>>Robert Hammond: We thought at the time it
would cost about 100 million to build. And
we said, okay, over a 20-year time period,
the economic benefits to the city based on
increased property tax revenues would be about
250 million.
It turns out we got both of those numbers
wrong. It's cost so far about 150 million
to build. But we've just updated the study
and the benefits to the city now are looking
to be just under shy of about $1 billion.
So it's turned out to be a good investment.
[ Applause ]
>>Robert Hammond: So that helped get -- you
know, at first it was just a community -- that's
the other thing we say. It's great to fight,
you know, the powers that be. But at some
point if you want to do a big project, it
has to be a public/private partnership. We
partnered with Bloomberg, Senator Clinton,
Schumer, Christine Quinn. And that's where
this became this public/private partnership.
And I love this photo because they're managing
not to look at each other. I think it's something
that politicians learn.
[ Laughter ]
>>Robert Hammond: I don't know, but -- so
then we had gotten the community on board.
We'd gotten the elected officials on board.
But the property owners were still fighting
to tear it down. The railroad owned the structure,
but the property owners owned property underneath
it. So they still wanted to tear it down.
So we partnered with the city planning commissioner,
Amanda Burden and the mayor's office to do
something that they had done first to save
Grand Central several decades before, which
is called the transfer of development rights.
Normally, you can only transfer to a property
next door to you.
This allows you to transfer anywhere in the
neighborhood. And, when that passed, that
sort of was the next hurdle in getting support
for the project.
