with the main demand being the inclusion of some community uses within at least one of the sites. This does not mean the buildings would be developed exclusively as affordable housing, a school, senior center or the like, which the community board has also been clamoring for, just some portion of the facilities would serve as such.

The community board sent its own proposal to City Hall all but begging for these considerations to be included in an RFP for the properties only to be ignored. Last month, the board voted unanimously against the sale.

Instead, the city is proposing residential, commercial or hotel uses for the properties, located at 22 Reade Street, 49-51 Chambers Street and 346 Broadway.

"Our goals are to consolidate and improve City office space, cut costs and generate tax revenue from buildings that are currently underused," Bloomberg spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said. "We will review the proposals we’ve received and work with the many stakeholders in this process to make sure that the final plan best serves Lower Manhattan."

Mr. Stringer and the board argue that because city-owned land is so hard to come by downtown, it should include some public use, as has been done with properties in less well-to-do neighborhoods, where it is common for the city to turn vacant or underutilized properties over to affordable housing developers or community groups.

The borough president may actually be able to thwart the city's plans, a task that is usually difficult in ULURP because his office's role is merely advisory. But the disposition of public land requires a vote by the Borough Board, a body made up of Manhattan's City Council members and the chairs of its community boards. The borough president chairs the board, and along with the backing of the local board, could stand a good chance of defeating the city's plan.

It may come to that since the city went ahead and issued the RFP this spring and bids are due today. There has been intense interest in the well-located properties, on the border of Tribeca, with more than 40 firms having toured them. These include some of the city's biggest (and most politically connected) developers, among them Vornado, Two Trees and Kushner Companies (whose partner, Jared Kushner, publishes The Observer). Their opposition to public uses could hamper the borough president's plan to extract such concessions given the developers clout—and their checkbooks.

"The borough president is confident that productive discussions with the mayor's office will continue on these issues, and a resolution will be reached," Mr. Stringer's spokeswoman, Audrey Gelman, said.

While the borough president acknowledges a lack of public benefit in the current proposal, he still said the mayor's decision to consolidate space and buoy the city's balance sheets is a good one.

"The Civic Center plan offers great potential benefits to our City, and I look forward to discussing it further with the administration,” he said. "By working together I believe that we can simultaneously advance the goal of consolidation, realize significant taxpayer savings and consider a variety of ways to meet the needs of Lower Manhattan."

Not in our back quad! (GVSHP)

Last Thursday, as has happened every day for going on a century, a couple middle-aged intellectuals gathered around a table in Greenwich Village to discuss the news of the day, which, as has happened every day for going on a century, did not suit them.

“They act like it’s a no-brainer,” Mark Crispin Miller explained of the acquaintances he had made in recent months in his quest to stand up to his employer and landlord, New York University. Just two days prior, a committee of the City Council, part of the monolithic “they” Mr. Crispin Miller was railing against, approved the university’s 2 million-square-foot expansion plan, which would plant four sizable buildings just across the street.

“‘Of course it’s going through,’ they tell you,” he said with disgust. “‘She’s running for mayor, she needs the support of the real estate industry, you moron.’” She would be Christine Quinn, Speaker of the City Council, without whose blessing almost nothing happens there. Her district also happens to be just around the corner, giving her added incentive to take an interest in, and credit for, the project.

“This is a no-bullshit city,” Patrick Deer interjected with his British crack. “Even if we see something’s off from across the street, we’ll barge in and do something about it. There’s an innate sense of justice. Or so I thought. I know there was when I got here.” Mr. Deer has been at NYU since 2002, teaching English.

“It’s amoral, like Mitt Romney,” added Bo Ricobono, an adjunct education professor and Soho lifer active on the community board, which unanimously opposed the expansion.

“You mean immoral,” Mr. Crispin Miller said.

“Not immoral, amoral,” Mr. Ricobono continued. “He has to do what he has to do. In that context, in finance, that’s fine. Well, it’s not fine, but it makes sense, you know what I mean? But in this context, in a public project and a public process, it’s just wrong.”

“You purport to act morally,” Mr. Crispin Miller said, looking up from his empty water glass, toward the ceiling. “That’s what Machiavelli said.”

They were sitting inside the Silver Spurs at the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, having finished a meal of burgers, the restaurant’s greasy specialty. They had hoped to go to Bruno Bakery for some lighter fare, but it had been overtaken by Spanish tourists—yet another affront.

“I love this university. This was my dream job, and we’re just trying to save the university from itself,” Mr. Deer said.

But really, the argument was academic. Like a student blithely ignoring the class syllabus, the NYU faculty opposed to the plan had left their all work for the very last minute. It had been a convincing argument, the kind that might have swayed the public had it been delivered earlier. But politicians and city planners do not grade on a bell curve. At best, the faculty had gotten a C-, a few concessions and little else.

For the past five years, NYU has been working on its first real master plan. Entitled NYU 2031, it is meant to chart the school’s growth over the next two decades as it expands in the Village and beyond—well beyond. Campuses are already up and running in Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and the biggest yet is planned for Shanghai. It is largely the vision of the university’s current president, John Sexton, the long-time dean of the Law School and former chairman of the New York Fed.

Were his vision for a “global network” lacking projects in New York—which also include the takeover of New York Polytechnic in Brooklyn to form NYU Poly, as well as an expansion of the medical school along First Avenue and a possible campus on Governors Island—his critics would probably be delighted, rather than despondent. As it is, they feel ignored, unloved, suffocated. At least that’s been the case the past few months.

It wasn’t until February that any discernible opposition movement began to form within the university. “NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan,” they dubbed themselves.

“We call it the Sexton Plan because it’s his plan, not ours,” Mr. Crispin Miller said. “The university is its professors, not the administration.” He is the opposition’s unofficial ringleader. A professor of media studies, he has round glasses and a buzz cut more befitting a monk than a marine. His books include Boxed In: The Culture of Television, The Bush Dyslexicon and Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy.

The opposition group has galvanized a good portion of the faculty—about 40 percent of whom live on the superblocks NYU wishes to redevelop—against the plan. So far, 37 schools or divisions have passed resolutions opposing the plan, including 27 of 32 in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the university’s oldest and most influential body.

These include programs that arguably know a thing or two about the university’s current undertaking, namely the Stern Business School, which voted 52-3 against, and the economics department, whose 30 professors were unanimous in their disapproval. “What does it tell you that these guys think this plan is a farce?” Mr. Crispin Miller said. Many of the humanities departments, from Anthropology to Museum Studies to Social and Cultural Analysis, are also opposed. Ditto Chemistry, Mathematics and the Center for Neural Science, among others. “And there are more by the week,” Mr. Crispin Miller said.

If one were to build the perfect coalition to beat back such a plan, this would be the place to do it. Economists, planners, scientists, investigative journalists—Nobel laureates! “I voted against it without reservation,” economics professor Thomas Sargent, who won the Nobel Prize last year for his study of “cause and effect in the macroeconomy,” said in an email. “The vote reflected widespread distrust among faculty members that has been fostered by the central administration’s embarking on various ill-conceived and expensive endeavors without consulting the faculty members for their advice and opinions.”

What more could community activists ask for?

Perhaps a little activity. While the outcry since February has been impressive, and is only growing louder, that was a month after NYU certified its plans with the City Planning Commission, at which point they were basically cast in stone. The proposal was ultimately shorn by the City Council committee last week and goes before the full council Wednesday (basically a rubber-stamp vote), but it remains only 20 percent smaller than originally proposed. Two of the four towers have been reduced in size but otherwise remain. In size, it is a development comparable to two Chrysler Buildings.

Meanwhile, the opposition group did not launch its website until late March, and it came up with its own counter-proposal only last week, the same day the council committee voted through the modified plan—well beyond the moment at which it could have changed anything.

In a similar fight two years ago, Extell Development’s plans for the last parcel of Riverside Center were confronted with four separate alternatives offered up by the community board that ultimately helped alter the shape of that proposal, though none of them overhauled it, either.

Quite a few community board members have complained privately that they wish the faculty had been more publicly involved in the fight. “They make a strong case against this plan, one that could really sway public opinion,” one board member said. “I just wish they had made it a year or two ago.”

The NYU administration deserves a good deal of credit for pacifying the faculty, though reportedly not in good faith. “They would hold these little open houses and say, ‘Oh, this is years away,’” Mr. Crispin Miller said. “When we would confront other faculty about it, they said the same thing. ‘I don’t have to worry about that.’ One of the smartest things NYU ever did was spruce up the gardens and buy a new jungle gym, after years of neglect, as if to say, ‘Look, why would we buy this new jungle gym if we were going to tear it down tomorrow?’”

Barbara Weinstein, one of the university’s distinguished Silver Professors, argues it is wrong to pass judgment on the faculty for its timing. “As with most issues, large numbers of people only got mobilized when specific decisions were looming in the near future,” she said. “How much are you doing to prevent global warming, which threatens life as we know it? I’m guessing not a whole helluva lot, even though the threat is massively greater than that of NYU 2031.”

As with any radical debate taking place, there is far from unanimity of opinion. “I am not opposed to it, nor do I view it as my job to defend it,” one Stern finance professor said, lauding the school’s “careful thought about how to achieve it within the constraints of our urban environment.”

Mitchell Moss, the outspoken urban planning professor and a supporter of the expansion, believes the fight is purely political. “You have a number of faculty who relish getting into political fights,” he said. “For them, this is just an extension of their time in graduate school, in Berkeley or Cambridge. For a lot of faculty members, it’s a necessary distraction from the burden of writing and teaching.”

And there is some truth to that. Animosity against President Sexton has been stirring since his appointment—some faculty wanted an outsider—and has only intensified as he has expanded the student body and the university’s footprint. A number of professors said they foresee a no-confidence vote in the future, and Mr. Crispin Miller made similar overtures toward Ms. Quinn and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, in whose district the project falls. “There is real talk in the community of a recall,” he warned.

The faculty already has Gibson Dunn on retainer and is preparing a lawsuit challenging the expansion once it is approved. (It cannot be challenged in court until that time, but such efforts have a track record of failure.)

Ms. Chin said the failure of the professors had as much to do with intractability as anything. “They had a very strong position pretty much opposing this, they didn’t want any compromise,” she said. “They just wanted a no, and it was hard to explain to them how we had to work things out with NYU.

“They did not seem to understand the process.”

The views from the ivory tower are pretty good, until some wants to build something bigger next door.

"What’re they going to tell us next? Are they going to get in the bedroom?” asked 19-year-old Zach Huff. The spokesperson for NYC Liberty HQ, barely tall enough to reach the microphone, was cheekily addressing a small group of rather tame demonstrators amassed in front of City Hall Monday for the Million Big Gulp March, a rally protesting Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large sodas.

If passed, the ban would prevent restaurants, delis, movie theaters and street carts from selling sugar-laden drinks that exceed 16 ounces. The protesters were, in a sense, advocating on behalf of beverages that contain 25 percent of one’s recommended daily caloric intake.

We stood waiting for some small eruption of jeering or whistling from the crowd in reaction to Mr. Huff’s aside. Nothing. Perhaps the lackluster response was a result of his bizarre logic leap from soda ban to bedroom play. Or maybe he hadn’t quite lowered the microphone enough to be heard above the slurping.

Andrea Herbert, a protestor from Midtown Manhattan, stood cornered by a media frenzy. (There were easily five reporters for every protestor.) She cradled a Super Big Gulp brimming with 40 ounces of blue Gatorade and a makeshift sign that read “Nanny Bloomberg: Stay out of our kitchens.”

Ms. Herbert told The Observer she fears the ban is a precursor to future food bans and an infringement on civil liberty.

“I understand that after this [Mr. Bloomberg] is going after popcorn, then Starbucks,” Ms. Herbert said, expressing genuine concern over the impending demise of all sugar- and butter-laden snacks.

We shifted our attention toward the voice of Queens councilman and Republican congressional candidate Dan Halloran, who was accompanied by two young women outfitted in soda cup costumes that read “One small sip for man … one Big Gulp for mankind.”

Mr. Halloran, with his flashy propaganda in tow, had his audience jeering the ban in minutes, imparting on the crowd his sound reasoning for protesting.

“When the mayor went after salt, nobody said anything,” Mr. Halloran bellowed to the crowd, evoking (perhaps unintentionally) Martin Niemöller’s excoriation of Germany’s failure to halt the Nazis’ rise to power. “When the mayor went after MSG, everyone was quiet. When the mayor required us to post the information about the calorie counts in everything, no one said a word. When we banned smoking inside restaurants, everyone said, ‘Hey, it’s fine. Well, today, it’s your soda,” he concluded.

His reasoning echoed in the testimonial of Audrey Silk, founder of CLASH, a smoker advocacy group.

“How soon until you can’t have that soda or burger standing outside—just like they don’t let smokers have a cigarette—because they say it’ll teach children the wrong message?” Ms. Silk questioned the audience, some of whom were murmuring about her smoker’s rasp.

Despite all the circular reasoning, the crowd seemed ever firm in mitigating the ban, claiming a breach of personal rights and emphasizing Bloomberg’s tendency to focus on frivolous causes in lieu of a grander picture.

We sauntered over to Jim Lesczynski, a protestor toting around the most discernible activist prop at the rally—his three children, each with a Big Gulp in hand.

“I think it makes a statement that people are able to give their children a treat,” Mr. Lesczynksi told The Observer regarding his decision to include his children in the rally.

“And he’s picking us up from camp!” his youngest daughter offered helpfully before taking a swig of Hawaiian Punch.

The City Council had a laundry list of concerns about NYU's 2031 Expansion plan. (Jess Schiewe)

The City Council's public hearing on New York University's Village expansion plan drew a crowd on Friday that was notable for both its size and its star power— Matthew Broderick offered testimony on the neighborhood's quickly eroding quirkiness—and its eagerness to communicate its distaste for the controversial project.

In fact, the City Hall hearing filled up so fast that eager attendees had to line up outside the door, waiting until someone left the room before they were allowed to enter. The Observer watched as one sign-bearing group debated queuing up in the punishing heat before deciding against it.

“Let’s just come back,” said one of the women. Nodding in agreement, her companions headed back onto the street with their yellow 8” x 10” laminated “Wrong for NYC-Wrong for the Village-Wrong for NYU” posters.

Inside the council chambers, community and council members spoke about the plan's flaws, expressing doubts that the plan—a multifaceted project that calls for the construction of new buildings, open public spaces, and facilities such as student housing and retail stores in the Greenwich Village area totaling more than 2 million square feet on two already-developed superblocks south of Washington Square Park—was as "perfectly balanced" as City Planning Commission chair Amanda Burden claims it is.

“NYU does not have the best track record when it comes to upkeep and maintaining a space,” said Council Member Margaret Chin, who represents the district where NYU's current and proposed home are located. “I strongly believe this plan is unacceptable in its current form.”

“NYU would not be where it is today without the pioneers who built Greenwich Village,” she added, eliciting a flurry of “jazz hands” (instead of applause) from the audience of villagers. Ms. Chin cited a number of concerns about the project, including the loss of public open spaces and the difficulty of maintaining affordable housing. She said that she felt it was important that the community retain some sort of decision-making power. Given Ms. Chin's authority in the neighborhood, such issues are likely to be central to any concessions that the council demands from NYU in exchange for project approval.

Other council members were equally skeptical, if not altogether opposed, to the university’s expansion plan. Council Member Jessica Lappin, leery of NYU’s motives, questioned the inevitability of the argument that the university needed more space. “You have made a choice to have a very large undergraduate population and my question is why you have chosen to grow to such a large number of undergraduates?” she asked members of the university administration.

Council Members Leroy Comrie and Gail Brewer asked questions about the design and aesthetics of the proposed campus, focusing on how the ambiance of the Village would be maintained and how the neighborhood's mix of shadow and light would be affected by the new buildings.

Assembly Member Deborah Glick and State Senator Tom Duane were sharper in their criticisms. Ms. Glick lambasted the institution for its “complete disregard and betrayal of community planning,” while Mr. Duane warned of possible future problems. “Don’t put us in a position of disliking a place that we have lived within in good times and bad times,” he said. “Don’t make it a battle from this point.”

The sentiments expressed during the public comment portion— which consisted of testimony from 200 people, the majority of them neighborhood residents or members of local organizations like Villagers for a Sustainable Neighborhood—were equally opposed to the plan. And David Gruber, a chairman from Community Board 2, pointed out that it isn’t just the community that opposes the development: 34 departments within the university also publicly oppose the plan. “Not 34 professors, but 34 departments,” Mr. Gruber noted. “So we really have to question the validity of this plan.”

Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media, culture, and communication at NYU, who was also at the hearing, spoke on behalf of other "stalwartly opposed" NYU faculty members. NYU's 2031 Expansion plan, he said in an email to the Observer is "something that has never happened in the history of NYU's expansion in the Village....NYU's finances are a mess—despite John Sexton's vehement claims to the contrary."

NYU President John Sexton defended his plan before the council, saying that the $4 to $5 billion dollar plan was "designed to be as little intrusive as possible” and was necessary for the university to continue too thrive.

“If we become too disparate, the fact that we don’t have a campus, that we don’t do big time athletics, that we don’t have a football stadium, would disable us from attracting students who have as an option going elsewhere where they have those elements,” Mr. Sexton told the Council. The NYU Expansion, he said, would expand the institution’s core and create a more cohesive central campus.

The City Council is scheduled to vote on the NYU’s Village Expansion plan later this summer.

jschiewe@observer.com

BluePRint pulls back the curtain on development. (Getty)

One of the more onerous aspect's of developing in New York City is the public review process, known as ULURP, a seven-month gauntlet of meetings and votes and editorializing about one's baby. But just as troublesome can be the act of getting to ULURP, a pre-certification process at the Department of City Planning that can take months, and sometimes even years, as city officials and planners get a project into the shape they want it and running environmental and economic analysis on the project.

The city just popped an aspirin on this development headache, or rather an Aleve, for a new program known as BluePRint, the Business Process Reform. It is meant to streamline the pre-certification process, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel announced at an ABNY breakfast this morning.

"These improvements will save applicants up to $100 million per year in soft costs and carrying costs," Mr. Steel said. "More development means more jobs for New Yorkers, and BluePRint simplifies the way applications are reviewed so those jobs can be created as soon as possible."

Since pre-certification takes place largely behind doors, with many moving parts, there is no set timeline for it, unlike ULURP, which has a seven-month clock for all the parties to act. This has much to do with the size of the projects and how much attention they need, the complexity of a site (over transit or a brownfield and so forth), and other factors.

Still, the Department of City Planning predicts certification will happen up to 50 percent faster for projects and provide a level of certainty for developers by codifying the steps in the process. “The pre-ULURP process has been the most problematic aspect of the public review process for real estate development," Real Estate Board president Mary Anne Tighe said in a statement. "It has been time-consuming, costly and unpredictable."

No longer. An entirely new per-certification review process has been created, which will launch in July. It has fewer steps with published templates and materials meant to help developers and their associates put together their applications. There will also be a new electronic system to increase coordination within the Department of City Planning as well as with outside agencies, a system that will also help developers track their projects.

The program will also aid the city in executing public projects, as well.

Many planners and developers believe that the ULURP process itself needs an overhaul, either because the community group has too little or too much power, but this first step should have developers in a better mood to proceed on these projects. They might even accede to some community demands if so.