Save the Plaza
There’s long been speculation that the Plaza Hotel would close its doors. Hotels don’t seem to have a very long shelf life these days. New amenities are rolled out by competitors, new audio-visual and networking technologies are introduced, new demands are made of conference and banquet space. New hotels can build for the modern marketplace, but older hotels have to pay a fortune to be retro-fit. Add to that the usual wear and tear that a hotel goes through (carpets wear thin, wallpaper fades and let’s not talk about those mysterious stains that turn up in the strangest places), and you wind up with the need for a hotel to close operations for top-to-bottom renovations every couple of decades. Many hotels decide to forgo the renovations. They close down, tear down, go condo.
The Mayflower, the Stanhope and the Regent Wall Street are just a few of the hotels that have closed their doors in the past year. They’ve been supplanted new hotels like the Mandarin Oriental in the Time Warner Center and the so-hideous-it’s-beautiful Westin in Times Square. This cycle of openings and closings has been going on for a long time, which is why there’s been speculation about the fate of the Plaza for such a long time. The question comes up every time the hotel is sold. Donald Trump made some vague threats to go condo when bought the hotel in 1989, but that was just some macho posturing against the hotel workers union.
The truth is that the hotel has looked the worse for wear for a little too long, so when Elad Properties bought the hotel recently, nobody was surprised when they announced that the hotel would close for renovations in April and reopen as a mixed-use building, with condo apartments, retail space and a much smaller “boutique” hotel in one part of the building.
The hotel workers union rallied in front of the Plaza yesterday. The union has formed a Save the Plaza Coalition. They’re enlisting support from politicians, celebrities and members of the community. They’re filing for landmark status for interior sections of the hotel, but the company was likely to preserve that famous dining rooms like the Oak Bar and the Palm Court anyway.
A spokesman for Elad told the Daily News, “This isn’t about landmarks, this is about losing 900 jobs at the hotel.” So what if that’s the case? Since when are 900 working people’s livelihoods of no concern? That’s 900 people with good pay, health care and seniority. That’s an awful lot of middle-aged waitresses, cooks and room attendants having to compete with younger workers for new jobs that won’t pay nearly as much or have the same benefits and security. Elad’s callousness is astounding.
The Plaza will be saved. The building itself is a landmark and is in no danger of being torn down. The famous interiors of its lobby and dining rooms will likewise win landmark status and will remain open to the public. What is in danger of being lost is hundreds of jobs if the hotel closes the vast majority of its guest rooms to the public. I don’t support tax breaks as a solution to keep wealthy owners making a profit. I do think public pressure might convince Elad that gutting the Plaza is not worth their time, and the publicity might inspire a group of buyers to get together and “save the day.” Maybe Donald Trump will buy back one of his formerly prized possessions. He could make a TV show about the renovations. That might pay for the hotel right there.
Shit In, Shit Out
Harvard President Lawrence Summers is sunk. He’s catching a lot of hell from his faculty and students over some stupid remarks that he made, by way of explaining Harvard’s gender imbalance in the sciences, that suggested that women aren’t as good as men at math and science. The controversy hasn’t let up, and as Summer’s character has been debated in the national press have come repeated complaints of his bullying and autocratic style, and constant reminders of how he chased Cornell West away to Princeton. It’s over for Summers. I’ve seen this movie before.
In my Junior year at Queens College, we brought down our president. Allen Lee Sessoms was appointed in 1995. He was Queens College’s first black president, one of the minority administrators appointed by Giuliani and Pataki in order to dismantle the hallmarks of the CUNY system and kick out thousands of minority students.
Sessoms wanted to break Queens College away from CUNY and make the college its own university, catering to middle class students from Long Island and out of state. He wanted to build dormitories in order to attract these students. He staked his reputation on a state-of-the-art AIDS research center. And he was a vocal supporter of Guiliani’s campaign to repeal CUNY’s 150-year tradition of open admissions (which meant that high school graduates from New York City’s public schools were guaranteed admission to CUNY; if they didn’t meet academic standards, they would have to take remedial courses to catch up, but could study at the university anyway).
When the Bar Association released a study on the open admissions debate in October of 1999, it included this passage:
New York State Education Law 6201, of course, does place a limit on the mission autonomy of the constituent institutions of CUNY. We were,
therefore, somewhat surprised to hear Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms, the President of Queens College, say that Queens is really more of a SUNY college, a “regional” university, than a part of CUNY, with almost half of its undergraduate student body coming from Nassau and Suffolk Counties rather than from the City of New York. Indeed, Queens College draws more heavily from Long Island than from the four boroughs other than Queens. Whatever the merits such an institution might have, this clearly does not fit within the statutory mission of CUNY to serve the New York City urban community and to give access to those who might otherwise be denied a higher education. Dr. Sessoms, however, believes that the key to increased funding is to build a strong connection with the middle class. He said that “the only people who benefit from open admissions are poor people and poor people don’t vote.”With respect to raising standards, Dr. Sessoms was quite blunt in stating his view that excellence is largely to be measured by the achievement levels of the incoming students rather than a value added measure of raising the achievement of those less prepared at the outset: “[Expletive] in, [expletive] out. If you take in [expletive] and turnout [expletive] that is slightly more literate, you’re still left with [expletive].” He said that he was out to build Queens into a great University and the concept of “value-added” as a measure of excellence would not indicate to him that Queens is a great University. Dr. Sessoms has thus made explicit what may well be a large part of the unspoken reasoning behind the proposed Amendment, at least by some of its more vocal proponents in the political arena, i.e. , that standards and excellence can only be raised by reducing access to the urban population for whom CUNY was created and maintained.
The expletive was “shit.” He was calling us “shit.” It took a few weeks after the report’s publication for it to get circulated much on campus, but when it did, boy, was Sessoms in trouble. The teacher’s union was after him. The student groups were after him.
This is from a pamphlet that my own Young People’s Socialist League distributed:
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As the controversy raged, Sessoms sealed his fate by publicly guaranteeing that he had secured funding for his AIDS center. When the deadline for producing the money came and went, he had to admit that he was bluffing. His reputation couldn’t recover, and he announced that he would not seek re-appointment at the end of his first five-year term. Sessoms was gone by the end of the semester.
Summers, like Sessoms, is attempting to change the structure of the university he leads, seeking greater centralization of the university’s mostly-autonomous schools. This means that he came in to the university facing powerful, entrenched opposition. Such arrogance as he displayed is so unwise, it betrays a greater character flaw. Summers better start thinking of how he will finesse his exit, since it seems doubtful that he can change his ways and win back his campus. Allen Sessoms never tried to apologize for the “Shit in, shit out” controversy. He could read the writing on the wall. It was time to leave.
We Built This City on Rock-n-Roll?
I don’t have much sympathy for the plight of the oh-so glamorous Village and Lower East Side. This is the bitter little Holden Caufield in me winning out over the urban planning nerd and the socialist. I just feel like the invading Darwinist hordes, the yuppies, limeys and spoiled NYU students who priced out the previous residents, will get what they deserve. Either they too will one day be priced out, or they will be left with a community that’s been sucked dry of vitality and art.
Nightlife is what attracts many to downtown, but high rents are forcing prominent nightclubs to close. The Bottom Line closed not too long ago, and now Tonic and Fez are following. New York University actually foreclosed on the Bottom Line, which couldn’t meet the exorbitant rents that the university charged. The truth is that the Bottom Line should have hired new management years ago. The club was a beautiful cabaret with a full stage and generous seating, but it was stuck in a time warp. Musical scenes came and went in New York, but the Bottom Line could always be counted on to host David Johansen. (I saw Alex Chilton there, solo, and Ray Manzarek joined by Jim Carroll – great artists, but dating from the mid-60’s to the late 70’s).
Fez was a wonderfully intimate setting, with full-seating and a wonderful showcase for singer-songwriters. I saw Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s a couple of times there, test-drive new material. I also saw and met John Doe.
Well, they’re both gone, and, much worse, CBGB’s might follow.
Downtown’s latest problems are further vindication of Jane Jacobs, whose book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” is the bible of civic activists. Her book was not so much researched as observed. One thing that Jacobs observed was how too much of a good thing in a neighborhood can ruin what was good there in the first place. She used as an example a vital 24-hour neighborhood, with shops and restaurants and homes all within walking distance. Into this bustling neighborhood, at a prominent intersection, would move a bank. The bank would prosper and thrive and soon another bank would move across the street. Perhaps a third and even a fourth would join the block. Pretty soon, the character of the neighborhood has been altered. It is no longer a 24-hour neighborhood because the banks close at 5:00. The street goes quiet in the evenings and, with fewer “eyes on the street,” crime increases. Residents move out of the neighborhood and a vicious cycle begins. Balance is what Jacobs is arguing in favor of.
Balance is lost downtown. The 24-hour party people pay huge rents as admission to an urban playground. Corporate retail chains (your GAP’s and American Appaerel’s and what-have-you) buy their way into the neighborhood to get in on some of that party money. The stores price out the nightclubs. The 24-hour party starts closing early. The neighborhood becomes a bore, and the party people move on.
As it is, the artists have moved on. It seems like all the up-and-coming bands in New York are based out of Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Not only that, but they cut their teeth playing at Brooklyn clubs like North Six and Warsaw.
Thirty years ago, the members of Blondie rented a loft on Bowery across the street from CBGB’s. Now, if NYC is to be the home of any more future legends, be they Radio 4 or the Black Spoons or someone we’ve yet to hear of, their story is totally unlikely to start in Manhattan. They’re much more likely to be a Brooklyn band, playing Brooklyn clubs for Brooklyn residents.
Perhaps one day, if Williamsburg gets totally gentrified too (not too far-fetched as of this writing), the next generation of rock-n-roll bohemians will live in apartments that face the J train on Jamaica Ave. in Richmond Hill, and cut their teeth playing the Republican Club and the RKO Keith.
A Letter to the Editor, Re: Wal-Mart
The news that the UFCW had organized a Wal-Mart store in Quebec was hailed as a real breakthrough in some quarters of the labor movement. Quebec has a card-check authorization law, which means the union merely has to present union cards that represent a majority of the workers in the bargaining unit in order to be certified. This avoids the bruising, months-long anti-union campaigns that employers like Wal-Mart engage in when unions in the U.S. petition the NLRB for a union election. Quebec also has a right to a first contract under law. In the U.S., many companies “recognize” the union but never agree to a contract, which leaves the union dead in the water.
So, of course, with favorable laws like that (which, by the way, there’s nothing stopping New York or other so-called “blue states” from enacting similar laws), Quebec was recognized as a weak spot for corporations like Wal-Mart, where unions could get a foot in the door and then leverage those properties in tougher fights in other parts of the world. Predictably, Wal-Mart closed the store.
Below is a letter to the editor of Newsday.
February 11, 2005
Letters Editor
Newsday
235 Pinelawn Road
Melville, NY 11747-4250
To the Editor:
Wal-Mart’s decision to close a store in Quebec where workers had recently voted to form a union should be a cautionary tale for Queens. Wal-Mart’s claim that union demands would have made the store unprofitable is an obvious lie. The contract was to be settled by an impartial arbitrator who would never have imposed terms that would force the store out of business.
Wal-Mart’s long history of union-busting is well-documented. The company harasses, intimidates and fires workers who stand up for their rights. It breaks the law with impunity. In China, it cuts dirty deals with the government. And if all of this doesn’t work, and the workers still succeed in forming a union, Wal-Mart pulls up stakes and leaves.
Why then should citizens of Queens allow Wal-Mart to build a new store in Rego Park? After they put all of our favorite small businesses out of business, after they dump untold fortunes into lobbying against fair wage, benefits and rights bills in our City Council, and after their workers inevitably seek union representation, Wal-Mart is just going to close this store. We’ve seen this movie before. Let’s rewrite the first act and prevent Wal-Mart from ever poisoning our community.
Yours,
Shaun Richman