Pinocchio Pinsky

We were so glad to see that EDC's Seth Pinsky-kinda like Sammy Glick-is a man on the move up-having been cited by Crain's as one of the forty under forty up and comers. But if there's a hall of fame for fibbers, Seth would be in a league of his own.

Here's what Pinsky says about EDC's Willets Point effort: "Also this morning, Pinsky said the city is still negotiating with property owners in Queens so it can move forward with its Willets Point development. Currently, he said, the city has secured 70 percent of the property and is negotiating the relocation of other property owners for the final 30 percent."

This is what's known in polite circles as prevarication-and in the spirit of the NY Daily News we're giving Seth our maiden,"Pinoccho Award." The reality is that EDC has cherry picked the larger property owners, but over 70% of the owners still remain without any deal-and many of those have yet to hear from the agency! There not only aren't any negotiations, there hasn't to our knowledge been any money forthcoming to those property owners who did sell out to the city; and we're still waiting for this pack of thieves to tell NYC's tax payers what the final cost of purchasing all of the WP land will come to.

But the eloquent Pinsky, late of Harvard Law, can't stop himself: "Pinksy said the corporation is waiting out the economic downturn to put the project out to bid, which he projected could happen later this year or early 2011." Hey Seth, can we take the "over" on that prediction? There's still that little problem of ramp construction approval-and despite what EDC's confidence man told the Daily News, that just might take some time.

But criticizing Pinsky really isn't quite fair-after all, he's merely representative of the Bloomberg mindset, just another example of how all the mayor's men from the world of high finance and corporate law have really no clue about the economic needs of the city's street level businesses.

In addition, aside from cluelessness, the agency runs a rigged game that would make Robert DeNiro blush in Casino-something that will will dramatize as the public review of these useless off ramps proceeds. Don't plan any ground breaking any time soon Seth.