NEW YORK CITY-Not long after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo outlined plans for redeveloping the site where the Javits Center sits on the far West Side of Manhattan and building the nation’s largest convention center in Jamaica, Queens, CRE reactions continue to flood in.

As GlobeSt.com reported, the governor’s plan calls for the demolition of the Javits Center, the city’s largest convention center—located on 11th Avenue between 34th and 39th Streets. Renovations at the center are underway and scheduled to be completed by 2013. Nonetheless, under Cuomo’s plan the site would be razed and redeveloped into 18 acres of planned development, along the lines of Battery Park City to the south.

In its place, the nation’s largest convention center—at 3.8 million square feet—would rise in Jamaica, Queens at the Aqueduct Race Track site. That construction would be funded by a $4 billion private investment; the redevelopment of the Javits Center site would be funded by $2 billion from the private sector.

Though critics doubt the viability of convention space so far from Manhattan and any major transportation hub, elected officials and members of the commercial real estate industry tout the plans as transformative.

“I do believe that we’re opening up a tremendous opportunity on the West Side,” Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, tells GlobeSt.com. “The Javits Center almost serves as a wall that separates Manhattan from the waterfront.” Most revealing, perhaps, of the proposal’s legs is the developer interest the site is drawing. Spinola says that he’s already spoken to two developers who expressed interest in the site after hearing the plans.

Spinola also spoke to the issue of job creation, saying that a repurposed Javits Center “holds the potential to create thousands of jobs and revitalize the Metropolitan area.”

Cuomo, in fact, used jobs as a big selling point for the plan and said that the Queens convention center would “bring to New York the largest events,” driving demand for hotel rooms and restaurants and creating tax revenues “and jobs, jobs, jobs.” The creation of “tens of thousands of jobs” was the estimate given.

The Regional Plan Association issued a statement commending the plans as well, claiming that “everybody wins” if its put into action. The RPA said that it believes that the redevelopment of the land the Javits Center sits on “would underpin the development of the Midtown West district that will be the focus of much of New York's growth in this century.”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in a prepared statement that the plans were “nothing less than extraordinary.” He added that he saw the economic expansion and job growth contained in the plan as critical.

“New York City deserves and must have a convention venue that is spacious and modern enough to accommodate international trade shows and conventions, and I look forward to working with the governor to ensure that we continue to attract top-flight conference from around the globe,” Stringer said. “We must also find ways to breath new life into the site of the Jacob Javits Center on Manhattan's West Side.”

As far as a convention center located in Queens, REBNY’s Spinola thinks that if it’s the right type of convention center, people will come.

“I don’t think the transport options are going to matter much in terms of the convention center,” he says, though he says that there would need to be a transportation plan in place.