NYCkayaker NYCKayaker Digest, Vol 16, Issue 16

[Harry J. Bubbins]

Since it is in the air and we kayakers are often bikers and the whole
complex is an issue see this for tonight Tuesday below:

""The Chelsea Piers thing is #3C on the CB agenda for tomorrow
(Wednesday)night: "Proposal for new exit at West 17th Street for Chelsea
Piers" (see http://www.manhattancb4.org/News.html#calendar). Looking at the
CP map at http://www.chelseapiers.com/CPRoadway.html, it seems that 17th
Street is the current exit, so maybe they just want to reconfigure it to
make it safer for cyclists, right?

As I wrote yesterday, I can't make it to the meeting, but I'm planning to
ride my NEW BIKE over to CP tonight and look at what's where. If you'd like
to meet me over there around 7:00 let me know. After scouting I'm going east
for blintzes and to see Taliah's show at NYC Velo:
http://www.bicyclepaintings.com/shows/06nycveloindex.html. Should be a
lovely evening.

Hannah<hannahb at att.net""


On 12/19/06 9:00 AM, "nyckayaker-request at rockandwater.net"
<nyckayaker-request at rockandwater.net> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1.  interesting read on chelsa pier  subsidization by nyc (mike)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:44:47 -0500
> From: mike <mpidel at optonline.net>
> Subject: NYCkayaker interesting read on chelsa pier  subsidization by
> nyc
> To: nyckayaker at rockandwater.net
> Message-ID: <008f01c722cc$365c9b60$0200a8c0 at e510>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:f8ntmeQf8KIJ:www.gothamgazette.com/
> 
> Reconstruction Watch - Lower Manhattan Development Corporation profiles
> ROLAND W. BETTS - Appointed by Gov. Pataki
> Roland W. Betts is a film financier and a real estate developer who
> helped George W. Bush
> become wealthy through their 1989-1998 shared ownership of the Texas
> Rangers major league
> baseball team. Betts is the developer of Chelsea Piers, the mammoth
> sports and entertainment
> complex on the Lower Manhattan Hudson waterfront. He also co-founded
> Silver Screen
> Management, a film financing company. Betts identifies himself as a
> liberal Democrat, yet he
> committed to raise $100,000 or more for Bush's 2000 campaign.
> Betts and his business partner Thomas Bernstein are part of President
> Bush's inner coterie from
> Yale. According to Betts, "[t]he conventional wisdom on George is that
> the turning point of his
> life was giving up drinking. I don't believe that. The turning point in
> his life was buying the
> Texas Rangers, being successful with the Texas Rangers." When the
> partners sold the team in
> 1998, Bush received $15 million.
> A September 24, 2000 article in The New York Times points out that the
> Rangers investment was
> immensely profitable in part because Betts and his partners "charmed and
> bullied the city of
> Arlington into giving them a great deal, with the local taxpayers paying
> more than $135 million
> to help build the Rangers a stadium." Key to that deal was the 1991
> passage of a sales tax
> referendum by the voters of Arlington; Bush, as team president, played
> the most public role
> advocating for the referendum.
> The son of a wealthy investment banker, Betts grew up in Syosset, Long
> Island. He received
> degrees from Yale University and Columbia Law School. Between college
> and law school,
> influenced by the culture of the sixties, Betts spent seven years in
> Harlem and taught in public
> schools. He met his wife, a teacher from a poor black family, during
> that time.
> After graduating from law school, Betts joined the entertainment
> department of the New
> York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison. There he met
> Bernstein; they
> became long-term business partners. The two founded Silver Screen
> Management in
> 1983 and raised $83 million in a limited partnership to help Home Box
> Office produce
> feature films. Between 1985 and 1991, Silver Screen raised $1 billion
> for 70 Disney
> films.
> Betts and Bernstein launched their next project in 1992, the $100
> million Chelsea Piers sports
> and entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan. The partners invested
> $11.7 million themselves
> and raised another $17 million from friends and family. While the
> project was largely privately
> financed, it involved payments in lieu of taxes that were not due for
> two decades; a large part of
> the rent was also deferred for three years. The New York Dept. of
> Transportation owns the piers
> and had used it for parking before Betts and Bernstein redeveloped it.
> The project was criticized
> for cost overruns and lack of public participation. The two other
> competing bidders for the
> project also criticized the state for selecting Betts' group.
> Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried denounced the deal as having been
> "negotiated entirely in
> secret," particularly the fact that the initial 20-year lease had been
> extended to 49-years. At the
> public hearing convened later, Gottfried said that, "The reason for the
> extension of the lease is
> Page 11
> Reconstruction Watch - Lower Manhattan Development Corporation profiles
> Roland Betts - continued
> simply so that Chelsea Piers Management can make more money. The interim
> use of this land is
> being converted into a virtual sale of this land. I don't think this
> should be tolerated."
> The Clean Air Campaign and other community groups criticized the project
> for having too little
> open space. Despite the disagreements, Betts and Bernstein persuaded the
> community board and
> legislators to approve a project that would focus on retail and
> recreational activities, rather than
> high-rise residential buildings that have anchored other waterfront
> developments.
> Betts is a shrewd and convincing negotiator with extraordinary
> interpersonal skills. Council
> member Thomas Duane said of his experience in negotiating with Betts
> over Chelsea Piers,
> "[Betts and Bernstein] are unusual because they come to meetings with
> people who are opposed
> to their plans. Usually developers aren't at the table with the
> community. They just send their
> lawyers."
> 
> 
> 
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> End of NYCKayaker Digest, Vol 16, Issue 16
> ******************************************
> 





Try viewing the world as with you and your efforts.

http://friendsofbrookpark.org

Harry J. Bubbins
646.206.5288 
Mail:  PO Box 801, The South Bronx, NY 10454
Space: 11 Bruckner Boulevard