"Is it feasible to develop on this parcel?" For one thing, a vast marshland has overtaken the runway.
Before last month's financial crisis, plans were to develop the parcel into a community called the Preserve that included 200 houses and a golf course.
Once the economy rebounds, Ms. Hamlin said, she hopes to develop the parcel with more town houses, a market-rate rental apartment building, a hotel and a school.
FJV bought the land from the city for $12.6 million in 1989, an amount agreed upon in a winning bid to develop the parcel that FJV submitted in 1983, before land prices more than tripled as the city and Mr. Bluhm sorted through negotiations and lawsuits detailed in "Here's the Deal: The Buying and Selling of a Great American City" by Ross Miller Alfredd A. Knopf, 1996).
Plans to develop the parcel, which had been a parking lot, were scuttled by one economic downturn after another.
"If they're going to close it, I'll take the land back," said Mr. Trump, who donated the 436 acres on which the park sits to the state after his efforts to develop the parcels grew costly and frustrating.
Seymour Milstein and the partners recently blocked Paul's son Howard, 49, from developing the parcel on his own by abruptly dissolving the partnership and putting the land up for sale.
"We never really wanted to move anyone out of there, but the problem is that developing this many acres sometimes necessitates putting parcels together.
The venture is bidding on the right to develop a parcel adjacent to the Manhattan Bridge; it has not started development.
He is president of the River Drive Construction Company of Elmwood Park, the managing partner for the investment groups developing the parcels.
