Hudson Yards, the most expensive real estate development in the history of the United States, reaped a reported $1.2 billion in funding through the EB-5 visa program, which allows foreign nationals to invest into real estate projects in order to buy visas for their family members to enter the US. Here’s how it works: EB-5 visa applicants must invest a minimum of $500,000 in a project within a designated geographic area called a targeted employment area, or TEA. For an area to qualify as a TEA it has to meet a threshold of 150% of national unemployment.
Hudson Yards, on its own, can’t qualify as a distressed urban area. So to qualify a strange map had to be drawn, snaking its way through Central Park, and up to Harlem, where 5 public housing projects helped meet the desired aggregate unemployment standard. Hudson Yards, with 2 bedroom apartments typically in the $5,000,000 range, is no one’s idea of a distressed neighborhood, but through a gerrymandered map, they were able to qualify as one. As Kriston Capps wrote in CityLab “Hudson Yards ate Harlem’s lunch”.
A central feature of Hudson Yards is Thomas Heatherwick’s The Vessel, a climbable, seven story reflective sculpture. This has drawn hoards of tourists to snap selfies and peek at a view of the Hudson River. What would happen if we repatriated The Vessel to a housing project that partially paid for Hudson Yards?
The image above is a rendering of the idea, The Vessel installed in the parking lot of Washington Carver Houses, one of the housing projects that helped make Hudson Yards happen. Imagine millions of visitors climbing to see views of the north end of Central Park, Harlem and beyond. Imagine the Vessel as a travelling public sculpture that makes it rounds to all the housing projects that helped fund Hudson Yards: Carver Houses, Dewitt Clinton Houses, East River Houses, Thomas Jefferson Houses, and Frederick Douglass Houses.
The cost of moving such a large sculpture around will be paid for with a new map, drawn up to include only Hudson Yards, which levies a tax on home sales above $1,000,000. For once, a project will pay for itself.