Sixteen Months and Counting

For months now, the Bloomberg administration has been sprinting to secure approvals and start implementing its major economic development projects, from Willets Point to Coney Island, all before the mayor plans (for now) to depart City Hall at the end of 2009.

But with some 16 months left until that date, private developers are starting their own race to the finish line, as some of the largest planned developments in the city, with thousands of proposed apartments, are trying to secure needed approvals before the development-friendly mayor departs. To name a few where developers have said they are trying for rezoning and other approvals before Michael Bloomberg leaves: the $15 billion West Side rail yards project; the planned redo of South Street Seaport; and a proposed development of up to 2,500 apartments at Riverside South on the Upper West Side.

While a change in the term-limits law—one that many council members are pushing—might change the calculus for some developers, for now there stands to be an unprecedented number of major projects entering the city’s seven-month rezoning approval process in the next nine months or so.

The rush to gain approval comes as developers fear the uncertain political climate that lies ahead in 2010, when, presumably, a new mayor and more than 30 new council members arrive at City Hall. The mayor appoints a majority of the members of the City Planning Commission and guides policy at the Department of City Planning; therefore, the mayoral administration has much control over developments that need a rezoning from the city, as most large developments do.

“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know,” said Martin McLaughlin, a consultant who works with developers as they seek city approvals. “You don’t want it to carry over into a whole new administration,” he said of projects seeking future approval. “You know what you’re dealing with now.”

Much of the rush seems to come not so much out of fear that a future administration will completely nix a project, but more out of a concern that new officials could have their own list of tweaks and changes that could further delay a project.

“WE ARE MAKING every effort, and I’m sure others are as well, to conclude the projects that are mature enough to be concluded,” said Samuel Lindenbaum, an attorney at Kramer Levin, a firm that does land-use law for many of the city’s largest developments.

“A large project can take a very long time, and I’m talking about years,” he said. “When you start [a project’s approval process] near the end of an administration, you don’t want to have to start with, let’s say, a new chair of the City Planning Commission, a new Council … a new deputy mayor.”

The chairwoman of the City Planning Commission in the Bloomberg administration, Amanda Burden, has been a particularly powerful figure with respect to developers seeking green lights from the city. She is known for her penchant for detail and an insistence on quality architecture and urban design.

“She has strong views on a lot of things, and she’s communicated them, and people now know what it takes to get something approved,” said Kenneth Fisher, a former councilman who works as a land-use attorney at the firm WolfBlock.

The most notable of the projects seeking to sidle into the city’s approval process in the coming months is the West Side rail yards, the $15 billion mega-complex planned for a 26-acre site just south of the Javits Center. The developer, the Related Companies, needs to rezone the western half of the site to allow for a planned 3,200 apartments or so. Both the Bloomberg administration and the local council member, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, agreed to an outline that guided Related’s plan, but future elected officials could potentially want to see changes.