NEW YORK | "LoLo" (Artificial Island) | VISION

[M II A II R II K]

Visions of a Development Rising From the Sea


November 22, 2011

By JULIE SATOW

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/re...fill.html?_r=2

New Yorkers are fond, perhaps overly so, of assembling ever-creative names for newly hot neighborhoods, from NoMad (north of Madison Square Park) to SoBro (the South Bronx) to BoCoCa (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens). Now comes LoLo — perhaps the most far-fetched name of all, given that the neighborhood does not actually exist. LoLo, which stands for Lower Lower Manhattan, is one of the first proposals from the Center for Urban Real Estate, a new research group at Columbia University. The neighborhood would be created by connecting Lower Manhattan and Governors Island with millions of cubic yards of landfill, similar to how Battery Park City was born in the 1970s. Over 20 to 30 years, the center estimates, LoLo would create 88 million square feet of development and generate $16.7 billion in revenue for the city.

- It may be an impossible project, because there are strict regulations on building with landfill. Governors Island has also become a popular destination for recreation and arts events. But the project is the kind of big thinking that New York needs, said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the director of the center and the Marc Holliday associate professor of real estate development at Columbia. One of the center’s other projects is examining how New York can nurture development by altering zoning regulations. There are nearly four billion square feet of unused development rights in the city, the center says, with more than 765 million square feet in Manhattan alone. The most common method for developers to create more space is to buy so-called air rights, or the right to build vertically, from adjacent buildings. The center suggests relaxing the city’s zoning rules so that developers can buy air rights from any property owner in the same zoning district rather than limiting them to adjacent plots.

- The Center for Urban Real Estate is also beginning work on a report, to be called NYC2040, that will examine New York’s development 30 years out, including broad public policy suggestions and environmental issues. The center hopes to publish preliminary findings in the spring and release a full report in the summer. As for Governors Island, Mr. Chakrabarti presented some parts of the proposal at a meeting held by the Municipal Arts Society this fall. A full version of the report was unveiled last week at a daylong conference, “Zoning the City,” held by the Department of City Planning. Mr. Chakrabarti has not yet met with city officials to push them on the LoLo proposal. He says he realizes that it is “an enormous project” that would need a lengthy environmental impact statement as well as regulatory changes. Despite these challenges, he said it would not be different from the rezoning and development of Hudson Yards and the extension of the No. 7 subway line.

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The Center for Urban Real Estate says that connecting Lower Manhattan and Governors Island would generate billions of dollars in revenue for the city.