The boom is back, but the street is not. (Getty)

It's true of communities across the city, so why not West 57th Street? From the Rockaways to Staten Island, people have returned to their homes and businesses but found them without power, and the same seems to be going for the one-block stretch of the city that was shut down after the crane boom of One57 snapped back.

Yesterday, the city secured the crane boom to the side of the building, a day ahead of scheduled, and reopened the street. But that does not mean life is yet back to normal. According to a number of people on the street, they remain without electricity or heat—even though Con Ed claims otherwise. "They said we couldn't expect anything before noon," Daniel Van Doren, whose family owns 130 West 57th Street, told The Observer in a phone interview from his MetroNorth train headed to the city.

"Just like the rest of this debacle, Con Ed is not giving much detail," Mr. Van Doren added.

The Observer also spoke with someone at the Salsibury Hotel, the 118-room hotel at 123 West 57th Street that had to be evacuated because of the crane accident. "We're not back up yet," said a woman at the front desk, who asked we not use her name. "We really hope we'll be back this afternoon by three, but that all depends on Con Ed."

This would seem to contradict what a Con Edison spokesman told The Observer this morning. "The power has been turned back on, but there are still some customer who have issues we have to deal with," Alfonso Quiroz said. But Mr. Quiroz also mentioned flooding issues on the street as a problem, which so far no one has reported as a problem, this being some of the highest ground in Manhattan.

The power was shut down following the accident to ensure no further damage should the crane boom fall and puncture a gas main or electrical line, which could have triggered an explosion.

The lack of help from Con Ed extends not only to landlords but tenants, as well. "Do you know when I will be allowed access to my building (north side of 57th, between 6th and 7th)?" Stuart Bernstein wrote The Observer in an email. "My office is there, and I can get no info on when I might gain entrance to my building. Extreme frustration on many people's part as no info is coming out about this block near the crane."

Update:According to Dan Garodnick's office, "it could be a few days" before some people on the street see resumption of heat and steam service.

No lights, no glow. (Ian Lamb)

The Williamsburg Bridge. Well, half of it. (Ian Lamb)

With these pics from last night, there's not much to say (and it seems like there will be pretty much the same story tonight). We just went to the East River Ferry dock in Greenpoint to check out the skyline. As you know, usually there's a halo of light over the city, but now it just stops around 34th Street.

The rest is a void.

Uptown, where there's still power, you can see all the light reflected in the clouds, and then south of that there is just nothing. It also was very odd seeing the Williamsburg Bridge exactly half lit-up. Seeing the city from across the river you can really get a sense of just how many people are without power right now—a massive amount of people, living in close quarters.

And jesus, just think about all the housing developments along the East River. They run from at least 14th Street all the way down to Chinatown. You could see the outlines of those big square buildings just kinda lumbering there in the dark as far as you could see.

The best laid plans... (Getty)

It looks like dreams of a downtown Islamic cultural center could be dashed if Park51 cannot come to an agreement with Con Edison. Dogmatic developer Sharif El-Gamal shares control of the site for the proposed community center with the utility, and Con-Ed now claims Park51 owes $1.7 million in back rent, according to the Post.

Mr. El-Gamal owns the five-story building at 47-49 Park Place, which was almost landmarked last year in an effort to thwart the Islamic-theme project, while Con-Ed controls 51 Park Place, which Mr. El-Gamal rents. He has to keep control of both, otherwise he loses the option to buy the adjacent building, which would cut the site for the cultural center in half.

But the plan hit a major obstacle in August when Con Ed raised the rent from $2,750 a month, a rate set in 1972, to $47,437 a month, retroactive to July 31, 2008.

[...]

After conflicting appraisals of the property by Gamal and Con Ed, it seems both sides came to an agreement this summer.

Court papers show that the appraised price for the Con Ed property is $10.7 million. But Gamal contends Con Ed’s math was faulty when it calculated the rent, saying it owes only $881,519 in back rent and should have to pay $25,875 a month going forward.

The dispute is currently in court, but this is not the first time Mr. El-Gamal has had rent trouble. He had to forfeit his Soho offices over back rent, got into trouble with Citibank, was attacked for seeking 9/11 recovery funds and just general bad press. Which begs the question: Is this bad blood for a good project, bad luck or mere mismanagement?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Earlier this year, Gothamist began snooping around a wall on Third Avenue that many people believed to be part of Washington Park, the borough's first ballpark and the Dodgers' original home. The wall is now part of a Con Edison facility,
and the utility had plans to demo the building. Uproar ensued, the Landmarks Preservation Commission got involved, and while no specific protections have been conveyed, Con Ed has promised to preserve the historic parts of the structure.

Yesterday, a Gothamist reader was passing by and noticed demo work going on and feared the worst, as did Gothamist. Fortunately, Con Ed promises they are not taking down any part of the Washington Park wall. But we fear what would have happened were it not for those eyes on the street, to say nothing of the eyes on the web.

The Times wrote about the closure of Washington Park--it was replaced by the far more famous Ebbetts Field, which was replaced by housing projects in the 1960s when the Dodgers went West--in 1912: "The Giants concluded a season's pastiming by saying good-bye and good luck to the Dodgers in a 1 to 0 game at Washington Park yesterday. Then they closed up the park forevermore. Pass the kerchief, pitase, and catch the tears." They sure don't write 'em like they used to.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

Fisher Brothers has just reached a deal to sell a minority stake in one such property, Park Avenue Plaza. The property at 229 Park Avenue famously took air rights from the adjacent Tennis & Racquet Club -- an exclusive enclave designed by McKim, Mead & White -- and built a 44-story SOM tower behind it. For many years it was one of Midtown's top towers, and it remains prominent to this day. 

Rockpoint Group paid $330 million for its 49 percent stake in the building. "From the family's perspective we're in a great position to take advantage of some of the dislocation that may be coming," Winston Fisher, grandson of a founding Fisher, told The Journal.

And while there is no definitive proof, it would also make sense that the Fishers have finally struck a settlement with Sheldon Solow, the once mighty, now fallen developer king, as a means to drumming up further cash for their planned acquisitions. The families took a 50-50 stake in the former Con Edison site just south of the United Nations complex, paying $600 million to the utility a decade ago.

Since the partnership soured, the Fisher's have slowly been selling their stake to Solow, with just under seven percent left on the tab at a price of $111 million. When the recession hit and nearly wiped Solow out, he was unable to pay and a lawsuit ensued. The details of the latest deal remain undisclosed, but presumably they were satisfactory to all sides.

It's hard to be sure, as The Times spends part of its account of the deal delving into the troubled return of Solow, which The Observer chronicled earlier this year.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

Last week's heat wave produced no widespread outages even though the city nearly set a record for power consumption on July 5, when the temperature reached 103 degrees. The utility did cut back power in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, but for the most part, New Yorkers were able to keep cool without interruption.

We take this for granted, but we shouldn't. If Con Edison had not been well prepared, last week could have been hellish-even deadly. Large sections of the city's population, especially the very old or young, are at risk during heat waves.

So kudos to the men and women of Con Edison for their response to the heat crisis. With any luck, it will be the last such crisis of the summer.

In recent weeks the editor has discussed the Beaux-Arts, McKim, Mead, and White–designed structure with city officials, community groups and developer Douglas Durst.

While Mr. Carter could not be reached for comment, multiple people involved with the effort to preserve the building and convert its use said Mr. Durst has discussed moving the International Center of Photography, which is in one of his buildings, to the would-be museum.

“Graydon is definitely hot and heavy about studying the photography museum,” said a person in talks about the effort. (A spokesman for Mr. Durst declined to comment.)

One problem: The current owner, Con Edison, has no desire to move. It uses the building to make steam for heating, and photos of its interior show much unused space surrounded by mechanical equipment. But groups such as Landmark West and Hudson River Powerhouse Group have been drawn to its magnetic facade, urging the building to be landmarked by the city and ultimately converted to something else that anyone other than a Con Ed employee can use. (Other ideas thrown around: a Tate Modern for the West Side; extra space for John Jay College.)

“Our past position is unchanged,” said Chris Olert, a Con Ed spokesman. “We want it to remain a steam-generating plant.”

Paul Elston, the executive director of the Riverside South Planning Corporation, a nonprofit set up to help monitor development of the monster Penn Yards site just to the north, pushed by Donald Trump in the 1980s and 1990s, is trying to present alternatives to Con Ed that include a new cogeneration plan, suggesting as possibilities a site owned by Mr. Durst to the south or a Riverside South site to the north.

Mr. Elston’s grand plans involve a group of benefactors raising money to buy the site. “We have proposed that Con Edison and the city agree on a price for the building,” he said, “and that Con Edison sell the building to a nonprofit that will raise the funds for the acquisition and renovation of the building as a community cultural center.” But Con Ed seems to be skeptical that this could be worth its while. And the Bloomberg administration has resisted the idea of landmarking the building against Con Ed’s will.

“Using the IRT Powerhouse for a photography museum or other creative use is an intriguing idea,” Andrew Brent, a spokesman, said in a statement, “but it’s an actively used power plant so any change would have to include plans and funding for a replacement facility.”

ebrown@observer.com

No injuries have been reported.

The blast occured just a few blocks from the scene of last July's steampipe explosion near Grand Central Terminal, which injured 41 people and caused one woman to die from a heart attack.

The goal is to deliver two megawatts (MW) of solar power to city-owned buildings. In 2007 New York City was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E) as one of 13 cities to help build the country’s solar-energy market. As part of this partnership, the city set a goal of increasing its photovoltaic cell capacity from 1.1 MW in 2005 to 8.1 MW by 2015.

This is of course a small drop in a very large bucket. According to Con Ed’s Web site:

I provide these data only to communicate a sense of scale. One gigawatt equals one thousand megawatts. The tiny contribution of solar power is dwarfed by the growth of electrical demand in New York City. Still, you’ve got to start somewhere.

There are two ways we measure electrical power use, annually (as we did earlier) and based on peak demand (as we do in Con Ed’s Peak Load chart). Peak demand is important because you have to provide enough power to meet demand when everyone wants to use it. Like a shopping mall’s parking lot, you need enough spaces for the day before and day after Christmas. In the power business, you need enough power for the hottest day in August. Both peak load and annual use are growing in New York City.

Why is power use growing? It is partially due to population growth but largely due to the growth of electrical devices in our homes. The growing number of computers, air conditioners, Ipods, CD players, TVs, microwaves and videogames are increasing our need for power.

So why is solar making such a pathetic contribution to meeting our power needs? Is solar power for real? The short answer is yes. Solar cells are coming down in price, and government tax incentives, higher oil costs, and fears of global warming are all contributing to the growth of solar power.

New York City provides some challenges to the use of solar power that other cities do not present. While most of the land in New York City sits beneath single family homes, most of the people in New York City live in apartment buildings. Many of our apartment buildings do not have the space and sunlight needed for current solar technologies to provide enough power to warrant investment.

However, the technological base for solar power is starting to change. While we once needed an entire room to house a computer that had less memory than the lap top (or even the Blackberry) you are probably reading this piece on, a revolution in miniaturization has shrunk the world of electronic devices. Many engineers think this will soon happened to photovoltaic or solar technology. Despite the nearly complete absence of federal funding for solar energy research, some of our best scientists and engineers are working to improve solar cells. (Watch a video and read an article about this progress in last year's Science Daily.)

In fact, G. Pascal Zachary reported in a New York Times article this past February that a number of Silicon Valley’s chip designers are now working on solar cell technology. That piece noted that both solar and computer chip technologies were silicon-based and that to some chip engineers, solar cells were really a type of “chip.” Some solar enthusiasts see solar power as inevitable and cite its impressive recent growth rate as evidence that we will soon be living in a solar powered world.

And even without new technology, other analysts see room for increased use of solar energy in our energy mix.

I agree that solar energy has enormous potential. My engineering colleagues at Columbia tell me that the earth absorbs much more energy in the form of sunlight than we could ever need to power our homes and businesses. The problem is we don’t know how to efficiently collect that energy and store it. The technology of solar cells must become more efficient and practical and the power we take from the sun must be stored in a more cost effective battery.

How do we get from here to there? I think the development of new carbon-free, solar-based energy technology is the single most important scientific challenge the United States (and the rest of the world) now faces. Low cost, decentralized energy would change the way we live. We would no longer be dependent on foreign oil. We would no longer need to pollute the planet by mining and burning fossil fuels. Imagine if all of the power use in your home could be fueled by a set of solar cells that could fit on a single window pane? If you think it’s impossible, let’s imagine it’s the year 1950 and someone tells you that some day you will carry a telephone in your pocket that is smaller than a wallet—and it would work anywhere. Or you will carry 5,000 songs and 150 movies in a machine that is no larger than that tiny phone.

The next President and Congress should put together a big pile of cash, a bunch of tax incentives and then set a moon-landing type national goal for solar power. Currently, the energy companies and antigovernment ideologues have blocked significant federal funding for solar research. If we are to move forward on this, these anti-solar forces will need to be countered by the economic interests of insurance companies and other businesses that are being damaged by global warming and high energy costs. This is a critical moment for America’s technological and economic future. A lot rides on what Congress and the new President manage to accomplish in 2009.

I am grateful for the research assistance of Sara Schonhardt, Master of International Affairs student, Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs

They were right to do so.

It's not clear how much the MTA can do to maintain train service in the century-old system during such exceptional weather, but it's certainly fair to ask how prepared we are for a terror attack or other catastrophic event after the agency's web site crashed, its workers were for the most as unpleasant and uninformative as ever (on many stations and trains failing to let riders know which trains were running until they were already in the midst of their commute) and half-empty buses passed by passengers waiting outside of train stops.

To call attention to the problem of the MTA's lack of preparedness - and to put pressure on the agency to perform better before the heavy rain predicted for last night and today -- Governor Eliot Spitzer, Comptroller Bill Thompson, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and other elected officials spoke out.

"We're not satisfied," the governor declared. "There was a system failure, and any time there is a system failure, you're not satisfied."

The one exception? Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said, "The bottom line is the subway system is pretty reliable." (Today's Daily News headline: "CITY TO RIDERS: LIVE WITH IT!")

Mr. Bloomberg may not control the MTA, but as the self-fashioned education mayor who successfully fought to gain mayoral control of the city's schools from the unelected Board of Education, he should know something about the power of his bully pulpit over outside agencies that service New Yorkers.

But on other issues, Mr. Bloomberg has taken a much quieter public stance, and in doing so has deprived himself of his ability to use public pressure, as his predecessors had, to influence decisions a mayor can't directly control.

Recall 2004, when a fire in a switch station led the Transit Authority president to announce, bizarrely, that A and C service would be suspended for three to fire years. Hundreds of thousands of commuters would have been effected daily, and politicians, citizens and the press fairly wondered how the system could respond to a greater problem if a fire in one switch room could shut down a key train line for half a decade. Mr. Bloomberg, an engineer, was conspicuously absent from the outcry, shrugging that if the shutdown was necessary, so be it.

Ten days later, service was largely restored, no thanks to the mayor, who seemed to view the initial complaints as political showmanship, and chose instead to defer to the MTA's technocrats-who'd until then been claiming that a week-and-a-half job would take at least three years.

Likewise, Mr. Bloomberg took a back seat during negotiations between the Transit Workers Union and the MTA in the contract negotiations that led to the 2002 strike that shut down the trains for three days just a few months after the mayor took office. A few days before the strike, he held a press conference to announce that he'd purchased a $663 bike to ride to work, and to suggest other New Yorkers do the same. The mayor signaled that he was ready to weather the strike instead of averting one by making clear that there would be dramatic consequences.

Compare this to Ed Koch's warnings prior to the 1980 transit strike when he bellowed out: "Stand up! Stand firm! Don't give away the city because of an illegal strike. Don't let these bastards bring the city to its knees by engaging in an illegal strike." (The union did strike nonetheless, correctly calculating that the raise they could get would be worth the price they'd pay in fines under the Taylor Law.)

A clearer contrast would be Mr. Giuliani's response to a threatened 1999 strike, when he declared that the TWU's demand for a 27 percent pay hike over three years was "way out of the ballpark." He sought and received a court injunction that prohibited transport workers from striking, voting to strike, "encouraging or condoning, or lending support or assistance of any nature to any strike." He threatened to pass all the city's expenses during a strike on to the union, and declared, ''They're going to really regret this after it happens.''

There was no strike that year, and the union waited for a weaker mayor and a better opportunity to press its case.

Mr. Bloomberg has extended the same public silence to his relations with Con Ed. During the 2006 Queens blackout that hit 100,000 residents and thousands of businesses for more than a week, he continued to offer public support to the utility, even as the power outage dragged on and it became clear that Con Ed had lied about how many residents were effected.

A week into the blackout, the mayor declared at a press conference with city and state legislators from the affected areas that "I think [Con Ed CEO] Kevin Burke deserves a thanks from this city. He's worked as hard as he can." The Queens officials who'd agreed to stand with the mayor were so stunned by this that they openly sneered and rolled their eyes, and publicly declared they didn't stand with the mayor, leading to a shouting match with Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler in full view of the press.

Mr. Bloomberg's hands-off approach has allowed Con Ed to continue operating in the same sloppy and unaccountable fashion. They're currently stonewalling a City Council inquiry into the cause of a July midtown steam pipe explosion that killed one person, shut down several of the city's busiest streets and conjured up the attacks of 9/11. The mayor has conspicuously kept silent.