“I think the dynamics would be different in Pennsylvania,” that state’s former governor, Tom Ridge, acknowledged a few days ago when asked how the G.O.P. might have fared had he been part of it. “I think we’d be foolish not to admit it publicly.”

Read the full article here.

I disagree.

First, of course social conservative “leaders” are going to react this way. Their status in the world of Republican politics (i.e. the reason politicians court them and the media wants to talk to them) is derived entirely from the perception that they will can and will derail a candidate who doesn’t tow their line on issues like abortion and gay rights. So of course (for instance) Phil Burress of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community values is going to tell the Politico that a pro-choice VP would “doom” McCain in Ohio.

But whether these “leaders” really speak for the masses is a different matter. Recall that during the primary season we heard similar doomsday forecasts from various conservative interest-group leaders about the consequences for the G.O.P. of nominating McCain. Rush Limbaugh was even talking about conservatives writing in a candidate in November rather than checking off McCain’s name.

But guess what? It’s the middle of August and McCain has no problems at all with the G.O.P. base – he’s winning nearly 90 percent of the G.O.P. vote and Republicans are telling pollsters they are motivated to vote this November even if they still don’t care much for McCain. The explanation is simple and obvious: The G.O.P. base hates and fears Barack Obama much more intensely than it ever hated and feared McCain.  

Conventional wisdom was dead wrong six months ago when it decreed that McCain could never win over the G.O.P. base. Now, conventional wisdom has it that social conservatives will, by the millions, walk away from McCain and the G.O.P. if he chooses a pro-choice running mate. And once again, this seems like a flawed and oversimplified analysis.

To understand why, you have to consider which particular pro-choicer McCain might place on the ticket and how the selection would be sold. For instance, Tom Ridge would probably be a lot more problematic than Lieberman. Why? Because with Lieberman, there’d be two powerful counter-forces that could neutralize the impact of outraged social conservative leaders.

First, there’d be the reaction to Lieberman from the left, which would be vicious and over the top. Among social conservative voters (as opposed to their “leaders”), this would engender a sense of sympathy for and kinship with Lieberman – who would probably take advantage of this by not so subtly changing the way he talks about abortion. He’d swear off tinkering with the G.O.P.’s platform language, talk about all of the common ground between himself and the pro-life community (we both want to end abortion, he’d tell them), and maybe even start talking about a “culture of life.” In short, Lieberman could present himself as pro-choice in name only. This is much different than putting an avowed, William Weld-like pro-choicer on the ticket.

The second neutralizing force would be the added appeal to independent voters that Lieberman’s presence would create. Right now, independent voters who badly want to throw the G.O.P. out of the White House (there are many of them) will only vote for McCain for negative reasons – that is to say, because of some concern about Obama’s experience or toughness or some similar quality. McCain’s campaign recognizes this and has been focused (wisely) on driving up these concerns about Obama. But Lieberman – alone among VP prospects – could change this basic equation and make the G.O.P. ticket attractive in its own right to these same independent voters. The gains made among independents would easily dwarf whatever fallout Lieberman’s selection would trigger among social conservatives (especially consider the above-discussed ways that Lieberman could also mollify social conservatives).

Rich Lowry has written a far more realistic take on Lieberman’s prospects. He’s less bullish on the political benefits of a McCain-Lieberman ticket than I am, but he does acknowledge that it could be sold to the G.O.P. base. His suggestion: a pledge from both McCain and Lieberman to serve only one term. In effect, they’d be telling conservatives: You may not be wild about us, but we’re a lot better than Obama and you’ll still get to choose one of your own in 2012.

The socially conservative “leaders” that the press loves to call might not go for that. But it wouldn’t matter: Socially conservative voters would.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else tonight,” Giuliani told the audience, which gave him a warm, though not particularly impassioned, welcome. “We met in 1989 and she worked very, very hard to get me elected in 1989, [and] we didn’t succeed, but we became very good friends,” he said.

Giuliani spoke for about eight minutes, praising O’Keefe’s work with families of 9/11 victims and her efforts to build the Republican Party. He made no mention of the presidential race, nor of his plans for the future. Afterward, Giuliani shook a few hands with attendees and left. On his way out, the former mayor declined to speak with me, but stood next to his double-parked SUV while taking photos with several well-wishers.

Also attending the event was Giuliani’s close aide Tony Carbonetti, (who confirmed that Giuliani met with the state Republican chairman and discussed, in passing, the 2010 governor's race); New York's Conservative Party chairman, Mike Long; and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

Ridge, the evening’s keynote speaker, cited security and the economy in making the case for electing John McCain.

“We need a leader that understands that our national security and our economic prosperity are tied, inexplicably linked together,” he said. “We need a leader who fits the times, not merely a candidate who thinks it’s his time.”

Afterward, I asked Ridge for his thoughts on Giuliani possibly running for governor. Ridge, who was a two-term governor from Pennsylvania before joining the Bush administration, said Giuliani would do well in that race.

“You know, there are a lot of people that thought a couple of years ago that he would run [in 2010]. And I think he would not only get a lot of support from New York, but I think he picked up a lot of admirers around the country, so I suspect that he’d have great national support if he chose to take that on. That’s a tough personal decision because he’s doing so well in the private sector."

Later, I asked Ridge about Barack Obama's position on terrorism -- which Giuliani recently criticized.

Ridge said, “I do think that he [Obama] would [start] immediately bringing troops home from Iraq, [and that] is a horrible miscalculation, a misunderstanding of the forces at play in that region. He proudly asserts that he was against the war from the get-go. Well, that was then. That debate is over. You lost, and we’re there. Now, the question becomes, ‘What is the right approach to deal with our presence in trying to bring some stability?’”

Note the absence of Catsimatidis' distinctive eyeglasses.

The Gristedes owner underwent cataract surgery a month ago to enable him to put his glasses away when he's working a room or reading off a teleprompter. There have been some complications, and recently he had to have more surgery, according to spokesman Rob Ryan.

This sort of cosmetic preparation is not unique to Catsimatidis. City politicians have been known to shave a mustache (Bill Thompson, Hiram Monserrate), or lose weight (John Faso, Michael McMahon) in advance of a big campaign.

"It's kind of shocking, since there is nothing new out there, that John McCain now changes his tune on Rudy Giuliani just because he is running for president," a Giuliani aide, speaking on background, just told me "That's not straight talk."

The aide was referring to the remarks McCain made this morning at a press conference with Tom Ridge, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, after today's indictment came down.

At the event, McCain cited Kerik's training the Iraqi police force in 2003, when McCain was visiting Iraq.

"Kerik was there at the time," McCain said. "Supposedly his mission was to help train Iraqi police. He stayed a couple of months and then up and left. That should have been a part of anybody's judgment whether to recommend that individual to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security. His contribution to the training of the police and law enforcement people in Iraq, which was ostensibly why he was there, was less than successful."

UPDATE: This is now getting ugly.

McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis released the following statement.

And the Giuliani campaign sends over this statement from communications director Katie Levinson in response to McCain seeking to secure a loan to bolster his cash-strapped campaign.

In a separate and subsequent statement by Levinson, the Giuliani campaign communications director adds the following:

And to round out the day, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker writes in the following statement. 

Last week, he suddenly reminded the nation of his manifest incompetence, after his department released a bizarrely skewed list of security grants to cities and counties. Municipalities that confront the most significant threats will lose many millions in funding, while those least likely to face attack will receive additional millions.

Even more outrageous than the funding decisions were the explanations offered by Mr. Chertoff and his staff, who had promised to award money on the basis of actual need instead of political clout. To justify cutting New York City’s grant by nearly half, the department claimed that city officials had failed to fill out the grant application properly. They also asserted that the nation’s greatest city has no significant landmarks, and that the superb counterterrorism division of the New York City Police Department is somehow substandard.

While the firing of Mr. Chertoff certainly is overdue, as the tabloid headlines suggest, his dismissal will not solve the department’s problems. The priorities at D.H.S. have been badly distorted from the beginning, with partisan patronage and lobbyist influence taking precedence over efficiency and effectiveness. The controversial grants issued to municipalities are dwarfed by contracts awarded to private corporations, which amount to around $10 billion annually.

To observe the unsavory workings of that process is to wonder whether New York, Washington and other big cities lost funding simply because they failed to hire the most connected lobbyists. The big defense, electronics and communications firms gathered at the D.H.S. trough, along with their friends from K Street and the members of Congress whose campaigns they finance, never suffer the same difficulties as the struggling cities.

Whether the tens of billions awarded by D.H.S. have been well spent, however, is in grave doubt. Shipping ports, nuclear facilities and chemical plants remain poorly protected. First responders in many cities still don’t have the communications and protective equipment they need. Public-health agencies are too weak and neglected to cope with the threat of an avian-flu pandemic.

The wiring of D.H.S. for lobbyists—and the dominant influence of political appointees—became inevitable when President Bush appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, amiable and malleable, to direct the White House Office of Homeland Security. He staffed the office with political aides and ex-lobbyists whose résumés were long on politics and short on security. When D.H.S. was established in 2003, the revolving door spun incessantly between its offices and Blank Rome—a lobbying firm that enjoyed an intimate relationship with Mr. Ridge and his associates.

Blank Rome’s chairman was a Bush Ranger, of course, while two other partners were Bush Pioneers. One of those partners took a year off from the firm to help set up the mammoth new department. As a result, Blank Rome has led the K Street pack in D.H.S. clients and billing.

This greasy political culture seems depressingly familiar, except that the stakes at D.H.S. are so much higher than at other federal agencies where private boodling outweighs the public interest. Both firms that employed the convicted crook Jack Abramoff have represented major D.H.S. contractors, as have all of the largest lobbying outfits in the capital. There are fees aplenty—and hundreds of millions of dollars to squander on wasteful programs and boondoggles.

Unfortunately, little has changed for the better since Mr. Chertoff took over. He brought along his own group of associates and cronies, notoriously including Julie Myers, the wife of his chief of staff, whose lack of relevant administrative experience didn’t deter him from appointing her to direct immigration and customs enforcement. (She also happens to be the niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, the former Joint Chiefs chairman.) Tracy Henke, the official who oversaw those weird municipal grants, is a political appointee who seems to be in far over her head.

The last time that the public demanded accountability at D.H.S., following the deadly fiasco on the Gulf Coast, Mr. Chertoff escaped by sacrificing FEMA chief Michael (Brownie) Brown. This time, he may have to go—but nobody should expect serious reform under this regime.

Last week, he suddenly reminded the nation of his manifest incompetence, after his department released a bizarrely skewed list of security grants to cities and counties. Municipalities that confront the most significant threats will lose many millions in funding, while those least likely to face attack will receive additional millions.

Even more outrageous than the funding decisions were the explanations offered by Mr. Chertoff and his staff, who had promised to award money on the basis of actual need instead of political clout. To justify cutting New York City’s grant by nearly half, the department claimed that city officials had failed to fill out the grant application properly. They also asserted that the nation’s greatest city has no significant landmarks, and that the superb counterterrorism division of the New York City Police Department is somehow substandard.

While the firing of Mr. Chertoff certainly is overdue, as the tabloid headlines suggest, his dismissal will not solve the department’s problems. The priorities at D.H.S. have been badly distorted from the beginning, with partisan patronage and lobbyist influence taking precedence over efficiency and effectiveness. The controversial grants issued to municipalities are dwarfed by contracts awarded to private corporations, which amount to around $10 billion annually.

To observe the unsavory workings of that process is to wonder whether New York, Washington and other big cities lost funding simply because they failed to hire the most connected lobbyists. The big defense, electronics and communications firms gathered at the D.H.S. trough, along with their friends from K Street and the members of Congress whose campaigns they finance, never suffer the same difficulties as the struggling cities.

Whether the tens of billions awarded by D.H.S. have been well spent, however, is in grave doubt. Shipping ports, nuclear facilities and chemical plants remain poorly protected. First responders in many cities still don’t have the communications and protective equipment they need. Public-health agencies are too weak and neglected to cope with the threat of an avian-flu pandemic.

The wiring of D.H.S. for lobbyists—and the dominant influence of political appointees—became inevitable when President Bush appointed former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, amiable and malleable, to direct the White House Office of Homeland Security. He staffed the office with political aides and ex-lobbyists whose résumés were long on politics and short on security. When D.H.S. was established in 2003, the revolving door spun incessantly between its offices and Blank Rome—a lobbying firm that enjoyed an intimate relationship with Mr. Ridge and his associates.

Blank Rome’s chairman was a Bush Ranger, of course, while two other partners were Bush Pioneers. One of those partners took a year off from the firm to help set up the mammoth new department. As a result, Blank Rome has led the K Street pack in D.H.S. clients and billing.

This greasy political culture seems depressingly familiar, except that the stakes at D.H.S. are so much higher than at other federal agencies where private boodling outweighs the public interest. Both firms that employed the convicted crook Jack Abramoff have represented major D.H.S. contractors, as have all of the largest lobbying outfits in the capital. There are fees aplenty—and hundreds of millions of dollars to squander on wasteful programs and boondoggles.

Unfortunately, little has changed for the better since Mr. Chertoff took over. He brought along his own group of associates and cronies, notoriously including Julie Myers, the wife of his chief of staff, whose lack of relevant administrative experience didn’t deter him from appointing her to direct immigration and customs enforcement. (She also happens to be the niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, the former Joint Chiefs chairman.) Tracy Henke, the official who oversaw those weird municipal grants, is a political appointee who seems to be in far over her head.

The last time that the public demanded accountability at D.H.S., following the deadly fiasco on the Gulf Coast, Mr. Chertoff escaped by sacrificing FEMA chief Michael (Brownie) Brown. This time, he may have to go—but nobody should expect serious reform under this regime.

On the crest of 2005, as the city emptied itself of natives for the holidays, leaving Manhattan in the hands of its visiting guests, I finally discovered the missing energy source that had fortified my sense of purpose as a New Yorker: the Code Orange Terror Alert.

Let me explain.

I first greeted the waves of Code Orange Alerts with fear bordering on paralysis (my mother's daily phone messages admonishing me to buy rolls of duct tape and map out my "escape" route surely didn't help matters). Each time Tom Ridge appeared on television, I girded for some unforeseen calamity or news that a "dirty bomb" was heading for Times Square.

But I began to welcome Tom Ridge's scary announcements, delivered with deadpan stoicism (or was it befuddlement?). The headlines blaring to make me feel less secure ended up, in a curious way, making me feel more secure.

Tom Ridge and the Code Orange Alert became a heady tonic that imbued me with a "live in the moment" sensibility. I began to recognize the allure of being a journalist living in a Code Orange New York (Manhattan isn't Mosul, of course, but it's a hell of a lot more exciting than ZIP codes far out of Al Qaeda's crosshairs). I thrived on the way the city charged into motion with each new terror warning. Every time my F train lumbered in from Brooklyn and paused in the tunnel, I wondered if the unannounced stops were the result of a terrorist strike further up the tracks. I held my breath until the driver's garbled voice played over the loudspeaker. Back on the street, the sidewalk pace seemed to ratchet up a notch, as if people were eyeing over their shoulders at some elusive foe. Each Code Orange pronouncement would send the city into a collective tizzy-like a D.J. laying down that favorite pop song for his audience-and I fed off the energy.

The past six months provided a stiff shot of Code Orange, with bomb threats at the Citigroup Center chased by the red-state siege during the Republican National Convention and, of course, topped off with the Presidential election. Each event brought new threats and more flashes of Tom Ridge's leaden face on Fox News. I got up earlier and stayed out later; pulling taut the cord of my daily routine, I plunged deeper into each day, trying to race ahead of what then seemed possible-even inevitable. Quotidian tasks, even daily minutiae, took on a newfound gravity. I paid my bills on time and scrubbed my house with an unusual diligence. Going out at night, I got sozzled on a few drinks but chalked it up to living in the now.

The Code Orange omnipresence also cascaded into my romantic endeavors. This fall, a few weeks after meeting a girl at a party, I decided to phone her up for a date-a rarity for this shy writer. As my fingers paused over my cell phone's digits, a little voice inside my head nudged aside any hesitation: "What if something happens tomorrow?" So I called her.

Throughout all this, there was something not entirely terrifying about Orange as a threat indicator. Red, of course, is undeniably scary, with all its sanguine undertones. But Orange? It had a comfortable feel to it-enough so that I knew Tom Ridge meant business, but could still forestall the morbid paralysis that had first gripped me.

But more than instilling a kind of post–Sept. 11 carpe diem, the Code Orange Alert became a stanchion in my New York identity. Beyond access to endless takeout and heaving large chunks of my salary at my rent, living on the front lines of the terror war endowed my life with a different kind of seriousness. Adrift halfway into my post-college decade, perhaps the terror alerts were the existential salve I was looking for. I watched cable news with a frisson of pleasure, knowing that though the hawks who supported George Bush's gleeful march to war lived safely inland, for the most part, we New Yorkers were the ones who would take it on the chin if Osama decided to get serious. In a weird way, it kind of made paying that much for my apartment in Brooklyn worth it. My pride as a New Yorker bulked up to Balco-like proportions.

And then, without any warning, the Code Orange alerts disappeared. Without them, I lost my private John Keating. Not that I think New York is any less of a terror target, but without that ever-present reminder, I've edged back into my natural state of procrastination.

With the Dow at a three-and-a-half-year high and tales of newly minted Wall Street millionaires snapping up Bentleys and yachts, in some ways New York is moving on. Or maybe it's that our attention has been dogged by the Iraq war or, more recently, the tsunami tragedy in Asia. Thoughts of our own danger have dimmed in comparison.

But part of the allure of living here was that I could tell my friends in the flyover states that we choose to live in a dangerous place because there's no reason to live anywhere else. Code Orange was a badge of courage. Now all I have are a long subway commute and a slice of Grimaldi's pizza to show for it.

So it is disheartening to realize that the city's Department of Environmental Protection has not been on the job in its mission to protect the water supply. For the last six years, the D.E.P. has failed to report complete results from its testing of city water for lead, a dangerous contaminant. It turns out, now that the full results have been compiled, that lead in city drinking water was slightly above allowable levels from 2000 to 2001.

While officials are at pains to point out that there is no danger to the public, and even environmental advocates don't see any intentional or criminal misconduct, the revelation is disturbing. At a time when terrorists would be happy to poison our water supply, it is imperative that we have confidence in D.E.P.'s ability to spot potential contamination. When contamination is found, D.E.P. has to respond swiftly and be candid with the public.

State officials have stepped in, properly, and demanded that D.E.P. devise a plan to deal with lead leakage into the water supply. They also want D.E.P. to tell the public how much lead is in its drinking water.

These are important steps, but the larger issues remain. We live at a time when we can no longer take so many things for granted-including the safety of our water supply. The public must be reassured that D.E.P. is on a footing equal to that of the Fire Department, Police Department and other first responders.

D.E.P., like it or not, is on the front lines in the battle against terror at home. Its oversight of the city's watershed, aqueducts and water tunnels means that it is responsible for some of the city's most important infrastructure.

The public must be reassured that D.E.P. is doing its job, now more than ever.

Bernard Kerik: The Right Stuff For Homeland Security

"He's really an unknown factor in Washington." So said a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security, speaking of the nervousness which spread through the department when the appointment of Bernard Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security was announced last week. When bureaucrats tremble, you know you're on the right track.

Mr. Kerik is hardly an unknown factor in New York, and his appointment immediately makes the city and its citizens much safer than we were under departing Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Caving to pressure from Congress, Mr. Ridge was turning the department into another government entitlement program, with little acknowledgment that high-profile terrorist targets such as New York should receive a proportionate share of federal anti-terror funding. Mr. Ridge was in over his head, and his departure was overdue.

As a former police commissioner of New York, Mr. Kerik has firsthand experience of the threat that continues to shadow our nation. On Sept. 11, he was standing a block from the World Trade Center when the second jet hit. In the weeks and months that followed, he worked around the clock to return a sense of order and safety to the city. He retains a keen sense of the ongoing danger. "You can't put it behind us," he said recently, "and you can't forget about it. Because if and when you do, they're going to come back."

A high-school dropout and the son of a prostitute from the streets of Newark, Mr. Kerik rose to become a highly decorated undercover narcotics detective. Prior to Sept. 11, he had already established himself as a strong, tough-talking leader who didn't suffer fools and who had learned his trade as a street cop. Such in-the-trenches familiarity with the ways and means of criminals is essential in the war on terror. And unlike many of the hacks who warm chairs in Washington, he is results-oriented: When he served as commissioner of the city's Correction Department from 1998 to 2000, inmate slashings and stabbings declined by 90 percent. During the last year of his term as police commissioner, crime dropped by more than 12 percent while violent crime rates in other cities were rising. He also improved the department's ties with the city's minority communities by visiting church leaders.

After the Iraq invasion, President Bush sent Mr. Kerik to Iraq to establish a police force. During his four months there, he recruited thousands of police officers and formed teams to go after kidnappers, but has said that he wasn't given adequate funding to train a sufficient number of officers.

At the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Kerik will be overseeing a cumbersome bureaucracy that resulted from the combining of 22 separate agencies, with a budget nearly the size of that of the city of New York. To some, it seems like an impossible task. Then again, that's what they used to say about fighting crime in New York.

Divorce Made Simple

In some ways, New York City is a great place to get divorced: plenty of therapists to help pick up the pieces, and lots of other divorced, eligible singles to meet once the dust has settled. But when it comes to divorce law, New York is still in the Middle Ages. Unlike our neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut, or even heavily Catholic nations like Chile, New York State doesn't allow one spouse to unilaterally end a marriage-a so-called no-fault divorce. In fact, we make it almost impossible for people who want a divorce to get one; even if both partners agree that they have irreconcilable differences and that the marriage is over, one partner must take the blame. Which puts some couples in the absurd and humiliating position of agreeing to lie and say that one of them has suffered "cruel and inhuman treatment."

As a result of New York's obsolete divorce law, families suffer, children are permanently scarred, and abusive marriages are encouraged. Indeed, one study has shown that in states with no-fault divorce, suicide among women and domestic violence both decline, since the woman is empowered to end a marriage without her husband's consent.

Fortunately, the city and state bar associations are backing legislation in Albany to change to a no-fault model. While New York State legislators are mostly known for what they do not do-get a state budget passed, control Medicaid costs, work across party lines-now they have an opportunity to agree on helping couples disagree, and divorce, with dignity.

At the center of the controversy is a planned 16-story building on East 50th Street between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, right across the street from the Palace Hotel. The building would serve as a ventilation and cooling tower for a link between the Long Island Rail Road and Grand Central Terminal. Local property owners have been fighting the facility in court, arguing that it would bring traffic and pollution.

But the MTA's plans to store diesel fuel for an emergency generator in or beneath the building is stirring the most concern, prompting Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney to write a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, stating that the facility would create a "homeland security threat to thousands of workers and pedestrians." "Concerned neighbors point out that terrorists could target the building knowing that the resulting conflagration would likely destroy the surrounding buildings and spread to the underground passenger concourse below," Ms. Maloney wrote in the October 7 letter.

The spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Tom Kelly, said he hadn't seen the letter, and did not comment in detail on the project. "We will take all safety and security precautions in the design and construction of the building," he said.

Neighbors aren't convinced. Representatives of the Palace Hotel, the Kaufman Organization, the restaurant group Smith & Wollensky, and St. Paul Travelers Companies, all with interests nearby, wrote their own letter to Secretary Ridge comparing the diesel fuel storage to the fuel tanks the explosion of which helped bring down 7 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Zwilling, also said, "We have been following the matter with concern."

Managers of the Waldorf-Astoria were not immediately available for comment.

The new building would stand on the south side of 50th Street, just west of the Colgate-Palmolive building. The Waldorf-Astoria is half a block east, and the grounds of St. Patrick's begin half a block west. The building would replace four smaller structures, including the one housing the venerable Italian restaurant Giambelli 50th.

The new building would be part of a $5 billion plan conceived 30 years ago and on schedule for completion in 2012. The East Side Access project would link Long Island commuters directly to Grand Central, giving them access to East Side subway lines and the commuter rail that the current Penn Station connection makes inconvenient. In the plan's current form, LIRR riders would disembark deep below Park Avenue and be transported by escalators to a new concourse closer to Grand Central.

The legal battle over the site has focused on the MTA's decision not to perform a full environmental review when it decided to change its original plans – according to a 2002 MTA assessment of project changes – because a facility on 50th street would "consolidate many ancillary facilities in one location and reduce construction and maintenance costs." That would include the emergency generator, and its fuel, which would power the escalators in case of a blackout.

Lawyers for the neighbors filed a request for a preliminary injunction this spring, demanding that the MTA complete a full environmental review. They withdrew their request when the MTA agreed to that review, which a lawyer for the owners of 437 Madison Avenue, Roger Roisman, said is expected any day.

But the battle appears to be just heating up. Project opponents have already retained lawyers, consultants, and public relations teams, and have even produced a thick study touting an alternative proposal.