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New York City officials’ dream of developing Manhattan’s far West Side came a little closer to reality yesterday when Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the official start of construction on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) No. 7 subway line extension.

The authority will extend the line 1.5 miles from its current terminus at Times Square and Seventh Avenue west under 41st Street to Eleventh Avenue, and south under Eleventh Avenue to a new station at 34th Street. The $2.1 billion project is expected to generate transit-oriented development at and around the Hudson Rail Yards that will yield about $60 billion in tax revenue to the state and city during the next 30 years, according to MTA.

MTA’s Eastern and Western rail yards represent “two of the last significant, multi-block development sites in Manhattan,” the agency said. In July, the authority issued a request for proposals for developing the rail yards; MTA received five proposals for each yard in October. The proposals are being reviewed by a selection committee made up of MTA-appointed members and two representatives from the Hudson Yard Development Corp., which is overseeing the yards’ planning and development. The committee will recommend proposals to the MTA board, which will consider the plans in first-quarter 2008.

In January 2005, the New York City Council approved the Bloomberg Administration’s plan for rezoning the far West Side, enabling developers to build more than 40 million square feet of mixed-use development, including office buildings and apartments.