Um, NO!!! Thanks to the higher gas prices more and more people are ditching the suburbs for cities. The NYC area has been one of the places where people have been coming back to. If gas prices keep going up my belief is that driving will be so expensive people will move to cities and public transport will be more appealing.

Manhattan?s largest undeveloped site, the Hudson Rail Yards, might finally be transformed into an office and residential complex. On Thursday, New York?s MTA unanimously approved a deal with Related Companies and its partner Goldman Sachs to develop the 26-acre parcel, located on the west side of Midtown, near Pennsylvania Station. The developer?s $15 billion proposal calls for office towers, residential buildings and a park, all to be built in the air space over a labyrinth of railroad tracks. This is not the first deal the MTA has reached with a developer: In March, Tishman Speyer won the rights to develop the site using a scheme designed by architect Helmut Jahn and landscape architect Peter Walker. That deal fizzled earlier this month. According to an article in The New York Times, the ?enormously complicated? project will take more than a decade to complete. ?Before the first building can be erected,? the article states, ?a developer must build a platform, foundations and columns over an operating rail yard. Construction cannot interfere with the trains.? While Related Companies has not announced whether it?s hired an architect, a project rendering is available on the developer?s Web site.

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New West Side Developer Approved

Jenna Flanagan WNYC

NEW YORK, NY May 23, 2008 ?The board of the MTA has approved a new developer for its West Side rail yards site.

Officials say that the billion-dollar agreement is already more secure than the deal that fell through with the previous developer.

The Related Companies and Goldman Sachs have already handed over an $11 dollar deposit and signed a preliminary agreement.

Board member Mark Page says the real security comes from an eagerness to develop the site.

PAGE: At the end of the day, the reason they have jumped in very quickly to pick up this deal is that they want it, and that is ultimately the motivator we are relying on here to get closure and get this area developed.

REPORTER: Officials warned that the whole deal could still fall apart if the western half of the yards is not rezoned as planned over the next few years.

http://www.related.com/index.asp?mode ... 1&companyid=7&storyid=498

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/nyr ... ves.html?_r=1&oref=slogin