Anthony Coscia

Food is pricey in this town, and when you eat it with other hot shots, it costs even more. Here, from a response to a Freedom of Information Act request, are some examples of how executives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have spent their lunch money—i.e., your tolls, landing fees, docking charges, etc.--over the last year or so:

$3,500 for 10 people to eat at a “vice chairman table” at the New York Building Congress's Leadership Awards Luncheon on April 17, during which the Port Authority’s chairman and executive director presented an award to construction executive Dan Tishman, whose firm is building the Freedom Tower for the Port Authorty;

$1,300 for two tickets to the New York Building Congress Industry Recognition Dinner at the Grand Hyatt, Oct. 19, 2006;

$1,100 for 20 people to eat at an Association for a Better New York (ABNY) breakfast March 2 with Governor Eliot Spitzer;

$1,200 for 20 people to hear the same Governor Spitzer speak about six weeks later at a Crain’s New York Business breakfast;

$550 to reserve a 10-person table at an ABNY event last Nov. 16, featuring Senator Hillary Clinton;

$550 for a 10-top at another ABNY breakfast, May 15, headlined by Anthony E. Shorris, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey;

And, the highest figure in the pack: $7,381.80 for 10 tickets to the annual black-tie banquet thrown by the Real Estate Board of New York at the New York Hilton Hotel on Jan. 18, 2007.

Compared to those prices, $2 for a Peppermint Pattie at JFK sounds like a steal.

Port Authority commissioners endorsed Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, N.Y., as the preferred site for the next New York City-area airport on Thursday when they unanimously authorized the bi-state agency to hire outside consultants to see how the two-runway airport, serving half a million passengers a year, could be made to carry more.

Chairman Anthony Coscia, a New Jersey appointee, said that taking over the Orange County airport, now run by a private company on behalf of New York State, was one possibility, but that the Port Authority may be able to help in other ways.

The move was a blow to Vice Chairman Charles Gargano, a New York appointee who had advocated instead in favor of better technology to expand capacity at the three city airports, and who was absent for the vote. But Coscia said that the increased capacity permitted by technological improvements, which are already under way, would soon be exhausted and that another airport to service the city was needed. Traffic at New York City's present airports is expected to reach 150 million annual passengers by 2025, compared to an estimated 100 million this year.

- Matthew Schuerman

Assembly Member Richard Brodsky is nipping at the Port Authority's heels: today he and counterparts from New Jersey will propose legislation to make the Port Authority adopt the same measures that New York agencies now must follow according to the 2005 Public Authority and Accountability Act.

Coincidentally--perhaps--the Port Authority introduced a brand new feature to its monthly board meetings last Thursday: a public comment period in which regular folks could make known their feelings about bridges, airports, the PATH, cargo and all the other things that the Port Authority gives us. No one took up the offer, but Chairman Anthony Coscia said it was part of an effort to make the bi-state agency more, um, accountable.

-Matthew Schuerman

• Will the government solve the Freedom Tower's impending tenant problem by sending state and federal agencies to fill it up? Not if those employees--some of them veterans of two WTC attacks--refuse to go. As Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia (right) has said, it "would simply carry too much emotional weight." Might Mr. Pataki force folks down there? (New York Times)
• As first-home and second-home ownership numbers rise for minorities, racism in realty has increased too. Enlightened Manhattan isn't immune: the Department of Justice is receiving claims from "upscale sections in and around New York," charging brokers with "steering minority clients away from nonminority neighborhoods." (WSJ)
• Can too much bright green healthiness be a bad thing? Manhattan will find out--maybe as soon as early next year, when two new Whole Foods Markets open at Greenwich & Warren and Bowery & Houston. (Lucky Brooklynites will some day get their 52,000-square-foot baby in Park Slope/Gowanus). (Curbed)
• "The Good Life" at Hudson River Park's Pier 40 museum presents a global vision of how we use our public spaces. East Berlin gets 100 blue deck chairs, Dublin gets singing sidewalks (really), and NYC gets measly little Lincoln Center, Chelsea's High Line, and the East River Waterfront. (Citi Limits)
• The Nets (whose stars include 'Jefferson Thomas') have extended their lease at New Jersey's un-glamorous Continental Arena through 2013. They can bail out, though, as soon as Frank Gehry's Atlantic Yards glass arena is ready, which should be anytime now. (New York Times)
- Max Abelson  read more »
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The Port Authority board just approved the deal with Larry Silverstein over in the agency's Park Avenue South headquarters. The developer signed the "framework agreement" this morning. For the most part, it sounds like the Port Authority accepted Silverstein's last minute amendments, although the agreement still will not close until September.

Chairman Anthony Coscia acknowledged, "As we turn that framework into a definitive agreement, there will certainly be issues that we will have to tackle together, but they are issues largely about the way of implementing what the parties have decided to do."

P.A. Executive Director Kenneth Ringler took his bow in front of a gaggle of reporters. "Hopefully we are not going to be as newsworthy. You will just see construction going on. It has been nice knowing all you guys."

Construction on the Freedom Tower could begin within days. Aren't you excited?

-Matthew Schuerman

The New York Times yesterday and The New York Sun today have suggested that tomorrow's meeting of the Port Authority board of directors is the new deadline for the state's Ground Zero negotiations with Larry Silverstein. Sure, if the Port Authority takes over the Freedom Tower, it will want to have voted on the new lease before breaking ground there, and ground is supposed to be broken in April. But Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told us that board chairman Anthony Coscia could always call an emergency meeting and hold it by conference call in order to approve a deal. -Matthew Schuerman