Challenging the Port Authority

...and with tax-exempt status, eminent domain, and a broad mandate from two state legislatures, it is certainly among the nation's most powerful public corporations...

...O'Connor acted first, announcing a resolution for a Council hearing, and prodded by this initiative, Lindsay two days later directed the Planning Commission to make its study...

...Proponents of the project tend to disparage the impact of dislocation, resorting to the axiom that what is best for the majority should prevail...

...Yet the anticipated 130,000 daily commuters and visitors to the Center will undoubtedly impose overwhelming demands on public transportation facilities with no new subway lines or extensions contemplated, or accounted for in the cost estimates...

...Alarmed by the "communications blackout" surrounding the Trade Center, he organized the Emergency Civic Committee to Oppose the World Trade Center in January of this year...

...That report was published, and the Port Authority has never disputed it...

...However, efforts to get the bill reported out of committee for full debate have been futile thus far, and it is improbable that the Republican majority of the Senate would defy Governor Rockefeller to rescue it...

...34 others said they were going out of business...

...In 1961, when the New Jersey State Legislature sought the same information, Tobin acquiesced, reporting that in 40 years, the Authority had made a net profit of $92 million through investments totaling $202 million...

...The Authority believes consolidation of the international banks, shipping firms and consular agencies scattered throughout Lower Manhattan will assure the port's return to its former pre-eminence and generally improve the city's financial condition...

...Although the Port Authority has a bonus system to encourage tenants to relocate, it is less uberai than either the liquidation or small business displacement grants provided under Title 1 of the urban-renewal law...

...Within 45 years, it has achieved a monopoly that today ranks it among the top 25 corporations in the nation...

...Plans were made, buildings condemned and work begun despite grave remaining questions about the Center's likely impact on the city or its position in international trade...

...Also, two years ago when plans for the Center were first revealed, the Commission's chairman, William F. R. Ballard, was quoted as saying the project is a "very exciting development...

...Although it is doubtful that the city legally could use this authority arbitrarily to halt construction, officials confide it could serve as a "wedge" in negotiations with the Port Authority for more equitable concessions in lieu of tax payments...

...Members of New Jersey and New York legislatures recognized that municipalities on both sides of the Hudson River were concerned more with their own interest, narrowly conceived, than with the development of their mutual port...

...The other, a "committee" of powerful realtors, is challenging the project on the sole ground that its 10.2 million square feet of office space will have a chaotic effect on their jealously guarded market...

...The tolls are still enforced...

...Recently, in the face of mounting pressures, the Authority quadrupled an earlier offer to pay $1.2 million a year to the city for the tax-free use of the land and the Lindsay administration is expected to demand still further increases...

...Concluding from the survey that the "large majority of storeowners appeared hopeless, immobilized and powerless in the face of the forthcoming changes,' the city has urged the Port Authority to liberalize its bonus payments and to spread out its relocation schedule over a longer period of time...

...The tax-exempt Authority has offered only a small fraction of that figure as a special fee to the city...

...And the Authority has been a recalcitrant and even a hostile witness when asked to give an account of itself...

...In fact, there now is a bill before the NewYork State Legislature calling for a moratorium on all work until a "final, comprehensive plan" can be reviewed by the lawmakers...

...In any event, it is withholding its approval until the Authority agrees, in writing, to construct a mammoth ocean liner terminal, part of Mayor Lindsay's plan to revitalize the Hudson River waterfront...

...Of the 157 storeowners who responded, 112 said they had no plans...

...When O'Connor disclosed that he was drafting a resolution for the Council hearing, Tobin, accompanied by a lawyer, showed up the next morning at O'Connor's City Hall office...

...The Port of New York Authority, meanwhile, has been flourishing...

...The alleged reluctance of editors to afford critics space may to a certain extent be understandable...

...Characteristic of their enthusiasm was a recent editorial in the New York Times which began: "The World Trade Center promises to transform the lower West Side of Manhattan at least as dramatically as Rockefeller Center did midtown, the United Nations enclave the East Side, and Lincoln Center the upper West Side...

...These suggestions are still "under consideration...

...Ostensibly in order to end this embarrassing discrepancy between its own fortunes and the decline of its eponymous port, the Authority is now concentrating its enormous affluence and power on one monumental project: Over the next three years, barring an unexpected miracle of effective public resistance, it will build a World Trade Center designed to bring together on Manhattan's Lower West Side the city's various businesses and agencies engaged in international commerce...

...While some 5,000 persons will lose their jobs and 220 retail businesses will be uprooted, advocates argue that the Trade Center will create some 50,000 new jobs...

...This is equal to 25 per cent of all the office space built in Manhattan in the last 20 years, and is four times larger than the world's most capacious private office building, the Pan American structure that looms and bulges from a constricted site over Grand Central Station...

...Regardless of their personal feelings, city officials, like the Commission in its evaluation, concede that the project "has approached a point of no return...

...With few exceptions, the Port Authority has been allowed to go unchallenged, and there is little chance of the Trade Center challenge succeeding...

...The most disquieting aspect of the World Trade Center is, undoubtedly, its colossal size...

...With assets estimated at more than $1.7 billion, a funded debt of $850 million, A-A rated bonds, and net operating revenues at $80 million a year, the Authority is one of the nation's largest enterprises...

...The independence of this analysis is a matter of opinion...

...Since the fall of 1958, Rubinow has led successful civic crusades to preserve Carnegie Hall, summer Shakespeare festivals in Central Park, and Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park...

...The project would create, in effect, a 16-acre "superblock," which would mean the closing of existing city streets and the incorporation of new ones in the city's official street map...

...Their reasoning is plausible...

...But the resulting investigations could disabuse the notion that the Port Authority is invulnerable...

...For the very magnitude of the project and its approval without apparent democratic constraints has evoked increasingly articulate criticism of the overweening autonomy of its parent agency...

...Except for the Port Authority, the Planning Commission and a handful of city agencies involved, relatively few influential New Yorkers knew that any organized opposition existed...

...Only 11 said they had found other sites...

...That a public hearing was finally held is due principally to the persistent efforts of Raymond S. Rubinow, executive director of a small philanthropic foundation who delights in describing himself as "the man who takes on City Hall and wins...

...Affected shopkeepers, or more accurately their wives and in one instance a daughter, are struggling to keep control of their personal destinies...

...Much of the Authority's success derives from its tax-exempt status and from the fact that it is responsible only to the over burdened governors and legislatures of both states, and ultimately Congress, which has the final say over all bi-state compacts...

...This expressed apprehension of the Commission supports the widespread view that the Trade Center would be not simply an unnecessary protuberance on Manhattan's landscape, but rather the symbol of a more disturbing gigantism: the Port Authority's uncontrollable autonomy...

...During its formative years, the Authority adhered closely to its charter and exercised conscientiously its powers of virtually incontestable condemnation (which supersede those of either state...

...Nor does it face the voters...

...In its architectural novelty and colossal size, in fact, the Center will provide a sky-barging symbol of what is considered by some the towering presumption and by others the continuing leadership and modernity of the first of the nation's many port authorities...

...It is difficult to determine, the Commission report said, whether the size is predicated on legitimate world trade needs "or on an urge to build a significant monument to satisfy the institutional ego of the Port Authority...

...Patterned closely after the Port of London Authority, it in turn provided the pattern for similar authorities in most other major American ports...

...After a 40-minute meeting, he emerged slightly flushed and said they had discussed only general plans for the Trade Center...

...But perhaps their position was summed up better by one city official involved in urban redevelopment...

...Ideally, they might even pave the way for legislative reforms to return the Authority to its intended function-this time with a large measure of control...

...Twelve days later the Commission submitted a well-documented report that the Trade Center will "bring long-range benefits to the city, both symbolically and financially...

...If the area in question were privately developed, it would provide at least $20 million a year in real estate taxes...

...The bill, now reposing in the Senate's finance committee, was introduced last year by Senator Thomas J. Mackell, a Queens County Democrat, who is convinced that the Authority has exceeded the plans approved by the legislatures in 1962...

...Beginning with no assets, no operating income, and no reserves, the Authority, however, had what neither state could attain -unlimited debt levels-and it soon began to accumulate power...

...Y.), Tobin was called before the House of Representatives to show why the 50-cent tolls on the Port Authority-owned George Washington Bridge and the Holland Tunnel should not be eliminated...

...Nor is the New Jersey Legislature likely to act...

...One of these firms, opponents quickly pointed out, bought only 2 per cent of its materials overseas last year and sold only 5 per cent of its total volume abroad...

...And although the city's construction and trades unions have hailed the project as a source of employment for their 2 million workers, Lawrence Wein, head of the real estate syndicate that owns the Empire State Building, has warned that after the Trade Center is erected, "no appreciable new office space will be constructed in New York City for the next three years.' Furthermore, the Center will displace 16 acres of prospering businesses, among them 58 discount electronics stores along the city's "radio row...

...For opponents of the project, the Council hearing itself represented a significant victory, for it provided the first public forum since the Trade Center was proposed in 1960...

...Actually, the concept of a world trade center in New York was advanced in 1946 but subsequently abandoned when its effectiveness could not be adequately demonstrated...

...The second, and hypothetically the more effective way of obstructing the Center, is direct action by the two parties that created the Authority, the legislatures of New York and New Jersey...

...In 1962, when both legislatures adopted the project, New Jersey acquired a cherished quid pro quo: the stipulation that the Authority take over the troublesome management of the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, a commuter line that links the two states...

...Because of its independent membership, which includes city planner Jane Jacobs, architectural critic Lewis Mumford, and Norman Thomas, the Committee's presentation has been substantially more persuasive than simply the claims of the immediate victims of the project...

...In the last decade its share of American trade overseas has gradually diminished from an enviable one-third of the nation's volume to under one-fifth...

...In the last 20 years its nearest competitor, the modern port of Philadelphia-Camden, has more than tripled its foreign trade, becoming the nation's leading port, while New York-plagued by outmoded piers, transportation tangles and runaway labor costs-has managed to expand by only 77 per cent (pitifully poor in terms of the quadruple overall American increase since World War II...

...Although the Port Authority was intentionally created as a non-political agency-a charter provision that its 12 commissioners generally observe-Tobin has given unmistakeable indications that he enjoys the chance for political wheeling and dealing...

...Aides to O'Connor, however, reported that Tobin had tried to persuade the Council President not to introduce the resolution...

...The ultimate jurisdiction over street closings rests with the city's Board of Estimate...

...The support of the state government under Nelson A. Rockefeller is unstinting...

...The Commission's report was based to a great extent on information supplied by the Port Authority...

...Land has been acquired, 20 buildings demolished, and $13 million already spent on planning and design...

...The Authority was created in 1921 by responsible men in a frivolous age...

...As originally set up, the Authority's raison d'etre was to take over the mismanaged Hudson River waterfront, and to construct and manage airports, bridges, and tunnels-in short, to control all interstate transportation and commerce facilities within a 25-mile radius of New York City...

...The Authority's powers are absolute: Its charter provides that "the public use of property in the hands or under the control of the Port Authority shall be deemed superior to the public use in the hands of any other person, association, or corporation.' Councilman Thomas J. Cuite, a Brooklyn Democrat, once remarked that the Port Authority "could even take City Hall...

...The House cited him for contempt, but the case was subsequently dismissed...

...No governor has ever exercised this power...

...According to the provisions of its charter, the Port Authority must submit all major proposals to the governors, who have 10 days in which to veto them...

...The Center will contain a 300room hotel, permanent exhibition halls, possibly an observatory, and 10.2 million square feet of offices...

...Without exception newspapers in New York and the metropolitan area have praised the Center...

...They are convinced that this "communications blackout" was intentional and that it continues...

...And despite the statistical volubility of the Authority's $250,000 public relations department, the agency's officials have been reticent or evasive on key issues...

...But unlike private corporations, it has no stockholders to answer to...

...Perhaps the basic reason for this is that until the hearing critics were given virtually no press coverage...

...Tobin told Celler, in effect, that the Authority's profits were none of his concern...

...Nonetheless, there are two ways the city can bring its residual power to bear...

...Anthony Prisendorf has followed the Port Authority-World Trade Center fight for the New York Post...

...Instead of arguing the merits of the Trade Center in the courts and offices of state legislators, as the merchants and realtors have done, the Emergency Committee appealed directly to the political egos of Mayor Lindsay, a Republican, and City Council President Frank O'Connor, the city's highest ranking Democrat...

...Six years ago, at the instigation of Representative Emanuel Celler (D.-N...

...Celler contended that the tolls were exorbitant since the facilities had paid for themselves many times over...

...In any case, the Port Authority is now moving ahead with condemnations...

...Before it is completed, however, the Center may also provide the occasion for chastening new restrictions on the New York Authority's power...

...Rubinow's group felt, perhaps quixotically, that if all the facts of the project were exposed at a public hearing, the World Trade Center would not be allowed to proceed...

...Most city officials, it should be noted, have displayed a genuine concern for the affected shopkeepers, and in February many of these merchants were interviewed to determine what relocation plans they had...

...It is also difficult to credit the Authority's claim that the Center will improve the city's financial situation...

...To insure the Authority's success, the legislators endowed it with the expansive powers which many legislators regret today...

...In addition, being caught in a political squeeze, Mayor John V Lindsay directed the City Planning Commission to conduct an "independent evaluation" two months ago...

...While admitting last month at a City Council hearing on the project that there are as yet "no firm commitments" from businesses engaged in international trade, Austin J. Tobin, the Port Authority's executive director, presented convincing examples of the "proper sort of firms" that are "considering" moving into the Center...

...But nearly 60 per cent of the Center's office space has been reserved not for international commercial firms but for the Port Authority's own executive offices, and New York State's principal administrative offices now occupying 1.5 million square feet in a modern office building three blocks from the proposed site...

...The basic motives of the two major groups that have been fighting the project since 1960 are self-serving to be sure...

...Even the Planning Commission, which worked closely with Authority representatives in making its evaluations, was at a loss to explain the need for such dimensions...

...You have to make up your mind whether you want to keep little stores forever or have a great trade center," he said...

...Construction will cost a conservatively estimated $528 million, take some 30,000 man-years to complete, and result in two 110 story towers, the tallest structures in the world...