This is NOT my america anymore, apparently.
I first read about this rumor over on Am I Patriotic?, who sourced it via NY-Indy Media. The rumor stated that the RNC may have been the leaseholder of Pier 57 during the GOP convention.
The rumor:
The now-famous Pier 57 in New York, used as the jail facility for holding protestors arrested during the Republican National Convention, was leased by the Republican National Committee, according to the Certificate of Occupancy and the Fire Safety Inspection Certificate for the pier.
The implications of the Republican National Committee leasing the pier, and arranging for the NYPD to then use the pier as a detention facility for people protesting the RNC, are quite startling. The ramifications for both the Republican Party and for the City of New York (for entering into a partnership with an organization essentially operating a private jail facility), both legally and politically, could be serious indeed.
This morning a comment left in Kyle's thread directed us to the source of the report, a woman who's daughter was disappeared in Gitmo on the Hudson for three days:
The notorious Pier 57 (owned by the Hudson River Trust--a city/state consortium) was dubbed "Little Guantanamo" by reporters who also got caught up in police sweeps and who said it looked like the Guantanamo Bay prison built by the USA to hold the Al Qaeda terrorist political prisoners in Cuba. Pier 57 was leased by the RNC before their convention. They arranged for the NYPD to put up the chain link holding pens with razor wire on top in the old Pier 57 warehouse that had oil, gas and asbestos dust on the floor from a previous fire.
My heart was in my throat when I got a call from one of my daughter's friends on Oahu who told me she had been arrested and taken to Little Guantanamo. I looked it up on the internet and fear crept into me. I called my daughter's cell phone over and over ("it's mom, where ARE you, call me"). She didn't answer. Only hours before, she had been calling us with joy, telling us of the peaceful protests and beautiful march. But now, nothing. I had nightmarish visions of a fire sweeping over the combustible floor with hundreds -- nearly a thousand -- trapped in the chainlink pens, razor wire on the top of the pens making escape impossible. My husband called the NYPD to ask who had issued a Certificate of Occupancy or Fire Safety Inspection Certificate and who was managing Pier 57. He was given the number for the Republican National Committee. Yes. My husband and I looked at each other in silent, cold horror.
So there is the source of this rumor. The claim is that the RNC leased Pier 57 during the GOP convention. I've been trying to independently confirm this since yesterday, and although I have been unable to obtain a copy of the Certificate of Occupancy or the Fire Inspection Certificate yet, I am going ahead and dumping all the info I have into this post.
According to what I've found, the Hudson River Park Trust "is the public benefit corporation charged with the responsibility of designing, building and operating the five-mile long Park running from Battery Place to 59th street on Manhattan's West Side" (1), and they will soon make a decision regarding turning over those rights to Pier 57 over to a private developer. On September 22, there will be a public meeting held to determine which of the four finalists will get the contract. The finalists are listed here.
Some of the bidders, particularly the Chelsea Piers team, have direct ties to Bush (2). But instead of focusing on that, I'm trying to focus on who is in charge of the pier right now.
At the moment, it's the Hudson River Park Trust, headed by a man named Charles E. "Trip" Dorkey, III. The Trust is responsible for day to day operations in the piers area, and they determine who can or cannot use the facilities. They determine who can or cannot lease space, which leads me to believe that they had to have reviewed and approved the RNC's offer to lease the facility.
Charles Dorkey - president/CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust - is a long-time GOP donor, as I discovered after a few searches on OpenSecrets.org. Mr Dorkey has contributed a total of $191,482 to the GOP since 1989. Dorkey was appointed to his post by Governor Pataki. He has donated to Rick Santorum, John Cornyn, Rudy Guiliani, Elizabeth Dole, among others, and has funnelled soft money to the Republican National Committee several times over the past few election cycles (3). Dorkey was also recently honored by the New York Young Republican Club. Oh, and Dorkey is a Bush Pioneer. The Globe and Mail calls him "a well-connected Republican fundraiser, both for New York Gov. George Pataki and President George W. Bush and serves as head of the Hudson River Park Trust, which is developing parkland along Manhattan's west side."
The two documents mentioned in the Indy Media post are the Certificate of Occupancy and the Fire Safety Inspection Certificate. I did some digging and discovered that a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy can be issued for short-term leases of property in New York state. I put out a call on DailyKos asking for assistance from New York City residents in determining the block and lot number for Pier 57. With this information, we should be able to confirm who leased the space during the convention.
As I understand it, the leasee needs to submit a Certificate of Occupancy to the NY Department of Buildings. Then they also need to get a Fire Inspection via NYFD. Digging online, I discovered that anyone should be able to obtain a copy of the Fire Inspection Certificate for Pier 57 by submitting a written request and $10.00 to NYFD. But we need a street address, and apparently there is no street address for Pier 57. When I put out the call, I got these two responses:
The addresses for piers are being listed this way in the NY phone book
Pier 57
57 North River
The zip for 15th st is 10011.
I used to park on pier 40 and the address was
Pier 40 parking
West st & west Houston
NY NY 10014
West st. may now officially be North River. They did a major redo there...
Pier 57 used to be the tow pound I'm pretty sure, you may find it that way
----
I have the following info, 90% sure this is for Pier 57 but it could be a neighboring one.
On the tax assesment roll, the address is listed as: 0 Marginal Street, with no zip code...a place-holder, as far as I can tell. But it also gives me a block and lot number, as: BLOCK 662 LOT 3. Almost all records with City of New York should be trackable with the block and lots.
Hope it helps
Using this information, I searched the NYC Department of Buildings website. The block and lot info posted above actually corresponds to Pier 63, so we're close but no cigar. The great thing about that website is that if we can get the correct block and lot numbers for Pier 57, we should be able to browse all applications, power authorisations, and PERMITS for the site. If a recent Fire Inspection Certificate was issued, it should be online (saving us the $10.00 it will take to get the info from NYFD). So I am putting out a call: let's get the block and lot number for Pier 57! It's got to be out there somewhere.
This as well may be tangential, but the NYC Dept. of Buildings puts all their permit reports online. I have not had the time to go through the pdfs yet, but there may be permit info in one of those files. I've downloaded all the ones for 2004 that are online, and I will spend some time tonight searching through them. I'm assuming that the Hudson River Trust had to apply for a permit to put up the cages at Lil' Gitmo, so the permit info may be in those pdfs. Again, I'll search them tonight.
I also did some legwork and tried calling the NYFD myself. After being looped through about ten different offices, I hit a brick wall. Nobody I spoke with seemed to be able to determine whether the inspection certificate was issued, and they didn't have a clue who I could call. I assume this is pretty standard for the city.
In conclusion (for now anyway), there seems to be a wealth of circumstantial evidence which points to a relationship between the Hudson River Trust and the RNC. Two documents - the Certificate of Occupancy and the Fire Inspection Certificate - will verify who leased the space during the RNC convention. The Fire Inspection Certificate can be obtained but block and lot numbers are needed (or a street address). The Certificate of Occupancy can also be obtained, but again, block and lot numbers are needed. And according to the tax records mentioned above, Pier 57 has no street address.
I've hit a brick wall with this one for the time being. Someone has got to be able to get ahold of that Inspection Certificate - someone local to NYC needs to try and track this down, and they are going to be able to make more headway than an outsider like me. I'm unwilling to say for sure that the RNC leased the space, but I'm also not about to write if off as a possibility. Any and all help from my readers would be appreciated. I'm looking for the block and lot number of Pier 57, and with that information I should be able to track down a definitive answer.
(1) source
(2) This may be tangential, but the Chelsea Piers group is closely tied to the Bushies. Two of the three trustees were partners with Bush when he bought the Texas Rangers, and one of them has gotten a political appointment from the President. I also traced their recent history and created a word doc which you can download here (right click and "save as"). Their political donations - hard and soft money - are also included in this document. My interpretation is that they greased both sides of the wheel (ie, they donated to many NY politicians, as is standard practice with many big time political donors), but the majority of the money went to the GOP (info obtained via OpenSecrets.org).
(3) I created a word document detailing all of Dorkey's donations. I got the information via individual searches on OpenSecrets.org. You can download it here (right click and "save as").
x-posted at mydd and annatopia in the hopes that people can help fill in the blanks and confirm or deny this rumor.
update: thanks to kossack scorponic - it looks like the subtenant for pier 57 is the MTA. If the RNC leased the property, it would be as a subtenant of the MTA. With this new information, I will try to determine whether a sub-lease existed between the MTA and the RNC. This raises more questions, but I won't clutter this post with them.
Also, the pdf reports I have should show whether a permit was in place to put up the cages. Now I know that I should be searching for permits issued to the MTA (thanks again scorponic). This is working on the assumption that permits were needed to erect the cages. Can any New Yorker confirm that permits would be neccessary for something like this?
another update: I've just spent the past hour on the nyc building site. Again, I'm trying to find permits issued for Pier 57 based on block and/or lot number. Searching the surrounding blocks *might* lead to the block info for Pier 57. Well, Block 662 includes Piers 59, 60, and 63, and one address with "no information". There is ZERO information (ie, no properties in the database) on Blocks 663 and 664, but Block 665 includes Pier 70 and 76. So working with that, I assume the block number for Pier 57 will be lower than 662. There is no property information online for Blocks 661, 660, 659, 658, or 657. Block 656 yields one result with a street address of 343 West Street, and it's Occupancy Code is "Transportation". I mapped it via Mapquest and it appears to be too far south (it's just south of Hudson River Park) to be Pier 57.
Via process of elimination, I imagine that Pier 57 resides in one of the Blocks that had no information online (657-661). So it seems I've hit a brick wall with the NYC Building Department. However, I still have the FOIL pdfs to go through tonight, so stay tuned. Maybe I'll have an answer to this question within the next day or so.
yet another update: glow dog rules! This pdf form confirms that Pier 57 resides in Block 662, lot #3:
Proposals should be submitted for the entire site offered for lease and include the
building, the pier structure and all of its components, and land under water within Manhattan
Block 662, Lot 3. The eastern boundary of the site shall be the building line of the head
house, also known as the U.S. Bulkhead Line. The northern and southern boundaries shall
be the northern and southern lot lines. The western boundary shall be the U.S. Pierhead
Line. The tenant will be provided with necessary easements and rights of entry.
Thank, glow dog! Tomorrow I am going to mail the written request for copies of the Fire Inspection records for that location to the FDNY. I don't know how long it will take to get a response, but I will certainly keep yall updated. The Fire Inspection should confirm who the leasee was during the GOP convention. Thank you to the entire DK community for helping fill in some blanks.
The reason I've researched this so intensely is that if true, obviously, it's a bombshell. And if not, then it just proves that people around here don't go spreading rumors without confirmation - that we are a curious group who thinks critically. Believe me, I would love to have titled this entry "RNC leased Pier 57 CONFIRMED", but since it's only rumor at this point, well, I wanted to dig a bit deeper. At this point, the rabbit hole seems pretty deep.
Now, off to search those FOIL pdfs... I'll update this post when I'm done with that.
yet another update: Since I posted this info, I've been contacted by a few people who've sent me some real interesting information about the Hudson River Park Trust. This is cribbed from an email, and the author asked to remain anonymous:
Now, let's look at the MTA. Chairman Peter Kalikow comes from a VERY wealthy NY construction family, and they are all heavy GOP donors. Pete even gave $1000 to Lamar friggin Alexander. But then again, PETER KALIKOW IS THE FORMER OWNER OF THE NY POST!!! The rest of the MTA Board leans more Dem than Rep, but Kalikow has pretty much unlimited authority if he wants to do something.
My take on the whole thing is that Dorkey arranged this with Kalikow's help, but that's just from knowing the two men, not from facts.
I thought this tidbit was interesting, and I've verified the donations. It's an interesting theory, but without the Occupancy Certificate or Fire Inspection Certificate I'm unwilling to add to the speculation. Just thought I'd share.
Also, I called Councilman Perkins's office this morning and spoke briefly with one of his aids. The person I spoke with sounded interested in following this up, and took my name and number. I am going to call them back tomorrow and follow up. I also sent them an email with a link to this post.
I called Rep. Jerry Nadler's office as well - hopefully someone on his staff will do the follow up, but I doubt it as he is pretty focused on the 9-11 follow up right now.
And finally, I've got a friend in New York who is going to go make the records request in person at FDNY. I figured it would be quicker to obtain the certificate that way then to do it via snail mail.
Damn, one more thing - I finished searching through the August permit records, and no permits were issued AFAICT for Pier 57 to put up the fences or pot-o-potties. The search terms I used were based on the location, owner, possible leasee, and address. They were "Hudson" (as in HRPT), "Pier", "MTA", "Metropolitan" (assuming the MTA had the sublease), "River", "NYPD", "Police" (assuming the NYPD might have been the subleasee). Nothing, nada, zip. This doesn't mean a permit was not issued - I still have six months worth of data to sift through, which I'll continue to do tonight.
Thanks again to everyone for the tips and suggestions. If anyone happens to track down the author of the email which originated this rumor, let me know.