City reaches for sky in midtown rezoning plan

East Midtown could be flush with a dozen modern skyscrapers and Grand Central Terminal could be even more packed with people if Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to remake the area near the transit hub gets the go-ahead.

The plan — reviled by some community leaders and in need of City Council approval — is estimated to bring in $500 million and add 4.5 million square feet of commercial space to an area where the average building is more than 70 years old.

The mayor Sunday devoted his radio address to touting the plan, which would rezone 73 blocks near Grand Central, allowing developers to build higher as long as they pay for pedestrian open spaces and projects to ease congestion in the packed terminal.

“Without the funding our proposal will generate, these improvements to east midtown may never happen,” Bloomberg said.

To allay community groups’ skepticism about waiting for developer cash to roll in, Bloomberg in a Daily News op-ed last week said the city will front the money for the projects.

Still, officials are far from sold.

“We have some serious infrastructure problems in the Grand Central area today, with or without any rezoning,” said Councilman Dan Garodnick, an East Side lawmaker who remains undecided on the plan.

Grand Central Terminal houses the transit system's workhorses, the Nos. 4, 5, and 6 trains, which are frequently crowded and running at full capacity. The plan “includes a mechanism to reinvest in the capacity of the transit system in order to meet the demand at these stations in the future,” said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz. The MTA estimated the improvements could cost $350-$500 million.

The City Planning Commission will hold a hearing on the rezoning Wednesday. As part of the public review process, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer gave his conditional support Thursday, but ultimately, it’s in the City Council’s hands.

The plan would allow for more commercial space on qualifying sites — sites that are at least 25,000 square feet and have 200 feet of frontage on a wide street.
Developers can also devote 20% of a building’s floor area to housing or a hotel.

To build bigger, developers would put $250 a square foot into a fund for infrastructure projects aimed at easing congestion in corridors inside Grand Central Terminal and on the narrow sidewalks outside. Further, developers that contributed to the fund could buy air rights from surrounding landmarks to go even higher.

“There is market demand for more office space, which of course means taller buildings, which necessitates the rezoning,” said Matt Lasner, assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College.

Community boards have panned the rezoning.

Lola Finkelstein, chair of a multi-community board task force on the plan, said it was being pushed hastily in order to get approval before the next mayor takes office.

She was wary of the city's decision to fund capital projects, saying the area cannot handle the new workers and residents rezoning would bring.

“If you have a bathtub full of water and it's overflowing, which is how the subway system is now on the 4, 5, 6 — you don't add more water to the bathtub,” Finkelstein said. “They can hardly find a place to stand on the platform — all of that is today.”

A cautionary tale for opponents of the plan is Hudson Yards on the West Side, in which revenues to fund the No. 7 extension were less than anticipated last year.

But Midtown East's status as a central business and transit destination makes the area attractive to those who want to build, according to Mike Slattery, senior vice president at the Real Estate Board of New York.