IT sure smells like a shake down to me: City Univer sity officials say they won’t even think about taking down the hulk of Fiterman Hall, which casts a morbid pall over Ground Zero’s north rim, until City Hall coughs up tens of millions of dollars more the school wants to put up its dream replacement.
The point is moot for the moment – although decontamination is underway, the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to approve a demolition plan. But CUNY Vice Chancellor Iris Weinshall as much as admitted to me that they’d rather let the macabre ruin remain if they can’t get what they want.
That might well leave the blackened relic standing on Sept. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack – a prospect that makes the mind and heart recoil.
Having followed the disgraceful Fiterman saga for years, I couldn’t believe what Weinshall appeared to say in a recent news story- that CUNY would balk at taking the building down until it has all the dough it wants for a new one.
But Weinshall politely made clear to me last week she meant just that. She asked disingenuously, “Why would we want to have an empty space there?”
If this isn’t a kind of shakedown, then New Yorkers are already dining and dancing on the top floor of a new World Trade Center.
I first wrote about CUNY’s Fiterman Hall on June 4, 2004, under the headline “Permanent Blight at Ground Zero.” At the time, it was by no means clear that Fiterman Hall (part of Borough of Manhattan Community College) needed to be demolished. Numerous government officials, Downtown business leaders, civic advocates and CUNY insiders told me the mess could simply be cleaned and repaired.
But, they said, CUNY had never much liked the facility and was holding out for a whole new building.
Since then, elected officials, the Downtown Alliance, Community Board 1 and landlords (including Larry Silverstein, who called it “the bane of my existence”) – every responsible voice for Lower Manhattan – has called on CUNY and on three different governors to erase the blight.
But it hasn’t happened, thanks to CUNY’s foot-dragging and the same EPA micro-management that continues to delay the takedown of the old Deutsche Bank building nearby.
Now, at least, CUNY is slowly decontaminating Fiterman Hall and hopes to finish the job this fall. Won’t that pave the way for demolition once the EPA finally blesses the deconstruction plan?
No. CUNY now says it first needs a total of $325 million to pay for a new facility – compared to the mere $166 million price tag it cited a few years ago.
The price skyrocketed mainly because CUNY keeps enlarging the job. Once, the project was about simply replacing Fiterman’s classrooms; now it’s swelled from 300,000 to 364,000 square feet and includes computer labs, lounges and an espresso bar.
CUNY already secured city, state, federal and insurance funds – but is still $71 million short of what it wants. So it asked Mayor Bloomberg to kick in. Not surprisingly, given the city’s fragile finances and CUNY’s insatiable appetite, he said no.
Now, Weinshall is standing by the indefensible and preposterous idea that having a cleared site would be worse than letting Fiterman stand.
“From CUNY’s perspective, just to have empty space there would not serve the college’s need of . . . space for students, nor would it serve the neighborhood,” she said.
Of course, by that logic – the undesirability of “empty space” – we oughtn’t to have cleaned up the Ground Zero crater after 9/11, but let the nightmarish rubble fester indefinitely.
Weinshall acknowledged that Fiterman is an “eyesore” and that “I don’t like looking at that building.” So I asked her repeatedly: How can CUNY justify delaying demolishing it?
She and CUNY flack Jay Hershenson took turns changing the subject to BMCC’s need for more classroom space and their desire for a replacement facility “that adds to the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan.”
Weinshall said my question was moot in any event until the EPA approves a demolition plan.
But, again, if they gave you approval tomorrow, would you take it down?
“It goes back to, let’s see where we are with city,” Weinshall said.
Doesn’t that sound like an attempt to coerce the city into giving you the money?
“I take umbrage with the word ‘shakedown,’ ” she said – though I clearly used the term not to mean criminal blackmail, but in the colloquial sense of putting the screws to someone to get your way.
Weinshall continued, “I spent seven years with Mike Bloomberg [as transportation commissioner], and I don’t think anyone can coerce him into doing anything.”
Maybe not. But apparently, when it comes to satisfying CUNY’s selfish needs, it’s worth the old college try.
scuozzo@nypost.com