Submitted by Mike Eisgrau, Apr 19, 2007 17:47

4-19-07

Dear Eliot,

As a former broadcast news man, who covered New York from 1967 to 1991 for the late, great WNEW Radio News (6 mayors and 5 governors), all I can say is "deju vu all over again". I refer to the 1970's battle to create Westway, the supposed underground highway along Manhattan's West Side from the Battery to 59th Street, topped by a beautiful park. I, and other journalists, reported that story for years---and recounted how everybody and their brother wanted to get into the act. Westway never happened---too many special interests mucking up a very good plan.

Now I'm retired. But, as the former Director of Public Affairs for the Javits Convention Center, a position I held for 11 years, I see the same scenario happening again. The professionals on Javits management team---the people who turned that facility around from being the "Peck's bad boy" of the trade show and convention industry to one of the most sought-after venues for events in the United States---spent seven years working on a great expansion plan with Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (HOK), one of the biggest and best architectural firms in the country.

HOK specialized in large venues and knew what they were doing. They came up with a solid plan for expansion that would create a beautiful, functional center which would handle almost all of the biggest trade shows in the country. It would satisfy our prime customers: the managers who bring those shows in to New York, providing incredible economic benefits to the city. And it addressed many of the complaints of the local neighborhoods.

The plan was there---until the state legislature, in December 2004, gave the final go-ahead for our people to find the financing and move ahead.

At that point politicians in the Pataki administration (check your clips) higher up than the team at Javits grabbed the ball from the professionals, installed their own people in jobs about which they had little knowledge, threw out HOK and replaced them with a guy named Richard Rodgers, whose name value far exceeded his knowledge of our industry, and proceeded to screw things up so much that legislative hearings were held to find out why the delay of more than a year in going ahead.

All of this happening as the Pataki era came to an end, and a new administration took over. As the news stories have shown, even with no deep knowledge of convention centers, the new Governor and his people had their doubts about the Rodgers plan, and the entire thing is being re-considered. And in your latest article, hoteliers are talking about a giant structure across from the Center.

The HOK plan saw such a hotel at 42nd and 11th Avenue---an anchor of the western end of the redevelopment of 42nd Street---a gateway to the Center even though it might take a couple of years to move an MTA bus garage and bring about the full original expansion plan---not just one, but three important blocks north from 39th to 42nd Streets. Not just 340,000 extra square feet of exhibit space but more than half a million---not going up several floors but on one level---contiguous space which trade show managers, our customers, demanded. And more than 300,000 square feet of badly-needed meeting room space.

But a Guiliani/Pataki political battle delayed our purchase of the land from 41st to 42nd Street, from 11th to 12th Avenues, for years, and we finally lost that land which Larry Silverstein had been trying to sell for years. In essence he said "Guys take it off my hands---I'm paying millions in taxes and we could strike a deal!" Silverstein, after all, had more on his mind than replacing a parking lot on that site---something called the World Trade Center.

So now more special interests are getting into the act. We're almost 12 years into this saga, and the only thing Javits has to show for it is a plan to expand one block to the north. It looks like "deja vu again"---another sad chapter describing how politics gets in the way of professionalism.

All the best,

Mike Eisgrau

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