Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Inside the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center
Over the past five years, more than $150 million of taxpayer money has been dumped into a spy center in Lower Manhattan where employees of Wall Street firms and real estate behemoths sit side by side with municipal police to spy on the comings and goings of pedestrians on the streets around Wall Street. But none of the thousands of spy cameras positioned around the city that feed into this center foresaw the storm surge that put as much as 40 feet of corrosive salt water in the basements of commercial buildings in Lower Manhattan, crippling thousands of businesses along with the lives of area residents.
With major businesses and employees dislocated indefinitely as landlords of commercial buildings deal with boilers and electrical systems destroyed by massive flooding, soggy debris that must be carted out, and in some cases extensive cleanup from toxins from fuel that mixed with the salt water, the question arises as to whether that $150 million of taxpayer money, both city and Federal funds, could have more wisely been put to use in securing Lower Manhattan with sea gates and storm barriers.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly call significant owners or occupants of commercial property in Lower Manhattan “stakeholders.” Goldman Sachs is a major stakeholder as is Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (which bought the landmark 33 Maiden Lane building for $207.5 million in February). The largest stakeholder in Lower Manhattan is Brookfield Office Properties Inc., which played such a significant role in the crackdown and eventual eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters from the public space, Zuccotti Park, which it owns.
Brookfield is a majority owner of One, Two, Three and Four World Financial Center, One Liberty Plaza, One New York Plaza, and a 44.6 percent owner of World Financial Center Retail. (Brookfield also owns commercial property in other areas of Manhattan including The Grace Building in midtown.)
Under a deal originally crafted in 2005 with Goldman Sachs, and unearthed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”
…
