Three Key Changes To Mayor’s Plan
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A deal to develop Manhattan’s far West Side, announced yesterday by the City Council and Bloomberg administration, is designed to bring commercial and residential development to a 59-square-block area between West 30th and 42nd streets. The agreement does not include provisions on the proposed Jets football stadium supported by the mayor – but that is part of the subtext. The revision changes the mayor’s original proposal in three key ways:
* It revamps the financing by decreasing the amount of money the city will borrow to $3 billion from $4 billion. It also increases short-term spending to reduce the amount of money the city shells out in interest. Under the new plan, about $1 billion will be paid out of the city’s operating budget over the next decade. The amount varies between fiscal years, ranging from $6 million to $162 million.
* It increases the amount of low- and moderate-income “affordable housing” to 28% of all housing units, from 19%. That means 3,300 units of affordable housing, 700 more than was originally proposed.
* It decreases the amount of commercial space to 24.2 million square feet, from 26 million. Much of the reduction is along Eleventh Avenue between 36th and 41st streets.
