Welcome to New York's Sixth Borough

William Tucker

I have seen the future of New York and it is Jersey City.

Just take a look at what's going on across the Hudson. Giant construction cranes dot the skyline. Newport Office Complex VII, now being topped off on the southern end, is on a par with anything in Lower Manhattan. Look back at the Harbor from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and you realize that "New York" is really twin cities on opposite sides of the Hudson.

Even more important, New York City businesses are moving west. The 32-story structure in the middle (tallest building in New Jersey) is Newport Office Center II, home of First Chicago Trust, Barry Diller's USA Networks, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Newport Office Center III (such exciting names!), on its left, houses UBS PaineWebber (the parent company), CIGNA, and U.S. Trust.

Newport Office Center IV, 22 stories to the far right, is the new home of ISO, the leading supplier of insurance industry data, which used to be at 7 World Trade Center. Office Centers V (21 stories) and VI, (10 stories), will be entirely occupied by JP Morgan Chase and Co - a company that used to be called "Chase Manhattan."

Every couple of years the New York Stock Exchange makes noises about moving to Jersey City. ("We'll build to suit," says Ed Cortese, vice president of Newport.) Now that the Securities Exchange Commission telling Wall Street to decentralize, it seems inevitable that the Financial District will eventually be hollowed out. Electronic brokerages have found it particularly easy to leave Manhattan. Even the Wall Street Journal has decided to keep almost half its editorial operation in South Brunswick.

Is it Manhattan-like attractions that are taking people to New Jersey? Are you serious? The only public plaza in Jersey City is the windswept Katyn Forest Massacre Memorial to Polish Victims of Communism (the inscription in Polish). Walk two blocks from the waterfront and you're in downtown Dallas. The streets are wide and unfriendly. There's no place to eat. Go out for lunch and you'll find yourself waiting in line behind 30 people in a stand-up deli.

No, Jersey City's advantages are entirely actuarial. A young couple making $70,000 can save almost a month's pay by moving across the Hudson. (The average housing applicant at Newport is 29 and makes $120,000.) For businesses there's escape from the sales tax, the commercial occupancy tax and all the other amenities that make Manhattan impossibly expensive.

Looming even larger, however, is New York's emerging inability to recover from September 11th. Even before redesigning Lower Manhattan became the city's favorite parlor game, Jersey City had huge advantages. "We go through the environmental and planning reviews over here in one-third the time," says 84-year-old Sam LeFrak, who redeveloped the Jersey City waterfront after becoming fed up with New York City politics. "In New York two people with a fax machine can hold up a project for ten years."

New York City now practices what might be called "veto democracy." Instead of the majority ruling, nearly unanimous consent is required before anything can move ahead. The landscape is cluttered with zoning boards, community planning boards, historical preservation boards, and environmental boards, all dominated by "activists" - meaning people with nothing better to do with their time. If all that fails there is always the courts, where a single individual halt the popular will indefinitely.

The Municipal Arts Society has delayed the redevelopment of Columbus Circle for almost 20 years. The Westway - which would have graced Lower Manhattan with 75 acres of waterfront parkland - was defeated by someone named Marcy Benstock, who hasn't been heard of since. Even plans for public toilets on the streets of Manhattan were thwarted by handicap activists insisting on wheelchair accessibility.

Any city that can't build an outhouse isn't going to be able to rebuild the World Trade Center.

The genius of private enterprise is that it allows small, anent groups of people to make the key decisions. The genius of bureaucracy is that it allows so many people in on decision-making that nothing ever gets done. In New York, bureaucracy has triumphed over free enterprise.

So let's go one better. Let's put the whole redevelopment issue to a popular vote. Majority rules, no more bureaucracy. We can have three choices - a memorial graveyard, a modest Cincinnati-type redevelopment, or a complete restoration of the New York City skyline.

My vote is for skyline.

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William Tucker
billtucker@nyc.rr.com