Professors earn 'stock' at Pitt business school

[James Baird]

>>How are the towers subsidized?
>
>Bigtime tax breaks. I haven't looked in a while, but last time I did, 
NYC
>had extended something like $1.5 billion in tax breaks to real estate
>developers. The whole Times Sq redevelopment scheme was driven by 
favorable
>zoning, eminent domain, and tax breaks. Overbuilding during the 1980s 
in
>the Wall Street neighborhood led to tax-subsidized conversion of 
offices to
>residential buildings. For decades, the city's development strategy has
>been to subsidize the strong (the FIRE sector) and punish the weak
>(manufacturing).
>
>Doug
>

The best source for this is Robert Fitch's "The Assassination of New 
York".  He digs up all the dirt on NYC development policies of the past 
60 years - including the manipulations of the Rockefeller family in 
order to salvage their dumbshit investment in Rockefeller center (on 
land, incidentally, leased from Columbia).  Interesting tidbit:  thte 
amount of office space vacant at the end of the eighties was almost 
precisly equal to the amount built that decade - in other words, demand 
wasn't driving the building frenzy of the eighties - subsidies were.  

Jim Baird

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com