Are you a distinguished New Yorker looking to help the United Nations improve its headquarters at Turtle Bay? If so, the president of the United Nations Development Corporation, Roy Goodman, wants YOU as a member of his Ad Hoc Committee for a New U.N. Office Building.

Using a version of that appeal, Mr. Goodman, the longtime Republican state senator from Manhattan, has enlisted such supporters as Colin Powell, Edward Koch, and Mortimer Zuckerman for the cause.

The development corporation, a city-state entity, hopes to erect a 900,000-square-foot, 35-story swing space on a neighboring city park as part of U.N. plans to renovate and expand the headquarters. The corporation’s component of the project has been imperiled by a legislative impasse in Albany, where the Republican-controlled state Senate has, since early December, refused to take up the first piece of legislation that is required for the project to advance.

In a solicitation letter obtained by The New York Sun, Mr. Goodman announced the formation of an ad-hoc committee meant to influence the state legislators. Their opposition to the expansion has delayed the project to the point that, as the Sun reported last month, the United Nations may be considering alternatives for temporary office space as it undertakes a $1.2 billion renovation.

The Goodman letter, dated April 26, came 19 days after the corporation’s president told other directors that he expected the state Senate to move on the legislation within the week.

In the letter, Mr. Goodman extols the virtues of the project – which he, the UNDC, and the United Nations maintain is a consolidation, not an expansion, of the world body’s offices in the city – and bemoans the roadblock in Albany.

“Unfortunately, the move to green-light the Project is blocked in the State Legislature which brings us to the specific request in this letter,” Mr. Goodman and another member of the ad-hoc committee, John Whitehead, a former deputy secretary of state, wrote. “WE RESPECTFULLY ASK YOU TO JOIN THE AD-HOC COMMITTEE WHICH IS URGING THE STATE LEGISLATURE TO PASS THE LEGISLATION TO PERMIT THE NEW OFFICE BUILDING PROJECT TO PROCEED.

“We believe that the time has come for a group of distinguished citizens such as yourself to make your voices heard in support of this project,” the letter continues. “If we let it slip away, New York City will lose thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue.” The development corporation and the city’s Economic Development Corporation have said the United Nations generates $2.5 billion annually for the city’s economy.

The invitation to join the committee, Mr. Goodman told the Sun, was sent to “a mailing list of prominent New Yorkers whose opinions would count.” The committee, he said, originated in response to a conversation with the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, who, Mr. Goodman said, “wasn’t clear who was really for this proposal.”

“So I thought it would be appropriate to put together a group of New Yorkers to convince Senator Bruno of the gravitas of those supportive of the new U.N. office building,” Mr. Goodman said, adding that the process of forming the committee began a few months ago.

A partial roster of the committee in formation consists of Mr. Powell, the former secretary of state; a former senator, Alfonse D’Amato; two former mayors, David Dinkins and Edward Koch; Mr. Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News, which has backed the project in an editorial; a leading Clinton administration diplomat, Richard Holbrooke – whose op-ed column frequently appears in the Sun – and the president of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, along with a variety of former American ambassadors and other luminaries.

Mr. Koch, who has called the United Nations a “cesspool” and a “monument to hypocrisy,” said his position on the world body’s internal operations did not affect his stance on its construction project. Punishing the United Nations “because you don’t agree with them, by preventing them from functioning and depriving them of new space, is ridiculous,” he said.

Mr. Goodman did not detail exactly what would be asked of committee members. Mr. Koch said, “I assume it’s going to be lobbying in some form, either by letter or in person, or by telephone.”

Previous attempts by Mr. Goodman and allies to win hearts and minds in Albany seem to have met with little success. As the Sun reported in March, the development corporation chairman, George Klein, and the city commissioner for the United Nations, consular corps and protocol, Marjorie Tiven, who is Mayor Bloomberg’s sister and a director of the development corporation, joined Mr. Goodman in a lobbying mission to Albany.

A spokesman for Mr. Bruno, John McArdle, said the senator’s office had not been made aware of the ad-hoc committee. “There are no plans to take up the bill at this point,” Mr. McArdle said.

Two of the state senators most strongly opposed to the project seemed undaunted by the formation of the committee.

Senator Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn, said of Mr. Goodman’s efforts: “He doesn’t have to go to all that trouble. All he has to do is get Kofi Annan to step down, and it’s a done deal.” Mr. Golden has long said that the resignation of the beleaguered U.N. secretary-general would secure his approval for the project.

Senator Maltese, a Republican of Queens, said: “I think all of the arguments have been made, and we’ve listened to them.”

“I don’t see how it makes any difference who’s on this committee,” Mr. Maltese said.

“I’m always willing to listen to my former colleague,” he said of Mr. Goodman, “but right now I don’t feel I’m going to be persuaded.” Mr. Maltese also said the wishes of his constituents – who, he said, are very much opposed to the project – outweighed high-profile support for the U.N. undertaking.

One of the project’s leading opponents in the Assembly, Dov Hikind, also said he had been unaware of the committee’s formation. Like his colleagues in the Senate, however, he was unimpressed by the list of backers.

“We’ve made it very clear that we have a very serious moral problem with the United Nations, and I don’t care who it is … 14 different secretaries of state, 16 former this, 20 former that – it will make no difference in the issues of principle involved,” the Brooklyn Democrat said yesterday.

Mr. Hikind expressed particular dismay at Mr. Foxman’s membership on the committee. “It’s absolutely preposterous, and shameful,” Mr. Hikind said by phone from Israel yesterday. The ADL, he said, is supposed to combat anti-Semitism, and he complained that Mr. Foxman “is going to support in any fashion an organization like the U.N. that symbolizes anti-Semitism … and is synonymous with hatred of Israel.”

Mr. Foxman, for his part, said: “I think that not everything in life is measured by one criteria.”

“One measures things with other criteria – is this good for the city of New York? The people of New York? The answer is yes; that’s no. 1,” Mr. Foxman said. He also said it is easier to combat anti-Semitism with the United Nations in New York City than abroad, where it would be subjected to less scrutiny.