Calatrava no nos la clava: Santiago Calatrava won't be participating in the Municipal Art Society's "provocation" on Penn Station.

Earlier this month, the Municipal Art Society announced a "provocation" for Penn Station, challenging four architecture firms—Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects, SOM and Santiago Calatrava—to rethink the city's most hated transit hub. The selection of Mr. Calatrava's firm as a participant, shall we say, provoked some controversy, with blogger Ben Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas telling The Observer, "Even involving Calatrava underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city’s leading institutions have." At over $3.7 billion, the PATH terminal that Mr. Calatrava designed for the World Trade Center site will be far and away the most expensive subway station in world history.

So Mr. Kabak should be pleased to learn that Mr. Calatrava's firm is not, in fact, participating in the effort. Santiago Calatrava's firm sent the following statement to The Observer via email this afternoon:

As architects and engineers dedicated to enriching the quality of life in New York City, we have volunteered our time and talent to assist the city whenever asked. And while we wholeheartedly support the mission of the Municipal Art Society, we are compelled to correct the public record concerning their announcement of our participation in the Penn Station Challenge. This notice was regretfully released prior to informing us and without our consent. Unfortunately, given the office's current work load and the time frame of the project, we cannot assist the Municipal Art Society in this endeavor.

According to the New York Times, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture will be taking Santiago Calatrava's place as the fourth firm involved in Municipal Art Society's "provocation."

Coincidentally, earlier today SHoP principal Vishaan Chakrabarti spoke about the high cost of the World Trade Center PATH station at a panel on the new Penn Station at the Regional Plan Association's 2013 assembly.

"There are people," Mr. Chakrabarti said, "rightfully, who are very concerned—look at what happened at the [World] Trade Center Site, and they understand that a lot of money went for something that maybe is not quite the right amount of money for the people that are going to move through that new station there, and that this is somehow going to be a white elephant."

"I think a shared vision" of Penn Station, he concluded, "has to convince people, politically, that that will not be the case here."

At $3.7 billion, Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center PATH terminal will be the world's most expensive subway station when completed.

Santiago Calatrava does not have the best reputation when it comes to designing practical public works. The Valencian architect has achieved great success in winning design commissions across the globe—especially for public works projects like bridges, train stations and cultural centers—but has also attracted criticism for his budget-busting designs.

Mr. Calatrava is practically a persona non grata in Valencia (he is now based in Zurich), where the leftist Esquerra Unida political party has started a website called Calatrava te la clava—loosely translated as "Calatrava bleeds you dry"—on which it accuses the architect of making 100 million euros off the Valencian City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural complex that is widely seen as a symbol of excess, built during Spain's boom years but now a drain on the government's finances as it undergoes a period of fiscal austerity.

He has also come under scrutiny in Italy, where a prosecutor put Mr. Calatrava under investigation for design defects and cost overruns on his Ponte della Costituzione, a pedestrian bridge in Venice.

Mr. Calatrava's most expensive project is found not in Europe, but in lower Manhattan. He was chosen during the heady post-9/11 days to design the World Trade Center PATH terminal—a project whose costs have since ballooned to $3.7 billion, making it by far the most expensive subway station in the world, even after its elaborate, movable roof was scaled back and made stationary.

"There's no question that the World Trade Center"—half of whose costs are in the PATH terminal—"has been a drain on the Port Authority's technological as well as financial resources," said Denise Richardson, managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, to the Wall Street Journal.

So it came as a surprise that the Municipal Art Society, perhaps the city's foremost independent planning group, chose Santiago Calatrava as one of four architects—alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and modernist giants SOM—to present proposals for a new Penn Station, to be unveiled on May 29.

The Observer spoke with Vin Cipolla, president of MAS, about the choice yesterday. He defended the inclusion of Mr. Calatrava in what he called a "provocation" on Penn Station, saying, "I'm a huge fan of Calatrava's work."

Benjamin Kabak, who runs the New York City transit blog Second Avenue Sagas, was not such a huge fan. "Even involving Calatrava" in the Penn Station challenge, he told The Observer, "underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city's leading institutions have." He suggested that money should be spent on increasing transit capacity, especially beneath the Hudson River, not aesthetics—and especially not on an extravagant Santiago Calatrava design.

Mr. Cipolla took issue with that characterization. "I don't believe there's a tradeoff," he said. "I think a compelling design is an essential part of what is successful infrastructure."

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.

These success suggest that even though Mr. Doctoroff is no longer in command, might it still be possible to see a gondola stretch across the East River between Lower Manhattan, Governors Island and Brooklyn? Or a light rail line running the entire length of the waterfront from Astoria in Queens to Brooklyn’s Red Hook? Or, most audacious of all, tearing down the Javits convention center and moving it to yet another decked-over rail yard, this time in Sunnyside, where it would be surrounded by apartment and hotel towers and a sizable retail complex?

These were among the proposals Mr. Doctoroff put forward on Friday during a speech at the Municipal Art Society’s MAS Summit 2012. They were meant as examples for the next mayor to latch onto in order to “extend the achievements of the Bloomberg Administration by knitting new connections among emerging communities, amenities and institutions.”

Among the 90 speakers—including quite a few probable mayoral candidates—at last week’s cities conference, Mr. Doctoroff was asked to address what New York would need to do in order to succeed in the coming century. He decided to build his speech around the importance of the mayor and the priorities he believes any mayor (but especially those looking to succeed his boss) should have.

“I decided to frame it in terms of leadership because I have watched Mike Bloomberg over the past 11 years be a great leader and I do believe that mayors (for better and worse) truly make the biggest difference in the fate of the city,” Mr. Doctoroff wrote in a follow-up email. “I also believe that we can lose what we have gained quite quickly, as we saw in the 1970s.”

Mr. Doctoroff said he had three central questions that New Yorkers should ask of their would be mayors:

• "Does he or she truly understand what makes New York unique in an increasingly competitive world?"
• "Does he or she fervently believe in what I call the 'virtuous cycle of the successful city?'"
• "Does he or she have the vision to fuel the imagination of this stunning city and then the courage and decisiveness to get things done?"

Of course Mr. Doctoroff himself had an answer, often lengthy, to each of these questions. To the first one, of uniqueness and global competition, he stressed that the city should not pine for the past, for legacy industries like manufacturing, for outdated ways of thinking, building and taxing. “If we begin to send signals, any signals, that we are not going to remain the most open city in the world, we will surely lose our edge,” Mr. Doctoroff said.

Mr. Doctoroff explained his “virtuous cycle” thusly: “We are a remarkably compassionate city. We believe that we need to help those in need, that we have to make the city more affordable, that we have to provide the tools for people to capitalize on opportunity. All of that requires money. That's why our leaders have to have to truly get―and then they have to effectively manage―the virtuous cycle.”

He then, only half in jest, copped what sounded like a line from Gordon Gecko. “It starts with the core belief that growth―growth―is good,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “That the additional resident, business, or visitor generates net new revenues, which, if invested wisely, enhances the quality of life, which, in turn, helps to attract more residents, businesses and visitors, thereby perpetuating the cycle.”

This growth, this net new revenue, naturally leads to the visions Mr. Doctoroff was so famous for cooking up, and where he outlined the plans previously mentioned.

"Over the past 10 years, we have rebuilt, rezoned, and refashioned huge swaths of the city," he declared proudly. "Rail yards are becoming New York's next great neighborhoods. A rail line has become New York's newest great park. A military base will become New York's next great park. We have reclaimed our formerly decrepit waterfront for housing and recreation. Roosevelt Island will become the intellectual center of a burgeoning tech industry. We are not a city that plays small ball."

In his email, Mr. Doctoroff explained the ideas, some new, some old, some variations on the old, were all designed to connect the progress that had come before. The gondolas would provide more reliable access to Governors Island, allowing it to become a 24/7 community, one that Mr. Doctoroff suggested would become "a hub for another emerging industry, like global health." As for the light rail line, it would run along Kent Avenue and Vernon Boulevard, among other generally quiet waterfront thoroughfares. "Brooklyn is hot," Mr. Doctoroff intoned. "It is Queens' turn next."

But the clincher was Sunnyside, demonstrating the kind of big-picture, nothing-is-impossible thinking that characterized Mr. Doctoroff's tenure at City Hall. He called it "a huge swath or rail yards," repeating the phrase three times, to laughter from audience, before pointing out that it "forms a scar through the middle of Queens." Indeed, this project, bigger than Hudson, Atlantic and the Hoboken PATH yards combined, reminded people all too well of the Doctoroff days.

Proposals for such a project have been in the works for four decades, but Mr. Doctoroff brought some new innovations to the table. For starters, he believes the time is finally right to justify the massive investment such a project would entail. The starting point would be dividing the plan up into parcels, so the entire yards would not have to be decked at once but could instead be done progressively. And the timing for that first parcel could not be better, Mr. Doctoroff suggested.

"Let's borrow an idea from Governor Cuomo and move Javits to Queens, this time, though, to a location that is one or two subway stops from Midtown," Mr. Doctoroff explained. "You could pay for a big part of it by selling Javits' land on the West Side, which is more valuable today because of the No. 7 extension, and we could draw a wider array of conventions to less expensive hotels in Long Island City are built."

He pointed out that while some might complain that the location is not Manhattan, it is close enough and has its clear advantages, including space and affordablility, an approach that Mr. Doctoroff said he witnessed this summer at the London Olympics, where a new convention center had been built in a formerly industrial part of the East End.

The final slide of the presentation, a joke, Mr. Doctoroff later insisted, was the one missing piece from his legacy realized at Sunnyside Yards. "You know, it could even be the site for a temporary Olympic Stadium," he said, to more laughs, "but I leave that to future visionaries."

The whole affair left us feeling dizzy. Many in the city, particularly in the business class, have been hungering for a candidate who could be the successor to Mike Bloomberg. Could this be the one? The rhetoric was certainly there, as Mr. Doctoroff's final words on stage made clear.

"Big visions like this are what have defined New York," he said. "But they don't happen by accident. They take guts and imagination. They require an intuitive understanding of what are New York's unique advantages in a competitive world. They demand the skill to generate the revenues so we can afford to be the kind of city we aspire to be."

Now who could have those qualities? Perhaps Dan Doctoroff?

"Just to be clear, I have zero interest in running for Mayor, so, if the premise of the story is that I am somehow putting myself out there, then I don't want to engage," Mr. Doctoroff said in response to the first email The Observer sent him asking him as much. "If it is about what I said on Friday, then I am happy to talk."

In a follow-up email, he explained that he gave the speech because he was asked, though he also admitted to constantly be thinking up new and far-out plans for the city.

"I visit all of the leading cities of the world on a regular basis, so it is hard to avoid what they are doing and I have always been fascinated with cities anyway," Mr. Doctoroff explained. "That said, I am quite focused on Bloomberg, so it is probably best to characterize my thoughts as musings."

For better or worse, bigger or badder, the city could use more of these kinds of musings.

We'll keep the lights on for you. (MAS)

For the past nine years, two gigantic beams of light have shown over Lower Manhattan—a beacon of loss and hope, a searchlight for something that would never be found and yet would stay with all New Yorkers forever.

Known as the Tribute in Light, it was a public art project created by the Municipal Art Society and Creative Time to commemorate the fallen Twin Towers. Beginning six months after 9/11, and relit every anniversary thereafter, the temporary, luminous memorial will return this year for the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It could be for the last time ever.While it seems as simple as flipping a switch, Tribute in Light actually costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce each year. Here is how the MAS describes the process:

It takes more than a week to produce Tribute in Light. The process starts Friday, September 2, and continues through dusk on September 11, when a switch is flipped and the powerful beams shoot four miles across the sky, visible for 60 miles around.

Everything is done by hand by the crew of 30 electricians, lighting technicians, stagehands and production assistants. From September 2 to 11 they’re at the projection site, the roof of the Battery Parking Garage in Lower Manhattan, installing, arranging, calibrating and testing 88 refrigerator-sized, 7,000-watt xenon searchlight bulbs so powerful that everyone handling them must wear eye protectors and special gloves.

And it's not just labor and expensive light bulbs that drive up the cost. There is also storage costs and site fees, plus one heck of a Con-Ed bill. Still, it's worth it, and the Municipal Art Society is hoping New Yorkers and other will help keep the Tribute in Light on. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and other donors have spent millions of dollars to produce the project over the years, but that funding does not extend beyond this year.

The MAS is launching a Tribute in Light fundraiser to make the project permanent, including finding it a new home.

"Tribute has become a world-renowned icon of remembrance, honoring those who were lost, as well as those who worked so hard to get our city through that terrible trial," according to the MAS. What will it take to ensure the tribute itself is not lost?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Mr. Cipolla: Not true! There are 400 national parks, and most of those national park units are buildings. There are 22 national park sites in metro New York. And most of those are really buildings, historic monuments. It’s much more varied than people think.

Have you spent much of your life in New York City?

I have, almost my entire adult life, had an apartment here. There have been periods when I was here full time, and then long stretches when I wasn’t here full time. But through my entire adult life, I’ve been a part of New York, involved with New York, obsessed with New York, and I’ve started businesses here.

You’ve come in at a hard time for New York. Does MAS’s role change when the city and state are basically in economic survival mode?

Our role absolutely does change as the city changes. It gives an organization like MAS an opportunity to focus more on its thought-leadership position. There aren’t going to be as many immediate planning and preservation battles or crises to respond to—MAS is leaving what has been a very reactive period, of neighborhood concerns and historic preservation battles and zoning initiatives. A lot of that stuff has abated. Things are just happening a lot more slowly. It’s different.

One of the things you said you’d be doing in this job is advocating on the federal level for New York, and you had strong ties to the Bush administration. How’s it going with Obama?

I’m spending very little time in Washington. The administration’s moves in public infrastructure investment and thinking about developing a strong urban policy position are very encouraging and very exciting. With federal money becoming available, one would hope that those resources don’t channel just to old-think solutions. We don’t want billions of dollars of infrastructure money available to cities to go to interstate highways. There are other ways to invest those funds in sustainable transportation, in rebuilding urban fabric.

What’s encouraging is that this is a group of people that I think understands cities and believes in cities and believes cities are the future, and so intellectually, all of that potential is there. But then the bureaucratic realities of Washington are the risk, because what a lot of the forces will do is to take this new investment and push it down into backwards, retro, unsustainable investment activities. As an urbanist, that really worries me.

So—Moynihan Station. What are the realistic prospects of that getting funded?

The conversion of the Farley Post Office is the quintessential shovel-ready project. The plans are done. Senator Schumer’s office has been working very hard on it, in terms of directing resources. It’s a very complicated set of players that need to be aligned to make that happen, but we feel very encouraged.

Another thing that MAS has been vocal on lately is the redevelopment of Coney Island. You don’t think it can happen on private land, but don’t want the city to take it through eminent domain. How is that going to work?

It was publicly reported [in early April] that the city made an offer to the developer of about $105 million. The developer had about $93 million invested in the property that the city was trying to buy. So you’ve got the city offering the owner roughly a 10 percent profit, at a time when there are global real estate failings. It’s remarkable, really. Is it then the taxpayer’s obligation to increase the size of the profit? I’m a capitalist. You have to have a motivated seller, and an eager buyer, and we have an eager buyer who seems to have made a solid offer. Our hope is that that negotiation is successful and that the city does acquire the property.

So Joe Sitt is not going to hold out for the extra $50 million he wants?

I don’t know.

The M.T.A. has also been short of cash lately. What can be done?

I think we need to see a large and sustainable commitment at the federal and state levels for public transportation in this country. Period. And we need to change the funding paradigm and think in a different model in terms of what we’re investing in and what we’re building as a country. Until that happens, we’re going to have a deteriorating existing public transportation infrastructure, only small incremental improvements, and more burden on the back of public transportation consumers. It needs to be a global policy shift. I think we have a president who understands this, but I think we have a country that largely doesn’t understand this. I mean, just look at what we subsidize today. When you look at how little money goes to support public transportation vs. what goes to support roads, bridges and the automobile industry, it’s no wonder we’re facing fare hikes.

What’s your commute like?

I walk. Or take the subway. I live in Carnegie Hill.

What are some of your favorite newish architecture projects in the city?

On the new side, I really like the Standard Hotel. I like all the High Line–related stuff. Some of it may never become reality, but it’s easy to get charged up about that. It’s really cool. I like the New Museum. I like the cubes. I love DS+R, they just did Tully. I went on a hard hat tour, it’s absolutely magnificent. It’s so cool. So there’s been some great stuff happening—not enough. In this environment, you know, when are we going to get a great new building?

Would you say you have a pet issue?

I have a lot of pet issues. Public transportation is a pet issue. Social and business entrepreneurship is a pet issue. Another pet interest is responsible landlords. What we’re seeing now in New York is that as retail places are going out of business, which is very sad, some of the property owners now are boarding up, literally creating blight. It’s disrespectful to the people who live and work in those communities. It’s happening at a greater rate, and I think that’s really alarming. It’s very un-Jacobsean. The whole idea is for a building to be a good neighbor to the one next to it.

What’s your feeling about term limits?

I’m a fan of term limits. Political change excites me. I think there’s a very legitimate debate, but I’m a term-limits guy.

Does Mayor Bloomberg deserve another term?

He deserves another term if the city of New York elects him.

You haven’t been too vocal as a spokesperson yet. Are you the person who should be the one speaking for MAS?

I will be. I’m new; and we’re working on a lot of things internally right now. So I’m doing a little more listening now than I am talking.

Has it been a steep learning curve?

No. I’ve always followed all this stuff. But obviously I haven’t had the opportunity to work on it or act on it. The charitable environment is really under tremendous stress; and that’s very disconcerting and unnerving.

How much has MAS’s funding been off?

Probably about a 20 percent decline [from the same time last year].

What about MAS do you want to change or modernize?

I think that we have to embrace change, and really take advantage of new media and Internet communication to do our work. Planning and preservation advocacy, historically, has been a totally offline activity. There are wonderful aspects to that, it’s very familial. People understand how to interact with each other over many decades of work. New forms of communication represent new models for conducting this work that, actually, if you’re open to it, while it doesn’t have the same kind of emotional pieces, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t the same underlying integrity. And on the upside, there’s an opportunity to make things more populist, to get out of the elite-driven boxes that this work has been in over time.

Does MAS have a Twitter feed yet?

We do.

You do?

All that stuff is firing up.

ldepillis@observer.com

Mr. Childs, who designed 7 World Trade Center and the Time Warner Center, among others, takes over from Phillip K. Howard, the New York attorney who wrote The Death of Common Sense. His ascension to chair comes as the society starts a new era with its leadership. The man at the agency's helm for much of the past four decades, president Kent Barwick, has retired, giving preservation advocate Vin Cipolla control over the group.

The Municipal Art Society has been around for decades, weighing in on various planning and development initiatives. Of late, they've been particularly active on the city's plan to redo Coney Island and the on and off plans to expand Penn Station, known as Moynihan Station (Mr. Childs is the lead architect for this project).