Albany to United Nations: It's Time For Plan B
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 24, 2005

After a drawn-out political battle over U.N. expansion plans, lawmakers in Albany pronounced the world body's ambitions dead last night, despite a last-minute, coordinated lobbying effort by Mayor Bloomberg and the Bush administration.
They need to go to Plan B, the state senator who represents Turtle Bay, Elizabeth Krueger, said yesterday, as U.N. hopes of erecting an office tower in a neighboring city park, for use during and after the renovation of its headquarters, were dashed with the imminent end of the Legislature's session.
Meanwhile, reports emerged from Turtle Bay that a figure implicated in the oil-for-food scandal - often cited in Albany as one of the reasons for denying the United Nations the city land - had overseen elements of the renovation process. The U.N. employee in question, Alexander Yakovlev, resigned this week after the internal U.N. watchdog began investigating allegations of conflict of interest against him in connection with the oil-for-food program.
Yesterday's development closed a months-long struggle, in which U.N. advocates sought a reversal of the state Senate's decision in early December not to take up legislation that would have begun the process of securing for the United Nations the Robert Moses Playground, a city park, just south of the world body's Turtle Bay campus, that neighborhood residents particularly favor for roller hockey. While the U.N.headquarters undergoes a $1.2 billion renovation, the world body had hoped to relocate its staff into a 35-story, 900,000-square-foot swing space to be erected at the park by the United Nations Development Corporation, a city-state public-benefit corporation.
For the park to be turned over to the United Nations would have required a series of legislative approvals, and Secretariat officials said the first assent was needed by the end of this session if the plan for the Moses building was to proceed. Claiming safety concerns, U.N. officials have said renovations on their headquarters must begin no later than 2007, and if the Legislature failed to begin the approval process before recessing for the year, then the Moses swing space could not be ready in time.
The majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno, in whose hands the fate of the building rested, said early this week that the Senate was thinking of pulling the plug on the U.N.'s renovation plans. Late yesterday afternoon, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, Mark Hansen, said: I don't expect that the Senate is going to act on the U.N. bill.
While Turtle Bay is forced to look to backup options - which include building the swing space on the current U.N. campus and renting commercial space during the renovations - one of the key players in the struggle in Albany, state Senator Martin Golden, Republican of Brooklyn, said the United Nations was to blame for the Legislature's lack of assistance.
Mr. Golden reserved particular criticism for the secretary-general, Kofi Annan. If he'd stepped down, he would've put his own self-interests aside, and he would've done what was right for the U.N., Mr. Golden, who has long maintained that he would have supported the U.N. expansion legislation if Mr.Annan removed himself from Turtle Bay, said.
The senator added that his opposition was rooted in a belief that the city and state should not reward bad behavior at the United Nations without any prospect of reform.
They want approvals, but I don't get why anyone would want to give any approvals to this organization when it's continuing to come out that the different leaders within the U.N. have involvements with corruption and malfeasance, Mr. Golden said.
A possible link between the Capital Master Plan, the U.N.name for the refurbishment project, and oil-for-food and other scandals surrounding the United Nations appeared yesterday. As the Volcker committee investigating the oil-forfood program examines the affairs of a procurement officer, Mr.Yakovlev, it may look into his role in the early stages of $1.2 billion renovation plan, a spokesman for the committee said.
According to a Fox News report yesterday, Mr.Yakovlev was assigned to supervise a $44 million contract with a small Milan-based architectural firm, Renato Sarno S.G.L., to design the first stage of the renovation program. A spokesman for Mr. Annan, Fred Eckhard, told The New York Sun yesterday that procurement procedures for the Capital Master Plan had been by the book.
Earlier this month, the assistant secretary-general for central support services, Andrew Toh, told the Sun that the project's design contracts - including the one to Renato Sarno - were awarded based on a competitive bidding process.
Separately, an investigation against Mr. Yakovlev, a 30-year U.N. veteran, was launched on suspicions that he granted at least one contract to the Lichtenstein-listed IHC, a firm specializing in facilitating outside services for U.N. projects. Mr.Yakovlev's son, Dmitry, was hired by IHC after it received the U.N. contract.
On Wednesday, the day after the Office of Internal Oversight Services announced its investigation in his case, Mr. Yakovlev resigned. Although the conflict-of-interest case had nothing to do with the oil-for-food program, the U.N.-commissioned investigation team led by Paul Volcker asked that Mr. Yakovlev's office be sealed.
We have been following a specific line of investigation for a few months now, regarding Mr.Yakovlev, a Volcker committee spokesman, Michael Holtzman, told the Sun's Benny Avni. He said he could not exclude the possibility that Mr. Yakovlev's activities on the contract with the Italian architectural firm in the early stages if the Capital Master Plan might be looked into as part of the Volcker team's investigation.
Proponents of the U.N. legislation in Albany, however, tried yesterday to separate the world body's scandals from the land-use issues surrounding the project.
The sponsor of the December U.N. bill in the Assembly, Steven Sanders, Democrat of Turtle Bay, said: The sad and unfortunate thing is that there are people who are confusing politics with the actual physical needs of a building and the security needs of that building, which not only has an impact on the U.N. itself but has an impact on the safety and security of the entire surrounding area.
It is unlikely, however, that the United Nations will abandon its renovation plans.What remains to be seen is where it will house staff during the five-year refurbishment project. Of the options available, one - the U.N.'s building the tower on a garden at the north end of its compound, inaccessible both to the public and U.N. staff - has the local community particularly concerned.
One thing we would strongly oppose is if they put this 35-story building on their North Lawn, the vice president of the Turtle Bay Association, Bruce Silberblatt, said yesterday.
Because the U.N.'s property is considered international territory, any construction on it would not require approvals from the city, the state, or the community. Nor would the United Nations be required to compensate the community with an esplanade park along the East River, as it had promised to do as part of the Moses construction project.
Mr. Silberblatt said he felt the Legislature made the right decision nonetheless, because the proposed esplanade park, he said, was inadequate mitigation for the community that ranks second to last in terms of open space in the city.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the politics of the U.N. It's strictly land-use, Mr. Silberblatt said of his opposition to the proposed Moses project.
While several calls to representatives of the city at the Economic Development Corporation and the United Nations Development Corporation went unreturned yesterday, some of those lobbying for the project said they held out hope that Governor Pataki would call a special summer session of the Legislature at which the project could be resurrected.
Senator Krueger, a Democrat, said, however, that she did not see how this is happening.
My understanding is that there are several possible Plan Bs, she said, and, as the legislator representing the district, I look forward to working with them on whatever Plan B is.