Disagreements between Developer, MTA Stop Hudson Yards Project in Tracks

By Anuradha Kher, Online News EditorNew York–New York City’s Hudson Yards project ran into a road block today, after developer Tishman Speyer and the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) could not reach an agreement over certain aspects of the massive $3 billion development project on a 26-acre site in Manhattan’s midtown west neighborhood.The deadline for negotiations has now been extended.“The plan isn’t dead by any means,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters in London, where he is currently meeting the newly elected Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. “These projects are fundamentally complex. They have lots of different layers of government involved.”Since the end of April, Tishman Speyer and New York City have been trying to resolve differences over the project site, where the developer plans to build towering apartment and office buildings over the rail yards between 30th and 33rd streets on 11th Avenue.Tishman Speyer, owner of Rockefeller Center and the extensive Stuyvesant Town apartments, won a bid in March for the land. Tishman would have had to spend about $2 billion to build a platform over the yards before it could start other construction.Other tentative plans for the site include skyscrapers over the Long Island Rail Road yards, an expanded Javits Convention Center, a 1.1-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line and a new Penn Station surrounded by office towers.Paperwork for the western half of the Hudson Yards was finished last week.Aside from the rezoning issue, the question of whether the MTA and the city will be able to extend the No. 7 line, as well as build a park and an 11th Ave. viaduct, remains, according to the New York Daily News.