>>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
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