As mayor, Giuliani said something very much like that.
New York Times
April 11, 1997
"Mayor Giuliani, who said the international body was on the verge of becoming a laughingstock, began talking half-seriously about the fancy hotels and apartment buildings that could be built on the site if United Nations members carried through on their threats to leave.
Speaking to a group of reporters in his office, he said: "They are making a little bit of a joke out of the U.N. by threatening to take a parking violations case to the World Court. It was not put together by treaty to argue out special-interest parking situations for diplomats."
Instead of settling wars and resolving human rights violations, he said, the institution was "defining diplomacy down" by arguing about parking tickets.
Mr. Giuliani was no kinder to the State Department, which just last month, in a public ceremony, signed an agreement with the city to force diplomats to pay their parking tickets on the threat of removing their plates. With State Department officials now seeking to remove the teeth from that agreement, the Mayor accused them of cowering to overblown United Nations threats to leave the United States over the parking rules, and said the diplomats’ bluff should be called.
"If they’d like to leave New York over parking tickets, then we can find another use for that area of town," he said. "It happens to be just about the most valuable real estate in the world, not just in the United States. That is enormously valuable real estate, and with the vacancy rates that exist in the city of New York, can you imagine what we could do with that?"
In case anyone thought he was bluffing, he had city lawyers check the United Nations lease to determine who gets the riverfront property if the institution leaves town.
(Answer: the Federal Government could use it; if it did not want it, the city would have next crack.)..."