Now that's a skyline. (William Weber/Curbed)

How does it compare to today?

Back when we did our big report one what the Bloomberg administration has in store for Midtown East under an in-the-works rezoning, we came up with a little dream/doomsday scenario of what that might look like. Then, when the city officially unveiled the plans, they revealed that some sites could potentially see buildings as big or bigger than the Empire State Building, and they produced their own images of this brave new world.

Now, our pals over at Curbed have come up with their own rendering of a Midtown of the future, which are equally exciting and terrifying, depending on where you stand on cool new skyscrapers and the crowds and shadows that come with them. Which camp are you in? Let us know in the comments.

Race for the prize? (Getty)

Dan Doctoroff, Olympic dreamer, got to attend an opening ceremony for the games this summer, even if it was not the one he had hoped for. It was from London, where Mr. Doctoroff was taking in the 2012 summer Olympics, that he fired off an email to his friends declaring “feelings of ‘what might have been’ are curiously absent.”

The Times got a hold of this email, where the former deputy mayor for economic development and current head of Bloomberg LP goes on to say that even without them, the Olympic bid was good for New York.

He pointed to the High Line park in Manhattan, which he called “one of New York’s premier tourist destinations,” as well as “a subsidized middle-income housing project in Queens, ferry service on the East River, new parks and even a new Yankee Stadium, Citi Field and the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn.”

“I don’t know whether New York will ever host the Olympics,” Mr. Doctoroff wrote, “but I do know that no city has ever benefited so much from trying and that no city embodies the Olympic spirit more. As we always said, New York really is an Olympic Village every day.”

The Times notes that both Atlantic Yards and the new Yankees Stadium were already well underway by the time the Olympics bid was announced, but Mr. Doctoroff counters that those projects were spurred on by the bid.

And yet the counter argument could also be made: Look at everything that remains unfinished. While it is true that the Bloomberg administration held onto much of the bid as a blueprint for the development of the city over the past eight years, think of how much further along many of these projects would be had we actually won the games.

Hunters Point South, instead of waiting to break ground on two towers sometime this year would be built, some 6,000 affordable housing units that would have, in the interim, served as the Olympic Village. Ditto Hudson Yards, which would have to be finished, instead of just begun--never mind the plan for a West Side stadium had already been scuttled by the City Council before the International Olympic Committee had made its decision.

A new Javits Center would probably have been undertaken, as well, on top of other projects that have since been forgotten or never would have materialized. And the Barclays Center might just be finished, along with some of those apartment towers. Would Dan Goldstein really have dared to stand up to the Olympics? (Probably, rightly, yes.)

Indeed, it is these hiccups, on the West Side, in Brooklyn and elsewhere, that likely left the New York at the bottom of the IOC’s list. Ask any developer, this is not an easy place to build. Mr. Doctoroff questions whether we will ever host an Olympic games. He is probably right to ponder such a question.

Nevermind that things are reportedly very quiet in London this summer, driving off the normal tourists in favor of the Olympic variety, of whom there are apparently far fewer. Meanwhile New York continues to see record numbers of visitors (we know, we tripped over them on the way into the office today). And there is the general fact that Olympics tend to be expensive boondoggles, costing nations and locations more than they are worth. The city might have gotten more money from the state and federal governments to realize the projects that are still undone.

Still, as the mayor, unlike his deputy, expresses disappointment at not hosting the Olympics this summer, despite the losses for a few developers on still unrealized projects, we cannot help but wonder if New Yorkers won the real gold in losing out.

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.

BluePRint pulls back the curtain on development. (Getty)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really. Really? (kerry!/Flickr)

Much as we want to be, The Observer is no real fan of the transformation of the Fourth Avenue from grotty auto shops to shoddy "luxury" apartment buildings. As usual, The Journal's Robbie Whelan delivers another brilliant diagnosis for the city's architectural woes, and this time he focuses in on "Brooklyn's Burden."

Sadly, the damage already is done. Fourth Avenue, anchored at the north end by the sublime Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, could have one day become one of New York's grand avenues, a broad street full of life, mixed uses and appealing architecture.

But the Planning Department lacked such foresight in 2003 when it rezoned the noisy avenue to take advantage of the demand for apartments spilling over Park Slope to the east and Boerum Hill and Gowanus to the west. Focused primarily on residential development, it didn't require developers to incorporate ground-level commercial businesses into their plans, and allowed them to cut sidewalks along Fourth Avenue for entrances to ground-level garages.

Developers got the message. With the re-zoning coinciding with the real-estate boom, they put up more than a dozen apartment towers, many of them cheap looking and with no retail at the street level, effectively killing off the avenue's vibrancy for blocks at a time.

The city finally got wise and passed another zoning change last year, correcting some of these mistakes. But it was too late. Walking along parts of Fourth Avenue today is like walking in the suburbs, bereft of the interaction between pedestrian and building, except for occasionally having to dodge a car darting out of a garage.

It closes with one of the strongest damnations of City Planning boss Amanda Burden, who has been honored by most every planning agency and civic group on the planet: "After Mayor Bloomberg leaves office at the end of 2013, Ms. Burden may be replaced as head of the Planning Department as well as chairwoman of the Planning Commission. Let's hope her replacement makes his or her mistakes before taking power."

This was clearly an awful oversight, but how much is Ms. Burden to blame, and how much is this the fault of the system with which she is trapped?

This is precisely why there is a war on landmarks, because so many New Yorkers are clamoring for more historic districts precisely because it is the only means of quality control in the city's "built environment." Just a block up the hill is Fifth Avenue, and the start of the Park Slope Historic District, one of the nicest and most expensive stretches in New York.

The historic district was just expanded for the third time, an outcome that makes developers red and blue. But can you blame the neighbors? When left to their own devices, some of these guys can do no right.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Mr. Whelan's name as "Robby," not "Robbie." The Observer regrets the error.

Party time. Excellent? (Dennis Crowley/Flickr)

Even as the city has gotten squeaky clean over the past decade, in some ways, it is still as nasty as the Bowery at its worst. Case in point: Booze hounds. According to The Times, drinking-related problems are at modern highs.

In 2009, alcohol was responsible for more than 8,840 hospitalizations in New York, a 36 percent increase over 2000. Additionally, the proportion of alcohol-related emergency-room visits among New Yorkers ages 21 to 64 doubled from 2003 to 2009. There were 70,000 such visits just in 2009.

And it is not like 2000 was exactly a tame time in the city, with Silicon Alley booming and the Millenium New Years probably pouring more champagne than any time since the end of Prohibition. Then again, in the midst of a depression, what better things to do than kick back the bottle.

Yet the real issue may be, if this is a problem, is there anything the city can do about it? Or even wants to do about it?

The Bloomberg administration, for its part, is adamant that it is not seeking to reduce the number of bars in the city, a spokesman said. (“The answer is no.”) Responding to inquiries earlier this year about whether the city might discourage the opening of more bars, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, said, “We’re deeply committed to encouraging entrepreneurs to start and expand small businesses in the city.”

In this instance an interventionist administration that recently called for residential buildings to regulate smoking seems oddly satisfied simply to play advertiser in chief.

But the fact of the matter is that even if the mayor thought he could do more to impinge on nightlife—maybe the smoking ban has helped more than it's hurt, making bars more inviting to all—because the State Liquor Authority is the one responsible for regulating these establishments. See the dread Williamsburgers faced with the prospect of a new mega-club, as well as the relief when the SLA turned the down. But only until the club's proprietor cleans up his place on the Lower East Side.

If the state cannot be counted on to properly fund the subways, what happens when it comes to the bar around the corner?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The idea was originally conceived by a handful of Columbia architecture grad students, and their professor, architect Laurie Hawkinson, presented an in-depth look at just why such a plan is viable and reasonable to Urban Omnibus.

The really brilliant part is that way the landfill connects existing Lower Manhattan to Governors Island. The real estate angle is the strong feeling that the proximity to – the extension of — Lower Manhattan is what will maximize value. And they did this without compromising the landmarked park space on the Northern end of Governors Island. So it makes for a kind of Central Park green space.

She goes on to discuss the viability of the project and how "dead serious" she and Mr. Chakrabarti are about realizing it in real life. To see how such a thing could take shape, and only in 20 years time no less, check out the attached slideshow.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Margaret Castillo, rubbing elbows with royalty. (Spencer Tucker)

Last month, Mayor Bloomberg stood in a shiny white conference room inside Department of Buildings headquarters on lower Broadway, two blocks from City Hall. He was surrounded by some of his top deputies and a giant flatscreen monitor mounted on the wall. Welcome to the Hub, a new high-tech system that allows the city’s architects and engineers for the first time to interface with plan examiners at the 17 different departments with oversight of their projects simultaneously.

“We all heard horror stories about delays in the approval process that cost time and money,” Mayor Bloomberg told reporters.

Standing at the podium beside the buildings commissioner and landmarks chair, closer to the mayor than the reps for the Real Estate Board and developer the Related Companies, was a striking woman in a black tweed dress and gray cardigan.

Margaret O’Donoghue Castillo, along with her members at the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, where she is currently serving as president, have told the city more of these horror stories than anyone else, and it was through their advocacy, their lobbying, that encouraged the mayor and the Department of Buildings to create the Hub.

“When anyone submits a permit or has to change one during construction, the whole process is very cumbersome,” Ms. Castillo said during a recent interview at the chapter’s sleek Center for Architecture in the Village. “You have to touch many agencies--Parks Department, DOT, it’s not just the Buildings Department, there’s Planning, Landmarks, Mayor’s Office, so on and so forth. So you can reach a stalemate on an issue, where one says the tree has to be here and the other says the curb cut has to be there, and there’s no way we can resolve it, we just get bounced around.”

For years, the AIA was used to getting bounced around. Many architects, despite their progressive convictions, are allergic to politics, at least publicly. Dependent on developers and patrons of other persuasions, designers are often concerned that if they come off as firebrands, it could cost them work in the future. However, the institute has been quietly raising its profile, politically, professionally and culturally, all in the interest of furthering its interests within the corridors of power—which it helped build but rarely gets the credit for.

Taking a political role is especially important in New York. Not only is this a city singularly associated with its architecture, its skyscrapers and townhouses, but it is also a place where politics has more to do with how we build than in almost any other city in the country. Rather than design commissions and planning boards negotiating projects on their aesthetic and community merits, it is zoning and building codes that define the shape of our structures. There is a common joke that is meant only half in jest, that the real designers in New York are the land-use attorneys.

“It used to be we were more reactive, waiting for the forum to air our views, and by then it was usually too late,” Rick Bell, the executive director of the chapter, said. “Now we want to be there for the start of the discussion, or even initiating the discussion ourselves.”

Mr. Bell is largely responsible for the AIA’s recent transformation. He joined the trade group a decade ago chiefly because he saw its potential to take a more active role in the civic life of the city. “Architects shape so much about the city, and yet they have so little influence in how they shape it,” he said.

Mr. Bell came to the profession in 1970s, and his first endeavor was a nonprofit on the Upper West Side that essentially offered free architecture and planning advice to other nonprofits, like housing groups and block associations. He then spent about 15 years in private practice, mostly building educational projects, before having “a cathartic moment in my 40s,” when he decided to go into public service. He joined the Dinkins administration in the General Services Department and then led the creation of the Department of Design and Construction for Mayor Giuliani. When he left in 2000, he took a year’s sabbatical before joining the AIA. “Rick’s a very strong personality and a very courageous personality,” said Margery Perlmutter, a land-use attorney and trained architect who serves as the AIA’s legislative director. “He is willing to talk to anyone and he is willing to talk about anything.”

Architecture rings his bell. (Emily Nemens)

Civic life is not new to the AIA. The organization was founded shortly after the Panic of 1857, when the recession made it almost impossible to find work—not unlike today. Following the Civil War, the institute relocated to Washington, where most work was being done for reconstruction. Momentarily bereft, New York architects founded their own chapter of the now-national organization in 1867.

For many years, the focus was on professional development, lobbying for standard practices at a time when buildings were designed as often by developers and builders as by trained architects. The AIA did play a role in the adoption of the first zoning code in 1916, and there was a particularly active period in the 1960s, when the likes of Philip Johnson marched on Penn Station—architecture was going through a particularly radical moment, like everything else in the world. But with the great moderation of the ’80s and ’90s, the industry largely left the politics to its development masters.

“That was one of the reasons I took the job,” Mr. Bell said, “I thought there was a lot of potential for greater public engagement.”

The Center was one of Mr. Bell’s first great achievements at the AIA, and it underscores this public commitment. Opening in 2003 at 536 LaGuardia Place, it has become a place not only for architects to gather but also those they hope to influence. The Center hosts hundreds of exhibitions, talks, forums and meetings a year, bringing architects, stakeholders, elected and appointed officials and the public into a space obsessed with how design shapes the city and daily life. Ms. Perlmutter said that she was never interested in joining the AIA until she made a visit to the Center for Architecture. Dozens of chapters across the country have since followed suit opened their own versions, and the one here just expanded into a storefront next door to accommodate more exhibitions and activities.

The Center also helped raise awareness of the AIA and the expertise of its members, and the Bloomberg administration began reaching out, looking for input on programs ranging from PlaNYC to the Green Codes Task Force. The AIA was chiefly responsible for the new Active Design Guidelines implemented in 2010, which urge architects and developers to create “healthier” buildings--better lighting, better air quality, better stairs. It also sponsored the urbanSHED design competition on behalf of the DOB, which created new, cathedral-like sidewalk sheds that will promote better circulation and aesthetics.

Still, the organization oftentimes felt like it was on the outside looking in when it came to major political decisions affecting the construction trades, development and zoning. “These things give you a seat in the room, but it doesn’t get you a seat at the table,” Ms. Perlmutter said. “A seat at the table means your ideas are coming up early in the discussion and they’re respected and listened to and people go, ‘Oh, my god, we have all these experts here, let’s use them.’”

The first step was hiring Jay Bond, the former director of land-use at the City Council, who left after his boss, former Councilwoman Melinda Katz, lost her bid to become city comptroller. He is serving as the AIA’s first full-time policy director, and his knowledge of not only land-use minutiae but also the inner workings of city government, as well as his connections there, has helped the AIA make its case in the right way to the right people. The organization has also retained the services of the Marino Organization, a PR shop with deep ties to Big Real Estate and City Hall, and lobbying outfit Capalino+Company, which does work in politics, community and cultural circles.

Beyond the Hub, the AIA is now trying to tackle such broad issues as reforming the land-use review process and ending the statute of repose, which holds architects liable for the life of their buildings. Lawsuits are rare, but the insurance can be crippling, and New York and Vermont are the only places to require it. The AIA has also been encouraging architects to join their local community boards.

“This is not a nice way to think about it, especially if you’re me,” said Steven Spinola, the influential head of the Real Estate Board, “but I think some people, when they hear somebody in real estate is proposing something, they think they’re doing it because of money. And when they think of somebody in the architecture world or the planning world is doing something, they are doing it for the architecture and so forth. So I think there is significant creditability there that’s automatic.”

City Hall, under renovation. (Spencer Tucker)

This creates its own challenges, however. Lacking the money of the real estate board and the size of some of the unions, the AIA has had to do most of its work through back channels. But heading into the next election, there is hope of creating an architecture platform of sorts. “There are so many good things about PlaNYC that we really want to keep it going, if not more invigorated,” Ms. Castillo said. “So we’re very interested, next year, in seeing where the candidates positions are, because we really think it’s critical to New York.”

Who knows, some day the mayor could be an architect. It is a rare thing in American politics--the only registered architect to hold national office in generations is Richard Swett, a Congressman from Vermont. (Don’t forget Jefferson.) Meanwhile, Ms. Perlmutter points to Istanbul, where the mayor was an architect widely credited with transforming the public realm.

The desire to affect the political process speaks a good deal to the historical moment in which the AIA currently finds itself, with a mayor who is actually quite enlightened to the issues the organization concerns itself with. The Bloomberg administration has transformed the way in which New Yorkers think about what designers like to call “the built environment,” the infrastructure and open space and architecture that the rest of us tend to think of simply as the city.

It is a rather chicken-and-egg debate, but the fact remains, without Michael Bloomberg, the AIA might not be so embolden, but having been awakened, architects want to hang on to their new-found riches. Not to mention the fact that a recession that has laid off more architects than workers in any sector, per capita, has created a greater desire to take risks.

“This has always been necessary,” Ms. Castillo said, “but what we did see was, if things were slow at the Building Department, this would be the time to get in there. We also felt that the mayor was pro-business and -technology and -efficiency, then we actually felt very motivated to do it now and not wait for another mayor to come in and who knows. So we really did feel the urgency to get this done fast.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

This has not kept a number of New Yorkers from reacting as though their homes had been flattened to make way for an expressway, as was the case under a certain biblical commissioner a few decades ago. It is true that much of Sadik-Khan's power lies in the realization that, like Robert Moses, her department enjoyed limited oversight and could act unilaterally with its visionary--or is it venal?--plans.

Which is why the news that the most ambitious--or perhaps unreal--plan yet, to close off the middle of 34th Street and send the cars and trucks fleeing out from there in opposite directions, with dedicated bus lanes and another grand pedestrian plaza to boot, has died. Business owners and residents were too worried about the changes it would mean, and in a surprising turn, DOT listened. Arguably, like Moses, the department tends to think it is working for the good of the entire city, even if a few locals may grumble. And its plans have mostly stuck--who complains about the Times Square changes anymore, except when it is on the topic of all the tourists.

Ben Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas worries deeply about the implications of this latest decision:

For the people who ride and the people who walk, this would have been a grand experiment in restoring the streets to the people who make them thrive. But the residents, for selfish reasons, and business owners with some practical concerns that could have been addressed, did not like it. [...] From personal safety to faster commute times to cleaner air and a nicer environment for pedestrians, this project matters. From a modeshare perspective, it's a no-brainer. Cars are vastly outnumbered by pedestrians and buses, and cars, which are trying to escape 34th St., do not contribute to the area's economy.

Given the backlash to bike lanes in the East Village, Upper West Side, Staten Island and, most notoriously, on Prospect Park West, it makes sense that the DOT would finally do some outreach on all these projects, even if technically it does not have to--not that the City Council is not currently mulling bills that will create more oversight and community outreach for the department.

But what if the plazas were a strawman, a grandiose plan that could never actually happen, but by comparison, the still radical proposal of, say, separated bus lanes, of which there are currently none in the city, could be proposed and look tame by comparison? This may sound like a conspiracy theory, and it kind of is, but consider that developers do this all the time, proposing out-sized projects they know cannot get built, politically speaking, before having them scaled down to what they actually want.

A number of transit folks consulted by The Observer agree that this was not the case on 34th Street, that DOT expended too many resources and too much political capital not to be serious about this plan. Still, when the new one is unveiled on March 14, we bet it remains radical by New York standards. And is also welcomed even by its skeptics.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

City Planning spokewoman Rachaele Raynoff stood up for the city's work and pointed out that some of the problems would have been addressed by the forthcoming rezoning of the Gowanus -- though that has been put on hold after the area was designated a Superfund site:

Creating inviting and engaging streetscapes has been a key part of City Planning's work, and indeed, active ground floor uses on streets within the Gowanus rezoning, including on Fourth Avenue, were an important part of the City's framework. However, a requirement for ground floor retail or community facilities would not have been appropriate in 2003 when the Park Slope rezoning was adopted by the City Council, nor was this issue raised during the public review process. Absent a market for the retail space on a newly developing corridor, such a requirement at that time could have discouraged development altogether by making it financially infeasible.

The Brownstoner Jonathan Butler agrees with City Planning that street life is important, but he disagrees with the rationale for forestalling it until now:

Obviously the main problem is the failure of all those new buildings to include retail.

Ron Shiffman, founder of the Pratt Center and a former member of the City Planning Commission, also thinks more should have been done from the start. But putting that aside, Shiffman said the issue the area's industrial legacy:

Part of the problem is that this is still a heavily automotive and industrial area, unlike Park Avenue, which was always residential and office when it was built. And unlike Park Avenue, you don't have all the truck traffic that you do on Fourth. Park Avenue is in the middle of a major residential and office neighborhood whereas Fourth Avenue is at the edge of a neighborhood. [...]  There are things other than urban design. Add inclusionary housing, so gentrification is less of an issue, and overtime, the character of the neighborhood would change.

Eric Safyan, an architect whose offices are located just off Fourth Avenue on President Street, reiterated the importance of retail and greenspace, but he thought a radical transformation of the street could have its advantages:

There should be a lot more landscaping, like you see on Park Avenue. Just taking out a car lane or two would help, slowing down traffic and creating more space for pedestrians and bikes. Right now, there's no bike lane on Fourth, but you see a lot of bikes. It's pretty dangerous.

Going back to the original Journal article that set off this debate, perhaps people are thinking about Fourth Avenue in the wrong way. Maybe it's not that the area has been slow to develop but that the other neighborhoods that were rezoned in its wake and against which it has subsequently been judged, places like Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn, perhaps they are the ones out of whack, growing too fast to reasonably control or grapple with.

As the Journal and our panel of experts suggest, things have been getting better along the stretch, largely in an organic way. Maybe this is how development is supposed to happen in New York City. Though a nice little infrastructure boost, say a bike lane and some trees, wouldn't hurt either.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo