‘Projects To Get a Pataki Push’

Seeing the overwhelming support for the Javits Expansion and Modernization Plan and recognizing that construction is on track to begin by the end of this year, some are complaining that this long overdue plan isn’t big enough [“Long-Delayed Projects To Get a Pataki Push,” David Lombino, Page 1, May 10, 2006].

But experts in the field of conventions and meeting space – those who actually know what size and what kind of space a convention center must have in order to draw the lucrative meetings – are united in their belief that the plan on the table today creates a state-of-the art, user-friendly, urban convention center.

Reed Exhibitions, the largest producer of trade shows and conventions in the world and George Little Management, another industry leader, both support the Javits Expansion and Modernization Plan, which also has the backing of Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and a host of other elected officials.

Citing a “magic number” of 500,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition space needed to get the top trades shows to New York, Reed, George Little, and others recognize that this plan – which will immediately grow our contiguous exhibition space to 520,000 square feet, with an additional 520,000 square feet to come in Phase Two – more than adequately does the job.

Furthermore, the Javits Expansion and Modernization Plan builds wisely, bulking up Javits’s now-woeful meeting space by 600% to 210,000 square feet.

This combination of exhibition space AND meeting-space increase will help New York draw not just the right number of conventions and meetings, but the right KIND of conventions and meetings – those that put the maximum number of “heads on hotel beds,” thereby bolstering a wide-range of economic sectors including the restaurant, transportation, theater, and other industries.

And while other proposed schemes cost upward of $7 billion and wouldn’t be built for perhaps as long as another decade, the Javits Expansion and Modernization Plan costs $1.7 billion and would be open for business in 2010.

After 20 years of talk, it’s time to stop waiting and put New York back where it should be in the convention business – on top.

JONATHAN M. TISCH
Chairman
NYC & Company

CRISTYNE L. NICHOLAS
President and CEO
NYC & Company

‘Contemplating Fortune’

Thank you for the wonderful review by Eric Ormsby of the new edition of Samuel Johnson’s “The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; With Critical Observations on Their Works” [“Contemplating Fortune,” Arts & Letters, May 10, 2006].

On Sunday, I read the lead review in the New York Times book section of Philip Roth’s latest novel. Nadine Gordimer took the opportunity to engage in some wild, far-left Bush bashing – even though the novel under review had nothing to do with the current political situation.

Thank goodness The New York Sun provides real cultural coverage, instead of agenda-driven politically correct cant.

STEPHEN RITTENBERG, M.D.
Larchmont, N.Y.