MTA real estate key to its fiscal viability.

Monetizing the latent value in the MTA's real estate would provide the capital and revenue streams that could ensure its fiscal viability, hold the fares, help support debt service, and fund maintenance and repairs, and other operating needs. It would also provide the land resources to systematically redevelop entire sections of NYC to meet its housing and job needs.

The MTA has vast acreage of under utilized, well located real estate holdings in the form of rail yards, terminals, rights of way, and air rights which have immense value, particularly in land scarce NYC. The sale or leasing of their development rights, if properly structured and marketed, could bring in billions of dollars in purchase prices plus large secure steady income streams from ground rents, retail overages, and related sources.

Planned development of these real estate resources would also enable NYC to meet its present and future growth needs and produce substantial municipal revenues and many thousands of jobs. People could work where they lived with convenience to public transportation.

For example, housing could be erected above the below grade or grade level railroad rights of way in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn and tenants in adjoining city blocks could be relocated into them allowing their vacated substandard residences to be replaced or renovated. The process could be successively repeated block by block until entire neighborhoods would be improved. In Addition, hundreds of acres of rail yards could be made available for housing, offices, retail, and job creation. The housing components in these developments should primarily be middle income. Their vacated units would, in turn, create more housing availability for lower income categories which would likely reduce public housing needs and subsidies.

Moreover, this would allow the City's irreplaceable, invaluable industrial waterfront, land, and buildings to be preserved and expanded for a Comprehensive High Tech Export Free Processing Zone Light Industrial Job Development Program (EFPZ) instead of being unnecessarily wasted on housing and big box retailers which produce relatively few minimum wage unskilled jobs and require large blocks of space and parking. Instead, an EFPZ would give the NYC a balanced economy; produce tens of thousands of quality jobs and the relevant technical and apprenticeship training to go with them; and provide revenues while reducing public assistance costs.

The MTA would attract the greatest builder interest, achieve the highest and best prices for the development rights of its properties (West and East Hudson rail yards, the Vanderbilt, Sunnyside, and Bronx Rail Yards, its rights of way, etc.) and get them redeveloped faster if it:(1) first pre-zoned each site 15 to 20:1 building to land ratio for high rise, high density mixed residential, commercial, and retail use; (2) pre- packaged all sites into one or two acre parcels with environmental impact statements already in place; and (3) then put the development rights for the individual parcels out for public bid to all qualified major developers. All NYC sites would be jointly preplanned by the City and the MTA to meet the City's present and projected growth needs. This process would have great cost and time savings for developers which would result in higher bids.

All bids would be conditioned upon each successful bidder bearing the obligation and cost of building the platforms over its portion of the rail yards and rights of way (with an additional obligation to contribute to platforms for related common areas) because foundations and footings are integral to the design of the individual buildings that would be erected over the properties. Consequently, pre-building a platform over an entire rail yard by the MTA without knowing the exact design, size and location of the structures to be erected on it doesn't make sense and would be an enormous waste of money.

By avoiding building the platforms, the MTA would also save many hundreds of millions of dollars which could be better spent on transportation needs.

Furthermore, there would be merit in making such an auction procedure mandatory in the sale or lease of certain classes and sizes of government owned properties throughout the State to maximize price, use, and development objectives.

BY HARRY L. LANGER, HARRY LANGER, LLC