Bloomberg's Sister Enters the Fray Over U.N. Offices
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 8, 2005

The mayor's sister has been dispatched to Albany to placate opponents there of the U.N. expansion project, in an attempt to break a legislative impasse that has frozen the United Nations' renovation plans and that may imperil the financing of a new 35-story swing-space building that is considered integral to the proposed refurbishment.
Marjorie Tiven, who was appointed commissioner of the New York City Commission for the United Nations, Consular Corps and Protocol, by her brother in February 2002, is a director of the United Nations Development Corp., the city-state entity overseeing the construction of the swing space on Robert Moses Playground on Manhattan's East Side near the U.N. headquarters.
Along with the president of the corporation, Roy Goodman, who is a former Republican state senator, and its chairman, George Klein, who is a real-estate developer, she has been meeting at Albany with sponsors of the stalled legislation and some of its opponents, according to state Senator Martin Golden, Republican of Brooklyn, who falls into the latter camp.
Legislative and other critics of the project have cited a host of complaints in their opposition to the plan, ranging from the loss of parkland in a community already deprived of it, to U.N. anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, to concerns about aiding the institution responsible for the corruption-riddled oil-for-food program.
Mrs. Tiven's office confirmed that she is actively meeting with Assembly and Senate leadership about this legislation, but the office declined to comment further while the negotiations were continuing. Calls to Mr. Goodman's office were not returned.
Mr. Golden said that in the recent meetings, the emissaries of the U.N. development group encouraged the state Senate to push the legislation forward, citing support for the U.N. renovation project from the federal government - which has authorized a $1.2 billion loan for the work - in making their case.
While the senator said no hard-and-fast deadline was set by which the legislation must be approved before the United Nations would be forced to abandon its hopes for building over the playground, the U.N. boosters stressed the urgency of starting the project soon to meet deadlines for getting approval for later phases of the construction.
Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, a Democrat who represents the Turtle Bay area around the United Nations and who is a co-sponsor of the moribund legislation, said the development corporation's concern about the delay centered on money and timing.
The legislator said that in his meetings with the threesome in mid-February, the delegation expressed concern that delays in moving the stalled legislation and swing-space construction forward could limit the corporation's ability to get the funds it needs to finance the project. The development corporation has said it plans to pay for the construction by issuing $650 million in bonds.
Mr. Bing and other leaders in Albany said yesterday, however, that there are no signs the legislative gridlock will end soon. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Mark Hansen, said that there are no new developments in connection with the legislation.
Mr. Golden, too, was skeptical the Senate would budge and consider the legislation in the near future. For his part, he said, the delegation must provide more information about the project to assuage concerns about it, which he said the officials were working to do.
One of those concerns, the senator said, is security, particularly surrounding the Queens Midtown Tunnel. As The New York Sun reported in January, current plans for the swing space would place the 900,000-square-foot building on top of the tunnel, which has been identified as a potential terrorist target. Mr. Golden said he was waiting on information from the state Senate's committee on homeland security to assure him the new building would not pose any further threat. Another concern about the project that needs to be addressed, the senator said, was its cost.
Mr. Golden previously maintained that nothing short of the resignation of Secretary-General Annan would sway his position on the world body's construction plans at Turtle Bay. But while he said the state Senate could see itself approving this property in the immediate future if Kofi Annan were to resign, Mr. Golden said that absent Mr. Annan's ouster, which he acknowledged appears unlikely, he might be more amenable to supporting the U.N. plans if these and other concerns about the project were sufficiently assuaged.
Another state senator who has opposed the project, Frank Padavan, Republican of Queens, is waiting for a signal from Washington before reconsidering his position, his spokesman, Peter Potter, said.
Basically, two things need to be met, Mr. Potter said. We need to receive a letter either from Ambassador Bolton or the White House expressing the importance and necessity of the changes, and also regarding security issues. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that John Bolton, currently undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs - and a past critic of the United Nations - has been nominated by President Bush to replace John Danforth as America's ambassador to the world body.
The other component, Mr. Potter said, is a commitment from Mr. Bing and the sponsor of the legislation in the Assembly, Steven Sanders, a Democrat who represents the immediate U.N. vicinity, that they support the proposed U.N. project.
Messrs. Bing and Sanders, however, said yesterday that the legislation they have sponsored allows only for a land use review to inform the community about the U.N. project, and that they cannot express an opinion about the project itself until the results of the review are available.
To one of the expansion project's most vocal opponents in the Assembly, Dov Hikind of Brooklyn, no information from the city or the United Nations, and no convincing by the mayor's sister, could alter his position.
It doesn't matter if it's the mayor's sister, uncle, aunt, or anyone else, Mr. Hikind said. My sentiment of the United Nations is I don't trust them. ... Maybe in five years, if the U.N. becomes a different body and one that we could trust, I would feel differently, but nothing has really changed in the last few months.
Because of opposition from legislators such as Mr. Hikind, the United Nations may be looking at alternatives to its current proposal for the swing space, Mr. Golden said. While the senator said there were no plans to build the swing space at Brooklyn or Queens, which he said was just a rumor, the development corporation said other Manhattan sites were being considered. Mr. Golden said he was not at liberty to identify which. But in planning for the renovation of its headquarters, the United Nations had identified locations on its own property that could be used to house U.N. staff while the refurbishments took place. Renting commercial space around Manhattan for temporary use has also been considered, but another director of the U.N. development corporation, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, dismissed that option as not viable.
A spokesman for the city's Economic Development Corp., Michael Sherman, said the city remains committed to the current plan for the U.N. project.
We are moving forward with our plan to build a new building for the United Nations near its campus in Turtle Bay, he said in a written statement. This is an important project because it will bring significant jobs and investment to New York City. The U.N. is a valuable asset to New York City, supporting thousands of jobs and contributing more than $2.5 billion to the local economy each year. The U.N. is visited by 800,000 people annually and makes a major contribution to the New York's reputation as an international city.