The troublesome two. (NYU)

Following a cadre of strong editorials in favor of NYU's Greenwich Village expansion plan, the 800-pound gorilla has spoken. Its fur is purple and it is screaming down the protesters in favor of the project. The Times' editorial board favors almost every point in NYU's plan. It is a striking endorsement for a number of reasons, but first, what was written.

The Times says the project's critics have overreacted; the community board "too vehemently" rejected the plan; the faculty who does not like are, well, dumb; and then tacitly calls on Borough President Scott Stringer to support the proposal with few changes:

There are some criticisms that N.Y.U. should take seriously, including the scale of the two large triangular buildings. Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, has proposed reductions in their design that would move far too much space outside of the site. But N.Y.U. should pay attention to worries that the structures will create walls to the streets on either side of the construction area. N.Y.U. is selling the project in part as a way to open what is already supposed to be an open space between the 1950s apartment buildings, but is not.

N.Y.U. has an obligation to make sure that space is truly public and does not become an internal courtyard walled off by four towers. The university has a habit of getting famous architects to produce famously unattractive buildings. This is not a moment to repeat that.

This is quite the reversal from Michael Kimmelman's daring proposal a week ago, which has already become a cause célèbres in the neighborhood. In it, Mr. Kimmelman called for a reduction in three of the four new buildings, including the elimination of the two Washington Square Park buildings.

The editorial is also a stern rebuke to Borough President Stringer. It was The Times on Friday the reported Mr. Stringer's concerns about the Washington Square Park towers, and now the editors seem to be saying "don't even go there."

And that is what makes the endorsement of The Times so important to NYU. Not only are its readers precisely the educated mobs graduating from and sending their children to the university, they are also the ones who might influence their elected officials on the land-use review of NYU. Oh, and not to mention be voting for Mr. Stringer in next year's mayoral election.

Looks like somebody's stuck between a rock and two towers.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

NYU's John Sexton and the Beep. Whose side is he on? (NYU)

The vote of Borough President Scott Stringer has become the hottest commodity since, well, the Park Slope Food Co-op's Israel vote last night. Everyone is leaning on the Beep to give the project a full-throated yes or no, from construction unions to community groups. No sooner did a group of 44 Village organizations send a letter to Mr. Stringer's office opposing the plan than the Post has come out with an editorial urging him to support it.

The Post calls the vote "a no-brainer" before it goes on to presume Mr. Stringer's stance, which he has yet to reveal to The Observer's knowledge (and repeated inquiry):

Any would-be mayor should embrace such dividends with unqualified enthusiasm.

Alas, not Stringer. He’s sidled up to the predictably short-sighted, knee-jerk anti-development opposition from neighbors of NYU’s Greenwich Village campus.

This follows on the heels of similar editorials in Crain's and the Daily News, where the editorial board described Mr. Stringer's desire to "thread the needle" as "disturbing" development. If anything, quashing thoughtful compromise is what is disturbing.

Following yesterday's letter, an NYU spokesman pointed out that the Greenwich Village Chamber of Commerce is among the groups supporting the plan. Part of what makes NYU's expansion so complex is that in an already very busy and crowded neighborhood, there can never be a unanimity of opinions. The Observer received a letter today from a group of 24 local businesses opposing the plan (see below). A complex plan breeds a  complex response.

That is why Mayor Ed Koch's recent op-ed for the plan is so intriguing. He opens with an anecdote about having lunch in the Village as he often does.

Every time I do that and see NYU students of every imaginable racial and religious group walking and talking together, I say to whomever I’m with, “These students make the Village what it is. They keep us at the center of thought; they keep us young, and keep the Village an interesting place in which to live. They keep New York competitive with the rest of the U.S.—and, indeed, the world.”

How lucky for the Village. But will more buildings—and not necessarily more students, as the plan calls for an expansion of space but not attendance—really improve the qualities Mayor Koch so enjoys when he is having lunch? What if his outdoor cafe were cast in shadow?

What if, more importantly, NYU shared the wealth, as many critics are begging it to do—among them the community board, the Municipal Art Society, and even Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelan—and limited, but did not eliminate, its expansion on these blocks and instead focused more of its efforts in place like Downtown Brooklyn.

The fact NYU and its backers seem to continually ignore is that no one is saying it should not expand, people are only questioning the need to expand on these two blocks, and to do it with facilities like a hotel, a gym and possibly more housing.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Letter to Stringer from Small Businesses

'New York Post': Secret 99%-ers?

You might read this morning's editorial in the New York Post, "Time to throw the bums out," as a knock on the Occupy Wall Street protests. After all, so far the paper has been pretty negative about the whole Zuccotti Park scene, calling it a drug-laden, hippie den that is a breeding ground for sexual malarkey and criminal activity. But it turns out the Post is quite sympathetic to the cause...if you read between the lines.

Let's start at the beginning:

What began as a credible protest against bank bailouts, crony capitalism and the like has, in large measure, been hijacked by crazies and criminals.

"You hear that Walter? The paper hear is saying that those damn kids on Wall Street had a credible protest going!"
"What?"
"I said, the paper says Occupy Wall Street was a credible protest!"
"What?"
"Come into the kitchen, Walter!"
"What about a protest?"

Oh, and then comes a more overarching endorsement:

No one has greater respect for the First Amendment than this paper. Even radicals--especially radicals--have a fundamental right to public protest.

Obviously, it didn't work, as the project found a savior in Russia, broke ground in March, and the arena is (maybe) on its way to opening in time for the 2012-2013 basketball season.

Still, there are a few remaining court cases to unwind, and as the indefatigable Norman Oder reports today, two of them have been tossed out by the Brooklyn Supreme Court. On Monday, Justice Abraham Gerges yet again ruled that the state was justified in its use of eminent domain at the Atlantic Yards site. The particulars of the case charged that the Empire State Development Corporation needed to file a new set of Determinations and Findings because the project had changed so much.

As before, Yards opponents could take some small consolation from the judge's decision, in that he essentially said what the state did was a terrible thing, but it not being the judiciary's place to overrule the legislature (and its constitutionally mandated subsidiaries, like the ESDC), there was really nothing he could do about it:

[T]he court further finds that the alleged additional changes to the Project that petitioners rely upon in this action, even if factually true, similarly do not change the public purpose to be served by the Project, i.e., to eliminate blight and the blighting influence of the below-grade rail yard and to construct a civil [sic] project.

Such declarations provided more solace in the past because they could be used in later arguments for further cases and appeals. With only one of those left, this may be more of a slap in the face than a stepping stone, though, as it is yet another reminder of the dozen-plus cases, no matter how righteous and just, that have been lost.

Justice Gerges also dismissed a case on Monday questioning whether or not Forest City Ratner had purchased associated air rights from Peter Williams Enterprises, from whom it had bought the Spalding Building. The judge ruled in FCR's favor. Granted this wouldn't have stopped the arena, but simply meant money for PWE.

Update: The Atlantic Yards Report thinks that maybe the Real Estate Desk is giving Gerges too much credit.

mchaban@observer.com

Former State Senator Joseph Bruno, a Republican who ruled the Legislature's upper house as majority leader for nearly 15 years, was convicted on fraud charges last year under the "honest services" law.  Mr. Bruno, who is 81 years old, was sentenced to two years in prison, although he has been allowed to remain free while the honest services law underwent the Supreme Court's scrutiny.

The case against Mr. Bruno always was vague. He surely ventured into a gray area when he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a businessman who had interests before the state. But then again, many of New York's part-time legislators use their connections and their political juice to advance their outside business interests.  Mr. Bruno probably pushed too hard; he certainly should have held himself to a higher standard. The issue now is whether his conviction ought to be overturned, given the Court's decision that the "honest services" law is too broad.  As Justice Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion, "The statute does not answer the question: What is the criterion of guilt?"

More practically, the issue really is Mr. Bruno's sentence.  It is far too harsh for a charge which the Supreme Court now says is too broad and too vague. What's more, it ignores Mr. Bruno's decades of public service. He was a voice of reason during the administration of fellow Republican George Pataki, who seemed content to buy popularity with all kinds of expensive goodies. His enabler was Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat who has never been adverse to lots of public spending.  Mr. Bruno certainly took care to make sure that his constituents were taken care of, but he also put the brakes on the tax-and-spend policies of New York in the 1990s. Without him, it's a good bet that Albany would be in an even bigger hole than it is at the moment.

Joe Bruno's life has been turned upside down over the last two years. The ordeal of a federal investigation and a public trial has been difficult, and the assault on his integrity has been profound. His fall from public grace has been tragic, and while some of Mr. Bruno's wounds surely are self-inflicted, it's clear that there is an element of tragedy to this story.

Yes, he has suffered enough. His reputation is shattered, and the memory of his good works forgotten.

He shouldn't go to prison.

Readers no doubt will recall that the long-stalled plan to build a slot-machine casino at the Queens racetrack collapsed several months ago when the state awarded, and then pulled, a contract with an outfit called Aqueduct Entertainment Group. The company had no track record, so to speak, but it had powerful political supporters, including former Queens congressman the Rev. Floyd Flake, who had hooks into the State Senate.

Governor Paterson reversed his decision to award the contract to AEG after a huge public outcry. But the scandal is ongoing, and so are the new revelations. Just the other day, the public learned that Senator John Sampson of Queens, the leader of the State Senate, gave an internal Senate document about the bidding process to a lobbyist who represented AEG.

Senator Sampson says he doesn't regret giving the lobbyist the document. After all, he says, the document was not confidential. Clearly, the man just doesn't get it.

The Aqueduct deal smelled worse than Aqueduct's stalls on a hot summer day. Were it not for newspaper investigations and a public outcry, AEG would be installing slot machines-assuming the company could figure out how to do it-right now, and its politically connected executives would be preparing to cash in big time.

It is all too clear what AEG and its allies in the Senate tried to do. You'd think Senator Sampson would understand that the public is outraged over this attempt at insider trading, Albany-style. But no, he sees nothing wrong with slipping a government report to a lobbyist.

The candidates for governor had better be paying attention. The State Senate is a mess, and somebody has to clean it up. Fast.

Dozens of police departments around the state think so, as do many prosecutors and elected officials. A majority of the State Assembly thinks so.

But in the leaderless, rudderless, scandal-scarred State Senate, not enough members recognized common sense when they saw it. While this may not come as a surprise to close observers, it is tragic all the same.

A bill that would require the personal armament industry to "stamp" individual bullet casings with information that would link bullet casings to the guns from which they were fired has fallen by the wayside in the State Senate. The Assembly passed the bill easily, but apparently leaders in the State Senate didn't wish to offend stout-hearted gun lovers who seem to think that keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys somehow is a violation of the Second Amendment.

This scandalous bit of pandering to the pro-gun crowd is bipartisan in nature. While Democratic supporters of the bill were quick to point fingers at upstate Republicans, the fact is that not enough Democrats in the Senate were brave enough to support the bill. If the Senate had effective leaders, Democrats could pass the bill on a party-line vote. But the words "leadership" and "State Senate" do not belong in the same sentence.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to rally the forces of common sense to embarrass state senators into doing the right thing. This is a monumental task, even for Mr. Bloomberg, but we wish him well. The pro-gun nuts will resist any attempt to regulate weaponry in the name of public safety, and they clearly have bullied the Senate into opposing this simple but important measure.

What could be wrong with helping police identify bad guys with guns? That's a question for the pro-gun crowd and its puppets in the Senate.

Pundits and political observers who routinely describe New York as little more than an ATM machine for national candidates clearly have overlooked another source of New York’s power—the power of ideas, expressed by talented women who grew up in a city that nurtured their creativity and ambition.

President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan has been interpreted as another victory for women in government and politics.

And so it is—if confirmed, Ms. Kagan will be the third woman on the nation’s highest court. That’s never happened before.
She also would be the third New York woman on the court. Ms. Kagan was brought up on the Upper West Side and educated at Hunter College High School. If confirmed, she would join fellow New Yorkers Sonia Sotomayor, a native of the Bronx, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was born in Brooklyn. (A fourth justice, Antonin Scalia, moved to New York with his family when he was 6 years old. Of course, he shares very little with his current and would-be female colleagues, except for their connection to New York City.)

The conspicuous presence of three New York women on the high court surely is no accident. Here, young women are encouraged to develop their talents and pursue their ambitions, and they are rewarded when they succeed. That is not to say that every glass ceiling in the office buildings of Manhattan, the brownstones of Brooklyn and the Cape Cods of Staten Island has been shattered. But the success of women like Elena Kagan (and so many others, in so many other fields) surely says something positive about New York’s families, schools and neighborhoods.

New York may no longer be the home of would-be presidents. But as the nation’s hothouse for ideas and innovation, its influence over public policy remains as strong as ever, thanks to the brains and talent of New York women.

There are no more residential holdouts on the 22-acre site, and the project’s opponents have lost one of their key allies in their long and loud opposition to Mr. Ratner’s project. The $4.9 billion plan should now move forward after languishing for far too long.

Mr. Ratner already has begun construction of a new basketball arena, the future home of the New Jersey Nets. But his plan to build as many as 6,000 apartments—30 percent of which are designed for moderate-income tenants—has stalled while opponents like Mr. Goldstein have stood in the way, insisting that Mr. Ratner’s plan was too ambitious. 
It surely is ambitious, and not least because Mr. Ratner has set aside so many apartments for people of modest means, at least by New York standards Mr. Ratner has tried to do the right thing, as some tenant advocates have acknowledged. But in some circles in New York, it is a capital crime to speak well of a real estate developer or to suggest that a new project might be good for any given neighborhood.

Mr. Ratner has persevered, to his credit. Downtown Brooklyn will be a better place when the Atlantic Yards project is finished. If there is any justice, Mr. Ratner’s critics will concede the point when the time comes.

Last week, City Hall unveiled an ambitious proposal to turn a portion of 34th Street from Fifth to Sixth avenues into a car-free zone. Traffic flow would change radically at either end of the mall, with cars routed one way only—toward the East River east of Fifth Avenue, and toward the Hudson River west of Sixth Avenue. Buses would run river to river in special bus lanes.

That’s an ambitious and potentially problematic proposal. City Hall has to demonstrate that traffic somehow will get better, not worse, in an area that already is terribly congested. But wait, there’s more! City Hall also wants to tinker with Union Square Park, which already is pedestrian friendly, especially along the park’s western edge. City Hall wants to block most vehicles from Broadway between 17th and 18th streets, just north of Union Square, and plans to turn 17th Street along the park’s northern edge into a pedestrian mall.

The Department of Transportation will “study” the proposal, as will local community boards, but there’s a sense that the fix is in. City officials say they hope the changes will be made by Labor Day.

That sounds like a rush to judgment. This proposal needs careful, objective scrutiny, not from cheerleaders but from traffic engineers and urban planners who can anticipate problems in both the near and long term. Even City Hall had to concede that the pedestrian mall in Times Square has not improved traffic flow to any significant degree, although that’s what the city promised when it created the mall last year. And the change that converted the Park Avenue tunnel to one-way traffic also hasn’t lived up to expectations.

Any great city needs great public spaces—Manhattan has some of the greatest such spaces in the world. There’s no reason, then, to ram through these proposals without careful thought. Pedestrians who want to enjoy open space have plenty of choices, as any visitor to Bryant Park or to Union Square will attest.

This issue should be studied, not rubber-stamped.