Grand schemes never seem to die. So former New York City deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff is back with a plan for scrapping Manhattan’s Jacob K Javits Convention Center and building an entirely new convention center in the middle of the Sunnyside Yards in Queens. Doctoroff’s op-ed pulled out the standard expansive booster rhetoric: “We are an undisputed leader in tourism, yet we lag badly in one important aspect: the huge convention and conference business.” And as for the Javits Center itself, well “It’s too small for many events and can’t compete with facilities in other cities.” And the price tag for a new center with double the space of the Javits, conveniently located in Queens? A mere $8 billion. Doctoroff offers the reassuring news that it would really be free: “But the beauty of this plan is that it can all be financed at no new net cost to taxpayers.” The fiscal magic would be performed by a sale of the existing Javits property, and all the new “incremental” tax revenues from the development boom around the Sunnyside Yards and the former Javits site.
The notion of a big new convention center in Queens isn’t new. Bob Yaro of the Regional Plan Association has been pushing the idea for years. And in his January 2012 “State of the State” address, Gov. Andrew Cuomo flogged a plan for the biggest convention center in the country to be by the Genting Organization gaming firm at Aqueduct Racetrack. For the politicos, NYC deserves something akin to the biggest.
Doctoroff (and Yaro and Cuomo before) neatly managed to avoid the realities of the convention business in New York and the rest of the country. The Javits has been hemorrhaging business for years, with convention and tradeshow attendance down from 1.25 million in 2000 to 817,100 in pre-recession 2007, and then just 595,300 last year. It’s been much the same at what is now the biggest center in the country, Chicago’s McCormick Place. There convention business has fallen from 1.44 million in 2000 to 863,773 last year. Even that has taken millions in public incentives and discounts to lure events, a necessity in an overbuilt buyer’s market.
The promise that a new center can be financed for free, with the tax revenues from adjacent development, has a familiar ring. When Mayor John Lindsay first promoted what would become the Javits in 1970, it was touted as the “first step in the redevelopment of the west midtown area,” part of a “transformation” of the West Side that would include a crosstown subway or “people mover” direct to the center, a “major new center” of high rise offices, and new hotels and restaurants, supported by the flood of new convention visitors. Didn’t quite work out that way.
Cuomo is not exactly ignoring the Convention Business, they are building one in Albany.
hold on, the extension of the 7 train to the Javits center that is opening next year was pitched as a great way to liven up business at the Javits center. (In addition, of course, to the “jobs created” in creating the extension).
At least convention centers bring in money from outside the city, and generally tax the people who utilize them to get built.
Ah Bryan, there’s the rub with the Javits.
Its calendar is filled with trade events like the BookExpo for the publishing industry. So it draws lots and lots of New Yorkers and folks from the metro area. According the Javits’ own economic impact analysis, of the 595,300 convention and tradeshow attendees last year, only 256,000 were “overnight visitors.” The rest were locals, or just came for the day. And those 256,000 people don’t generate nearly enough tax revenue to pay for the center’s cost.
What kind of events exactly is the Javits too small for? I’ve been to several events at the Javits, some occurring concurrently with one or two others in different wings. The Javits is enormous.
It is very expensive to exhibit at trade shows in New York as compared to shows in other locales. They really stick it to exhibitors with all their hidden costs and extra fees (for example you have to pay someone from the union to unload your skid, you can’t do it on your own). My company only did shows in New York if there was no other option. I’d much rather do shows in Chicago, Vegas or Atlanta. New York was always a pain in the a**.
EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS
That’s the equivalent of building 5 more Met Life stadiums.
Ah, the sunnyside yards. What a tremendous opportunity. When I was in planning school (and bob yaro was one of my professors) we *loved* to talk about what could happen there, and I think that the original 1929 Regional Plan proposed the development of skyscrapers there.
I always thought that with the existing and potential subway and commuter rail access would be a good location for the Mets to develop a new stadium; it would have been super expensive, what with requiring a platform and all, but much more exciting (and accessible) than building in a parking lot.
If we’re looking for bad ideas for the the javitz center and the sunnyside yards, though, we could always go with Jim Venturi’s ridiculous proposal:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/nyregion/an-idea-to-restructure-and-expand-la-guardia-airport.html?emc=edit_tnt_20141108&nlid=21613896&tntemail0=y&_r=0
Venturi’ “…is (in) over his head, or naïve, or impractical, or simply trying to do too much…”
but just enough to bag half a million in taxpayer dollars. Beats workin’.
The RPA and it’s enablers like dandy Dan (and his escorted limo world) only occasionally dabble in the real world, just look at all the problems with the WTC transit hub.
Dan’s Olympic boondoggle west side monument would have closed down the West Side Highway for weeks because the west end of the building would have been extended over the road to accommodate the running track – see bid book for that one.
If an exhibition building on the west side is considered “out of the way”, then what about another boondoggle in another borough?
As much as King Bloomie and dandy Dan pushed for midtown west development, changes there proceed at a snails pace. If areas like this or Sunnyside are so attractive to developers they would grow with little prompting with taxpayer funded lures. Not every “underdeveloped” area in cities has to be over-developed.