If only Eliot Spitzer had kept it in his pants, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. “It is absolutely true that were it not for Client 9,’ a deal would have been reached on the Garden and Penn,” insists Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, director of Columbia University’s Real Estate Development program and a partner at SHoP Architects. “We were weeks away from a deal when Eliot got caught.”
Indeed, the same week in March 2008 that The New York Times revealed the governor’s peccadillo in the nation’s capital, he was scheduled to have a meeting with the three railroads, two developers, and one arena operator, as well as city, state, and federal agencies, and the sundry bureaucrats and advocates all involved last decade in finding a new home for “the world’s most famous arena” and the nation’s busiest transit hub.