CONSTRUCTION, CONDEMNATION AND THE SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY

Make no mistake, a new East Side subway line is needed desperately. After the two elevated lines on Second and Third Avenues were demolished in the 1940s and '50s, that left only the IRT Lexington Avenue Line — the most crowded in the country, with its average of 1.3 million daily riders more than double that of the entire Washington, D.C., Metro system, and more than the daily ridership of the San Francisco and Boston rail-transit systems combined.

Talk of building a new Second Avenue line dates to 1949, and after many false starts, plans began in earnest in 2007. Late that year, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters announced that the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) would receive $1.3 billion in federal funding for the project's first phase, to be doled out over a seven-year period.

The project will include a two-track line along Second Avenue from 125th Street to the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. It will connect through the 63rd Street tunnel to existing tracks for service to West Midtown and Brooklyn. The first phase of the four-phase project includes tunnels from 105th Street and Second Avenue to 63rd Street and Third Avenue, new stations along Second Avenue at 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets, and new Third Avenue entrances to the existing Lexington Avenue/63rd Street Station.

The first contract involves the construction of new tunnels between 92nd and 63rd Streets; the excavation of the launch box for the tunnel boring machine at just south of 92nd to 95th Streets; and access shafts at 69th and 72nd Streets. The target completion date is 2015.

Four residential occupancies along Second Avenue and one large commercial occupancy are being taken over. There are additionally 24 takings of easement — i.e., slivers of properties — primarily for entranceways, emergency exits and station venting. To see if your building falls in the new subway's path, check the Capital Construction Page of the MTA's website and/or contact the MTA.

My Way or the Subway

According to Roco Krsulic, the MTA's director of real estate, here's how the process works: the city decides what property or portion thereof is needed. The owner is then informed. A public hearing is held at which questions and protests can be filed. The findings are published and any issues raised at the hearing addressed. This report is presented to the MTA board, and there is a 30-day review process. After that, the MTA negotiates with the property owner.

"Our activities are guided by federal rules and regs. It's not that we arbitrarily offer them figures because we like to lowball them," Krsulic notes. "We have an independent appraiser value the taking. And we are obligated … to offer the highest appraised value." For stores, the agency offers relocation benefits.

Neil Brody, the 18-year board president at he block-wide, 31-story co-op at 250 East 87th Street, didn't wait to be contacted. As soon as he heard about the MTA's plans and saw a map of the route about four years ago, he took action. Besides reading all he could on the proposed work, he attended Community Board meetings on the issue and had his co-op board hire a lawyer specializing in "easement and zoning."

"We weren't going to be able to stop this project, so the thinking was, 'Let's understand it as much as we can,' and see how we could work together to accommodate what we knew was coming," says Brody, an attorney who handles construction litigation.

His board hired Richard Bass, a senior real estate analyst at the law firm of Herrick, Feinstein. In addition, the board hired an architect and a mechanical engineer to offer advice. "We wanted to stay as much ahead of the curve as we could," explains Brody, "so that we knew we could intelligently speak with them and try to protect ourselves as much as we could, and see where [the MTA was] going in terms of adversely affecting the property."

Attention, Passengers

Some affected buildings took similar routes. The Royale Condominium on Third Avenue from 63rd to 64th Streets, for instance, will have to deal with four new sidewalk entrances. The 202-unit condo, completed in 1984, will lose its public plaza temporarily (it will be used as a construction-site staging area) and the western border of the plaza will be destroyed for a ventilation shaft.