Coming to Terms with That New Blue City
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It is a strange time to be a capitalist in this country, and in New York City in particular.
A public soured on skyrocketing rents, deteriorating subways, growing homelessness and vanishing neighborhoods reacted with a collective sneer when Amazon bestowed a new headquarters and 25,000 job opportunities upon us last November. You know what happened next.
This week, the master developer Stephen Ross opened the doors to his glittering Hudson Yards, the largest real estate development in America, only to discover that his project was on the wrong side of the zeitgeist. There was a time in New York City when a new, spectacular, skyline-redefining development would be greeted as an affirmation of our city’s primacy. This is definitely not one of those times.
“Hudson Yards glorifies a kind of surface spectacle — as if the peak ambitions of city life were consuming luxury goods and enjoying a smooth, seductive, mindless materialism,”
wrote
New York Times
architecture critic Michael Kimmelman in a scathing critique.
He called the Vessel, its iconic artistic centerpiece, “a 150-foot-high, $200 million, latticed, waste-basket-shaped stairway to nowhere, sheathed in a gaudy, copper-cladded steel.”
(That was generous compared with
Slate
, which compared the Vessel to
a giant shawarma)
.
While some national reporters swooned, treating Hudson Yards with the awe that an historic development of this size arguably deserves (“
a commercial and residential wonderland
,” a
CBS This Morning
anchor called it), the locals weren’t having it.
“I can’t help feeling like an alien here, as though I’ve crossed from real New York, with all its jangling mess, into a movie studio’s back-lot version,” wrote
Justin Davidson
in
New York.
“
Everything is too clean, too flat, too art-directed. This para-Manhattan, raised on a platform and tethered to the real thing by one subway line, has no history, no holdover greasy spoons, no pockets of blight or resident eccentrics — no memories at all.”
The British – or at least
Hamilton Nolan
in The Guardian
– were in agreement. “It will have a suburban-style mall with a Neiman Marcus, since New York lacks for places to buy overpriced watches and yoga pants,” he wrote.
Ross threw a great opening party, but the governor and the mayor were nowhere to be seen. De Blasio, who rode a tide of public grievance against the rich to Gracie Mansion six years ago, was decidedly Somewhere Else. "He can't be everywhere," his spokesman, Eric Phillips, said.
It was stunning that the two most powerful elected local officials stayed away from the biggest real estate opening in decades. But de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo, still shaken from the Amazon backlash, could read the public mood. In a city where it's difficult to find a sandwich for under $20 anymore, who feels like cheering when the one percent get another place to play?
If this were a Broadway show it would have closed on opening night. But real estate is forever in New York, and Hudson Yards will be with us long after its critics have uttered their last complaints. The gleaming new neighborhood will eventually meld into the fabric of Manhattan, and the intelligentsia will find something else to hate. That’s why we love this city.
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Further downtown, the City Council and the media are beginning to stray from the bash-the-rich movement. De Blasio's inaugural ceremony infamously lambasted his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, as presiding over a “
plantation
” that was “Dickensian.”
The class warfare fun has started to die down at City Hall, though, where impatient City Council members are now asking why de Blasio can’t be more like Bloomberg.
The administration scored a trifecta of sorts with accusations of mismanagement of three of his biggest initiatives. His Renewal Schools program, designed to turn around the most struggling schools, spent $773 before the administration threw in the towel on it. De Blasio’s New York Works program was supposed to create 100,000 jobs, but to date has spent $300 million to create 3,000 jobs. The First Lady’s ThriveNYC mental health initiative is on track to spend $850 million on a program whose success or failure the administration seems unable to measure.
“Renewal Schools is failing to renew, ThriveNYC is failing to thrive and New York Works is failing to work,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres (who knows how to deliver a good quote), “because there is a pattern of failing to measure outcomes.”
We’ve said it before: de Blasio’s success or failure will have a huge bearing on whether the city will trust liberals to govern New York again. If the public doubts your competence, no one wants to hear your speeches.
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The cinematic shooting of reputed Gambino boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali outside his Staten Island mansion sent reporters and editors racing to beat the competition with the latest blood-stained details and theories.
It was a feast for readers, but the episode also highlighted the dangers of running too fast, too hard, and not stopping to ask –
are we sure this is right?
Cali was shot Wednesday night and everyone went big with first-day stories. On the second day, coverage diverged.
Larry Celona, the legendary
Post
veteran who has vast police sources and calls rewrite like it’s 1942, went hard on the fact that Gene Gotti, brother of John, the former head of the Gambinos, got out of prison not too long ago –
was he behind the hit?
The News
had this angle, too, though not as front-and-center.
The Times
?
Not a mention of Gene Gotti
.
Had the Gray Lady been beaten, or did its reporters know something that Celona didn’t? Maybe their sources had warned them off the Gene Gotti angle. That seemed likely until the next day, when
The Times
abruptly
did a story
focusing on… Gene Gotti. Oops. Guess
Times
editors thought they’d been beaten.
And then the next day – an arrest. The suspect, Anthony Comello, appears to have held a grudge against Cali because he barred him from dating his niece. Gene Gotti, this twist suggested, had nothing to do with it.
So
The Times
was right at first, and Celona’s hunch was off?
It’s fun to compete, but what’s the expression those 1942 editors loved? “If your mother says she loves you – check it out.”
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Here and There
Comings and Goings in Media and Communications
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Former City Council Speaker
Melissa Mark-Viverito
,
fresh
off
her loss in the public advocate’s race, has been selected interim president of the Latino Victory Project...
AJ Frucci
returns to Vox Media as VP of Concert & Programming from
Axios
…
Zoe Greenberg
joins
The Boston Globe
from
The New York Times
… Lisa Kersavage is now executive director of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
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“My understanding of childcare is that we were supposed to take care of the needs of the child.”
–
Anonymous employee of the Nicholas Scoppetta Children’s Center
, to WNBC’s Melissa Russo, whose expose of dangerous conditions led to a leadership shakeup.
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Have a career announcement for Here and There? A Quotable quote?
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Kirtzman Strategies is a strategic communications and public affairs firm that works with public officials, nonprofits, companies, tech startups and education organizations.
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