U.N. and Bloomberg in Disagreement Over New Turtle Bay Building
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Less than a week after Mayor Bloomberg went public with his plans to push for a new 35-story tower for the United Nations next to its current building at Turtle Bay, the head of the organization renovation project said the organization doesn’t need it.
The assistant secretary general who oversees the renovation of the United Nations building, Fritz Reuter, told reporters yesterday that the world body did not need the tower to temporarily house staff while it renovates its dilapidated building.
“I can’t wait for them another two or three years to get the approvals and build this building,” Mr. Reuter said. “Chunks of plaster are falling down.”
The 35-story project, which would be built on a playground on First Avenue, was all but rejected in 2004, when the state Legislature refused to consider it. Much of the opposition to the plan came from those who do not favor the U.N.’s policies.
Mr. Bloomberg is lobbying for the building again, saying it would be an important economic shot in the arm for the city. But Mr. Reuter said that even if the building was proposed as a permanent site, the United Nations would not move there unless it was offered better lease terms than it now has. Its lease runs until 2024.
If the mayor wins Albany approval for the new building, the city would press the United Nations to move out of two buildings it leases from the United Nations Development Corporation, a city and state public benefit corporation, and consolidate at the new site. That would allow the city to sell the two buildings or rent them for far more than they are getting now.
“Those are two very valuable assets,” an executive director at the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, Glenn Markman, said. “I couldn’t pick a number out of thin air, but those are two desirable buildings that would command top dollar.”
The United Nations’s plan is to construct a temporary warehouse style building on its own property and house staff there for different phases of the seven-year, $1.6 billion renovation.
A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, said the city does not negotiate rents in public, but that a new building would be good for the city and the United Nations.
