This Is Why I Would Never Let My Daughter Date A Bird

No matter how often we tell them not to, they keep flying into buildings:

There are no easy fixes, however. A few manufacturers are exploring glass designs that use ultraviolet signals visible only to birds, but they are still in their infancy. Opaque or translucent films, decals, dot patterns, shades, mesh screens — even nets — are the main options available. And they have been a tough sell in the high-design world.

New York City Audubon, the American Bird Conservancy and other groups are actively pressing for their use. “I hope there will come a time when putting up an all-glass building is like wearing a fur coat,” said Glenn Phillips, executive director of New York City Audubon. “Not that no one will do it, but maybe they’ll think twice about it.”

What Do You Get When You Cross A Memorial Site With An Office Development And A Public Plaza?

I believe the technical term is “fuckshow.” So much for all the rah-rah Jane Jacobsy bluster from those seeking to undo the urban planning eddy of the original World Trade Center site — that dream is years away (if ever?):

It’s the beginning of a gradual process that will eventually weave an off-limits space back into the fabric of the city. But it may be years before the eight-acre memorial is truly reconnected to New York, as part of a plaza where people can come and go freely or stop to enjoy lunch on a bench.

The goal is “an open memorial and true amenity for people who live in work and down here,” said Joe Daniels, the president and CEO of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum. “I think it’s OK that right now, as it opens, it is more of a controlled destination.”

Only those with one of 7,000 daily tickets can enter the memorial, and reservations are filled through mid-October. Access to the entire plaza currently ends at 8 p.m., though closing time will move up with arrival of winter’s shorter daylight hours.

The ticket system is temporary, but Daniels said he expected it to last for about three years, long after the adjacent One World Trade Center tower is scheduled to be completed.

Location Scout: September 11 Memorial.

It’s Broke . . . And Do We Really Have To Fix It?

Maybe you were wondering how toll takers got into real estate . . . and why this makes any sense . . . and how no one can do anything about it . . . and then The Times’ Joe Nocera really poops in the punchbowl in the weeks leading up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11:

But despite the shroud of patriotism that its supporters have always cloaked it in, it’s really just a big, fancy office building. An office building with such poor economics that it will soak New Jersey and New York commuters for decades to come. An office building only the government could love.

Lately, supporters of the project have begun saying that its economics have improved. They point to the fact that Condé Nast, the publishing giant, has agreed to be the anchor tenant. What they fail to point out is that Condé Nast’s rent is less than half the break-even cost of the 1 million square feet it will occupy. In other words, a company that publishes high-end magazines aimed at rich people will be getting an enormous government subsidy for the foreseeable future.

And who will be paying for that subsidy? The mailroom attendants who use the Lincoln Tunnel to get to work. The middle-class New Jersey-ites who use the George Washington Bridge. The firefighters and police officers who live in Staten Island. Thus, in the name of 9/11, does New York and New Jersey place another economic burden on the already overburdened middle class. How sad.

Still A Laughingstock, In Just Three Short Years

Widely heralded DOT pedestrian plaza in Meatpacking District continues to impress:

Street plazas with stone barriers that distinctly resemble breasts have become the laughingstock of the trendy Meatpacking District, and businesses are poised to give them the heave-ho, The Post has learned.

. . .

The city Department of Transportation installed the odd open areas between Gansevoort and West 14th streets in one of its first experiments with public plazas. The promenades have since become a DOT obsession, spreading all over the city.

“The plazas look neglected, dirty and unkempt. No one is taking care of them,” said [the] executive director of the Meatpacking District Improvement Association, a nonprofit spearheading the $500,000 overhaul. The tab is being split between the city and the business group.

The Meatpacking District Initiative, another local group that pledged to maintain the areas when they were first built, claimed the city stiffed them out of $40,000 and their funds dried up in 2009.

Clubgoers have taken to loitering in the plazas in between bar-hopping, and filling them with trash.

Just So You Know As You Take The Bus Through The Lincoln Tunnel Into The Port Authority Before Heading Up To The Yankees Game . . .

. . . it’s all probably just fine:

A major testing lab and its top execs have been indicted on charges they faked concrete-strength tests at hundreds of city building sites, including Yankee Stadium and the Lincoln Tunnel.

Officials of American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories Inc. “regularly skipped vital safety tests and created false reports to create the impression that the tests were performed,” an indictment unsealed in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday charged.

Prosecutors said projects involved in the 12-year scam also included Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Javits Center, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the control tower at LaGuardia Airport.