City urging ConEd to sell its $500M waterfront property and lower rates
Hello, liQcity readers. We are back from a brief hiatus in posting, to bring you this interesting article detailing the City publicly asking ConEd to sell off it’s LIC waterfront property and reduce electric rates for all. Controversial request, for sure.
ConEd Training Center, Vernon Blvd, Long Island City
“Con Edison should sell off its pricey waterfront property that’s used mainly as a parking lot before jacking up rates even higher, a city councilman said Sunday.*
The 11 acres of Con Ed land along the East River in Queens offer eye-popping views of Manhattan and is valued at about $500 million, according to City Councilman Eric Gioia, a Queens Democrat.
“They’re a bloated monopoly,” Gioia said, that is “fleecing its ratepayers.”
The bulk of the Long Island City property is used as a parking lot for the Con Ed Learning Center, a training and office building on Vernon Blvd.
“Con Ed should start by selling off some of the most expensive land in the city, saving its company property taxes, and not continuing to balance its budget on the backs of hardworking New Yorkers,” Gioia said.
Last month, Con Ed customers were sacked with a 4.7% monthly increase.
Six weeks later, Con Ed asked the Public Service Commission to okay one of two plans for even higher rates.
Con Ed spokesman Michael Clendenin said the waterfront property contains an “essential facility that we use to train our men and women.”
…And the site Gioia’s talking about is not the power plant shown in your photo. It’s the ConEd “Learning Center” on Vernon around 44th Avenue.
Unlikely they will sell in the near or not-so-near future. Anyhow the 421a fun is about to end.
nice pic!
Gioia is an idiot and I wouldn’t vote that loser for anything. That said he is right on this one. There is no reason for ConEd to have that learning center and parking lot on the waterfront. I’d rather see them sell and invest the proceeds in upgrading the electricity grid and/or not increasing prices.
That isn’t a ConEveryone power plant in the photo, its Keyspan.
Agree with #5. There no reason waterfront property should be used as a parking lot. Its a sin. 421 or not that site would get top dollar. Sell it an use the money to pay for capital improvements. They can rent a training facility when it is needed just like every other corporation does.
Wouldn’t it be a perfect world if that were to come true.
Con Ed = Tyrell Corporation
What so another highrise can block the water front – I’d prefer the learning center
Is that the place where Conn-Ed learns how to gouge its customers?
#10 enjoy looking through the locked ConEd gates at your waterfront. At least of a condo is built you will be able to access it. Maybe a park will be built.
I don’t care what developers call them. Those narrow 4 foot wide strips of land on the river are not parks.
It’s better than nothing at all or an empty lot with rusting cars and rats the size of small dogs running around.
I wonder if #13 has actually visited the waterfront. Gantry Park with its piers and the new ballfield with running track are hardly “4 foot wide strips”.
where is the ball field with the running track? The private one for Rockrose?
#16 – The ball field and running track are part of the public park as is the pavilion that is being built just past the Rockrose “View” tower.
#14 – Good to see you have high standards!
BTW this # thing sucks!
A learning center does not have to be in the water front. The same thing with the Boards of Edu. (storage and distribution center) building next to Water´s Edge. These buildings and land could be sold and the money could be put to better use.
18, the only “better use” that would realistically result from removing those two properties, and eliminating the jobs of the people who work there, is yet more high-priced condos. Instead, I’d rather see some a more imaginative use, like repurposing the learning center and BOE buildings into a school.
#19 why do you assume that jobs would be eliminated? Where is the NY board of Ed going to go? NJ? This is about bring revenues to the city and using land for its highest and best use.
That is NO BALLFIELD – wait maybe t-ball – but that’s it – way tooooooo small
Why would anyone want a ballfield right outside their building anyway? Stupid idea.
that running track with the little patch of grass in the middle (alleged ball field) is PUBLIC? Then how do you get in there?
23 you are right its not public. Stay away. I heard a longtime LIC resident and his 5 year old daughter were arrrested last week for scaling the fence and tresspassing. Rockrose has a private secuity force that roughed them up before the police arrived.
As I understand it, the park will be a state public park. It has not been finished yet, so has not been opened. But when it is finished, it will be opened to the public.
#24 do you really think anyone believes you?
I think Con Ed should sell it’s land to the same billionaires who priced all of native Western Queens residents OUT OF Western Queens. That way, all of the trust fund kids who have moved here in the last 3 years and do nothing but whine and go to the latest crap ‘ASIAN FUSION’ restaurants can be equally pushed out by the Euro / Asian uber rich trash buying all of the apartments in midtown and displacing the out of work Wall Street types. We could all live happily ever after 50 miles away and commute on the LIE to our meaningless jobs in Manhattan with our SVU’s and park in THEIR neighborhoods and add another 5 degrees to global warming so we could flood everyone out of the riverfront for good, effectively releasing all of the toxins laying beneath the ground that Con Ed put there 60 years ago that they don’t talk about.
The Con Ed learning center is a school for con ed employees.
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With all due respect, the “city” is not asking Con Ed to do anything. Eric Gioia, who is running for public advocate, is making noise about it.