The MTA does not have a property empire

Good morning. It is Wednesday. We’re answering one of your questions about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from a few weeks ago. We’ll also find out why Mayor Eric Adams says public school students should take a deep breath. And another. And another.

In April, we asked what you would do for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – what you think needs to be done to improve the New York area’s subways, buses, and commuter rail systems, and the massive agency that runs them. A few days later, we printed some of your responses.

I left out one idea that came up more than once: real estate.

The MTA has a lot of property next to subway and train tracks, these readers said, so why not sell it? Wouldn’t that go a long way in generating revenue for the ever-troubled agency? Wouldn’t that eliminate the need for congestion charges for drivers entering Manhattan, or at least prevent tolls from becoming stratospheric?

And why doesn’t the MTA have a real estate department that could have already unloaded all those excess acres?

I left out the idea of ​​real estate because I thought it was a topic that needed answers from the MTA. This is what officials told me.

The government already has a real estate department, it turns out.

But it doesn’t have a lot of properties it could sell because it doesn’t own what we think it owns.

The vast majority of the land around subway tracks is owned by New York City and leased to the MTA under an agreement called the master lease. It dates back to 1953, when the New York City Transit Authority was formed to take over the former private subway and bus lines.

In the 1960s, that authority was itself taken over by the MTA, a state agency that had also taken control of commuter rail lines to Long Island and the suburbs north of the city—two other “legacy systems” that were struggling financially. “They sold as much as they could to stay afloat,” said Robert Paley, the MTA’s senior director of transit-oriented development.

The MTA looked at what was left about 15 years ago. “We scoured the city for rental properties to see what we could sell,” Paley said.

They found exactly seven, “only two of which had any real value,” he said.

One was a triangular lot on East Houston Street in SoHo where the MTA parked emergency vehicles. The MTA valued the deal to sell it, to developers for a six-story multi-use building, at $38.8 million — $25.8 million from the sale and $13 million for a new lot on East 20th Street that will office was handed over.

The agency is working on a deal for land adjacent to a Metro-North bridge over the Harlem River in the Bronx and has made other deals that have sold development rights, including air rights. It cost $17 million in an air rights deal next to Lower Manhattan’s Fulton Transit Center, a subway and shopping complex that connects literate and numbered subway lines. The MTA says the deal gave developer SL Green additional floor space Broadway 185, a new building across Dey Street. But the MTA retained additional development rights that could later be worth millions.

The MTA also consolidated its offices at 2 Broadway, freeing up two buildings. One was 347 Madison Avenue, the old headquarters. It has already received an initial $15 million down payment for the site after designating Boston Properties as a developer and negotiating a leasehold.

It also left 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn, which had been the headquarters of New York City Transit, the division that runs the subways and buses. The MTA “master-leased” the Jay Street Building from the city; the agency returned it to the city in a three-way deal. NYU moved in and paid the MTA $50 million to cover the move. So for the MTA, it was essentially a break-even deal: there was no additional revenue that would benefit passengers worried about future fare increases.

Perhaps the most visible real estate deal in recent years involved Hudson Yards, the site that developed over a rail yard on the far west side. The MTA officials noted that the yard was redesigned in the 1980s to accommodate development — along with real estate income for the agency.

The MTA officials said they had also worked to take advantage of zoning regulations that provide incentives to developers connecting their projects to transit systems. They credited that effort with placing $220 million worth of elevators, escalators and stairs under the One Vanderbilt skyscraper next to Grand Central Terminal, which connects the subway, Metro-North and the new Long Island Rail Road connection.

“It’s a huge, huge benefit to the riding public, and it’s something we couldn’t have undertaken on our own,” said Paley. “We could never have acquired that property. That would have been way too expensive.”

Weather

It is a partly sunny neighborhood of 80, with a chance of rain and thunderstorms. Overnight showers and thunderstorms may continue, with temperatures hovering in the mid-60s.

ALTERNATIVE SIDE PARKING

Suspended today (Eid al-Adha).

The latest New York news

An Eric Adams announcement reminded me of a joke I heard from an editor years ago. The joke went like this:

There was a man who always wore headphones no matter what he was doing. Even when he went to bed.

He met the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. They are married.

She asked him to take off the headphones. He said he would die if he did.

She persisted. He took them off and died.

After the funeral, she put on the headphones. This is what she heard: “Breathe in, breathe out. Breath in breath out.”

The joke came to mind because Mr. Adams had announced that public schools would soon offer two to five minutes of daily “mindful breathing exercises,” something he called “a valuable, low-cost tool proven to improve mental health and well-being.” being.”

“Two to five minutes,” he said. “Think about that. We’re not talking about hours.”

My colleague Troy Closson writes that this is how Adams’ announcement came about some lawyers and families advocate a more dynamic approach to young people’s mental health. One concern is the proposed elimination of funding for one program that connects schools in dire need to mental health clinics and provides mobile response teams for students in crisis situations.

Adams’ announcement about breath classes, at Public School 5 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, also came as school districts elsewhere sharpened their focus on student well-being to address higher levels of anxiety, depression and self-harm.

Here in New York, the state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, found that city schools were underprepared for the youth mental health crisis in the 2021-2021 academic year. Since then, education officials have made several changes; every school now has access to a social worker or mental health clinic. Adams and the school’s chancellor, David Banks, have also said that high school students will soon be able to receive virtual mental health services.

But about breathing.

“We think it’s just air going through your nostrils,” Adams said. “No, there’s a science to breathing,” he continued, before closing his eyes and following a student-led breathing exercise.

He said the two to five minutes at school were billed “as a requirement” but would not be “forced on anyone”. But he predicted that students would learn something they could teach their parents.

“They’re going to watch their parents experience some level of stress, and then they’ll say, ‘Mommy, Daddy, just breathe. Sit down, Mommy. Take a deep breath and just breathe.'”

METROPOLITAN Diary

Great coat

Dear Diary:

I was on a crosstown bus on my way to a friend at Lincoln Center for a concert when I saw a woman wearing what I thought was a great coat.

When I got to the theater and took my seat, I saw the woman with the amazing coat sitting nearby on the other side of the aisle.

I smiled at her and saw the coincidence in my head when she smiled back. We started chatting and continued until my friend arrived.