By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
FINANCIAL DISTRICT — The Daily News wants to build a parking garage for its planned new downtown home, but residents are worried about reporters speeding to cover breaking news.
The paper wants 42 parking spaces on the ground floor of 4 New York Plaza for employees' vehicles and a fleet of cars that reporters share to cover breaking news. A News attorney has met with a Community Board 1 committee to begin the process of getting a permit to build the garage.
"The parking is a big issue for them," said attorney Carol Rosenthal, referring to the move that's not a done deal. "They’d like to have the parking [garage]."
News reporters currently park their cars at on-street parking and a block reserved for NYP press license plates near its Hudson Yards location.
Community Board 1’s Financial District Committee supported the plans, though some members worried that speeding reporters would endanger pedestrians on Water Street.
"Say a reporter’s in a rush," said Catherine McVay Hughes, a member of the committee. "I want to make sure that if they’re in a race with another reporter to get to a story, no one gets hurt."
Philip Habib, the News’s traffic consultant, assured the committee that drivers leaving the garage would have to stop before crossing the sidewalk.
"They’re not going to come flying out," he said.
The Daily News and Publisher Mort Zuckerman’s U.S. News & World Report Media Group plan to take a combined 100,000 square feet in the 25-story building at Water and Broad streets. Zuckerman hopes to move the companies by next spring, Rosenthal said.
The city automatically allows small parking garages in new buildings, but existing buildings that want to add garages have to go through the public Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, Rosenthal said.
Once CB1’s full board weighs in later this month, the application will go to the borough president’s office, to the City Planning Department and possibly to the City Council, which could take several months, a City Planning spokeswoman said.
The Downtown Alliance wrote a letter of support urging the city to approve the application.
