U.N.'s Boro Haul 

By Patrick Gallahue
February 10, 2005
The New York Post
Original Source: http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/21817.htm

The United Nations is looking at the outer boroughs for a controversial new building to house its interim headquarters, The Post has learned. 

Downtown Brooklyn and Queens are being considered as sites for a massive project to house U.N operations while the organization's historic Manhattan headquarters undergoes a $1.2 billion upgrade, sources said. 

Although the project was being planned as a temporary facility, that could change once the United Nations is settled in the outer boroughs, one of the sources said. 

This could be a permanent site, the source said. 

It's one of the world's major institutions and it would only help Downtown Brooklyn develop as a business district, said Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn), who added he was unaware of the plans. 

The proposed 35-story, $650 million auxiliary building — which U.N. planners call swing space — was to be built on Robert Moses Park, a playground next to the U.N. headquarters, but was stalled by the state Senate. 

The towering new building was intended to host all operations while security upgrades, safety-system improvements and an expansion of the meeting facilities are completed on the 52-year-old Secretariat building. 

Once the renovation is finished — which could take 10 years or more — the new building was intended to become a permanent office for workers now scattered throughout multiple buildings on the East Side. 

But now, with earlier plans indefinitely stalled, sources said the United Nations, which had been dead set on staying in Manhattan, has set its sights on other possibilities in the outer boroughs. 
This is the first I've heard they would explore outside of Manhattan, said state Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), whose district contains the United Nations. She said she knew they would consider other sites in existing commercial buildings in Manhattan. 

Krueger, who supports keeping the United Nations in New York, was enthusiastic about the outer-borough potential and said, It's about the city of New York. 

A spokesman for the United Nations declined to comment. 

The United Nations ironically traces its roots back to Queens. 

Then-Parks Commissioner Robert Moses converted a skating rink on the 1939 World's Fair grounds in Flushing Meadows Park into a makeshift general assembly hall in the late '40s before construction of the nine-acre U.N. campus between 42nd and 49th streets on Manhattan's East Side.