Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

Mr. GRAY. Was he a consultant on that project?

Mr. LEHNE. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRAY. What was the reason for hiring him?

Mr. LEHNE. What was the reason? Mr. Keib is a well-known real estate man in the New Jersey area.

Mr. GRAY. Is he associated with the Penn Central Railroad?

Mr. LEHNE. Not to the best of my knowledge in any fashion.
Mr. GRAY. Who owns that site, or who owned the site?

Mr. LEHNE. A subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Central owned quite a bit of it, not the whole thing.

Mr. GRAY. We have information that was given to this committee, and I am not making any accusations, but the same gentleman who helped select this marshy site also does appraisal work for the Penn Central Railroad including the site in the Bronx where you changed locations.

Mr. LEHNE. That we changed locations in the Bronx?

Mr. GRAY. You are moving it to another spot.

Mr. LEHNE. What we are going to do, sir, is we are going to eliminate the necessity for a big building in the Bronx.

Mr. GRAY. The building named the Buckley Building? You just killed that building, named after our distinguished former chairman. Mr. LEHNE. We are expanding the present Bronx building to a very minor degree.

Mr. GRAY. Which way are you going, are you moving into air rights some place?

Mr. LEHNE. No, sir.

Mr. GRAY. Are you buying additional property?

Mr. LEHNE. No, sir; we are expanding the building slightly and putting in mechanisms, putting in this letter-sorting machine. We are eliminating the need for that facility.

Mr. GRAY. But you are not taking any additional territory or paying anybody for air rights?

Mr. LEHNE. To the best of my knowledge we are not doing that.
Mr. GRAY. That was not the information that came to me.

Mr. TERRY. Will the chairman yield?

Mr. GRAY. Yes.

Mr. TERRY. Mr. Lehne, I recall a prior witness offering to read from a letter I believe signed by you in connection with the Charles A. Buckley site in the Bronx wherein the Post Office, the Postal Service requested that it be held on the grounds of possible relocation of that station or a motor-vehicle terminal.

Mr. LEHNE. That is right.

Mr. TERRY. Are you saying here now that that information is inaccurate?

Mr. LEHNE. No, sir, I am not saying that. I was trying to clarify the point that is being made. We have eliminated the need for the large construction that was on that Fordham site.

What we are going to do is build a much smaller facility. We hope to build a much smaller facility, much less expensive facility, and we are going to consolidate and continue to process the mail in the present Bronx Post Office through this facility the chairman is referring to in New Jersey.

We are taking out of that Bronx area all those big bulk parcels, and they are going to be handled in New Jersey.

Mr. TERRY. Is the present Bronx Post Office contiguous to the proposed site?

Mr. LEHNE. No, sir, they are a few miles apart.

Mr. TERRY. What is the reason for requiring the GSA to continue to hold this site for your possible development?

Mr. LEHNE. Well, the Bronx facility, to run the postal establishment needs many types of facilities.

What we do not have in the Bronx at the present time is a decent garage. Our vehicles are parked all over the streets in the Bronx area, and we also need a new Fordham station site branch office.

What we hope to do on this Fordham station site that was initially obtained by GSA at our request quite a few years ago is to put on that site a station, not a complete new post office, but a station plus a vehicle maintenance facility and a garage.

Mr. TERRY. On a site that cost $2,129,700 to acquire?

Mr. LEHNE. Is is a very expensive piece of land, yes, sir.

Mr. TERRY. Is that garage type facility where you spent in excess of $2 million for land acquisition for one block and then put up a garage

Mr. LEHNE. Just a moment. It sounds a little bit the way you say it, it makes it sound foolish, but the plans are not 100 percent finished, and what we hope to do is prevent the disposition of that property. Mr. TERRY. You said your primary purpose in that, plus a relatively small substation, I presume because your continued occupancy of the branch post office site would be for a garage facility.

Mr. LEHNE. That is our principal need in the study we have made of the metropolitan New York plan.

We do not need the $30 million building that was being planned. Mr. TERRY. Well, I can see that, and I can see where your modernization of facility might change your requirements, but I certainly would not think you would be desiring a $2.1 million site for a garage, especially in that location, which would not enhance the area surrounding it in the same fashion that the proposed $20 million Buckley building will.

Mr. LEHNE. I assure you we will do our best not to ruin our environment by the type of building we have built.

The reason we have asked GSA to hold that property, those plans that we have in mind we set forth some of our need several months ago, and those plans are still being studied.

Finally, what we will build on that site, I do not know as yet. That is still being determined by the New York Postmaster General and his staff.

Mr. TERRY. But as I understand it, there will be no requirement for returning to either Mr. Gray's committee or any other congressional committee to get approval of a garage-type facility that you would purport to build on that site or some other site in the Bronx; is that right?

Mr. LEHNE. The Postal Reorganization Act does not require the Post Office Department to come to Congress to get individual approval of our individual building plans; you are correct.

Mr. TERRY. You could, in fact, request that site from the GSA and then hold it, and, in fact, sell it with the proceeds going to the Postal Service Corporation?

Mr. LEHNE. That would depend on the agreement between the GSA and the Post Office Department and OMB and the President.

If the President decides to let the Post Office Department have it, that is his privilege. We do not have the unilateral right to demand that site and get it.

Mr. GRAY. I will be glad to yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mrs. ABZUG. Mr. Lehne, it seems that you had indicated in testimony before Mr. Gray that the land would become surplus to Post Office needs once there was a post office site agreed to.

Mr. Gray read from a letter from Mr. Reynolds confirming that fact, and you said here today that the land will be given up, and it will become excess to the needs of the Post Office.

My question to you is, is there any reason why this property has not been declared excess to future needs, or cannot be declared excess to future needs, in view of all these statements?

Mr. LEHNE. It is still being used, Mrs. Abzug, as you know.

Mrs. Abzug. I said declared excess to future needs.

Mr. LEHNE. How do we do that? We have written a letter indicating what we are planning to do.

Mrs. ABZUG. Well, I believe there is a standard form 118 in which you can declare property excess to future needs, and you certainly have that power under the Reorganization Act which gives you the power to dispose of property and declare that which is found to be excess or

otherwise.

Why has that not been done, and are you prepared to do that?

Mr. LEHNE. I do not think we are prepared to do it until we know a little more definitely when the facilities in New Jersey are going to be ready and in operation.

Mrs. ABZUG. I grant you that. You did state it will be excess for future needs, and I want to know contingent upon it being excess for future needs as of June 1973, why you cannot make such a statement of excessibility or as being in excess for future needs.

Mr. BATRUS. I do not know if this will be of any help, Mrs. Abzug, but I do know that we have in the entire New York area a rather comprehensive study as to what all our needs will be. A good part of that has been completed with respect to what we call the bulk mail network.

We should be completed with this by the end of the year. We are not sure yet what it will call for in the way of facility needs that may be in addition to what we claim at this point, so I think, and I am not sure that Mr. Lehne is aware of that, but for that reason it would mean not until that was completed would we be sure of whether we had any need for that or not.

Mr. GRAY. Could I interrupt, Mrs. Abzug.

Mrs. ABZUG. I yield.

Mr. GRAY. I want to get this very clear.

Are you saying, Mr. Batrus, that you are not sure whether it is going to be declared excess at all?

Mr. BATRUS. I am saying, Mr. Chairman, whether a decision to declare that as excess for 1973 it may be influenced, and I am only

Mr. GRAY. I am not trying to put you on a spot, if you will pardon the interruption.

We are on a collision course, sir. We have a letter stating that it will be declared excess, or 90 percent of it.

Now we are injecting in here that the study shows it will be needed and will not be declared excess.

She is very able to speak for herself, but this puts her in an untenable position to go back to her constituents to reiterate again what is said in a letter after a study is concluded, you come along and say no, we found out our requirements are greater, and we are not going to do it.

Mr. BATRUS. I am not sufficiently acquainted to make that kind of a statement.

Mrs. ABZUG. Let me ask you this question. This property has been held by the Post Office Department for 10 years. People were victimized, thrown out of their land and out of their apartments and out of their businesses. There were any number of commitments and statements made by the Post Office Department, and in June, before Mr. Gray, in the letter from Mr. Reynolds on June 26, your own Post Office Department press release confirmed the disposition of the block will be made when the refurbished Morgan and GPO project is operational,

Now we have conflicting interests. The major interest that we are all supposed to be committed to are the interests of the taxpayers, and these are people who are desperately in need of housing.

Now, obviously, all of those statements that were made in letters and in testimony and in press releases were done after considerable study.

You came before the Public Buildings Committee and insisted on having a new site. That was granted to you. You are holding this land while people are dying for lack of a place to live.

I do not think that one can have any confidence in the way the Post Office is going to be able to handle the property, real estate, and the interest of the people of this country if you are going to hold on to something for motives which are not clear.

We are not interested in this country to see that an independent corporation establishes a large holding. You have to deliver the mail, and people have to live.

Now, this piece of property is not being utilized. We had a letter to Commissioner Walsh of the HDA, in which you said the truck traffic will decrease, and we will not need any part of this except for the widening of perhaps 29th Street.

You can go on and study forever, and nothing will be done, either mail delivered, or housing or building of facilities.

It seems to me that you are really not demonstrating to the Congress that they were right in placing any confidence in the Post Office if you deny these conflicting rights and there are some very fundamental rights of other people when you really do not need this land except for some very unclear motive or unclear reason.

I want to repeat my question. You have stated on the record today as well as previously that this land will be excess to future needs.

Will you make a statement, and will you have a declaration by standard form that this property can be declared excess to future needs?

It is important to us that we know that, and then we can plan to build our homes.

Mr. LEHNE. I think we have stated, Mrs. Abzug, that the property is not required in our plans when the Morgan station refurbishing is complete, and when the New Jersey facilities are operational in 1973, and the exact date of that, and what will happen to that land, as you have indicated before this morning, GSA has the first right to that land.

Our disposal agreements we have referred to, that is how it will be disposed of. Exactly what they will determine in the use of that land I cannot tell you.

Mrs. ABZUG. They will not have the land until you declare it excess to your needs. If you declare it to be excess to future needs, then GSA will have that land to dispose of now, and we will be able to work out a way in which that land can be procured for the purpose of making plans to build housing that we now have plans for that are being held up because of your untenable, and I say completely arbitrary and completely uncalled for under the law attitude, and it is an unfair use of the taxpayers property.

I want to know why you cannot make the statement that it is excess to future needs now so that GSA will have a return of that property, and so that the city of New York can work with that property for the purpose of providing very desperately needed housing.

Now, sir, that is all we are asking.

Mr. LEHNE. We have indicated out plans. Now, you are asking us to sign a form today apparently, and I do not believe we are ready to sign that form today.

Mr. GRAY. Well, are you willing to stand by your commitment, general, your commitment to our committee on the date of June 22, 1970? Mr. LEHNE. We have not changed that, Mr. Gray, at all.

Mr. GRAY. We could not get any statement at all out of the person that stood in for you at the hearings in New York. They would not make any kind of a statement at all that they would stand by the original decision made by the Postal Department.

Mr. LEHNE. That is the program as it now stands. That is the exact program.

We have not changed that from the time Mr. Reynolds and I were with you.

Mr. GRAY. Then Mrs. Abzug can tell her people that the Post Office Department intends to relinquish 90 percent of that tract when you are finished in New Jersey?

Mr. LEHNE. Yes, sir; when that is operational in New Jersey. We have not changed that plan.

What will happen to the land beyond that is not within my jurisdiction.

Mr. GRAY. The reason I keep going over this, Mr. Batrus makes it contingent upon the study.

I want an unequivocal answer as to whether the Postal Service is going to keep a commitment given to a committee of the Congress, or is it contingent upon the study?

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »