new condos

In a city of 8 million people and about 1000 parking spots it's not hard to believe that people are often frustrated.   As the city OK's new developments they never seem to take into consideration the effects it will have on other things like parking spots, subway crowding and room in playgrounds etc.  It's always just about new bigger and better buildings, never about quality of life.   

 
There has been construction in the building next to my office for 4 years.   I'm not saying 4 months but 4 long years as they've put up some fancy hotel-condo combination.    The sidewalk has been closed for 2 years and was diverted through some scaffolding tunnel for the other 2 with construction workers shooing everybody away.   

I'm sure the developers of the building have gotten some major tax exemptions from the city and at some point Bloomberg will come out and christen it with a couple of the tabloids taking pictures.    The issue is that this new building has done nothing but aggravate the neighbors with the insistent noise of jackhammers, saws and hammers as well as the street closings and other inconveniences.   But at the end of the day the people who have had to deal with all of this will get no benefit, it's not as if they will invite us into their lobby for shrimp and crackers on the grand opening or as if they build a public park alongside the building for the enjoyments of the neighborhood.   The developers will sell out the condos at a healthy profit and rent out the hotel rooms for $400 a night and the only thing we'll get are tourists stopping us on the street asking for directions.  

What it will do for the city, nobody knows.  Maybe it will drive tourism or more business travelers onto 45th street which presumably will help out some of the local businesses but as everybody knows the stores in and around 6th avenue and 45th street aren't even open on weekends as they do almost all their business during the workweek and I highly doubt that adding one hotel will change that landscape all that much.

This is the same thing in our residential neighborhood where new buildings prop up every few months, they are usually big monstrosities with no regard to neighborhood feel and have somehow been able to get away with ridiculous sizes by greasing the palms of the city-planners   This is the beauty of living in an overdeveloped city, the people in the neighborhood have to deal with all the construction nuisance while the people buying into the new development will never have to deal with any of it, they will come in and think that everything is just dandy as they refrigerate their produce in Sub-Zero appliances and wash their hands in those idiotic bowl sinks tops, they'll immediately think that they fit right into their neighborhood obviously oblivious to the fact that their building stands 20 stories higher than anything else on their street.  

 

But even this which is palatable if it also didn't mean that they took away our parking spots.