Subway Plaza Trees In Peril

Katia and Barbara report that the developer Stein has applied for a permit to cut down the trees on the subway plaza.

It will be a shame to see the trees that are located o private property be removed. It is absolutely vital, however, that he not be allowed to remove the trees which are public property, on the public portion of the plaza.

For a sense of what portion of the plaza will be lost to the 360 Smith project, see Barbara's blog here. On the other hand, the portion of the currently empty, fenced in parking lot that corresponds to the courtyards on 2nd Place will become more open when the lot is developed. Not open to the public, but open in the sense that the fence obstructing the view down 2nd Place will be gone.

MUST READ: Definitive Spitzer Timeline

Looseheadprop has posted an exhaustive timeline of the Spitzer debacle over at FireDogLake.

As I suspected, it appears there is a lot of chicanery going on here behind the scenes . . . on the GOP side. This whole thing stinks. The apparent abuses of power here are far more scandalous than patronizing prostitutes. This is a GOP power play for the governorship, using dirty tricks and abuse of police powers.

February Existing Home Sales: A Bloodbath

For some reason, the AP and nearly all major media outlets still swallow the spin from the National Association of Realtors and their spokesperson, comedian Lawrence Yun.

And so we get headlines lauding the "improvement" in February, as sales were up 2.9% from January . . . "The first increase since July!" Further down the page is the other news, that average prices were down 8.2%.

Newsflash: this is a seasonal business. Sales ALWAYS increase from January to February. On top of that, there was an extra day in February this year due to leap year. The increase of 2.9% in February is absolutely meaningless. The real news, which was buried in most articles (presumably, because it was underplayed in the NAR's press release) was that year-over-year, February sales were DOWN 23.8%. There is not a more dishonest group of shills in all the land - the deceit of the NAR borders on criminal fraud.

For a more in depth and sober analysis of the February numbers, see this post and this post at Calculated Risk, the best economics blog in all the tubez. As CR makes clear, February is a relatively unimportant month for housing . . . you'll want to pay close attention to the March numbers when they come out next month. More from The Big Picture. And did I mention that prices are tumbling at record rates as well?

We're not immune here. I'd expect the tone on local real estate to get progressively more sour as 2008 wears on, continuing in 2009.

Congestion Pricing Hearings @ City Hall TODAY & TONIGHT

Per Streetsblog:

The morning session, beginning at 10:00, will be open for public viewing but closed to public testimony.

The evening session begins at 6:00. Members of the public who wish to testify may sign up on a first-come first-served basis, beginning at 5:30. Public testimonies are limited to two minutes each.

Needless to say, it is important that the council (and the media) hear from as many pro-pricing citizens as possible. The Campaign for New York's future suggests bringing signs or wearing pro-pricing t-shirts, whether you are able to testify or not. CFNY would like to hear from those who will be attending, if possible; contact Katie Savin at ksavin@mrss.com.

The hearings will take place in the City Council Chambers, City Hall, Second Floor.

I am hoping to squeeze in at 6:00 - I have my first CB6 Public Safety/Environmental Committee meeting tonight in Park Slope at 6:30 . . . and there is no public testimony at the morning session. I can't stress enough how important it is to our transit infrastructure to get this passed.

Streetsblog also has a liveblog of the Committee hearings going on. The first two installments are here and here. Great summary of Jeanette Sadik-Khan testimony. Check it out.

Spitzer Skullduggery

I am pretty confident we're going to learn, over the next 2 years, more about how the Fall of Elliot Spitzer was engineered. Hubris? Of course. But this was a man with many enemies. One of them, Roger Stone, (click here for larger version of picture big enough to read) is a sleazebag GOP political operative and dirty trickster going back to the Nixon administration. He had a role in halting the Florida recount in 2000. He is a complete and total scumbag. He is also a swinger . . . on that count, to each their own - I don't really care what he and his wife do with their private parts. Consenting adults can do whatever the hell they want behind closed doors, in my view.

But he reported Spitzer to the FBI for using hookers four months before this scandal broke. . . . and it does add some irony that HE, of all people, should be reporting someone to the FBI for sexual misconduct.

Did I mention that Roger has a tattoo of Richard Nixon's face on his back? Must make for an interesting conversation piece at the orgies.

UPDATE:
Scott Horton has a much better distillation of the politicization of the Spitzer prosecution over at Harper's. It is a must read. Concludes Horton,

This marks a strong shift in position in Justice Department explanations of the case, increasingly bringing into focus the fact that Eliot Spitzer was a target because he was Eliot Spitzer. The comparison of this case with the handling of the “D.C. Madam” case produces a very curious bifurcation. Eliot Spitzer is worthy of being a target, and the dedication of massive resources to nab him. But G.O.P. Senator David Vitter and Bush Administration Director of USAID Randall Tobias are not. What, other than the fact that the latter are Republicans and the former Democrats, provides the basis for distinction? This investigation increasingly looks like a political hit.

Wither Atlantic Yards?

Yes, that's wither, not whither. It seems the project that Brooklyn loves to hate may be dying on the vine, so to speak. A tanking R/E market, sputtering credit markets, and Ratner's failure to secure an anchor tenant for Miss Brooklyn (she's no lady) have soured prospects for this mega-project.

This project from the start was a disaster in the making: a naked giveaway to a politically connected developer, a boondoggle of taxpayer financing for a sports arena, an egregious misuse of eminent domain, and a complete disregard for the community's input.

Make no mistake about it: The Vanderbilt Yards (there is no such thing as the "Atlantic Yards" outside of Bruce Ratner's drawing board) are an excellent site for development. So are the Hudson Yards. Deck them over and build. But this project was ill-conceived from the beginning.

The fig leaf of "affordable housing" (really, did you think that this project was ever about that? Or that we weren't just robbing Peter to pay Paul by raiding the state's funds for affordable housing to hand it all over to Ratner, at the expense of other sites around the city and state?) did very little to disguise the hideous, bloated carcass of Atlantic Yards.

Let's go back to the drawing board. We can do so much better than this. And don't dare build that goddamn arena as a stand-alone eyesore.

Graphic credit: New York Times.

More from The Brooklyn Paper. And an unusually thoughtful Brownstoner thread.

Back on My Feet

Was on my back sick for a few days. Been a long time since I had a 103 degree fever, and I hope it's a longer time before it happens again.

Sicker than me, it turns out, was Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns, which 1 year ago traded at $170 per share, was sold last night to JP Morgan for $2 per share. It gets more interesting- the FED basically GAVE JPM $30 Billion to buy Bear for $250 Million. (A $30 billion non-recourse loan to JPM secured by crap mortgages on BSC's books)

Why? Because Bear Stearns was bankrupt. Insolvent. Broke. And why? Because at bottom, they facilitated the housing bubble, where mortgage brokers lent money to people who couldn't pay it back to buy houses they couldn't afford. The mortgage brokers and investment banks didn't care, because they were shuttling the repayment risk off to the bond and CDO investors, and huge fees were made at every step of the process. Except when the music stopped, Bear was left with heaping armloads of crap, and no one was left that would take them away. They lost a giant game of Old Maid . . . only in this game, it seems, the Fed is willing to hold the Old Maid card . . . in a couple of years, we'll be able to figure out just how much this bailout cost. (It IS a bailout . . . because JPM would not have paid a nickel for BSC without that $30 billion from the Fed. And they're getting a $1.25 Billion office building in the deal. Peel that out, and they're valuing BSC's business not at $250 million, but at -$1 billion.)

Because of the mortgage mess that was enabled by BSC and it's peers, prices on houses and condos went through the roof the past few years, while incomes for the average guy stayed the same or even dipped slightly. This is George W. Bush's "ownership society", brought to you by "Easy Al" Greenspan.

Our economy, if you haven't guessed already, is in a lot of trouble. And the real estate market is in for a rough patch for the next couple of years. And that most certainly includes NYC.