By TOM TOPOUSIS
!['We set the city's priorities. They don't come out of Washignton...[Schumer's] part of the job is to bring us the money.' - Mayor Bloomberg, in response to Schumer's speech yesterday recommending New York shift its focus away from the West Side](/seven/05132008/photos/new03a.jpg)
May 13, 2008
A war of words erupted yesterday as Mayor Bloomberg reacted angrily to comments made by Sen. Charles Schumer suggesting the city has its priorities wrong in turning Manhattan's far West Side into a business district.
"The city's priorities are clear," the mayor said. "We set the city's priorities. They don't come out of Washington, and the city's priorities are the West Side, getting it going and getting the rail line going there."
He was reacting to a speech Schumer gave earlier in the day, when he said the city should shift its focus from building office and apartment towers above the MTA rail yards west of 10th Avenue and instead concentrate on constructing a new train station named after the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan.
"I appreciate all the senator's views on Moynihan Station. His part of the job is to bring us the money," Bloomberg snipped.
Bloomberg also rejected Schumer's call to put the Port Authority in charge of building Moynihan Station inside the Farley Post Office building, calling it a "terrible idea" based on the agency's difficulty rebuilding Ground Zero.
Schumer said he has every right to make suggestions about West Side development, since he's helped secure more than $100 million from Washington for Moynihan Station.
"It is equally important for a responsible senator to watchdog how that money is spent," he said.
Schumer waded into the West Side fray after negotiations between the MTA and developer Tishman Speyer - winner of a $1 billion bid to develop above the rail yards - hit an impasse last week.
"Relying on developers to build haphazardly on the West Side in an uncoordinated fashion is unrealistic and counterproductive," Schumer said at a breakfast sponsored by Crain's New York.
He proposed that development efforts should first focus on the area around Penn Station before moving west toward the Hudson River.
