The once dead in the water proposal to rezone Midtown East has suddenly undergone a rebirth. According to Crain's Mayor de Blasio will release a timeline for the rezoning "in the next week or two." The controversial plan to allow newer, bigger, greener buildings in that part of town failed to earn approval before Bloomberg left office, and now it's up to de Blasio to initiate a plan that coincides with elected officials, community members, preservationists, developers, and the countless other parties invested in this decision. The project as initially proposed by Mayor Bloomberg intended to rezone a more-than-70-block belt of Midtown East to spur the construction of a new generation of bigger, state-of-the-art skyscrapers. By the sale of air rights that would permit developers to do just that, the city could, in turn, raise hundreds of millions of dollars for transit improvements in the area. The original plan was primarily halted due to objections from the City Council, several preservationists, and transportation advocates. Among other things they said that the plan under priced the air rights to be sold. An article by the New York’s Post Steve Cuozzo should shed some light on the dire situation at hand. In it, Cuozzo writes that, “Since the proposal’s flop, big-name companies in the area have stepped up the pace of their exit. Among the most recent are law firm Reed Smith, purportedly in talks for a deal at Hines’ Seven Bryant Park, and Citigroup, which ditched its longtime 399 Park Avenue headquarters for 388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan in a December deal. Jones Day, another law firm, is leaving its 41st Street home for 4 Brookfield Place, while Time, Coach and L’Oreal have inked deals at the Related Companies’ Hudson Yards. Sony is also splitting for new offices near Madison Square Park, and Conde Nast and GroupM are to set up shop in Silverstein’s 1 and 3 World Trade Center.”

Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen shared the information about the rezoning timeline reveal at a breakfast on Wednesday, but details on what the actual plans were appeared insufficient and infrequent to say the least. At Wednesdays breakfast Andrew J. Hawkins of Crain’s asked how Mr. de Blasio's approach to the rezoning will differ from Mr. Bloomberg's, Ms. Glen said, “We want to make sure we do it in a way that makes clear the infrastructure can be paid for in the sequence of events when you actually need the infrastructure to come online."

It’s encouraging to see that de Blasio is taking a pro-active approach toward halting a potential mass exodus of big name companies from Midtown East. The question still at hand is how a de Blasio-led rezoning will truly divaricate from past plans. In any case, according to Mayor de Blasio no changes will take effect until 2016, but knowing de Blasio’s penchant for being tardy don’t hold your breath on his plan being ready on time.