Re: The McMansion backlash

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Interesting article on MSN:
> http://realestate.msn.com/buying/Articlenewhome.aspx?cp-documentid=418653
>
> ----snip
> Austin typifies the McMansion craze -- and the backlash that's
> followed. Several of the city's neighborhoods like Tarrytown and
> Travis Heights have seen an influx of large homes, said Kathie Tovo,
> president of the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood Association, who lives in
> a "funky, fun" area just south of downtown that also has seen some
> change. Just down the street from their modest home, Tovo and her
> architect husband bought a house as an investment. After they finished
> remodeling it, the home next door got knocked down and replaced by a
> 4,000-square-foot building housing two condominiums. "What had been
> not a tiny, but a modest-size and -scale cottage, has been replaced by
> something hugely bigger than what's the scale along that street," Tovo
> said. "The entire yard is now lined by this massive house," she says
> of her house.
>
> --raghu.

NY Times, April 22, 2006
For $2.4 Million, 7 Racing Yachts Get Parking Spot
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

The Kiwis are coming, and so are the Dutchmen and the Brazilians. They are 
coming by sea in sleek racing yachts and they are going to need what so 
many people in Manhattan covet ? a place to park.

To make way for them, workers are dredging the North Cove Marina in Battery 
Park City as fast as they can. When they started last Saturday, the water 
in the marina was less than six feet deep in some places. But the seven 
boats, which are taking part in a round-the-world race whose next leg ends 
at the Statue of Liberty, need the water to be at least 14 feet deep.

So the agency that runs Battery Park City decided to spend $2.44 million to 
give the yachts a proper place to dock when they arrive in early May.

That is how much a New Jersey-based dredging outfit, Donjon Marine Company, 
is being paid by the Battery Park City Authority to remove about 25,000 
cubic yards of silt from the bottom of the basin by May 1. With a deadline 
looming, the authority's directors convened a special meeting three weeks 
ago. Although some directors wondered aloud why the authority was paying so 
much to prepare for an event that would benefit so few, they unanimously 
approved the rushed contract, an authority spokesman confirmed.

The authority, a state corporation that collects rent and other payments 
from the owners of residential and office buildings in Battery Park City, 
spent $37.2 million last year to manage the entire 92-acre development, at 
the southwestern tip of Manhattan.

"We're certainly paying a premium to have it done quickly," said James 
Cavanaugh, the president of the authority, which owns the marina. "It's not 
cheap to move dirt, especially when it's underwater."

But, he added, "They're going around the world; we don't want them to run 
aground in North Cove."

Still, the notion that a state agency would invest a significant amount of 
money toward an elite event with a limited following has puzzled some 
residents. And the racers will not have a chance to do much spending in New 
York because they will be here only two days.

Edward Hersey, a father of two who has lived in Battery Park City for 12 
years, said he would rather see the authority spend its money on parks than 
yachts. "There needs to be more open, public green spaces," he said.

The yachts are expected in New York Harbor on May 8 or 9, after a short leg 
of the race, from Annapolis, Md. The Volvo Ocean Race is a sort of roving 
international carnival of sailors from a variety of ports and support teams 
of more than 500 people.

In five months, the boats, which are 70 feet long with masts 100 feet tall, 
have sailed 25,000 nautical miles in an eastward loop from Spain to South 
Africa to Australia to Brazil to Maryland.

The latest leg ended on Tuesday, with ABN Amro One, whose skipper is from 
New Zealand, holding the lead. Pirates of the Caribbean, a boat inspired by 
the movie which has an American skipper, Paul Cayard, and a crew that 
includes Kiwis, Australians and a Dutchman, is in a tight battle for second 
place.

After racing 400 nautical miles up the East Coast to New York, the boats 
will dock for two days, then turn around and head from Manhattan to 
Portsmouth, England.

"The race restart should be really cool and a great symbol for Lower 
Manhattan," said Michael Fortenbaugh, commodore of the marina, who led the 
campaign to have the race go there. "This is the first time a race of this 
magnitude has been attracted to New York City."

Mr. Fortenbaugh's company, North Cove Marina Management, leased the marina 
from the Battery Park City Authority a year ago. Dennis Conner, who has won 
the America's Cup four times, is one of Mr. Fortenbaugh's partners.

All of the drama on the high seas was of little interest to Thomas D. 
Witte, executive vice president of Donjon. His priority was getting the 
dredging done on what he called "about the tightest schedule we've ever seen."

From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, a crew of five men operates the dredge. 
Other Donjon workers operate tugboats that push the loaded scows up the 
river, where the silt is unloaded and trucked to landfills, Mr. Witte said. 
He said the silt was mixed with cement to form a hard material used to cap 
the landfills.

The goal is to increase the depth of the water in the basin to at least 16 
feet, he said.

"Unfortunately, the life of a dredger is what the life of a dredger is," 
Mr. Witte said. "I've never owned a yacht. I'm all blue-collar vessels."

The late start on the dredging work was causing no worries for the race 
organizers, said a race spokesman, Cameron Kelleher. "It's not unusual for 
us to be a couple of days away from a stopover and the last few bits of 
dredging still to be done," Mr. Kelleher said by phone from Baltimore. "In 
Brazil, they were dredging up to two days before we arrived."

Warned that public-works projects are rarely completed on time in New York 
City, Mr. Kelleher laughed and said, "You should try Spain."

Kate Hammer contributed reporting for this article.