Real Estate

Bloomberg’s East Midtown rezoning plan sunk

One of Mayor Bloomberg’s most ambitious legacy projects went down in flames Tuesday, leaving his hard-fought plan to rezone East Midtown to the next administration.

City Council leaders said the measure, intended to produce taller and more modern buildings within a 73-block area around Grand Central Terminal, was DOA because it lacked the support of a majority of the 51 members.

It had been scheduled for a vote by the Land Use Committee Wednesday and by the full council Thursday.

“After extensive negotiations, we have been unable to reach agreement on a number of issues in the proposed plan,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilman Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan), whose district the initiative targets, said in a joint statement.

They cited a number of concerns, including the sale price of valuable city air rights, which allow developers to pay for the opportunity to construct taller buildings, and the uncertainty of city funding for promised transit improvements.

Bloomberg and other proponents of the project have argued that the affected area hadn’t seen significant development in decades and would crumble toward irrelevancy without the rezoning.

Bloomberg responded to the council snub by pulling the application.

“This will unfortunately cost the area hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed subway and street improvements and $1 billion in additional tax revenue — as well as tens of thousands of new jobs that would have been created,” Hizzoner said.

“The inability to reach a consensus on the plan’s details is regrettable, but it was encouraging that nearly everyone involved in the process recognized the need for the area to be rezoned to ensure that it remains competitive with other business districts around the world.”

Opponents of the plan, including seven local community boards and the two state senators who oversee parts of the district, argued that the plan was being rushed through solely with Bloomberg’s departure date in mind.

Opponents claim the city is lowballing the value of the air rights by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio welcomed the delay, and the chance to leave his mark on the huge project.

“We cannot afford to hand over the right to develop some of the most valuable real estate in the world without ensuring real and fair benefits for the people of New York City,” said de Blasio, who takes office Jan. 1. “We must continue this process in earnest upon taking office, and I commit to presenting a revised rezoning plan for the area by the end of 2014.”