According to the Village Voice, the attitude of the NYT’s is “don’t soil our publicly subsidized new HQ with your riff-raff.”

The Pataki administration, acting on behalf of the New York Times Company, condemned the property for a so-called “public purpose.” It appears that public purpose does not include any of the following: 

“a school or classroom or juvenile or adult day care or drop-in center.” It forbids “medical uses, including without limitation, hospital, medical, or dental offices, agencies, or clinics.” It gives the New York Times Company “the sole and absolute discretion” to reject United Nations or foreign-government offices, including any “considered controversial” or that are potentially the focus of demonstrations. It bans any “employment agency (other than executive-search firms) or job training center” and auction houses, “provided, however, the foregoing shall not apply to high-end auction houses specializing in art and historical artifacts.” Discount stores are forbidden. And the deal bars “a welfare or social-services office, homeless shelter or homeless assistance center, court or court-related facility.”

All are barred under the NYT lease. While these might be normal for a luxury office building, in this case we are talking about a condemned building. Kelo anyone?

Technorati:kelo nyt New York Times

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at 11:10 am by Insider and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.