The other day I showed the streets that look like this in front of the area by The Village Voice. All this infrastructure work should have been done before Mike Bloomberg and Amanda the people's Burden ( a socialite mega millionaire) gave way too many green lights to developer friends including NYU -- the no.1 heaviest zone buster on the Village's old infrastructure.
Why is all this being done now?
Before the hideous mirrored building that you can't see that is a zone buster on land Cooper Union owns and is leasing so Cooper Union using their not for profit status got the green light from friend Amanda to bust through zoning and supersize and than lease the land.
They had asked Giuliani's city planner if they could tear down the little yellow science building and supersize and lease and I am told he said - NO! It is a shell game but Amanda Burden has given NYU, Cooper Union and every hotel developer and condo developer green lights to bust through zoning and that is why the street conditions are awful and we have so many infrastructure breaks and incidents.
This is city wide a huge problem post 9-11 by a mayor that pushed a reckless tsunami of development.
We need every dept. head and Con Ed to listen to the people who demanded safety first.
Now after the fact you see major infrastructure expansion when it should have been before all the green lights and in fact many developers should not have been given the free passes they got.
It seems Mike's goal was to make the financial district start at 14th Street or at least make the area look like Wall St. giving the green light to tear down as many historic buildings and supersizing with the goal to leave a few historic buildings as was done downtown.
Too bad the mayor and his socialite city planner city wide pushed through this reckless tsunami of development and only now are just beginning to address infrastructure expansion.
How reckless and dangerous....even know just to walk any where in the city -- the streets are in awful conditions and what lays beneath them -- rotted depilated pipes.
Bloomberg and the peoples' Burden had not business giving the green light to developers friend including their best friends NYU, Columbia University and Cooper Union. Don't kid yourself -- they rank with Donald Trump when it comes to ruthlessness, zero respect for the community and greed. They just rely on a reputation that continues to sink like our infrastructure.
