The Municipal Art Society is worried that the Midtown East upzoning would allow development that would block views of the Chrysler Building, among other landmarks.

Based on the arguments made by those both for and against the Midtown East rezoning—a "sweeping proposal," wrote New York magazine architecture critic Justin Davidson, with "swollen ambitions for the skyline"—one might think that the proposed land use change, which would affect 78 blocks between Second and Fifth Avenues and East 39th and East 57th Streets, would be a dramatic revision of New York City's most hallowed business district.

Crain's New York Business calls the plan "essential." The Post’s Steve Cuozzo, ever a friend to big real estate, says it's “vital to the city's future, a way to ensure that Manhattan's most desirable commercial zone can compete in the future with global capitals like London and Shanghai."

Meanwhile, opponents of the plan to rezone the area north of Grand Central Terminal have painted it as a death knell for some of New York's most iconic sites, and a massive imposition on an already-overburdened transit system. "The rezoning study makes no mention of protected-view corridors," wrote starchitect Robert A.M. Stern, coming out against the plan in today's New York Times. "I can hardly make my way to the stairways and escalators that lead to the Lexington Avenue subway platforms."

The Municipal Art Society, which has proposed landmarking 17 pre- and postwar towers in the area (the Historic Districts Council has a list of 33), commissioned mock-ups of potential new towers that could obscure the district's most famous buildings, writing, "The verifiable photo simulations show how iconic buildings such as the Chrysler building will not be visible from many vantage points if development occurs as proposed."

But delve into the actual numbers on the proposed rezoning, and it starts to look like much ado about nothing. As the Wall Street Journal’s Eliot Brown pointed out on Twitter, only 3.8 million square feet of office development is expected beyond what would be built without any zoning changes, according to an environmental assessment released by the city on Friday, or 4.4 million square feet of total extra development taking into account all uses. (While more than 14 million square feet of new office space could rise, two-thirds of that would replace existing buildings.)

Compare this to the rezoning of Manhattan's far west side earlier in Mr. Bloomberg's term, where nearly 26 million square feet of new office space was allowed in Hudson Yards—an area with far worse transit and less new investment ($8.4 billion for East Side Access, which will bring the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central, versus just $2.1 billion for the 7 train extension to 34th Street and 11th Avenue)—and the Midtown East rezoning starts to look downright puny.

With just 3.8 million square feet of new office development expected out of the plan in an area that already contains 70 million square feet of office space, the Midtown East upzoning would barely add more floorspace to the district than the Port Authority is building in One World Trade Center—3.5 million square feet of floorspace in one tower alone.

Even the Williamsburg and Greenpoint rezonings, which added over 30 million square feet of residential development rights, dwarf what Mr. Bloomberg and the real estate industry want to add to Midtown East.

Given the relatively small numbers involved, both sides should drop the histrionics: the Grand Central upzoning just isn't that grand, and isn't going to make or break Midtown East either way.

Grand Central: progress vs. preservation. (TravelJapanBlog)

When the plan to rezone Midtown East was revealed last year, there was much excitement and much grumbling, but the outlines of the battle to come lacked definition. In retrospect, it seems so inevitable: how could the conflict over the heart and soul of the city's central business district take any shape but that of progress versus preservation?

It is a conflict that haunts, if not defines, every land use debate in the city, and a particularly fitting one for Midtown. The district developed around, and largely because of, Grand Central station—a building that not only epitomizes the conflict, but helped to define it.

Grand Central Terminal lauded for setting the legal precedent that went on to save landmarks across the city, was actually built over the demolished ruins of another landmark—Grand Central Depot. The Depot, despite its relatively recent vintage (it was completed in 1871) and its popularity (it was second as a tourist attraction only to the Capitol in Washington, according to Sam Roberts's book on the terminal) was destroyed without sentiment in the early 1900s, making way for the Gilded Age beauty that now stands on 42nd Street.

The old Grand Central, demolished to make way for change.

But what of the fact that the mansard-roofed station boasted a "magical" 652-foot-long arch-ribbed-vault train shed, had the largest interior space on the North American continent and provided the backdrop wherein we first set eyes on Lily Bart in the House of Mirth? Pretty details all, but progress called. The electrification of the rails was the way of the future and the depot had to go.

To finance its construction, Grand Central Station pioneered the sale of air rights, a practice that transformed the surrounding neighborhood, which was something of a backwater when Grand Central Station was constructed. Its resultant character—which preservationists are so eager to see maintained—was formed by the forces of development, forces that could care less about the past, or the semi-pastoral quality of the land they so eagerly converted into a business district. Nor did its developers seem to have any illusions that the architects' vision of the final station would be sealed in amber. Engineering provisions were made for the construction of a (never-built) tower over the terminal.

The sale of air rights went on to spur development in neighborhoods around the city. So much so that 100 years later, air rights are the centerpiece of the Midtown East rezoning proposal—the powerhouse that is to drive the neighborhood's next transformation.

It is, of course, no surprise that a new and somewhat radical station would be bedfellows with other new and radical things. Nor is it particularly surprising that some years down the road, when Grand Central was no longer so new or so radical, it would nearly fall victim to those same pro-development forces, who saw it as an impediment to change (and profits).

And so, the symbol of brave progress and growth became a beleaguered old beauty that needed to be protected from greed-induced destruction. For most people, it is this, more recent vision, that springs to mind most readily when one thinks of Grand Central. Jackie O. front and center, that arbiter of taste, defending New York's grand monument. It was, moreover, a historic battle: Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City went all the way to the Supreme Court (the first historic preservation case to do so) and established that the city could use its landmarks law to protect a property from being torn down (that the act was not an unjust taking, but within the land-use regulatory power of government).

In the decades since, landmarking has been used to preserve not only buildings, but an increasing number of pockets within the city. And, after three terms of Mayor Bloomberg's strongly pro-development policies, it has increasingly come to seem like the only real tool that community groups and neighborhoods have to stop (rather than simply modify) unwanted changes. As such, the dialogue between the pro-preservation and pro-development forces has become ever shriller, the two camps now diametrically opposed, in our rapidly changing city.

There are many issues with the Midtown East rezoning besides the preservation of unlandmarked buildings. It is, as a growing chorus of critics have complained, hurtling along very (quite possibly too) quickly. The speed leaves little time to examine its impact or whether the city is selling air rights for too little—giving a generous gift to developers that it can ill afford, particularly considering the costs of transportation and pedestrian upgrades that greater density will require.

But the battle lines have been drawn and now we're all stuck squabbling over the historic significance of buildings in Midtown East. Perhaps this is the only way to hash out a plan that's agreeable to both parties, but if the opposing camps' recent publications are any indication, they seem to be moving farther apart rather than closer together.

This past week, both the Municipal Art Society and Midtown 21C, a pro-development group backed by REBNY, released reports each purporting to be the best visions for the future of Midtown East. MAS's report, entitled "A Bold Vision for the Future" lists 17 buildings that it claims would be prime candidates for landmarking. Midtown 21C's report, entitled "Icons, Placeholders and Leftovers" argues that every building worth landmarking has already been landmarked (hence the focus on placeholders and leftovers).

MAS claims that the vibrancy of the central business district owes much to its current character. Midtown 21C argues that the central business district will cease to have any vibrancy if we stand in the way of its "continuous transformation." MAS sees a district with lots of architecturally and historically significant buildings. Midtown 21C sees a district with lots of dowdy and dated office buildings.

Both groups are right; successful cities are successful precisely because they are a blend of the old and the new, tradition and change, historic buildings and fresh development. We should save truly noteworthy buildings and allow developers to tear down the unexceptional and the outmoded. In the months to come, the city must decide what to keep and what to discard, how to preserve the elements that make Midtown what it is, while clearing away the detritus that's stopping it from becoming what it needs to be. We would do well to consider Grand Central, a model of how development can create beloved buildings and how preservation can save them.

kvelsey@observer.com

Don't block my landmark, bro. (Getty)

Add a few more names to the growing list of people concerned about the speed with which the city is executing the Midtown East Rezoning—ones that carry some serious political clout. In addition to the community boards, a few civic groups and local Councilman Dan Garodnick (who's vote will be crucial to get the rezoning through the City Council), four new Midtown reps have just sent a letter to the mayor saying the rezoning needs more time to be perfected.

"Because this rezoning is so important, it is critical that it is done correctly the first time and is responsive to the concerns of the area’s current stakeholders even as it lays the groundwork for the area’s future," Congresswoman Caroline Maloney, Assemblyman Dan Qart and state senators Liz Krueger and Brad Hoylman write. They ask the Department of City Planning to withdraw the plan currently in the works, which is expected to be certified in the coming weeks, "in order to permit sufficient time for community input."

The Midtown East Rezoning seeks to give developers incentives to tear down their aging buildings by adding new air rights to certain blocks in Midtown, with an emphasis on Park Avenue and the area around Grand Central. Locals fear that there will not be sufficient public benefit and that the plan is a giveaway to developers. Air rights will have to be purchased from the city, which would fund new open space improvements and mass transit projects, though there is skepticism the project would generate enough funds to create meaningful investments.

A City Planning spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment, but when Mr. Garodnick raised similar objections, she said:

As with all of our projects, we have been carefully analyzing the area and meeting with area stakeholders, including the community boards, to discuss the issues and proposed policy solutions so that an appropriate long‐term zoning framework for East Midtown can be created. There is ample time to complete all the necessary review and analyses for this project, and we are committed to continue working closely with the community and other stakeholders as the process moves forward.

The four politicians lay out a number of specific concerns they have about the plan as it is currently configured, including more information about public realm improvements, a study of adverse impacts, a commitment by developers to build sustainable projects and concern over the fate of numerous landmarks, both officially designated and those not, but otherwise noteworthy.

One request is particularly interesting, and no doubt alarming to the development community, given how open it would be to debate and interpretation: "a special review process for buildings that could disrupt iconic features of New York’s skyline such as the Empire State and Chrysler buildings." Talk about encasing the skyline in amber, precisely what this rezoning is meant to undo.

"While we support the concept of encouraging the development of more iconic Class A office buildings in East Midtown," the four conclude, "we ask that your office and the Department of City Planning heed the community’s request to allow more time for deliberation and consideration of the community’s questions and recommendations to ensure that this plan serves the neighborhood, both current and future."

To that end, the Municipal Art Society has put forward 17 buildings it believes the city ought to consider protecting before the Midtown East rezoning goes into effect. The administration is rushing toward approving this plan sometime next year, but survey of the area's historic buildings actually has more time than it might seem to proceed, since it has promised the rezoning will have a sunrise provision preventing it from taking effect until 2017. Still, that does not mean any of these buildings could be saved from being torn down and becoming the next Empire State Building.

“City Planning’s proposed East Midtown re-zoning has the potential to dramatically change the area and threaten the mix of old and new buildings that define the neighborhood as uniquely New York," MAS president Vin Cipolla wrote in a release. "A holistic vision for the future of East Midtown must support a mix of businesses, people and buildings. Retaining the diverse, and historic, building stock is a critical component of maintaining a vibrant and successful business district.”

The administration wants to rezone Midtown East, particularly Park Avenue and the area around Grand Central, to allow for new, modern towers. Currently, more than 80 percent of buildings in the area are half a century old or older. To entice developers to tear down their buildings, they are being given generous development bonuses. In some cases, this could create spires bigger even than nearby landmarks like the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings.

As you can see from the list of 17 buildings MAS has selected out of hundreds in the neighborhood, this is not exactly a call for freezing the neighborhood in amber, as some might say (Columbia real estate director Vishaan Chakrabarti, among others, once sneered at the idea of preservation in the heart of the city's central business district). But there are some good candidates, both old (Yale Club, Graybar Building) and modern (450 Park) worthy of consideration.

The problem the city and the activists encounter when pursuing such a program, however, is that development and preservation are inherently at odds. Consider 445 Park Avenue, a late 1940s office tower designed by Kahn & Jacobs. In its plea to the city, MAS describes it as, "The first post-war office building on Park Avenue–and the first fully air-conditioned commercial structure in New York City–445 Park Avenue set the stage for future development along Park Avenue."

This is certainly some sacred history, but it underscores the very reason the administration has undertaken this plan. It wants to do away with old, obsolete offices like this very one, with outdated mechanicals and inferior (by modern standards) ceiling heights. In fact, in the Department of City Planning's presentation on the subject, we see a number of old buildings that look quite a lot like 445 Park Avenue.

Just as there was a major fight over the creation of the Downtown Brooklyn historic district, one envisions that Midtown's developers, already licking their chops over the possibilities of this rezoning, could be in full-on revolt should any of these landmarkings come to pass.

That does not mean they should not be pursued, simply that one is at odds with the other, and it is up to the city to determine what to do. As has been perhaps the biggest complaint thus far, the city may not be leaving itself enough time to do so.

A good idea? (DCP)

In its final grand zoning gesture, the Bloomberg administration is racing to rezone Midtown East, paving the way for what could be a wave of huge, skyline defining towers. But in an essay in this weekend's Wall Street Journal, Richard Florida seems to warn that that could be the wrong approach for New York, as it has been the case in other hyper-dense cities.

In the hyper-crowded skyscraper districts of Shanghai, densities can approach 125,000 people per square mile. Giant buildings often function as vertical suburbs, muting the spontaneous encounters that provide cities with so much of their social, intellectual and commercial energy. People live their lives indoors in such places, wearing paths between their offices and the food courts, always seeing the same people.

In terms of innovation and creative impetus, Shanghai pales in comparison to New York, London, Paris and Milan, not to mention high-tech hubs like Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Austin and North Carolina's research triangle, all of which have much lower densities.

He goes on to explain that it is the "Jacobs Density," named for—yep—Jane Jacobs, that makes these places successful. Not just a lot of people, but a lot of people interacting (notice Dallas and Phoenix, two of our biggest cities, don't make the cut).

And even within our well-balanced cities, where does the real magic happen?

Look at New York City. Its hubs of innovation aren't the great skyscraper districts that house established corporate and financial headquarters, media empires and wealthy people (an increasing number of whom are part-time residents who hail from the ranks of the global super-rich). The city's recent high-tech boom—500 start-ups in the last half decade, among them Kickstarter and Tumblr—is anchored in mid-rise, mixed-use neighborhoods like the Flatiron District, Midtown South, Chelsea and TriBeCa.

Not to mention Brooklyn.

This may not be entirely fair to the office rats clamoring around Midtown and Downtown because many of them do wind up in the Village, Chelsea and Park Slope after hours, relaxing, rejuvenated, sharing ideas. The Garment District, Times Square, the museums and non-profits uptown, all are home to smart people living ontop of one another.

And if anything, the administration wants to use the bigger buildings to help fund improvements to the streetscape in Midtown, from wider subway platforms to the new plans for Vanderbilt Avenue becoming a grand pedestrian mall. Just so long as we do not wind up with a string of Zuccotti Parks, everything just might work out.

It is big. No, really big. Bigger than almost anything the city has ever seen. Empire State Building big. While that will not be the case for every tower that is eventually built through the program, it could be for at least a few.

The parameters, unveiled at Community Board 5 last night, are close to what had been previously hinted at, an area stretching from 39th Street up to 57th Street, emanating out from Grand Central. Fifth Avenue has been eliminated from the original study area, as has the northern reaches of Third and Lexington avenues, which were considered too residential. Still, the plan affects all or part of 74 blocks in the heart of the city.

Far fewer of them will be developed because a provision in the plan limits development sites to only those that stretch the length of an entire avenue blockfront, and they must sit on a site that covers at least 25,000 square feet, or a little more than half an acre. Still, that is already the case for many Midtown towers, including landmarks like the Seagram and Lipstick buildings, for example. The bigger challenge would be emptying old towers of tenants so new buildings can be built.

Just how big? As suggested at another public meeting last month, the focus of the rezoning is on the blocks surrounding Grand Central Terminal as well as the length of Park Avenue to 57th Street. Surrounding avenues will see their density bumped up slightly, from a floor area ratio of 15 to 18 (excuse the technical numbers for a moment). Park Avenue and the Grand Central subdistrict, which will expand one block north to 49th Street and two blocks south to 39th Street, between Madison and Lexington Avenues, will have an FAR of 21.6. A new Grand Central core district will be created for the blocks immediately around Grand Central with an FAR of 24. (See: map.)

To put that all in perspective, the massive Pan Am/MetLife tower that currently looms over Grand Central has an FAR of 18. City Planning pointed to the old Bear Stearns headquarters around the corner, at 383 Madison Avenue, as having an FAR of 21.6. One Bryant Park, just down 42nd Street, hits 24 FAR, and is one of the biggest buildings in the city. Frank Ruchala, the project manager for the rezoning from the Department of City Planning, mapped out scenarios with towers rising between 575 feet and 700 feet  on Park Avenue and between 700 and 800 feet around Grand Central, approaching the height of 30 Rockefeller Center.

"We think that's what's appropriate to build the kinds of building we need," Mr. Ruchala said. After all, this plan is predicated on preparing the Central Business District for a major modernization over the coming decades.

But the fun does not end there. All these big new buildings can be built as of right, meaning no cumbersome public reviews. But should a developer wish to aim high, really high, they can go for an additional FAR bonus, a jump to 24 along Park and around Grand Central, while the Grand Central core subdistrict, the eleven small blocks around the train station, jumps up to a whopping 30 FAR, on par with the skyline defining Empire State Building (FAR of 33, the only thing in town that comes close). As if to drive this point home, City Planning's presentation showed a spindly tower, which looked not unlike the MoMA tower it once rejected, piercing the skyline above Grand Central.

To achieve this, a developer must submit to a special permit, requiring the standard (and often torturous) public reviews. There would be a considerable emphasis on quality design, both at the top of the building, which would almost certainly take a prominent place on the skyline, as well as at the base, where "a significant public space" would be required, as Edith Hsu-Chen, director of the Department of City Planning's Manhattan office, put it.

Mr. Ruchala framed it in terms of global competitiveness. "If you look around the world, you see iconic building being built in every major city," he said. "We invented that." He then showed a slide of the Chrysler Building, Seagram Building and Lever House.

These greater heights do not come for free, however. For a boost ranging from 25 to 100 percent of the current zoning, developers would have to buy their air rights either from local landmarks or a city-sponsored Development Investment Bonus. The numbers are still far from final on this, but the project would hope to generate many millions of dollars to fund improvements to the streets and subways.

The city has only identified two projects so far, the most critical of which seems to be better routes through the Grand Central subway stations for the Lexington Ave and No. 7 trains, though attention is also being paid to stops along 53rd Street. "The 4/5/6 is at 116 percent capacity," Raju Mann, chair of the board's transportation committee, pointed out warily. "We need to think seriously about solving this problem, and make sure there are sufficient resources to do so."

The other big public works project—of which there could be more, the city is still soliciting ideas—is the already controversial closure of Vanderbilt Avenue. A drawing of the plan reveals that the crosstown traffic lanes will remain open, essentially creating plazas out in front of the new and old buildings, similar to Times Square but without the traffic of 7th Avenue rushing by. Access to Grand Central would still be provided by the block between 43rd and 44th streets (just missing the slightly incensed Yale Club, two of whose members spoke at the hearing).

As for those old buildings not quite big enough to cash in on all the new air rights being thrown around, if they were built before the 1961 zoning code, and thus have more FAR than current zoning might allow, developers will be allowed to tear down their buildings and build to the old densities, a move seen as helping replace many outdated buildings—nearly 80 percent in the area are older than 50 years, according to the city.

While supportive of the idea, the community board was taken aback by many of the proposals. "The amount of density here is incredible, and I applaud the city for being ambitious" Mr. Mann said. "But I don't think many of the issues have been thought through that will keep Midtown from being overwhelmed."

One of the biggest issues was the decision to allow bigger buildings if their designs were deemed to be of sufficient quality. There was widespread concern about who would determine that—the City Planning Commission and the City Council—and why every building in the district should not be held to the same standard if Midtown was so important to begin with, as the city officials kept insisting. "Thirty FAR scares the hell out of me," board member Miele Rockefeller said. Member Matthew Scheid countered that "I'm fine with 30 FAR, but I don't understand why it's not 40 FAR or 25 FAR. You haven't explained the rationale for the numbers."

As with a previous meeting, historic preservation was a hot topic, with many board members concerned that there would not be enough time for the Landmarks Preservation Commission to survey and protect buildings of historical or cultural significance. Especially now, given the economic incentive developers would have to tear down their buildings, since the rezoning has been outlined, the task would be even harder. "I think there's wide recognition that this is a special area, and there are special buildings in this area," Edward Klimerman said.

There were also widespread concerns about whether the sale of development rights would be sufficient to cover the costs of the needed improvements. "The city paid for the improvements to Times Square," land-use vice-chair Giuseppe Scalia pointed out. "Why are developers being given millions of square feet to do it here?"

But the biggest issue was not so much policy as politics. The city is putting what it calls a sunrise provision into the plan, which means that no buildings can be built under the new zoning until five years from now, in the summer of 2017. This is meant as a protection for the city's considerable investment in Hudson Yards—Mr. Ruchala called that "our top priority"—but that left many on the board wondering why this rezoning could not simply wait five years. Their explanation, at times implicit, occasionally explicit, was that the administration, and its partners in Big Real Estate did not feel it could wait. Ms. Hsu-Chen said simply that developers needed time to plan for their projects.

"There was this idea that came out in the media that we were looking to destroy half of Midtown," Mr. Ruchala said. "We're not looking to do that, and we don't think that's possible. We're looking to create some development for the future."

Midtown, 2025? (Photo composite: Ed Johnson/NYO; Photos: Getty)

It was but one line in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City address in January, but it could prove to be one of the biggest of his dozen years in office.

“In the area around Grand Central, we’ll work with the City Council on a package of regulatory changes and incentives that will attract new investment, new companies and new jobs,” the mayor said from the stage inside Morris High School in the Bronx.

Hizzoner spent more time talking about Cornell’s Roosevelt Island tech campus, keeping the Hunt’s Point Produce Market from moving across the Hudson to Jersey and efforts to further expand the blue-collar workforce on the waterfront. Even the redevelopment of nearby East Fordham Road and Webster Avenue got equal billing with these vague pronouncements about “the area around Grand Central.”

Despite the scant mention, it turns out that for an administration that has never shied away from big plans, this may be one of the biggest projects yet.

In what is likely to be the latest, greatest and last of the grand Bloomberg rezonings, City Hall has turned its focus to Midtown East. Under the direction of City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, the administration has undertaken 115 rezonings in almost every corner of the city, remaking nearly a quarter of its landmass.

Now, it is time to remake the middle of Manhattan, to redevelop one of the most developed swathes of land in the world.

Midtown, 2000. (Getty)

It was not the first time Robert Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development, had considered the plight of Midtown East, but he recalled it as the moment everything came into focus. Around this time last year, the former Goldman exec and Wachovia chief was standing on the roof of the Hearst Tower two blocks south of Columbus Circle, gazing out at the city surrounding him.

The Hearst building itself is an apt metaphor for the plans the city is currently contemplating. Originally built by William Randolph Hearst in 1928, the Art Deco dandy rose to six stories, with plans for a tower to rise above. Those were waylaid, for nearly eight decades, courtesy the Great Depression. But it would take another great boom to see the project through, and in 2006, the new Hearst Tower opened, with its faceted obsidian exterior, a gem of modern office life.

It was created by the high-tech practitioner and Pritzker Prize-winner Sir Norman Foster and received a LEED Gold rating for sustainability, the first office tower in the city to do so. The base of the tower remains, a nod to history, but it was gutted to make way for a soaring lobby, complete with a waterfall that recycles rainwater, helping to cool the space and cut down on A/C costs.

This is precisely the sort of building that Mr. Steel wants to see more of in Midtown, still the heart of the city’s commercial core.

“Think about what Midtown was historically, the Pantheon for corporate America,” he said during a recent phone interview. “It was lots of jobs, but also a symbol for all the Fortune 500 companies.”

But it was not so much the Hearst Tower as the ones surrounding it that got Mr. Steel concerned. A few blocks south, Mort Zuckerman was getting underway on 250 West 55th Street. In the distance stood the new Times headquarters, and across the street the still mostly-empty 11 Times Square. To the north was the Time Warner Center, and most telling of all, 3 Columbus Circle--another 1920s beauty built for General Motors, shoddily reclad in glass during the last boom by Joe Moinian, an effort to modernize the building.

Were Mr. Steel standing on the other side of Midtown, say atop the Bloomberg Building, he could point to almost no new development whatsoever besides the tower his boss and Vornado’s Steve Ross had built in 2004. And even then, the top half of that building, like the Time Warner Center, is filled with apartments for the likes of Jay-Z (Time Warner) and his wife Beyonce (Bloomberg). What new development there might be is much closer to 3 Columbus, buildings that have been “refreshed,” than anything built new, from the ground up.

The city wishes this were not the case, but given the vagaries of Manhattan development, from the challenges of clearing out tenants to the cost of construction, the status quo is often the easiest choice for a landlord to make. Developers argue that they need incentives, namely air rights, to do anything more. The number of new buildings could be counted on one hand.

“While new windows and HVAC systems can be installed, the fundamentals of ceiling heights and column configurations are fixed,” Mr. Zucckerman, chairman of Boston Properties and owner of a number of buildings in the area, including the iconic Citicorp Tower, said in an email. “To incentivize owners to empty leased office buildings and replace them simply requires that a much higher density be allowed.”

When the city began to look at solutions, the administration was struck by just how severe the situation in Midtown east had gotten. “We did an audit, and we found that 80 percent of buildings were more than 50 years old,” Mr. Steel said of Midtown East, roughly 39th Street to 57th Street, east of Fifth Avenue. “Basically it feels like the 1940s in a lot of places. We just think this should be a showcase place for the city, especially around Grand Central.”

But the city is focusing on much more than just Grand Central, based on a preliminary presentation it gave to community boards earlier this month, with the potential upzoning of the entire area. Still, there is a special focus on the blocks around the train station, as well as along Park Avenue, seen as especially valuable as well as especially outdated.

The entire rezoning might not cover the largest footprint of any the administration has undertaken, but it could well have the largest impact. Stretching to Second Avenue in the 40s and Third Avenue in the 50s, the current study area measures 85 square blocks, roughly 250 acres of the most densely developed property on earth. It is equivalent to about 10 Hudson Yards.

Yet compared to a place like Hong Kong or Singapore, the densities are piddling. “On a macro level, we have to remain competitive on a global basis in terms of creating modern office space,” real estate scion and Association of Better New York chairman Bill Rudin told The Observer. “Back in the ’80s, they shifted the zoning from the East Side to the West Side, and it kept going out to Hudson Yards. But Park Avenue is still very desirous.”

Steven Spinola, executive director of the Real Estate Board of New York, put it in even more stark terms. “Right now, our buildings top out around 50 stories,” he said. “Why shouldn’t they top out around 80 stories? They do in a lot of other great cities.” According to one much-discussed proposal, they could, with air rights jumping as much as 50 percent in certain areas.

An initial proposal is to be released on July 11, and the city hopes to begin the arduous public review process by the first quarter of next year—just before the notorious countdown clock at City Hall blinks off.

It all starts with Grand Central. (Getty)

There are those who fear that the city is putting the cart before the conductor. One of the big arguments for rezoning Midtown East is the arrival of East Side Access, which will usher the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central by the end of the decade (assuming no further delays). The Second Avenue subway might someday reach the area as well. But at the same time, the city has made massive infrastructure investments in areas like Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center site, where the Related Companies and Silverstein Properties struggle to find tenants. These expenditures, for expanding the 7 train and rebuilding ground zero, were partly based on the argument that Midtown had seen its day.

The case for reviving it is good, but not at the cost of these other areas, the thinking goes.

“The public is spending billions of dollars at Hudson Yards and ground zero, and for good reason,” Raju Mann, a former city planner and member of Community Board 5, said a recent meeting of the board. “We haven’t even seen what these projects have produced yet, so how can we be sure what’s appropriate for Midtown East?”

And yet developers outside of Midtown East areas are not worried, pointing out that the city’s proposal could take years, if not decades, to come to fruition.

“My first reaction was to be concerned about it, but the more I thought about it, it’s a really long-term proposition,” Jay Cross, president of Related Hudson Yards, told The Observer. He said the proposal could even be self-defeating. “It will also make these buildings more valuable, just perceptually, which will drive up the building cost,” he said. “That means they cost more to trade and assemble the sites, and by the time you’ve done all that, you may not be able to afford to replace the buildings.

Larry Silverstein shared this sentiment at the topping out of 4 World Trade Center on Monday, his shiny new office building that remains half empty. “My hunch is, we’re going to do fine,” he said, pointing to the drift of New Yorkers to both live and work in Downtown and Brooklyn.

There are other demographic shifts afoot, as well, though, that could undermine the success of the city’s plan. If one area has flourished during the past few years it is not Midtown East or Hudson Yards but Midtown South. As financial firms, with their love of shiny buildings and vast trading floors, have retrenched, the city’s tech sector has flourished, and it largely prefers old buildings to new. Even those firms moving to Midtown, like Facebook and Twitter, are setting up shop on Madison Avenue, filling spaces that are more Mad Men than Blade Runner. “We don’t know what the office of the future will look like yet,” Mr. Mann said.

Mr. Rudin pointed out that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. “We need office space of all types for all types of tenants,” he said. “The important thing is that we plan for the future.”

The past is an issue, as well, as some preservationists worry about taking a full accounting of Midtown’s historic fabric before we begin bulldozing it. “I’ll be the first to admit that just because a building is X years old doesn’t mean it’s worth saving and reusing,” said Peg Breen, president of the Landmarks Conservancy. “But we can’t just plow it all under and build Midtown anew. Why bulldoze the place without seeing what’s there first.”

Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of Columbia University's real estate development program and former head of the Department of City Planning's Manhattan office, warned against knee-jerk preservation in the heart of Midtown. "This is the engine for the entire city," he said. "We cannot freeze it in amber. If we do, we'll end up like Paris, a museum and nothing else." Pro-development types love invoking Paris. It is the bête noire of businessmen the world over, apparently.

Still, the city argues that it is not obsessing over Midtown but instead finally giving it the attention it was used to in the past after a fair amount of neglect. “Really, this is a response to the five borough economic plan, which has focused outside of Midtown more than any administration ever has, I think,” Mr. Steel said.

This could be the case in more ways than one, as some traditional Midtown heavyweights, like SL Green, have felt neglected amidst the city’s westward expansion. Earlier this month, The Journal revealed that the city’s largest commercial landlord had teamed up with Hines, another player who has mostly developed along Third and Lex, to replace a clutch of turn-of-the-century buildings immediately west of Grand Central, on 42^nd Street between Madison and Vanderbuilt avenues. The city freely admits that it is working with local stakeholders to craft its plan but denies that they are the ones sketching it out.

"We will listen to what our partners in the private sector have to say, as well as the community, but this is definitely the mayor and his team's plan," Mr. Steel said. One City Hall source even called it "Bob Steel's baby," the marquee project of the deputy mayor since he joined the administration two years ago.

425 Park, in its prime. (Eral Soto)

One need look no further than 425 Park Avenue for proof of the problems with Midtown’s current zoning. One of those bland mid-century grandees, all flat glass planes, it was completed in 1958 and spans an entire block on Park. David Levinson, a partner at L&L Holdings, would tear down the 32-story behemoth if he could and replace it with something better. He is in the rare position of owning a building that will be empty of tenants coming 2015—normally a bad thing, were L&L not set on ridding itself of the low ceilings and column-choked spaces that fill the space.

“It’s an entire block-front on Park Avenue, and that opportunity hasn’t existed in my lifetime,” Mr. Levinson said with relish.

But he is confronted with the challenge of the zoning having changed three years after his tower was built, and were he to replace it, he would be left with a much smaller building. It is a problem faced by landlords all across Midtown East.

His clever real estate attorneys have determined that he could demolish all but the bottom quarter of the building and build up from there, getting as close to a new building as one could hope for. He has convened a private competition between 10 of the world’s top architects to solve this vexing problem.

Naturally, his fingers are also crossed that the city might solve this problem for him. “The zoning does not make this easy, but that’s the way it is, and we’re going to comply with that,” Mr Levinson said, “unless something changes.”

It might, and it might not. According to city planning sources, the proposal could get downsized to include only the immediate blocks surrounding Grand Central. There are almost 2 million square feet in development rights that once belonged to the Penn Central Railroad, currently owned by a little-known firm called Argent Ventures.

The city would add to that pot by a few million square feet, selling off the extra air rights, which would go to fund improvements to the surrounding streets and the spaces within Grand Central, particularly the local, and long-neglected, subway stations. This would benefit but a few developers owning surrounding properties. City Hall denied it has shrunk its scheme, but also admitted that it has yet to finalize the boundaries.

The administration is stuck between what it wants to build and what it has time to build. With thousands of constituents in Midtown, many with money to make and lose, it would be difficult to realize a sweeping plan within the next 18 months—public review alone takes seven. “I’m not even sure if there is unanimity at City Hall on what to do,” as one top land-use attorney put it. “I hope they can move quickly and not settle for the lowest common denominator.”

Even those critical or wary of the plan want to see it succeed, they just want to see it done right. The Municipal Art Society has long been a champion of Grand Central Terminal, helping to save it decades ago with Jacklyn Kennedy Onassis, and they have taken a keen interest in this project as well. Vin Cipolla, the group's president, hopes the mayor will take time in coming up with a plan, while realizing that if the administration puts it off, the next one might not take it up, either.

"Any plan for this area needs to be carefully balanced and worthy of Grand Central, the Chrysler Building and the Seagrams building," Mr. Cipolla said. "It’s a part of the city where the bar has to be very high."

And so do the buildings.

Needs work. (Globe Images)

How many New Yorkers, after a long day of work, are headed home, a little beaten down, look up and think to themselves, "You know what Midtown needs? Bigger buildings."

Probably not very many. But this is a question the Department of City Planning and the Bloomberg administration are very seriously considering as they work on rezoning a huge swath of Midtown East, the vaguest details of which were revealed to the land use committees of Community Boards 5 and 6 last night.

The goals of the plan, first revealed, also vaguely, in the mayor's State of the City address, are quite reasonable. Like it has with so much of the city, from the Far West Side to the Brooklyn waterfront to downtown Jamaica, Queens, the administration wants to revise a set of zoning principals first laid out in 1961, and changed little since.

Meanwhile the world has, as has the city, and in order to stay competitive with places like London, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, Midtown, where 80 percent of buildings are 50 years old or older, must modernize. "We need to think of the global context," said Edith Hsu-Chen, director of the department's Manhattan office.

This idea gave a number of community board members pause, though. While there was modest concern that Midtown is indeed dense enough as it is, many agreed that improvements could also be made. The big question was whether giving developers a huge development bonus, as appears to be the main thrust of the rezoning, would achieve the goals the city hopes to achieve.

Details were scant, but the area the department is looking at was outlined, an 85-block swath running from 40th Street to 57th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Third Avenue, except for a section of Second Avenue in the East 40s. This brackets a section of the neighborhood the department is especially interested in, roughly 20 blocks surrounding Grand Central Terminal. The one other detail to emerge was an interest in improving Park Avenue, ensuring its place as the city's premier business address.

To put things in perspective, this roughly 250 acre rezoning would be almost 10 times as large as Hudson Yards, and according to one city planning source could increase development rights in the area by as much as 50 percent, depending on what set of recommendations the department embraces. As Real Estate Board president Steven Spinola explained a few weeks ago during a different discussion on the future of Midtown, "right now, our buildings top out around 50 stories. Why shouldn't they top out around 80 stories? They do in a lot of other great cities."

Including in Hudson Yards, and even exceed that height at the slowly redeveloping World Trade Center. And this was perhaps the greatest concern for community board members. "The public is spending billions of dollars at Hudson Yards and ground zero, and for good reason," said Raju Mann, a member of Community Board 5. "We haven't even seen what these projects have produced yet, so how can we be sure what's appropriate for Midtown East?"

He also argued that the whole rationale for investing in these areas was because the administration had argued that Midtown was outmoded. Now to reinvest in that neighborhood, worthy as it is, could undercut the others before they have a chance to take root. The department counters that because Midtown is indeed built up, it will not develop over night and be a direct competitor to these areas, but instead this is a rezoning that will play out over two or three decades. Ms. Hsu-Chen made special note of a marked lack of office development in Midtown in the past decade to drive home the point that current zoning does not work.

Such ambitions also had community board members worried, as they felt the plan is moving too quickly given its size and scope. The department plans on releasing a more concrete vision in July, which it will study and modify throughout the fall before submitting it for public review in the first quarter of 2013. "For something so big, and so important, that seems awfully fast," said Kate McDonough, chair of board 5's Land Use Committee. The implication was that this was one last land grab by developers before the Bloomberg administration leaves office at the end of next year.

Creepy or cozy?

We are as fond of baby animals and those brightly-colored mini food erasers as much as the next person. But our affections are decidedly more muted when it comes to small hotel rooms. Certainly there's something cute about the teensy spaces, but it's one of those you-won’t-know-until-you-try-it kind of things. And we're not sure that we want to try it.

That said, tourists will have more opportunities than ever before. BD Hotels, the developer responsible for opening the first tiny hotel (or pod—if you want to put a positive spin on it) in Manhattan in 2007, is opening up a new location in Murray Hill, reports The New York Times. The 366-room hotel, Pod 39, will be slightly larger than its Midtown East sibling, Pod Hotel, and it will have more amenities.

“When we built the original Pod Hotel, we had a nice communal lobby and garden, but we realized it was just too small for the capacity,” Richard Born, a principle of BD Hotels told The Times. “In every corner was somebody sitting cross-legged with a backpack and laptop.”

Perhaps residents found their rooms too small?

Pod 39, however, will have about 4,500 square-feet of communal space, Mr. Born said, and will include a lobby, marquee, ground-floor restaurant, and a lounge with a bar, library, pool table, tennis table, and a fireplace.

“We’ve learned that our customer really wants to be out of their room in a public environment with other hotel guests,” he added.

Inn-deed!

Mr. Born told The Times that one of the reasons why they chose Pod 39’s location was for its size. The new hotel, which has 17 stories and includes a rooftop garden, is located in a former Allerton club hotel that still has its original Italian Renaissance style façade.

The new hotel will have other perks, like private bathrooms for every room (the Pod Hotel has some rooms with shared bathrooms), and more rooms with two single beds and bunk beds. But the hotel’s main draw, of course, is the price. With rates going at $100 to $200 a night, guests almost won't mind pretzeling themselves into their chambers.

jschiewe@observer.com