Not a parking garage, Michael, but a maximum buildable area
office gargantua on 2/3 of a city block. This site had long been
in dispute over ownership among the Durst real estate
dynasty and a variety of other claimants, a major hold-out
in the Times Square redevelopment plan begun in the 1970s
under Lindsay, the last socially-responsible mayor (and one
of the few besides LaGuardia in the 1930s).
The site was covered with low-rise, tawdry buildings, Tad's
Steak House my favorite, porn shops, a few empty lots and
some two-story taxpayers built by the Dursts with Dryvit
facades to give the finger to the giant-builders stone-clads
nearby.
It was home to Seymour Durst's world-famous national debt
clock (now not far away) which showed the society-crippling
debt run up by the war machine industry since WW1 and WW2.
Today the debt was some $87,000 per US person, rising at
about $500 per second, a total when I walked by of
over $22 trillion. No way that will be paid off to pigshit happy
lenders except by raiding Social Security and the other stealable
reserves accrued by siphoning laboring wages and, as ever,
extortionate idiot-war taxes.
Probably like other large cities around the world, a small number
of real estate moguls rule New York, Dursts and Trumps and their
ilk, who bicker among themselves like kindergarten brats, buy and
sell pols and tip professionals for obsequiousness. Contemn
fancy architects, boost the hacks like Costas Condilis and his
many predecessors (Condilis bragged at a continuing ed
show that he had to do excellent design under the table so
his clients wouldn't kill it, excellent design mind you, like the
huge Trump turds arrayed along the Hudson).
A team of us from Columbia School of Architecture once took
a meeting with a scion of the venerable developer Zeckendorf,
arranged by a visiting prof of real estate development, and I had
been elected to make an opening presentation for development
of a housing site which had a bit of preservable history.
I began a song and dance about the patrimony of New York
but was cut short after a minute by the bullet-headed real
estate prof who cursed, "who the fuck is this guy, how
did he get in here." Nobody on my courageous team, led
by Stan Eckstut, said a word.
I sat down and after the meeting the young Zeckendorf came
over to pat me on the back, and grinned, you're not the first who
tried that. My wife loves "you people," his four fingers bracketed.
office gargantua on 2/3 of a city block. This site had long been
in dispute over ownership among the Durst real estate
dynasty and a variety of other claimants, a major hold-out
in the Times Square redevelopment plan begun in the 1970s
under Lindsay, the last socially-responsible mayor (and one
of the few besides LaGuardia in the 1930s).
The site was covered with low-rise, tawdry buildings, Tad's
Steak House my favorite, porn shops, a few empty lots and
some two-story taxpayers built by the Dursts with Dryvit
facades to give the finger to the giant-builders stone-clads
nearby.
It was home to Seymour Durst's world-famous national debt
clock (now not far away) which showed the society-crippling
debt run up by the war machine industry since WW1 and WW2.
Today the debt was some $87,000 per US person, rising at
about $500 per second, a total when I walked by of
over $22 trillion. No way that will be paid off to pigshit happy
lenders except by raiding Social Security and the other stealable
reserves accrued by siphoning laboring wages and, as ever,
extortionate idiot-war taxes.
Probably like other large cities around the world, a small number
of real estate moguls rule New York, Dursts and Trumps and their
ilk, who bicker among themselves like kindergarten brats, buy and
sell pols and tip professionals for obsequiousness. Contemn
fancy architects, boost the hacks like Costas Condilis and his
many predecessors (Condilis bragged at a continuing ed
show that he had to do excellent design under the table so
his clients wouldn't kill it, excellent design mind you, like the
huge Trump turds arrayed along the Hudson).
A team of us from Columbia School of Architecture once took
a meeting with a scion of the venerable developer Zeckendorf,
arranged by a visiting prof of real estate development, and I had
been elected to make an opening presentation for development
of a housing site which had a bit of preservable history.
I began a song and dance about the patrimony of New York
but was cut short after a minute by the bullet-headed real
estate prof who cursed, "who the fuck is this guy, how
did he get in here." Nobody on my courageous team, led
by Stan Eckstut, said a word.
I sat down and after the meeting the young Zeckendorf came
over to pat me on the back, and grinned, you're not the first who
tried that. My wife loves "you people," his four fingers bracketed.