E.D.C.

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Just a couple of years ago, the container port in Red Hook, Brooklyn, looked doomed.    read more »

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Six weeks before the Great Blackout of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg’s senior energy adviser quit his  read more »

Joshua Sirefman is returning to the Economic Development Corporation as interim president, filling the spot left by Andrew Alper, who officially left June 2. The interim part is bit mystifying--Sirefman was chief operating officer of the E.D.C. for a while before becoming chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, such that he would not be a long-shot candidate himself. But Doctoroff's e-mail announcing the change said, "[T]he search for a permanent replacement continues," suggesting they are looking to hook a larger fish. Ostensibly, the announcement (first reported on The Daily Politics) is a disappointment for Kate Ascher, but Sirefman essentially outranked her anyway, so that the rumor she was ascendant was just that--rumor. -Matthew Schuerman

An important building site in downtown Brooklyn that The Observer reported in January was leaning primarily residential is now leaning commercial. Cushman & Wakefield Executive Director Glenn Markman, who is brokering the site for developer Joshua Muss, told us that 75 percent of it would be devoted to offices.

"The message here is that there are a lot of residential projects on the board," he said. "But how many sites out there are focused on what's going to become a huge demand for office space? Manhattan is running out of office space. The big blocks of space that will be left, there will be huge premiums associated with them."

And the site, on Boerum Place between Livingston Street and the Fulton Street Mall, has lots of large blocks of space, with 850,000 square feet of potential development rights. It was one of just six projected sites that the Bloomberg administration identified in a 2004 rezoning to transform downtown Brooklyn into a Class A office district.

It turns out (we didn't know this in January) that when the city Economic Development Corporation designated Muss to acquire the city-owned parcels that make up part of the site last July, the agency said he could devote only 250,000 square feet to residential. The rest can be for retail, office or community uses (the latter most likely for neighboring Brooklyn Law School).

But the final mix is far from definite and no tenants have been announced .

""Both Muss and the E.D.C. are interested in doing a commercial building," said Muss spokesman David Stearns. "They are still in discussions with the E.D.C. and nothing more has been is determined."

-Matthew Schuerman

Issuing a press release at noon Tuesday, Larry Silverstein confirmed that Beijing Vantone agreed to basic terms of the 200,000-square foot lease at 7 World Trade Center. Along with a lot of quotes from every public official who had anything to do with financing the building or luring the tenant is an intriguing history. It started in June 2004 when the city's Economic Development Corporation first met with the Chinese real estate firm. Next, the E.D.C., along with the Partnership for New York City, brought a group of 20 American chief executives to Beijing last May. Subsequent visits by Silverstein and Governor Pataki sealed the deal. Crain's is reporting that the rent is a tad more than $50 a square foot. -Matthew Schuerman  read more »

Last night, Brooklyn Community Board 6 held a public meeting with representatives from the Economic Development Corporation to discuss future plans for Piers 7 through 12 in Red Hook.

(The piers are located roughly in the center of Brooklyn's much-hyped waterfront-renewal project, a map of which is posted to the left; the Brooklyn Bridge Park area is off the map to the north.)

According to E.D.C. executive vice president of infrastructure Kate Ascher, the city has begun the planning stages to develop the piers the site just north of the Atlantic Basin area where cruise ships, starting with the Queen Mary 2, will begin to dock in April.

"Tonight's about a dialogue," Ms. Ascher said. "This is a project I'm really excited about." She said that the E.D.C. had "no specific plans" as of yet, and last night's meeting would be the first of several to analyze what the neighborhood and area residents need from the piers, currently occupied by American Stevedore. She said that residents of the secluded and poorly accessible neighborhood need to figure out how much development they want.

"How many people do we want to come in from the outside?" she asked.

Ms. Ascher presented a timeline of the gradual conversion of the 1.1-mile-long, 120-acre area (both waterfront and upland) from industrial waterfront use to mixed maritime industrial and recreational marina uses:

--December 2005-January 2006: feedback on conceptual framework --February 2006: planning development and marketing study --April 2006: cruise-ship piers (11 and 12) in use --Summer 2006: the uniform land-use review process --Spring 2007: acquisition of Piers 7 to 9B --2007 and on: maritime use of Piers 7 to 9B --2007-09: development of uplands

Ms. Ascher welcomed suggestions from the public for uses of the waterfront, and fielded questions about how local business can begin to prepare for the piers' increased use. The more popular suggestions were for a public boat slip, sewage and infrastructure repair (several people said that the prevalence of sewage and seafood stench would drive out any tourists debarking from the cruise ships), streetscape improvements and the removal and/or beautifying of area industries, especially the garbage-truck lot facing the ship terminal.  read more »

"I think that's something we need to solve, not just work on, before the fancy people from the Queen Mary show up," Ms. Ascher said jokingly.

-Matthew Grace

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