Midnight At The Oasis

For nearly 15 years, fully 1/3 of my life to this point, my home was Stuyvesant Town, that sprawling 80 acres of residential real estate on the east side of Manhattan. I never expected to leave there and still feel very connected to the place. So, I am watching the meltdown with more then detached interest.

Where to begin? Well, perhaps a good place to start might be with our fine mayor and the role that he played in this debacle of epic proportions. In 2006, when Met Life announced that it was putting the property on the auction block, City Council member Dan Garodnick was the point man for an offer that would have made the residents of Stuyvesant Town the new owners of the property. Met Life's response was a paraphrase of the famous New York Daily News Headline of the '70's, which was hardly surprising, After all, they were looking to sell the property to the highest bidder.

But one could be forgiven for assuming, naively, that Mayor Bloomberg might have looked upon the tenant's offer somewhat more favorably. We know that Met Life and Tishman Speyer have legions of lawyers and lobbyists representing their interests, but who's looking out for the little guy? By his words and his actions, Mike Bloomberg has left no doubt where his sympathies reside. At the time of the sale, the mayor's comments were something to the effect that it..."is their property (Met Life's) and they have every right to sell it to whomever they please". He also remarked that affordable housing in the city was something that belonged in the outer boroughs. Bloomberg pointedly refused to put the considerable influence of his office behind the tenant's offer and Tishman Speyer was the winning bidder with the final sale price coming in at 5.6 billion dollars. And as recent events have revealed, nearly all of that astonishing amount was borrowed. Tishman only put in 112 million of their own money. I guess it is a lot easier to walk away from your obligation if your investment stake is so miniscule.

The tenant offer was something like 4.5 billion dollars, which is still more then double what the property is valued at today. However, if the tenants offer was accepted then you don't have the whole acrimonious and tortured 3-year history that was Tishman Speyer's disastrous stewardship of the iconic development. I witnessed the whole thing firsthand and it was even worse then we thought possible. The "landscaping" improvements alone consumed untold millions of dollars and most of what they planted died immediately. I remember reading a description of this crazed project where the writer said it appeared to be the work of a "deranged horticulturist". That says it better then I ever could.

I could go on in this vein forever, but will limit my bile to these few paragraphs. As my numerous links demonstrate, there are plenty of talented people weighing in with their thoughts. And as Barbara Bush so memorably put it "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?".