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Another Museum Boom


Over the next few months, museums across the city will complete major construction projects, planned when the economic picture was sunnier and sustained in spite of the difficult fundraising environment of the past few years. The weak economy has caused some donors to reconsider their commitments, and museums such as the Guggenheim have had to put their plans on hold. But, remarkably, most projects appear to be on schedule, including expansions of established institutions like the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morgan Library, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum and openings at the new Rubin Museum of Art and Skyscraper Museum.

Many of these projects were planned during the 1990s, when museums in New York and across the country rode a wave of unprecedented popularity. Visitors flocked to big-name shows, to extended hours and added programming like movies, concerts, and dance parties, and to retail stores and cafes. More than just temples to art, museums became social destinations and community centers, places to hang out with the kids or meet a date. With the help of upgraded, visitor-friendly facilities and innovative designs, museums are hoping to build on this legacy well into the 21st century.

Brooklyn’s Front Stoop

Though the Brooklyn Museum of Art never shut its doors during its multi-phase renovation, it has planned a celebration this month to inaugurate what its director, Arnold Lehman, refers to as “Brooklyn’s greatest front stoop”--the museum’s new entrance and public plaza.

The museum has long had an image problem. The 1893 building was intended to face Washington Avenue, where the architecture team of McKim, Mead, and White had envisioned a hemispherical entrance. This plan was never realized, and the Washington Avenue side is now the museum’s parking lot and rear entrance. Along Eastern Parkway, the museum’s main entrance, there was once a massive staircase--twice the height of the stairs in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- that took visitors to the third floor. The staircase was removed in 1934 to provide easier access to the building, leaving behind an unwelcoming Beaux Arts façade.

The new entrance is designed to lend the building a sense of openness and transparency--its glass and steel design providing a window into the artwork and the people inside. A sheer-glass pavilion leads to the main lobby, and an elevated promenade provides views into the museum and around the neighborhood. The modern design won unanimous support from the city’s Landmarks Commission, Lehman says, because it builds on the original plan: the stepped-glass pavilion recalls the old stairway, and the hemispherical entrance echoes the architects’ unrealized design.

The 80,000-square-foot plaza in front of the museum, once bisected by a driveway, has been reclaimed as public space. Five hundred people can sit on the curved, wooden steps--the “front stoop”--to watch outdoor performances or enjoy the new fountains, designed by the same showmen that created the spectacular water show outside the Bellagio Casino, in Las Vegas.

The museum is using the reopening to show off its rich artistic community. In Open House: Working in Brooklyn -- the first comprehensive survey of the borough’s arts scene -- emerging and established artists will show painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, film, and installations, and accompanying performances will feature local dance, music, and poetry.

New Museums Open Downtown

Also this month, the Skyscraper Museum will open in its first permanent location, on the ground floor of a 38-story tower in Battery Park City. Designed by Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the museum is one of the first signs of downtown’s cultural renaissance. The museum has held temporary exhibits since 1996 (its curators helped to create the viewing walls around Ground Zero, which depict the towers’ history). But it now has a chance to take on an important role as interpreter of New York’s history as a “vertical metropolis,” and as a participant in the ongoing debate among architects, engineers, builders, and the public about the safety and ethics of skyscrapers.

Later this year, the Rubin Museum of Art will open its doors in Chelsea, on the site of an old Barney’s department store. This new museum is the product of one couple’s passion for a culture that will be unfamiliar to most art lovers. Donald Rubin, who made a fortune in managed care, and his wife, Shelley, collected art from the Himalayan region (Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal) for 25 years. When they couldn’t find the right museum for their collection, they decided to create their own.

Public Works in Tough Times

How did these institutions sustain major capital campaigns during one of the toughest fundraising climates in decades? Part of the answer may be that buildings have inherent populist appeal. Public buildings -- particularly architecturally notable ones -- can be a source of pride for individuals, corporations, and cities. To raise spirits and generate jobs great public works are often built during tough financial times; the National Gallery of Art was built during the Depression. “It’s easier to raise money for a building than a show,” Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim, told a New York Times reporter in 2002. “A building is permanent.”

Another reason is that City Hall, and perhaps corporate and individual donors as well, have come to accept what reams of research has shown: culture fuels the local economy. According to a study by the advocacy group Alliance for the Arts, capital spending on construction by nonprofits from 1992 to 2002 totaled $2.4 billion. One-quarter of the funding for capital construction came from the city, and this investment helped to leverage private and other government funds by a ratio of three to one. In 1997, thanks to a change in policy, the Department of Cultural Affairs was able to make donations for capital projects to any nonprofit organization--not just the 33 city-owned cultural institutions that had been its longtime beneficiaries.

The city recoups its investment in culture in the form of income and sales tax, and down the road in tourist dollars. Another Alliance for the Arts study looked at the 1992-93 winter season, when just three museums (the Guggenheim, the Met, and MoMA) attracted an estimated 1.3 million tourists to blockbuster shows, with half of the tourists saying they came to New York specifically to see them. All together, out-of-town visitors brought an estimated $617 million in tourist dollars to New York, reaping $60 million in tax benefits for the city and state.

It’s up to museum directors and curators to capitalize on their donors’ confidence and widespread popularity. During the 1990s, critics argued that museums were becoming too populist, that dazzling architecture, visitor-friendly facilities, and extra-curricular programming were delegating art to a back seat. But it’s not such a radical notion to make visitors feel comfortable and welcome, to allow them to enjoy just being in a museum. For a least a couple of centuries, people have been drawn to culture’s reflected glamour--to plush opera halls and tony theaters--and, so far, culture has survived.

 

The Jets Stadium: Another Sad West Side Story


The opposing view on the proposed west side stadium:

Related article on New York's sports economy:
The Bringing the Jets Home
by Jay Cross
New York's Sports Economy
by Mark Berkey-Gerard

And in Community Gazettes, how sports play out in Staten Island and Brooklyn:
Reviving Coney Island
(Coney Island, Dist. 47)
St. George: Waiting for the Ferry Terminal
(Staten Island, Dist. 49)

Supporters of the proposal for a football stadium on the Hudson railyards describe it as a way to revive the neighborhood, the city, and the region. In reality, the plan serves only the needs of the New York Jets.

Stadiums have not proved to be sensible public investments. On game days, they clog the streets with traffic -- in this case in an area where streets are already straining under the weight of the Javits Center, Madison Square Garden, and the theaters on Broadway. In other cities, when no events are scheduled at a stadium, by contrast, the surrounding area turns into a ghost town. This pattern discourages other types of developments nearby.

This would be bad for the west side even if no public money was used. But stadiums always require huge public subsidies to build and often operate only with additional public money. Yes, the $800 million that the Jets propose to invest is unprecedented. But the city and the state have each pledged $350 million to deck over the railyards and build a retractable roof. And that doesn’t include the $700 million the city is going to invest in the stadium by creating open spaces, condemning property, and constructing parking garages nearby.

Before the city pours over $1 billion into this project, we should consider that not one football stadium in the country works in such a dense urban area.

Some claim that this stadium will be the exception. It been dressed up with the current flavor of sustainable architecture and presented as part of a larger plan for the area. But recent additions of a Museum of the Science of Sport and a community theater are just window dressing. The retail square footage is minimal—equivalent to a large Duane Reade or CVS. The proposed open spaces around the stadium are hard-surfaced plazas and walkways--not parks. All of these items are in the service of the main event—the75,000 seat stadium.

Councilmember David Weprin recently said that the stadium would be good for the city’s finances. However, his financial analysis was not independent. He later clarified it was taken from a report commissioned by the Jets.

ANOTHER CONVENTION CENTER?

Prior to the political arm-twisting by Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York Jets, the officials of the Javits Center showed little interest in the stadium-equals-convention-center idea. Plans developed by the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation, the state entity that operates the Javits center, proposed an expansion to the north, completely covering two blocks and erasing two streets, with a high-rise hotel on 11th Avenue and 42nd Street. The stadium plan to the south was a footnote to their planning efforts.

But when the leader of the effort to bring the Olympics to New York, Dan Doctoroff, became the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, this footnote became the plan’s main storyline. Doctoroff has pushed hard for a stadium in Manhattan as a vital part of the Olympic plan. But there is no reason that the Olympic stadium couldn’t be built in Queens instead.

Now the Jets propose to enter a business they know nothing about and run it at a profit. But convention centers are generally run by public authorities, whose goal is only to cover expenses. Convention centers are not intended to earn money for the operator, but to make money for the city or region where they are located. Their purpose is to draw visitors to a city to spend dollars on hotels, restaurants and other attractions. Many convention centers actually lose money.

When the Jets realize that they cannot make money running conventions, they will probably begin to compete with Madison Square Garden for events like concerts or circuses. If they succeed in this, the west side stadium will not bring new business to New York, but merely pull existing events a few blocks westward.

PUBLIC INVESTMENT FOR PUBLIC BENEFIT

It is a good idea to make a large public investment on the west side, by decking over the rail yards, laying out streets, and building sewers and streetlights. Instead of the Jets stadium, the city should break the railyards into several sites. The Javits center could then expand both to the north, as currently proposed, and to the south into the railyards. Then we could also build a new park overlooking the Hudson and create infrastructure to encourage the private sector to redevelop six blocks of exceptionally located waterfront real estate.

This would spread the risk out over a range of businesses in a variety of business sectors – office, commercial, retail, residential, hotel. The city’s increased tax revenue would not depend on a single business, especially one using a plan that has proven itself a failure elsewhere.

Joe Restuccia, the executive director of the Clinton Housing Development Company, is on the board of the Hell’s Kitchen/Hudson Alliance, an organization of community groups and elected officials opposing the west side stadium.

After Mitchell-Lama


For more than 20 years, Marc Richardson has called the Lower East Side home and despite gentrification and increased rents in his neighborhood he has been able to do so thanks largely to the fact that he lives in a Mitchell-Lama apartment building.

But his days in the apartment may be numbered: The owners of the Lands End One complex, which includes 251 apartments, announced late last year that they have opted to buy out of the Mitchell-Lama program - and seek market rents for the apartments.

"Tenants are really feeling it," Richardson said, a member of the Lands End One Tenants Association. "There's very little affordable housing in this city. Where are we going to go? I really don't know where I'm going to start looking for an apartment."

There is growing fear among tenants of Mitchell-Lama apartments that they may have to leave their apartments or pay significantly higher rents. An appeals court decision at the end of February only added to their anxiety. City-sponsored legislation in Albany and City Council bills have set off a political battle.

There are about 60,000 Mitchell-Lama rental apartments left in New York City, mostly located in Brooklyn and Manhattan. They exist in buildings developed with state and city low-interest loans provided through a 1955 law sponsored by Manhattan State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and former Brooklyn Assemblyman Alfred Lama. The laws helped spur the development of almost 150,000 apartments in New York City, according to the city Comptroller's office.

"Mitchell-Lama housing is absolutely critical," said Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, who represents district 4 on Manhattan's East Side, which has several Mitchell-Lama projects in it. "It's one of the most well designed affordable housing programs the city has and a model for the nation. It's a force for stability in the city. [If it is undone] you're going to undo the very stability you've created."

In return for the loans and real estate tax abatements, developers committed to keeping the apartments affordable. But not forever. A buyout option allows developers to take the apartments out of the program depending on what year they were built and whether the building's mortgage has been paid. For developments like Land's End One, which was opened for occupancy in 1978, a 20-year commitment to affordability expired in 1998. About 32,000 Mitchell-Lama apartments face a similar fate; 11 developments are currently in the process of buying out.

That developers can buy out of the program is not really the issue, advocates and tenants said. What is really at stake is what will happen to the rents. Rents will increase dramatically, perhaps four or five times the current rent, if developers are allowed to charge market rate rents. At the very least, tenants would like their apartments to become rent stabilized, with rent increases set by the Rent Guidelines Board and important tenant protections, like the right to lease renewals and sublets.

Running Out Of Rent Subsidies

For buildings built after 1973, some people have accepted that their rents will go to market rates. At the Lands End One development, that could be the case. Tenants might qualify for federal rent subsidies through Section 8 or Section 236 "enhanced vouchers." But federal assistance is facing radical cuts under current budget proposals from the Bush Administration. The vouchers would last only one year unless the money is increased.

The New York City Housing Authority recently confirmed that it has just 300 Section 8 vouchers left for 2004. These vouchers are reserved for the neediest cases - victims of domestic violence, intimidated witnesses and homeless families that have been separated. As more than 150,000 people who qualify for Section 8 assistance are currently on the waiting list, that is just one indication of how great the need for rental assistance is.

A spokesperson for Lands End Associates, which decided to buy out of Mitchell-Lama, said the company did not think it would lead to massive displacement of Lands End One tenants unable to afford higher market rents.

"Eighty-seven percent of tenants will qualify for the enhanced vouchers," said Devorah Fong. "For the remainder, (Lands End Associates) are sure they can make reasonable adjustments. They're willing to work with the residents."

Fong said she did not know the company's response to the possibility that enhanced vouchers might not be available due to budget cuts.

Will Ex Mitchell-Lama Apartments Become Rent Stabilized?

As February ended, an appellate court decision paved the way for one developer to charge market rents for apartments in three buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The ruling was significant because the buildings had been built before 1973. Until the ruling, the law seemed to indicate that pre-1973 buildings would become Rent Stabilized.

 

Carol Abrams, a spokesperson for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said state legislation sponsored by the city, which would place into rent stabiliziation all apartments that have left the Mitchell-Lama program, would not be affected by the appellate court's decision. State legislators will begin discussing the legislation this month.

"The question is whether, after a buyout, an owner could apply to adjust the rent under the provision of rent stabilization that was the subject of this ruling," Abrams wrote in an email message in response to questions.

Victor Bach, senior housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society, said the city-sponsored legislation did not go far enough. As many as 36,000 apartments that were built with federal assistance through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also may be expiring, he said, destined for market rate rents.

"We are urging whatever the bill it should include HUD-subsidized developments," Bach said. "These are not officially Mitchell-Lama and are not covered in the mayor's bill. If they are not included then they will be lost."

Bach said that legislators need to understand that the loss of affordable housing provided by the programs would cause even greater problems for the city. City and state leaders need to be more assertive, he said: "I think the city and the state need to understand the dimensions of the crisis, the kind of the loss that will occur, the displacement, and how it will increase pressure on the homeless system."

Moskowitz said she was committed to preserving Mitchell-Lama.

"There's a lot of support on the council" for the two pieces of legislation to protect Mitchell-Lama. "A lot of us grew up middle class."

Lands End One tenants have responded, Richardson said, but it has not been without great effort.

"There's a lot of confusion," he said. "We've had to really scramble to get ourselves organized. We've been all about town to talk to various organizations. There's a lot to do in such a short time."

They are hoping to hold city leaders to the promises they have made.

"At least there are some politicians showing some concern for this issue," he said. "We just have to make them connect their words to action."

Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.



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