RADICAL preservationists last week filed another loony lawsuit to prevent the city from selling 2 Columbus Circle – the vacant and crumbling “lollipop” eyesore – to the Museum of Arts & Design. The suit, accusing the city of “fraud,” raises the question: What will it take to end this reprehensible campaign to thwart the democratic process?
The city can continue to play defense, turning back each successively zanier legal challenge. But it might go on for years and leave a vital Columbus Circle site permanently blighted. How can Mayor Bloomberg’s ambitious initiatives for the West Side be taken seriously when he can’t see through the $17 million sale of one tiny building?
Two Columbus Circle is a rotting, window-less eyesore; the museum should already be well along in transforming the site into a modern and spacious home for its sparkling American crafts collection, with a new facade by distinguished architect Brad Cloepfil. The sale was announced nearly three years ago, in June 2002.
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission wisely declined even to consider 2 Columbus Circle for immortality. But a loose alliance of Upper West Side preservationists, dominated by the Landmark West! group, insist that Edward Durrell Stone’s marble monstrosity be saved as a testament to Stone’s late-career rebellion against Modernism.
It’s the kind of inside-architecture obscurantism of interest only to true zealots, and the fact that they passionately believe in their cause makes it no more compelling in the real world.
The sale to the museum was approved in a 9-1 vote of the Manhattan Borough Board, comprised of elected officials and community board chairpersons – the final step in the public-review process that should have enabled the city and the museum to sign a contract and close on the deal.
But to the Landmark West crowd, the board’s vote doesn’t hold any weight either, so it filed several suits to block the sale. The plaintiffs lost in three different courts – most recently in a 5-0 ruling by the Appellate Division. But so what, when there are always new lawsuits to file?
As long as the city continues to let the agenda be set by well-heeled obstructionists, the museum – and citizens who want to see Columbus Circle made whole – will be out of luck.
How preposterous are the lawsuits? One argued that public hearings on the sale were invalid because they were held during August, “a month when many New Yorkers traditionally take vacations.”
Risible as the claim was, it took nearly three months for a judge to toss it.
The newest suit claims the city must never, until the end of time, allow 2 Columbus Circle to be used as anything other than a public visitors’ center. Why? Because when Gulf + Western donated it to the city in 1980, the Board of Estimate “authorized” the mayor to accept the property for use “solely by the city” as a visitors’ center.
Of course, the idea that 25-year-old ceremonial language by the Board of Estimate – which was abolished when courts deemed it unconstitutional – binds the mayor in 2005 is laughable. In any event, the words plainly meant that only the city could operate the building as a visitors’ center; in no way did they preclude its sale for another use.
But even a swift dismissal of this suit will delay the sale many months more, taxing further the patience of museum donors whose support is needed to repair and redesign the building.
For there ever to be a museum at 2 Columbus Circle, the city needs to act like it means business. Why wasn’t it able and ready to close on the sale immediately after the Appellate ruling last month?
The nuisance suits add up to a pattern of deliberately attempting to undermine a legal contract. The city has grounds, but apparently not the stomach, to counter-sue the obstructionists for tortious interference.
If the city continues to play patty-cake, the museum should force the issue by demanding that the city make good on its promise to sell it the building.
Neither the city nor the museum might have the heart for strong-arm legal tactics. But the alternative scenario – that the sale will never take place – is even less appealing. The museum will have to live with its cramped galleries elsewhere, and New Yorkers be stuck with Stone’s worthless slab, for good.