The City of New York seems to think so. (NY Times-- free registration needed to read) It’s actually the land under the airports that Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff wants to trade for the trade center site. He has been quoted as saying it would be for “sentimental reasons”. Yeah, right.
I wasn’t sure whether to put this in GQ or in GD. It seems to me to be a really stupid idea-- almost 10 times the amount of land with two airports on it for, well, an undeveloped hole in the ground. There’s got to be more to it than this, right?
Well, the article does say NYC would be trading the airports for the WTC site and “lots of cash”. So maybe the city isn’t being as sentimental as it seems at first glance. How are New York City’s finances these days?
It’s not so silly a deal as it seems – the Port Authority is a two-state special-purpose venture, equivalent to the sorts of things that own major bridges, toll highways, municipal airports, and other major infrastructure across the country. It was the owner and constructor of the WTC, and as such holds title to the WTC site. It also operates the docks and harbor facilities in New York City, Jersey City, and the other port areas in “the Tri-State area” – including the major airports. But NYC owns the land on which the two airports are built, and PANYNJ pays NYC rent for the airports that are built on their land.
One can see strong sentimental reasons for NYC wanting the site, and it’s also a good investment – beyond the area of the memorial, it’s hundreds of acres of land in what’s probably the most valuable real estate area in the world. On the other hand, the point to one public body owning the land on which another public body operates a facility and receiving rent from the latter for the facility, seems a bit unnecessary.
All in all, it’s a fair trade, with the cash thrown in. PANYNJ gets the land their airports are built on; NYC gets the land that’s probably the most hallowed site in the city, by common consent, and with it control over the memorial and any construction in the area. (I have no particular problem with the New Jersey legislature, but I don’t see why they should be able to appoint half the membership of the body that decides what’s to be done with the WTC site.)
There are still approximately 1500 families who have not received so much as a fingernail as the “remains” of someone who once meant everything in the world to them. The last place they were known to be alive is the site of the World Trade Center; their atoms are likely still mixed in the dust and dirt on that spot. Their wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, children, parents and lovers still mourn–and have no other graves where they may lay flowers, or weep, or pray.
You may privately think of the World Trade Center site as “an undeveloped hole in the ground.” It is, however, shockingly bad manners for you to call it so publicly. Have some respect.
Take a pill, AuntPam. Undeveloped hole in the ground, undeveloped hole in the ground.
Being respectful and being honest are not mutually exclusive. When the government of Biggirl’s city is putting an economic value on the WTC site - by proposing to swap it for cash and land with its own economic value, Biggirl and other residents of New York City better consider exactly what the WTC actually is when deciding whether to support or oppose the plan.
The WTC site has economic value, and not as the surrogate grave for the families who did not recover remains of their loved ones. To refuse to publicly discuss the WTC as an “undeveloped hole in the ground” means that the citizens and government of NYC will not make the informed and proper choice on how to proceed.
Undeveloped hole in the ground, undeveloped hole in the ground, undeveloped hole in the ground!
I’m with Sua and Biggirl on this. We have to stop regarding the WTC mourners as the 800 lb. gorilla.
This land swap is a bad, bad deal. Giuliani had it right – let the airport leases expire, then wave bye-bye to the PA.
Poly, a correction on your post. The WTC site is not “hundreds of acres of land.” It’s 16 acres. Valuable, to be sure, but NYC’s 2 sprawling airports trump those 16 acres any day.
The deal doesn’t seem all that atrocious to me, now that I’ve read the article.
First, the logic: it does make some sense for the city to be in control of downtown and closely supervising the development of such a hot-button project; likewise, it makes some sense for the PA to own the airports that they already lease (leaving aside the fact that I think the PANYNJ and the MTA are evil evil evil constructions in the first place).
Then, the cash. Here are the relevant numbers:
Unfortunately, the “years of rent” haven’t been that great. We’ve got:
NOW:
NYC gets $26.6 million/yr for WTC (from PA, in lieu of taxes)
NYC gets from $3.5 million to $13.3 million for airports (from PA, in rent)
AFTER DEAL:
NYC gets 120 million/yr (from LMDC, in rent)
NYC gets ??? million/yr (from PA, as taxes/in lieu of taxes?)
So NYC gets the LMDC’s rent directly, and (I should think … though I can’t see any numbers one way or the other) some amt. of property taxes or the equivalent from the PANYNJ.
The answer to that would be to make a more equitable leasing agreement (for the airport land). Also, the City as a landlord has a bad, bad track record.
The plot thickens. Deputy Mayor Doctoroff’s main man at the LMDC, Alex Garvin, has suddenly quit.
“Economic value” is just the value that people put on things. The value that mourning families place on a grave is just as real as any other economic value.
Look, my apologies for the smart-ass crack, but the demands and expectations of the mourning families often borders on the absurd. Memorial needs are important, but they should not trump all other needs across the board.
Like it or not, the WTC tragedy will fade. The economic needs of the metropolitan region will not.
Actually, stuyguy, what you wrote, regardless of your intentions, wasn’t a smart-ass crack.
Hawthorne wrote this:
Economic value is actually the value people are willing to pay for something (in money, time, barter, etc.)
If a family is not willing to pay to preserve their grandfather’s gravesite from being paved over, grandfather’s grave has no economic value to them.
Similarly, if the bereaved families aren’t willing to pay to preserve the WTC site in its current form, it has no economic value to them. If they are willing to pay, but someone else is willing to pay more, it has greater value to that other person.
Actually, stuyguy, what you wrote, regardless of your intentions, wasn’t a smart-ass crack.
Hawthorne wrote this:
Economic value is actually the value people are willing to pay for something (in money, time, barter, etc.)
If a family is not willing to pay to preserve their grandfather’s gravesite from being paved over, grandfather’s grave has no economic value to them.
Similarly, if the bereaved families aren’t willing to pay to preserve the WTC site in its current form, it has no economic value to them. If they are willing to pay, but someone else is willing to pay more, it has greater value to that other person.
Sorry to bump this, but I’ve been away I can’t leave an economics thread on this unsatisfactory note.
No, this is wrong. Economists measure value in dollars, but dollars are just a measuring stick. They are of no value themselves. A proper benefit cost analysis would indeed try to measure the emotional impact (in dollars). It is rather tricky to do, but any serious attempt at project evaluation would have to have a stab.
This is a very confused. The WTC as a memorial is a textbook case of a pure public good. It satisfies the two conditions for a public good: 1. it is non rival in consumption. All those who would gain mourning/ rememberance services (including all the victims’ families and everybody else who would get some satisfaction from the site remaining undeveloped) could simltaneously consume. This is the opposite of a pure private good (like an orange) where only one person can consume it. The benefits to society are the sum of all the individuals’ evaluations (whereas for a pure private good this reduces to one person’s evaluation).
Price exclusion is not feasible. No one could be excluded from consuming the service if they refused to pay (or understated their valuation). Once again, this is the opposite of a private good, where you can be excluded from consuming if you don’t pay.
Note that this is quite unlike being prepared to pay for the upkeep of grandfather’s grave. The upshot of this is that the technical characteristics of the good prevent the expression of preferences and the link between people’s individual valuations and the market is severed, due to free-riding.
I’m not saying that the best use for the site is no development. But it is completely wrong to say that we would expect the site to be bought for the purpose of rememberance if that were the site’s highest valued use.
Huh? Dollars are just a measuring stick and economist measure emotional impact in dollars (which have no value in and of themselves), but dollars and emotional impact are the same thing?
You have confused me. Either emotional value is the same as economic value or it’s not. Pick one.
Hard to answer, because you don’t sound very confused, biggirl. If I were adding up the benefits and costs of a project, I would add up all the benefits (profits, extra marketed goods consumed, grief avoided, view spoiled, environmental damage done, time saved etc etc) measured in dollars. Measuring in dollars gets around the “apples and oranges” problem. But it’s always the person getting a kick out of it that is the real value in the deal. Does that help?
That is what I thought you said. The part that has me confused is the part where you say that economical value is the same thing as emotional value. (Or, more accurately, say that I’m wrong when I said that emotional value may influence ecomomic value but the two are not the same thing).
Now, WTC site is an undeveloped hole in the ground with some sort of value. In order to come up with the value of this hole in the ground ecomomists use a complicated formula to come up with a dollar value (which is referred to as the ecomomic value) which takes into account the emotional value of the property.
It seems to me you are saying exactly what I said, but are disagreeing with me at the same time. This confuses me.