Greenways and Waterfront Development

[Edward]

Waterfront Called Washout

By LISA L. COLANGELO
Daily News City Hall Bureau

Acres of city-owned waterfront property are being wasted to store road salt, wash buses and even house prisoners, according to City Councilman David Yassky.

Yassky (D-Brooklyn) said this prime real estate should be transformed into parks, housing and commercial development.

"It's not 100 years ago and it's not 50 years ago, but our waterfront is designed as if it is," Yassky, who is chairman of the City Council's waterfront committee, said yesterday at a City Hall news conference.

And he plans to introduce legislation requiring the city to keep a comprehensive list of these sites and how they are being used.

Yassky appears to have an ally at the other end of City Hall.

"Mayor Bloomberg made waterfront development a centerpiece of his economic development plan during the campaign," said the mayor's press secretary, Ed Skyler. "And as he indicated in the State of the City address, reclaiming the waterfront for New Yorkers will be a priority."

Tight Budget Expected

But it's unclear how the city's projected $4 billion-plus budget gap would affect any kind of waterfront redevelopment.

The mayor is expected to unveil an austere budget plan for the next fiscal year on Wednesday that calls for belt-tightening throughout city government.

Carter Craft of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, a group that supports Yassky's plan, estimated there are between 175 and 200 city-owned parcels of land along the waterfront.

Yassky said some of the waterfront properties could be developed through private and public partnerships and could help bring money into city coffers.

He was not able to say, however, how much it would cost to move facilities — such as the police tow pound in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the salt storage lot on the Harlem River and the bus wash in Bushwick, Brooklyn — to other locations.

"This is long-term investment," Yassky said. "We learned a hard lesson during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. If we stop all long-term investment, we pay for it tenfold down the road."

http://www.wirednewyork.com/images/import/daily_news_waterfront.gif

Original Publication Date: 2/11/02

[Fabb]

The development of the waterfront should have been a priority decades ago.
Now there is another one, more urgent.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/waterfront/20030721/18/469

The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway -- A Thin Green Line

by Carter Craft
July 07, 2003

When the Manhattan waterfront greenway opens in just a few weeks Mayor Michael Bloomberg will have achieved what 25 years of planners and policymakers could not: a nearly continuous waterfront esplanade (http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dcp/pdf/bike/greensys.pdf) (in pdf format) for walkers, cyclists, joggers, skaters, birdwatchers and many others in the world's most famous borough.

With this esplanade the mayor will have wiped away more than two decades of attention deficit disorder that plagued previous administrations, but the key to harnessing the waterfront to benefit the long-term growth of the city lies well beyond this thin green line. Here’s why:

Popular visions for the waterfront of the future generally swing between two extremes. The first is the sweeping green ring around the water’s edge in places like Little Neck Bay, East River Park, or along the Shore Parkway. The second vision of the waterfront is the “Gold Coast” model, where the remnants of industry are replaced with glistening towers in glass and steel.

Each of these models falls short in certain respects. One, the ribbons of green were in reality little more than decorative trim, a green lace edge alongside the massive investment of waterfront highways and parkways which themselves really cut communities off from the waterfront. The development of Hudson River Park is the most recent version of this thin green edge. The “Gold Coast” model similarly falls short as a community development tool because it generally only accommodates the high-end of the income spectrum. Herein lies the Catch-22 for post-industrial waterfront revitalization: can new life be brought to the waterfront in ways that accommodate all city-dwellers as residents and users, or will this new investment physically and economically exclude most people in favor or higher income brackets?

The city’s rezoning proposal for the waterfront of Greenpoint and Williamsburg will test this limit, and largely determine whether those casually referred to in the popular media as “inner-city” dwellers will in fact be relegated to literally inner city districts laden with asphalt and stricken with highways, or whether the city's emerging vision of a new waterfront will serve poor folks too.

One of the problems with a continuous ribbon of green is that it defies the reality that we are a city of islands. As such, we should be embracing modes of transportation that harness the waterways. In Manhattan, the city is making great efforts to expand ferry transit, with a slew of new or upgraded terminals ring the island from East 90th Street south around the Battery and north to West 38th Street (all connected by the greenway). There are efforts afoot to improve or expand landing facilities further north along the west side even as far north as Dyckman Street. But in addition to the city’s need to create new options for white collar commuters, there is a tremendous need to improve the movement of goods in and through Manhattan, home to two of the three largest central business districts in the city.

When the trend toward containerization carried the port to New Jersey nearly a half century ago, it inevitably took a lot of manufacturing and distribution facilities with it. All of these activities continued the seemingly irreversible trend towards highway and truck transport. Since that time, as traffic has increased exponentially, no new freight connections have been created. Getting a truckload of computers or foodstuffs from New Jersey to Brooklyn relies wholly on the same bridges and tunnels that existed back in the Great Depression more than 70 years ago. And Canal Street sure shows it! *

While the Manhattan waterfront greenway celebrates the fact that we are an island, it doesn’t help us address the fact that in the grand scheme of highway-dependent economics Manhattan is nothing more than a congested through route to I-95, the Cross Bronx, or the Long Island Expressway. Yes, pedestrians, cyclists, and birdwatchers vote, but it’s the tens of thousands of trucks passing through Manhattan each day that are literally and figuratively paying the freight. Just as the first layer of asphalt on this new path is being laid, neighborhoods such as Washington Heights and Chinatown are still suffering the effects of noise, vibration, and air pollution of this perpetual truck dependency.

One of the greatest benefits of the greenway plan is that it will connect activity and opportunity that already exist at the water’s edge. Fort Washington, the Battery, Stuyvesant Cove and Harlem River Park will be linked to Riverbank and Hudson River State Park as well as dozens of other attractions. Surely every waterfront neighborhood needs such green destinations at the blue water’s edge, but the city also needs places for less-appreciated activities such as the transport of garbage or generation of energy. The pending sale of the Waterside Generating Station by Con Ed, for instance, has already placed pressure on the Lower East Side by causing the expansion of the East River Generating Station. The development of Hudson River and Riverside South parks on the West Side are only creating added pressure to relocate facilities such as the 59th Street marine transfer station which moves thousands of tons of recyclable paper every day. These facilities shouldn’t be closed, they should just be engineered to perform better. In reality, Lower Manhattan probably needs a state of the art marine transfer station far more than it needs more luxury housing.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of the Manhattan waterfront greenway will not be the greenway itself, but the chain reaction of land-use pressures that heat up on the waterfronts of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Now that Mayor Bloomberg has vanquished twenty five years of inaction for Manhattan, let’s hope he puts forth ambitious and positive plans for waterfronts of the opposite shores that have been abused or ignored for even longer.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.

[Kris]

August 18, 2003

Renovation Efforts Reclaim the City's Forbidden Shoreline

By COREY KILGANNON

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/08/18/nyregion/18wate.xl.jpg
Runners at Stuyvesant Cove Park, a renovated waterfront on East 20th Street and the East River. Many stretches of New York City's shoreline are being revitalized.

One morning last week, Zoe Klein, a 24-year-old circus performer from Brooklyn, stood practicing her act, which involved swinging a pair of tethered balls, and stared out to the Hudson River.

"Growing up in New York, I always felt boxed in," she said. "I always knew we were surrounded by water, but it always felt dirty or inaccessible."

Actually it was not too long ago that the stretch of waterfront where she was standing was dirty and inaccessible. But it has been recently reclaimed as part of the Hudson River Park project, a lengthy effort to upgrade the West Side riverfront and install miles of landscaped public space and freshly paved pathways for runners, bikers and skaters.

Although traffic was heavy on the nearby West Side Highway, Ms. Klein said she considered the spot on the western fringe of Greenwich Village an oasis of serenity. "I come here all the time, to counteract the stress of living in the city," she said.

Things are changing along New York's waterways and waterfront, and Ms. Klein is not the only one noticing. City residents are now zealously embracing the waterfront.

Yoga groups convene on a Hudson River promenade just south of West 72nd Street on what was once a fallow railyard. Fishermen are casting for schools of striped bass off the Battery. And the Downtown Boathouse offers free kayaking programs.

"New York is a water city — we're the Venice of the East Coast — but for a good part of the 1900's, the city turned its back on the waterfront," said John Waldman, the senior scientist with the Hudson River Foundation. "Now we're turning around and discovering it."

Cleaner waters have encouraged many revitalization projects along the city's 578 miles of shoreline. Despite economic hard times, waterfront development projects are proliferating from Staten Island to the Bronx.

"The development of the waterfront is one of the Bloomberg administration's most critical economic and neighborhood priorities," said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding. "With maritime industry uses gone or fading, we can reclaim parts of the shoreline. We have a once-in-a-century opportunity to reclaim New York City's waterfront, so we're seeing a lot of things beginning to come together."

In Manhattan, progress is being made on the $400 million Hudson River Park park project to reclaim five miles of ramshackle waterfront from Battery Park City to 59th Street. There are also plans to revitalize the Harlem Piers, renovate Fulton Street and create a "Champs-Élysées"-style promenade on West Street.

In Queens, the Queens West project has two residential towers up and another planned, and there are proposals to create new access to Jamaica Bay and the Flushing River waterfront. The city hopes to create a waterfront Olympic Village for 2012 in Long Island City.

In Brooklyn, plans to develop 1.3 miles around the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges into commercial and recreation space are on tap, as is a revitalization project for a 1.6-mile stretch of industrial waterfront in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

In the Bronx, there are plans to redevelop the waterfront near Yankee Stadium and the Bronx River. In Staten Island, city officials hope to redevelop the former Homeport Navy site, and a new pier at South Beach is almost complete.

Four of New York City's five boroughs are part of an urban archipelago. This was one of the big draws for the Dutch, who built wharves in southern Manhattan in the 1600's. As commercialism began to grow, waterfront structures began blocking views and access. And the less-than-savory sailors and dock hands made the waterfront synonymous with mob activity, prostitution and crime.

So New Yorkers avoided the water, wrote Luc Sante in "Low Life," his book on New York's underbelly. Mr. Sante noted that Fifth Avenue became the most desirable residential address because it was farthest away from the Hudson and the East River.

Early in the 20th century, highways were built blocking the shoreline, which was thick with freighters and ocean liners. The fishing industry declined as the waters became more polluted. Foul water also meant the end of Whitehall rowboats off the Battery and grand boathouses and swim clubs with staircases descending into the water.

"For generations, the river was considered an unpleasant place to go," said the city's parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe. "It was where you put slaughterhouses and where poor kids went to swim."

By midcentury, manufacturing began to decline and many piers became inactive. Still, the city's nautical life was reduced to tiny pockets, like Broad Channel and City Island.

But the federal 1972 Clean Water Act and better sewage treatment practices improved water quality. Starting in the 1980's, industrial waterfront stretches began to be redeveloped into residential or recreational areas, including Battery Park City and Chelsea Piers.

The once dying ferry industry has recently been revived. Developers and city officials continue to see new opportunity in the old wharfs and dilapidated shoreline buildings.

So New York is finally shaking off a legacy of the padlocked waterfront, and undergoing a "mindset change," said Raymond Gastil, author of "Beyond the Edge: New York's New Waterfront" (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).

"The idea that you can go kayaking off a pier in downtown Manhattan is a pretty bold expectation," he said, "but one that is being realized."

Carter Craft, program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, a division of the Municipal Art Society that advocates for more public access to the shoreline and more water transit, said that the "change in New Yorkers' consciousness" certainly helps economic revitalization. But he said that waterfront parks should do more than just lead people to the water. "There are still relatively few ways for Manhattan Islanders to actually interact with the water," he said. "The current park designs are not as boater-friendly as they should be. The waterfront should not be an edge, but rather a gateway."

Even as a work in progress, the transformation of the waterfront is something the city is pretty proud of. The Parks Department is planning an opening ceremony later this month for an interim bike path around the perimeter of Manhattan.

"Opening the waterfront for recreational use in the 21st Century is as important at the creation of Central Park, Prospect Park and Riverside Park in the 19th Century," said Mr. Benepe of the Parks Department.

Last week, Jose Gerald, 65, a retired merchant seaman from Carroll Gardens, was fishing off the Valentino Pier in Red Hook

Mr. Gerald, who moved here from Puerto Rico, has been fishing at this spot for 45 years, looking for blackfish, blues, porgies and striped bass.

"Forty years ago, the water was filthy," he said. "Now it's beautiful. Before nobody wanted to eat the fish. Now everybody wants to eat the fish. Now you even see some kids swimming over here some times. I don't know the name, but the fishing ducks are back."

The same day, a man sat on the waterfront in upper Manhattan with no fishing pole, but rather a bottle of beer in his hand.

The man, a pay phone repairman named Robert K. Morton, sat at a table set outside at the Tubby Hook Cafe at Dyckman Street and the Hudson River. The cafe offers spectacular views of the river, of the George Washington Bridge and the Palisade cliffs.

"When you sit out here, you don't think you're in Washington Heights," Mr. Morton said, squeezing a lime into his beer. "I work for the phone company and I get to go all over. It doesn't get any better than this."


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

Venice in New York

At a time when everyone is looking how to fix the electrical grid because of the ’03 blackout, we shouldn’t confine ourselves to thinking of repairing the past without looking at some truly magnificent opportunities for the future. New Yorkers live surrounded by one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, and most never give it a single thought. We’re talking, of course, about the waterfront, those extraordinary 578 miles of shoreline which range throughout the city and have the potential to become an urban attraction to rival Central Park. Given the city’s abundance of waterways, New York is indeed "the Venice of the East Coast," as John Waldman, the senior scientist at the Hudson River Foundation, recently told The New York Times. But instead of drawing the millions of tourists who flock to that Italian city by the sea, New York’s shoreline has been underused for decades, more of an embarrassment than a world-class tourist destination. The city’s waterfront policy has been characterized by neglect and abandonment, a place where pathology and crime have been allowed to flourish despite much rhetoric.

Fortunately, Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who announced in his first State of the City address that he intended to bring new life to the waterfront—is committed to taking action. Already under his watch, the city has proposed rezoning the Brooklyn shore area for housing, completed a bike path around Manhattan and developed new links to the lower Manhattan waterfront. Many New Yorkers have seen the progress on the $400 million Hudson River Park project between Battery Park City and 59th Street. And as The Times noted, there are plans to redevelop the area around the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, the waterfront near Yankee Stadium and the Harlem Piers. The city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, deserves praise for making the shorefront a priority of his department.

But the city and the state should put far more money into the waterfront, and secure federal funding as well. To take just one example of an untapped natural resource, look at the Harlem River. A sizable public investment along with private donations could reface that entire shoreline, spruce up the bridges, build condos, boating facilities and restaurants, and transform the area into something resembling the Grand Canal. Tourists and residents would be drawn there, all of Harlem would benefit economically, and what is now totally wasted space would become a showcase attraction.

And it’s not just the area around Manhattan which is ripe for development. Look at the remarkable number of bays and canals in every borough, such as the Rockaway Inlet, Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend Bay, the Gowanus Canal, Little Neck Bay, the Bronx River—not to mention the shorefront of Staten Island. Any Governor or Mayor with real vision could put the most extraordinary development in the 21st century into play. And if the Bush administration were wise, it would invest heavily in such a history-making project. If the federal government were to take the money from the space program and invest it in New York’s waterways, they’d see huge, bankable returns. Indeed, while the government of Italy spends billions on Venice, Florence and Rome, and the government of France spends billions on Paris, the U.S. government spends zero on New York. This is not only shortsighted from a cultural point of view, it’s also a lost opportunity to create a permanent source of tax revenue.

To put it simply, a full-scale investment in New York’s waterfront would benefit everyone. Imagine going for a candle-lit dinner and a gondola ride on the Harlem River.

COPYRIGHT © 2003
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER


Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/waterfront/20030821/18/500

Will The Bountiful Triangle Return?

by Carter Craft
August 08, 2003

New York started with a single island. That first island was not Manhattan, but "Nut" Island, now called Governors Island. But the colonists soon expanded to Manhattan and then to Brooklyn. For more than three centuries, the focal point of life in New York City was the bountiful triangle of water, bounded by Brooklyn, Governors Island, and Manhattan. What was once the heart of the city now offers an extraordinary opportunity once again - if we take it.

Governors Island

The first European colonists in our area only took Manhattan after they had a secure foothold on Governors Island. Now, the roles are reversed. Earlier this year the state and city announced the formation of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation. As part of the deal with the federal government which allowed the return of the island to state control, some type of educational facility is planned. A family entertainment center and artisan workspaces also seem to be on the list. Just last month, the new preservation corporation opened the gate to the island for public tours which are available to both individuals and groups. Wildly popular, (with long waiting lists each week) the collaboration between the preservation corporation, the National Park Service, and the handful of civics involved in organizing the tours (now extended through October) bodes well for the creative problem solving that the island demands. But will the novelty wear off?

Redevelopment of the island is hamstrung by two factors. The first is that nobody uses it now; it is not part of modern New York. Then, the island is accessible only by a ferry from Lower Manhattan and the price of this centuries-old disconnect grows higher. One way to cultivate visitation might be to link with other harbor attractions now. If art and craftsmanship is part of the future of the island then perhaps links to the gallery districts in Chelsea or DUMBO could be created. If tourism is anticipated to become a driving force then the 3+ million annual visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island may want to come learn about New York's colonial history as well.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is close by, with a silent fleet of barges, lighters and container ships passing through Buttermilk Channel daily. Just last year, the state, city, and Port Authority took an important step in creating Brooklyn Bridge Park by consolidating Fulton Ferry Park with a patchwork of city and Port Authority controlled piers (numbered one to five) and other properties between the Manhattan Bridge and south almost to Atlantic Avenue. Now a second phase of planning has been initiated to the south along Piers six to 12 extending down around Atlantic Basin and into Red Hook.

Before any new structures have been built, concerns about commercial development versus open space are growing loud. The Church of Latter Day Saints, for example, has expressed its intent to sell its building on Furman Street, and this prime waterfront property could tie together two currently separated areas of the waterfront (Piers one to five, and Piers six to 12).

South of Atlantic Avenue along Buttermilk Channel, the wave of waterfront redevelopment seems to be crashing up against the bulkhead of Brooklyn maritime activity on Piers six to 12. At this confluence of the Channel, the East River, and the harbor the ecology within the water is almost as complicated as the political ecology on the land. The crux of the issue seems to be whether maritime and port land use still makes sense in this area (a report is expected in late September). Divergent visions for this area defined by Atlantic Avenue to the north and Atlantic Basin to the south range from a new Carnival Cruise Terminal, a beverage distribution center, or a southward extension of Brooklyn Bridge Park. A recent planning exercise by the New Amsterdam Development Corporation showed how low-scale housing might look where containers are now stacked four and six high.

The undeniable physical reality is that on an island home to more than seven million people, maritime trade and transit has to make sense somewhere. In a city where traffic congestion approaches lunacy levels on a near-daily basis, we have to cultivate and stabilize water- based alternatives not just for people but for goods as well.

East River Piers

Across from the Brooklyn Piers are the East River Piers of Manhattan. The canal on Broad Street that brought trade right to the door of today's Stock Exchange has long been filled in, and the river segregated from the prime office district of Lower Manhattan by a highway that is simply too big for its place in the city. Recently the Bloomberg administration convened an advisory committee to ponder new plans for the area that emphasize housing. A consultant is being sought to help think through the challenge of appending this waterfront to the body of Lower Manhattan. While housing needs are pressing, we can't forget what brought us to this spot on the island nearly 400 years ago: transportation.

Yes, Lower Manhattan is important for the commercial, cultural and corporate identities that are all embedded in the words "New York City." But this stretch of Lower Manhattan is even more significant because it's the one place in the city where the water and land transportation systems come together -- where the subway comes right to the water's edge.

Between the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and the Pier 11/ Wall Street Ferry pier lie probably the most underutilized stretch of waterfront in any part of New York City. This area was the commercial and transportation heart of New Amsterdam, largely because it was where the East, the Hudson, and the Harbor converged. Today, the Staten Island Ferry, the Battery Maritime Building (terminal for the Governors Island Ferry), the Port Authority heliport, and the Pier 11 Ferry Terminal at Wall Street make for a linear transit district that could be the basis for tremendous growth if they can be better connected, and possibly bolstered with new transportation uses.

What the Dutch knew and we seem to have forgotten, is that the value of waterfront lies not just in the return on investment, but how the water itself is used. From the founding of New Amsterdam on Governors Island to the creation of the first regularly scheduled ferry service between the shores of Brooklyn and Manhattan in 1642, the connections that were made between these areas over a just a quarter century fueled the growth and enabled a prosperity that lasted over 300 years. We have an opportunity to bring this area to prominence once again.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance (http://www.waterwire.net).

[Gulcrapek]

Just don't take money from the space program. They're hypocrites if they do; it's far more important in the long run than the waterfront.

[Kris]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR- 271-03
September 30, 2003

MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES THE FIRST PHASE TOWARDS THE COMPLETION OF THE MANHATTAN WATERFRONT GREENWAY

Mayor Fulfills State of the City Pledge To Create 32-Mile Continuous Loop Around Manhattan And Increase Access To The Waterfront

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced that the first phase of the project to complete the Manhattan Greenway has been achieved at the historic Harlem Speedway, the newest portion of the trail in Northern Manhattan. During his 2002 State of the City Address, the Mayor pledged to create an interim, continuous 32-mile pathway all the way around Manhattan, and today’s announcement marks the completion of the City/State effort towards realizing that goal. Over the last ten years, various City and State agencies have built portions of the Manhattan Greenway but not until this year had they worked together to connect the existing portions. This phase of the plan uses $6 million in City and State funds to connect existing waterfront esplanades, create new waterfront pathways and, where necessary, establishes on-street routes that will serve as interim links between the waterfront paths. The 32-mile trail around the island of Manhattan provides cyclists, joggers and pedestrians with a continuous route that includes over 23 miles of waterfront pathways and facilitates access to over 1,500 acres of parkland throughout the borough.

NYS Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph Boardman representing the Governor, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall, Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Sports Commissioner Ken Podziba, and Olympic cyclists Deirdre Murphy and Oscar Pineda joined the Mayor at the Harlem River Speedway for the announcement.

“Today’s announcement is the fruit of our collective labor, and is indicative of this administration’s commitment as outlined in my State of the City address, to restore access to our great waterfront and improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Too much of our 578 miles of riverbank and coastline had been inaccessible and neglected for too long. This phase of the Manhattan Greenway builds on the amazing work of the past ten years to complete a 32-mile continuous trail and I will continue to work with Governor Pataki to improve this path and reclaim more of our Manhattan waterfront.”

“The creation of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway continues our commitment to providing pedestrian-friendly options for commuters and recreational cyclists, in-line skaters, runners, and others, while simultaneously giving New Yorkers access to their majestic waterfront,” said Governor Pataki. “Together with Mayor Bloomberg and the people of this great City, we will continue to work to improve the quality of life of all New Yorkers for generations to come.”

“This is an important day in Manhattan as we open a key stretch of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway,” said Manhattan Borough President Fields. “We must continue to find new ways to increase access to the waterfront so we can enjoy the great features of this borough by bike and by foot, up close and naturally.”

In 1993, the Department of City Planning issued a Greenway Plan for the City, which called for the development of a 350-mile network of greenways through all five boroughs including a continuous waterfront greenway around the island of Manhattan. At that time, only six miles of the waterfront were accessible to cyclists and pedestrians. Since that time, City and State agencies have built portions of the greenway but until 2003, had not worked together to connect the existing portions of the pathways. With $4.5 million in City funds and $1.5 million in State funds, first phase of the plan to connect the entire Manhattan Waterfront Greenway has been completed.

To coordinate construction of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, the Mayor’s Office under the direction of Deputy Mayor for Economic Development & Rebuilding Dan Doctoroff, forged a working group including NYC’s Parks & Recreation, Department of Transportation, Economic Development Corporation and Department of City Planning. To complete the path, the team worked in conjunction to:

Pave over three miles of path in city parks
Make improvements to over 6.8 miles of on-street routes
Build 14 new pedestrian ramps
Create six new crosswalks
Manufacture and install over 750 Greenway signs
The working group also partnered with the State Department of Transportation, which, in addition to constructing the Harlem River Speedway on-ramp, created a new safety fencing system along the FDR Drive between 13th and 15th Streets.
The announcement occurred at the Harlem River Speedway, a two-mile stretch of waterfront open space that runs adjacent to the Harlem River between 163rd and Dyckman Streets. As part of that effort, Parks & Recreation built a bike and pedestrian path along the Speedway, the NYC Economic Development Corporation reinforced Greenway infrastructure and the NYS Department of Transportation built an exclusive bike and pedestrian ramp at the southern end of the Speedway. Built in 1898 as a racing ground for the carriages of the City’s elite, the Speedway had fallen in to disrepair and, since the mid-1960’s offered severely limited access to the general public.

In addition to the Harlem River Speedway, City and State agencies collaborated on uniform signage for the entire length of the Manhattan Greenway to safely guide users, particularly bikers, along the path with recognizable trailblazers. For example, the entire route is marked with the Greenway logo, a round, green medallion, and includes directional signage and indicates areas where the Greenway widens to provide two paths – one for pedestrians and one for cyclists. In addition, where necessary, on-street signage exists to provide links between Greenway portions.

“I commend the Mayor and Governor’s commitment to creating the Manhattan Greenway system throughout the City of New York,” said Parks Commissioner Benepe. “This phase of the Greenway will not only link New Yorkers to their waterfront, but to expanded recreational opportunities for walking, jogging, biking, and in-line skating, improving the health and well being of New Yorkers of all ages. While New Yorkers travel along the Greenway, they can enjoy over 1,500 acres of City and State parklands. We ask that bicyclists and skaters go cautiously and yield to pedestrians.”

“At DOT, we have enjoyed working cooperatively with the Mayor, with other City agencies and State agencies on this exciting project,” said DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall. “We were involved on many levels, most notably, in implementing street markings and signs. New York City is a great walking City and it is a great City for people for bicycles. We are creating a tremendous opportunity here for the bicycling community, and we are proud to be a part of it.”

The next phase of the completion of the Greenway includes The Battery, now an interim route, which will have a world-class bikeway around its perimeter connecting the East and Hudson Rivers. The Battery project will advance as soon as plans for the MTA’s 1/9 South Ferry Station project and the State DOT reconstruction of Battery Place are finalized. Secondly, the City is working with State DOT to improve the connection from 25th to 41st Streets. Parks and the Economic Development Corporation are working with the United Nations on a proposal to create an esplanade and greenway connection from East 41st to 51st Streets should the UN’s consolidation plan advance. Thirdly, plans for creating a waterfront connection through Riverside Park between 83rd and 91st Streets are in the design phase and the City is working to secure remaining capital dollars needed to construct this segment of the path. Fourth, the fully funded West Harlem Piers is expected to be complete in spring 2005. Lastly, the City will build the second phase of Harlem River Park from East 139th to 142nd Street path in next two years, thereby extending the newly completed first phase of the park from 135th to 139th Streets.

To obtain a hardcopy of the Manhattan Greenway map, New Yorkers can call 311 or download it from the City’s website at www.nyc.gov .

CONTACT:

Ed Skyler / Jennifer Falk (212) 788-2958

Mollie Fullington (Governor) (212) 681-4640

Megan Sheekey (Parks)
(212) 360-1311

Tom Cocola (DOT)
(212) 442-7033

Greenway Map (http://www.nyc.gov/html/edc/pdf/greenway_mapside.pdf)

Greenway Brochure (http://www.nyc.gov/html/edc/pdf/greenway_broside.pdf)


Guide Book To Walking Manhattan's Rim (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=218)

Biking in New York City (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=323)

[BrooklynRider]

This is a major accomplishment and one of the finer, higher-minded visions this city has undertaken. Too bad it gets lost in the news.

[Kris]

Innovative Designs Along the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway (http://www.transalt.org/press/magazine/034Fall/05greenway.html)

[Ninjahedge]

This was one thing that surprised me about Brooklyn Heights. With such an affluent area, to have a wide unobstructed view of the DPW buildings and the salt storage was a bit of a surprise...

[billyblancoNYC]

It will be a great park soon...

http://www.bbpdc.org/

[Clarknt67]

It will be a great park soon...

http://www.bbpdc.org/

That link gives you a good (but outdated) view of the park. There's more news here:

http://www.brooklynbridgepark.com/

It seems like it's been a LONG time since they released the original master plan (found at the first site). I've read about a lot of changes to it including:

• The cove will no longer be converted to a marsh, in response to local environmentalists convincing architects that they existing eco-system is precious.

• Pier 6 now appears to be almost certain to be included in the park plan.

•*Conflicting reports of what to do with the art deco building under the Brooklyn Bridge. It wil either be razed, truncated (to allow unobstructed views down the shoreline of the park) or remain as is. (9/11 created an additional hurdle/complication as City's FEMA office, formerly housed in the Twin Towers was moved there).

I wish they'd release a revised Master Plan. Maybe they will soon.

Next Public Meeting: January 8, 2004 The Coalition's Neighborhood Advisory Committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition Offices, 334 Furman Street at the corner of Joralemon.*

The committee meets regularly on the first Thursday of the month to discuss issues regarding the development of the Park.* Open to the public.*
RSVP to info@bbpc.net by e-mail, or by calling (718) 802-0603.

[Kris]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/waterfront/20040123/18/849

Eight Ways To A Better Future Now

by Carter Craft
January 01, 2004

With talk of a new stadium for the Jets, new buildings for the site of the World Trade Center, and the possibility that the Olympics will come to the city in 2012, New Yorkers seem to be focusing lately on the future, and hoping for a glorious one.

This has happened before – in the World’s Fairs of 1939 and 1964, for example – and, just as with those ambitious projects, the advocates envisioning an Olympics 2012 in New York City promise investments in preparation for the games that will result in permanent improvements in the city’s waterfront and waterfront communities. But those who remember past promises of future glory know that many of the shining new pools and shimmering lakes have turned into decrepit pools and silted-in lakes.

In any case, we shouldn't have to stay in a holding pattern until July 2005 (when the 2012 Olympics host city will be announced) in order to make improvements. There is much to improve right now.

A. Embrace the Water

1) In the city's rush to revitalize the waterfront, we are overlooking the most important physical asset: the water itself. We should make water usage and water dependency a priority for waterfront land use policy. In 2002, the city conducted their first ever inventory of publicly owned waterfront. Now we need to take the next step and identify those inlets, bays, creeks and reaches of rivers where in-water opportunities exist.
2) The city has nearly a dozen marinas, stretching from Throgs Neck to Jamaica Bay. Too many of these places are viewed as physical blights rather than community assets. The city parks department should conduct a review of all municipal marinas and explore new partnerships with community-based organizations, particularly the variety of young and upstart rowing and boating programs.

3) Many great waterfront cities have a dock master, someone who understands the physical characteristics of the water (and the submerged lands, pile fields, and ship wrecks underneath) and can advise other agencies, communities, and waterway users on how that area can be used and maintained. New York should consider this as well.

B. Face up to End-of-Pipe and Bottom-of-Pail Problems

4) The greatest threat to water quality is our waste. One type of waste is the oily, polluted runoff from streets, highway and roofs that comes with every Nor'easter or summer downpour. In such a heavily paved environment as New York, every serious rain event makes our beaches unswimmable and our fish and crabs inedible. Our current municipal strategy for dealing with storm water is to build giant containment tanks that can capture and hold the "storm surges," as they are called. This end-of-pipe "solution," however, is perpetuating the dangerous trend of creating a whole new infrastructure that future generations will have to pay to maintain. To look at it another way, our gas taxes are being used to build new transportation facilities, which create more runoff. Then our water rates are raised to help pay for the new infrastructure needed to capture this runoff. It's a vicious cycle that is also costing us billions.

Rather than have tax- and rate payers perpetuating the problem of endemic over-paving, the city should institute a "Zero Tolerance for Polluted Runoff." This comprehensive greening program would include new wetland buffers at the water's edge, a giant green grid of new street and sidewalk trees throughout the city, and green roofs on buildings.

5) With two of the city's largest central business districts located on the island of Manhattan, we need more marine transfer facilities in midtown and downtown.

C. Invest In Better Mobility

6) Air quality is threatened with the growth of marine transit for goods, for people, and for trash. On the water, so-called "marine engines" are not regulated by the EPA as are land-based engines. New York City, home of the most famous ferry service in the nation, should invest in clean fuel technology to help our fleet get to the forefront of marine transit. The Staten Island Ferry will be 100 years old next year. We should make a more substantive investment in its long-term success that lasts long after the inevitable blue and orange balloons have gone flat.
7) Truck traffic exacts a tremendous toll on the physical infrastructure of the city, from the cobblestone streets of Soho to the structural steel and deck plates of the river crossings. The movement of goods is critical to keeping New York a center of world trade and business.

The city should look at truck ferries as a way to reduce truck traffic and increase the reliability with which goods are delivered. New freight ferries from the Greenville Yards in Jersey City to Brooklyn Army Terminal on Atlantic Avenue could help reduce truck traffic along other congested routes such as the Verrazzano Bridge or Gowanus Expressway.

8) And last, with long-range planning back in vogue for the first time in over a decade, the city should put stock into other long-range planning efforts now ongoing. City University's Gotham Center is looking ahead to "NY2050," and a "Comprehensive Port Improvement Plan" is looking ahead as far as 2063.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance (http://www.waterwire.net).

[billyblancoNYC]

http://www.nycedc.com/Library/Newsletters/WestHarlem/hw_winter04.pdf

[TLOZ Link5]

Maybe a fast ferry to Albany? Rochester will soon have such a link to Toronto, and a similar route between the City and the Capital would improve links between downstate and upstate, as well as help out the economy up there.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Downtown Express (http://www.downtownexpress.com/)

Ball fields near completion; East R. walkway plan to begin

By Albert Amateau

The $50-million reconstruction of the East River Park promenade, stretching from Jackson St. on the Lower East Side to E. 12th St. and closed for more than two years, is scheduled to begin this autumn.

The 1.25-mile park project, outlined at a Jan. 27 Community Board 3 meeting and eagerly awaited by East Village and Lower East Side residents, is scheduled to open in stages, the first 2,000 sq. feet in the summer of 2005.

The entire promenade along the East River is to be completed by the summer of 2006, according to Lawrence Mauro, project manager for the Department of Parks and Recreation, who made the presentation with Elaine Crowley, administrator of city parks in District 3, and John Williams, of MKW Associates, landscape architect for the project.

“After the promenade is finished, we’ll begin work on the bikeway that runs on the western side of the park along the F.D.R. Drive’” Mauro said.

The new promenade will include two “embayments” or inlets, one just south and the other just north of Houston St. “They will bring some East River water into the park,” said Williams. Plans call for bridges across the openings of the bays in addition to the broader walkways curving around them.

A new entrance to the park will be built south of Jackson St. and the reconstructed promenade will have new benches and lighting.

Four new ball fields near Houston St., currently being built as a separate project with funding from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. are expected to open this spring. Two of the fields will be natural grass and two will be artificial turf.

The amphitheater at Grand St., renovated two years ago, will get a new paint job and a new handicap access ramp. The project will include new bathrooms and a reconstruction fireboat station at Grand St. But there is no funding yet to refurbish any other buildings in the park, Mauro said.

The width of the promenade will vary from 18 to 32 feet with plazas carved out in the widest areas. Bordering trees, some planted 60 years ago when the promenade was built on pilings in the river, will be saved and replanted if healthy and replaced where necessary.

The promenade was closed in the summer of 2001 when a Department of Parks survey determined that many of the piles that support the deck were being destroyed by a combination of marine borers and dry rot. The plan then was to complete the reconstruction in two years, “barring unforeseen circumstances.” The World Trade Center attack interrupted the plans.

The project will require the removal of two Con Edison electrical feeder cables and an abandoned fuel line that run the length of the promenade. The electrical cables will be relocated to the bike path along the F.D.R. Drive, Mauro said.

The project will go out to bid this spring, contract approval is expected in July and construction will begin in the autumn, Mauro said.

Albert@DowntownExpress.com


Downtown Express is published by
Community Media LLC.

[Kris]

April 25, 2004

EAST SIDE

As the East River Is Transformed, Industrial Nostalgia Takes Hold

By ERIKA KINETZ

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/25/nyregion/indu184.jpg
Sean Kelly

THE East River has been the city's digestive system. Unlike its sparkling sibling, the Hudson, it has belched with industry for years and unflinchingly done its part in processing the city's solid waste.

Now, as developers are spending $4.25 billion to create more than 2.3 million square feet of office space and 6,000 units of housing along the East River, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is working to save what remains of the river's industrial past.

"If we don't save some of this history while it's out there, we're going to end up looking like the Gold Coast of New Jersey," said Carter Craft, the director of the alliance, referring to the many shiny residential buildings that have popped up across the Hudson facing Manhattan.

Last year, the group got a $40,000 state grant in part to create an East River Industrial Heritage Trail, which would offer intrepid boaters and curious citizens guides to long-forgotten spots like the Greenpoint Terminal Market in Brooklyn, the old captain's boathouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the Fulton Ferry Fireboat House.

The group is also exploring new uses for some old sites. It hopes to transform a sludge tank in Greenpoint into a public swimming pool, and make the old ferry terminal at East 132nd Street in Manhattan - now a mass of decayed gray pilings - into a boat launch.

On a recent Saturday, Mr. Craft led a tour of the 27 industrial sites that the alliance has already identified. The tour boat, a 25-year-old trawler, left from a little marina on 23rd Street and spent three hours crisscrossing the East River.

The water itself was a flat gray that day. Outside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a barge called Matilde was loaded with cement, and a yellow Caterpillar made small progress scooping large piles of sand. The chemical-sweet smell of industry hung in the air.

Just ahead was the old captain's boathouse, a humble steel shed. Mr. Craft envisions it as a water taxi station.

Farther north, an old man stood in the parking lot of the Costco in Long Island City, Queens, and fished. At Hunts Point in the Bronx, the wind picked up. The abandoned South Bronx Marine Transfer Station, which sits near the mouth of the Bronx River, is a weary-looking gray-green shed punched with holes. The waterfront alliance would like to see the structure converted into a transportation hub, in part for goods headed for Hunts Point and the new Fulton Fish Market.

All in all, the East River remains a largely ruined landscape, lined with wild marsh grass, the back ends of school buses, humps of dry dirt, razor wire, railroad tracks vanquished by rust, 11 power stations that spin fine ribbons of steam and four waste-treatment plants.

That's what Mr. Craft likes about it. "The East River has been the kidneys, liver, spleen and urethra of New York City," he said. "That has sort of stigmatized the river over our modern history. The reality is there is nothing we should be ashamed of. We eat, we drink, we throw things away, we go to the bathroom. We manufacture things."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


www.waterwire.net

[krulltime]

Waterfront designers named

May 11, 2004

The city has hired Richard Rogers Partnership and Sharples Holden and Pasquarelli Architects to be lead consultants for a design team that will produce a master plan for redeveloping the East River waterfront.

Economic Development Corp. President Andrew Alper and Director of City Planning Amanda Burden also announced Tuesday that there will be a series of public meetings in June to present preliminary concepts for the waterfront area, which stretches from Battery Park to the Lower East Side.

The master plan, which is expected to be completed in early 2005, will focus attention on the Wall Street, South Street Seaport, Chinatown and Lower East Side communities, and "finally connect them to the East River waterfront," the city said in a press release.

Tuesday’s announcement comes five months after Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his $10 billion "vision for lower Manhattan." That plan included a tunnel under the East River to create a nonstop ride from Manhattan to John F. Kennedy airport, new housing, a new public market on Fulton Street, theaters, galleries and museums.

Copyright 2004, Crain Communications, Inc

[Kris]

May 13, 2004

BLOCKS

Planners Consider a Riverfront Without the F.D.R. Drive

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

AS Boston dismantles its Central Artery, the elevated roadway that stood forbiddingly between downtown and the waterfront, New York City officials are asking whether it is time to take down the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, the elevated roadway that stands forbiddingly between downtown and the waterfront.

Demolition of the F.D.R. viaduct will be considered by the city's newly designated planning consultants for the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan: the Richard Rogers Partnership of London, a leading British architectural firm, and SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, a seven-year-old firm whose office is downtown.

It is an article of faith among planners that cities ought to be reunited with their waterfronts. For instance, the colossal structural centipede known as the Central Artery is now being dismantled as part of the Big Dig project, leaving Bostonians to marvel at swaths of sky they have never seen before or to celebrate the return of a more human scale to the downtown cityscape, even if they have no idea what will come next.

Opening up such space along the East River has an innate appeal.

"Certainly, in concept it's something you'd like to do," Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said yesterday. But much depends on the cost, the potential financing sources and the impact on traffic, he said. "I don't think we go into this with any preconceived notions of what ought to happen."

Gregg Pasquarelli, a principal in SHoP, said, "We're looking at what it means to leave it up and what it means to take it down." They will also look at hybrid ideas, he said, taking as one starting point a conceptual plan prepared in 2002 for the Alliance for Downtown New York and Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan.

That plan, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Greenberg Consultants; and Ove Arup & Partners, recommended dividing the drive south of the Brooklyn Bridge into a roadway and promenade. The plan said that the viaduct was wider there than it needed to be for traffic and that a promenade on the river side would yield unobstructed views of the harbor.

The underside of the viaduct, the plan said, could be transformed from a parking lot into a sheltered colonnade, dotted with retail and food pavilions and seating areas.

Marilyn Jordan Taylor, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, said yesterday that the planning team had looked at keeping the F.D.R. Drive as it is or moving it to street level, where it would become a wide boulevard like West Street.

"It seemed a little ironic," Ms. Taylor said, "to take it down, put the traffic at grade and create a bigger barrier for pedestrians to have to cross."

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill applied for the East River planning contract under a request for proposals issued by the city's Economic Development Corporation, in consultation with the City Planning Department. So did Diller + Scofidio, which offered a wildly imaginative East River megastructure, with a floating forest and a sandy beach, as part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's "Vision for Lower Manhattan" in 2002.

"Either the city felt that this was exactly what they don't want," Ricardo Scofidio said yesterday, "or there were legitimate proposals that were stronger than ours."

Acknowledging that a "lot of very good ideas" were presented in recent years for the East River waterfront, Mr. Doctoroff said: "We wanted to take a fresh look. We also have to be mindful of the financial resources that exist."

BESIDES SHoP and the Rogers firm, the winning team includes the landscape architect Ken Smith and the engineering concern Buro Happold, which worked with SHoP on the Rector Street pedestrian bridge and with Rogers on the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, England. Lord Rogers is already working with Silvercup Studios on a master plan for a mixed-use development on a waterfront site in Long Island City, Queens.

In Manhattan, from Battery Park to East River Park, the city wants the planning consultants to "create a range of development scenarios," including "new and traditional waterfront uses, aesthetic improvements and enhancements of the ecological habitat." After six public meetings and a winnowing process, they are to be finished next February.

Amanda M. Burden, the director of the City Planning Department, said yesterday that a "very important motivation for this initiative was to strengthen the financial district" by improving its connections to the riverfront. She is clearly open to a plan that does not reflexively regard the F.D.R. viaduct as a barrier.

"It has fantastic proportions," she said, "in the sense that it is wide enough and tall enough that there can be great spaces under there." Ms. Burden wants the planning consultants "to really think creatively about how to populate the understructure all year round." She was bold enough to propose dance performances, by way of example.

And after a waterfront tour during yesterday's downpour, she noted another advantage. "I was just walking under it in the rain," Ms. Burden said. "The canopy may be an important element to keep."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[billyblancoNYC]

There are definitely positives and negatives for each, but the main thing is that planning is in the works. it has to start somewhere. Iron out the financiing, etc. later.

It's great to see the city really looking at waterfront development and access. For too many years, it boggles the mind, NYC has had virtually nothing to do with its 500 plus miles of waterfront. What a waste and a disgrace. This city should be number 1 in the world for waterfront access, recreation, etc. (or at least close to the top).

The FDR sucks and is in shambles, but it would cost too much to bury it. I'm all for Battery Park City-like development. Hey, it's pretty much worked before, plus now we can improve on the past.

At any rate, very encouraging news.

[billyblancoNYC]

Sorry, this will be a review or sorts, but I just thought it might be nice to see all the current and proposed waterfront developments in the city (I'm sure I'll miss some, so please add to it if you wish).

Manhattan:
1. Hudson River Park
2. East River Development Plan
3. Harlem River Park Proposal
4. Cruise Lines
5. Trump Place and Park
6. West Harlem Park Development

Queens:
1. Queens West
2. Arverne by the Sea

Brooklyn:
1. Brooklyn Bridge Park
2. Williamsburg/Greenpoint Waterfront Rezoning Proposal
3. DUMBO-area development
4. Coney Island Master Plan Development
5. Oceana Condo complex in Brighton Beach
6. Red Hook Ikea vs. Village Redevelopment Plans
7. Cruise Lines

The Bronx:
1. Various scattered plans throughout the Bronx by Yankee Stadium, development on the South Eastern areas, Harlem River Park.

Staten Island:
1. Homeport Development
2. Continued development of St. George area.

[Kris]

Architect Rogers Aims to Revive New York's East Side Waterfront

June 21 (Bloomberg) -- British architect Richard Rogers is working on a plan to bury part of the highway along New York's East River and create a waterfront from the lower East Side to the southern tip of Manhattan.

Rogers, 70, is known for futuristic-looking buildings such as London's Millennium Dome and Paris's Centre Pompidou, where the utility pipes ride up the outside of the museum. He also designs office towers for companies including British Land Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG. Rogers has a parallel career advising mayors how to revive declining inner-city areas and stop people from moving to the suburbs by offering them apartments, restaurants, green squares and riverfronts.

The architect on May 11 won New York City's competition to design a master plan for the East River waterfront together with Sharples, Holden & Pasquarelli Architects. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, aims to revitalize lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center's destruction.

Rogers, silver-haired and lean in belted trousers and a white shirt, works out of a converted oil refinery on the River Thames in west London's Hammersmith area. The glass-fronted studio has white metal supporting beams and columns, a canteen with pink and orange chairs and an exhibition space where people wander in from the river to see models and photographs of his buildings.

Richard Rogers Partnership, including 75 architects who give 20 percent of the firm's profit to charities, averaged annual revenue of 14.7 million pounds ($27 million) in the past three years. The top salary is six times the pay of an employee of two years' standing.

Lloyd's Headquarters

The displays range from the headquarters of Lloyd's of London's insurance market and DaimlerChrysler's building in Berlin to Rogers's planned Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport and an airport project at Madrid Barajas, Europe's biggest construction site.

Rogers's wife Ruth is the chef of the adjacent River Cafe and co-author of the River Cafe Cook Book. Her restaurant opens onto a garden on the river beside a car park where oil vats once stood. The Rogers live in two stucco 19th century row houses overlooking Chelsea Hospital that were gutted to create a two-story high space inside.

Born in Florence, Italy, Rogers, the son of a doctor and a potter, was raised in London with Bauhaus furniture that he said accustomed him to modern-looking shapes. Rogers followed his uncle, an Italian architect, by entering the profession in 1962 after studying at Yale University. A partnership with Italy's Renzo Piano, who helped Rogers to win a competition to design the Centre Pompidou in 1971, dissolved in 1977.

Two of Rogers's designs in the 1980s, for offices under St. Paul's Cathedral and a new wing for London's National Gallery, were derailed by Prince Charles, who campaigned successfully for copies of older buildings.

Rusting in Paris

Some of Rogers's structures may be costly to maintain. The Centre Pompidou needed two years of renovations in 1997, after 150 million visitors and 20 years of exposure to Parisian weather. The silver-piped Lloyd's building gathers dirt and its six exterior staircases may leave it exposed to security risks. The nearby Baltic Exchange was bombed by the Irish Republican Army in 1993.

``There's no way to terrorist-proof a building,'' said Robert Torday, a spokesman for Rogers.

In Queens, a New York borough, Rogers is designing 2 million square feet of offices, studios, housing and stores for Silvercup Studios, where Home Box Office Inc.'s ``Sex and the City'' television series was filmed. Rogers, who was knighted in 1991 and made a peer in the House of Lords in 1996, is an honorary trustee of New York's Museum of Modern Art, where he will show a planned skyscraper for London's financial district at an exhibition of tall buildings next month. He talked to Bloomberg Muse's Linda Sandler in his studio among the models of his buildings.

Manhattan Plan

Bloomberg: You're doing a waterfront plan in Manhattan and a master plan for a new city district in a Lisbon dockyard. What's the key to making developments like that work?

Rogers: In some ways, cities have had the same needs since Mesopotamia. You want to see your neighbor and you want to go to work and come home and sit on the stoop. You want to have security for yourself and your family, and you want ease of communication. It's very much the same today. We love our kids and we make love in the same way. We like to eat well in places we like.

If you can give these things to people, they'll come back to the city.

Bloomberg: What's involved in your Manhattan plan?

Rogers: The area around the East River is run down. There's a high-level highway along it. On the East River Drive, the buildings look away from the river. They should be facing the river. They should have parks and cafes.

We're learning that motorways don't solve transportation problems, they just bring more cars. On the East River we may bring part of the highway underground around the United Nations Building, or we may bury some of it.

Barcelona Model

We can learn lessons from other cities. Los Angeles has lots of highways and it has the worst congestion. In Copenhagen, people go by bus. Barcelona -- I'm chief adviser to Mayor Joan Clos on urban planning -- had the problem of being a dying port. Now it's got industry, it's got parks along the sea. That's a story we're all trying to replicate.

In London, the success story is the South Bank. Fifteen or 20 years ago, no one would go to the South Bank. Today, you can walk from the Docklands practically to Kew Gardens. It's all accessible, and there are lots of cultural buildings. There's Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Design Museum, the National Film Theatre. There are cafes and restaurants.

New York should recognize it's an island and use the water.

Bloomberg: You had your own plans for the South Bank.

Rogers: They didn't go anywhere. Our design was a great glass wave enveloping the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery and the Purcell Room. It would have hidden the existing concrete structures and created a lot of new public spaces. We won the competition but the funding proved to be unavailable.

London Tower

Bloomberg: What about the tapering skyscraper you've designed for British Land at Leadenhall Street? What effect were you trying to create, and how will a 48-story tower fit in with the 600 historic buildings in the City?

Rogers: When you're designing a tall building in London there are severe constraints. This one leans back to avoid blocking the view of St. Paul's Cathedral from Fleet Street. That's why it's tapered. After that, the design was about legibility. You can read the structure through the glass, you can see how the building was put together. The northern facade contains the stairs, the lifts and servicing.

The design was also about limiting energy use and pollution. It has triple glazing with blinds inside to minimize the use of electric light and air conditioning. It uses chilled water, not air conditioning for cooling.

Fighting for Modernity

When you're putting an office building among historic buildings it has to be in sympathy in quality and mass. But a new building doesn't have to fit in. Every historic building was new at one time. The Strozzi Palace in the 16th century was considered an outrage. It was five stories. It dwarfed its older neighbors. Modernity has always been a battle.

There always has been a juxtaposition of styles. Renaissance architecture is very different from medieval yet we love seeing them together. You can have harmony through juxtaposition, not just by copying older styles.

Paternoster Square (a cluster of offices under St. Paul's that houses the London Stock Exchange and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.) is a continuous sore. The buildings copy older styles and they were not successful.

Bloomberg: What was your plan for Paternoster Square?

Rogers: I had a plan for genuinely modern buildings. They weren't a pastiche. But the mood of the country at the time, led by Prince Charles, was historicism. Prince Charles described modern architecture as a carbuncle.

The Victorians

It was the Victorians who started copying older styles. They wanted gothic or medieval or classical. The great buildings of the Victorian age were engineering works, stations, and the Crystal Palace. They were genuinely modern. The British Museum is less interesting. It's a nice building, but it's a copy.

Bloomberg: The City may be getting as many as five skyscrapers. How will they change people's lives? Because tall buildings attract a lot of people.

Rogers: The problem we're facing is the vitality of cities -- bringing people back to the center. The City had begun to lose corporations to Canary Wharf. It was competing with Paris and with Frankfurt. It turned toward conserving older buildings and the net result was corporations moved to the Docklands (including Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and HSBC Holdings Plc).

Then the City fell in love with good-quality design. Norman Foster and Kohn Pedersen Fox are building elegant towers. That's the way to bring people back to the center.

There are two outstanding things about the building we designed for Leadenhall Street. It has a seven-story atrium and a piazza as big as the Lutyens building that you can see beyond it. (He points to a tower projecting from a model of buildings on the street.)

Leadenhall Piazza

The piazza will increase the number of public cafes and restaurants, it will bring people into the center where there's good, or relatively good, public transport. It would be the only large public space in the Square Mile. Because it's a glazed space, protected from the weather, there are opportunities to host concerts, lectures, readings, screenings.

Ninety percent of the workers at Leadenhall Street will use public transport because there's no parking and few parking meters. Congestion charging limits the traffic, gives us money for buses. If you're looking for a city where you can encourage walking and bikes, you need a well-designed working city that's compact, with high density.

Bloomberg: What's it like working for British Land?

Rogers: I have an old standing relationship with John Ritblat (chairman of the U.K.'s second-largest real estate developer), but this is our first project for him. He has strong views. You need a good partner when you're designing a building. It's like a game of ping pong.

Partners

We've designed buildings for Elliott Bernerd of Chelsfield Plc at Paddington (a west London development near the station). He was chairman of the South Bank Centre. And for Stuart Lipton of Stanhope Plc we're doing Chiswick Park, (a west London office project that has won four architectural awards). Lipton was head of CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, a government-appointed body whose role is to improve buildings and open spaces).

Bloomberg: What work are you doing for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, as his adviser of planning?

Rogers: We're working on a plan to improve the streets in London -- to make pavements where people can walk, and green squares.

We're starting a refurbishment of 100 of London's green squares. One of the success stories has been the pedestrianization of Trafalgar Square.

We're doing a lot of plans for the Thames Gateway (an area of east London from Tower Bridge to Dartford). London will have grown by 23 percent between 1986 and 2016. Livingstone says the growth must all be in the 33 boroughs, there must be no sprawl.

London is going through its greatest vitality ever. It's much better than the 1960s. Then it was inward-looking.

Steel and Glass

Bloomberg: What are your favorite buildings and why do you like them?

Rogers: The Pompidou Center is one of my favorites. 1971 was a different era. Piano and I were the first foreign architects to have our own firms in France since the war. Now it's common. We had a tremendous client in Robert Bordaz, the first president of the center. He was in charge of the French withdrawal from Vietnam, and he made this building possible. It took six years to completion. The client relationship is very important.

It's hard to say which are your favorite buildings. It's like saying, which is your favorite child. But I do like the house I built for my parents in Wimbledon opposite the common. It's steel and glass with a lot of plants and natural light. My mother was a potter and she loved it.

Last Updated: June 20, 2004 19:17 EDT


Rogers to Plan Queens Waterfront Complex (http://forums.wirednewyork.com/viewtopic.php?t=1144)

[billyblancoNYC]

Volume 17 • Issue 5 | June 25 - July 1, 2004

City brainstorms on the E. River

By Elizabeth O’Brien

http://downtownexpress.com/de_59/river.jpg
A rendering of a plan to improve the East River walkway Downtown and add retail under the F.D.R. Drive, by SHoP Architects and Richard Rogers Partnership. The current bike path would be relocated nearby under this scheme.

A beach at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, 1,000 river birch trees along the esplanade, recreation and retail under the F.D.R. Drive. These are among the possibilities for a revitalized East River waterfront that the city presented to the community this week.

At a June 21 meeting of Community Board 1, the city outlined a vision for the East River waterfront that would transform today’s inaccessible, trash-strewn stretch of land into a recreational paradise worthy of the prime real estate that it occupies. The study area extends from the tip of Lower Manhattan to Montgomery St. on the Lower East Side, where the East River Park ends.

“This could be an incredible gift for future generations,” said Gregg Pasquarelli, an architect with Manhattan-based SHoP Architects, one of several firms the city commissioned to submit designs for the waterfront. Richard Rogers Partnership, the celebrated British architectural firm, created Monday’s presentation with SHoP.

Officials stressed their design was an initial rendering and asked for community input to help it progress. Funding for the project has not been established yet, and it remains unclear how many of the proposed design elements will actually come to pass. Daniel Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, has sought money from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to fund improvements for the East River waterfront.

Short-term goals of waterfront revitalization included improving access to the river, completing the circle of green ringing Manhattan, and creating a waterfront environment that would sustain growth over time. Monday’s presentation focused on land designs that could be accomplished within three to five years. Future presentations will tackle the more complex and heavily regulated maritime aspects, officials said.

Chain link fences cut people off from the river along at least 14 acres of waterfront, presenters said, and removing the fences and concrete jersey barriers would represent one of the easiest improvements under consideration. The plan would also focus on creating direct access to the waterfront from places like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Coenties Slip, possibly by a new pedestrian bridge. Another new pedestrian bridge was proposed to link the renovated Whitehall Ferry terminal to the esplanade.

City planning officials said the Community Board 1-Downtown Alliance waterfront study served as a valuable reference for the designs presented on Monday. Completed in 2002 by the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the C.B. 1 plan was an “incredibly well-done study,” Amanda Burden, chairperson of City Planning, said at the meeting. Like the city design, it featured a pedestrian walkway under the F.D.R., with shops and cafes.

“I don’t have to tell anyone here that the East River waterfront is one of the most important elements in the revitalization of Lower Manhattan,” Burden said.

Community board members said they appreciated that the city was finally turning its attention to the East Side.

“First of all, I’m ecstatic we’re talking about the East Side waterfront,” said John Fratta, a board member and Southbridge Towers resident. Fratta said he would prefer to see more maritime uses proposed for the Seaport area.

Many sounded a note of concern that the spruced up waterfront would turn into a tourist trap. One plan under consideration for Pier 14 near the South Street Seaport includes a large Ferris wheel by the London firm Tussauds Group, of celebrity wax-figure museum fame.

“It’s something we’re keeping an open mind to, but nothing has been decided yet,” said Robert Balder, the director of Lower Manhattan development for the mayor’s office.

“We do not want it in our community,” said Linda Roche, chairperson of the C.B. 1 waterfront committee.

Some offered practical suggestions about what they would like to see in the area instead. Clara Lipson, a long-time Seaport resident, said she would welcome a Whole Foods-type market.

“It’s a highly residential area and there’s really no place to shop,” Lipson said.

Community members have suggested that Whole Foods would make a good addition to the Seaport after the Fulton Fish Market leaves for the Bronx around the end of this year. The Rouse Company, operator of the Seaport retail, has right of first refusal on the Tin Building and the Fulton Market Stalls, two buildings now occupied by the market.

Michael Piazzola, general manager of the Seaport Marketplace, has said a problem with Whole Foods was that the popular chain required 39,000 square feet and there were few spaces of that size within the Seaport.

Balder was mum on what might be in store for the Seaport once the fish market leaves, saying only that the city had been in discussions with the Rouse Company.

The plan for the East River waterfront will be finalized in about eight months, city officials said. None of the plans proposed would block the surrounding area’s water view, the architects said.

Instead, Pasquarelli said, the design would revive a neglected part of the city: “Why not bring the of life in New York right to the edge?”

Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com

http://downtownexpress.com/de_59/citybrainstormsonthee.html

[TLOZ Link5]

Retail under the FDR is a wonderful idea. It reminds me of Guastavino's and the Food Emporium in the arches of the 59th Street Bridge viaduct. A big supermarket definitely needs to be built in that neighborhood.

[BPC]

Retail under the FDR is a wonderful idea. It reminds me of Guastavino's and the Food Emporium in the arches of the 59th Street Bridge viaduct. A big supermarket definitely needs to be built in that neighborhood.

Guastavino's was a spectacular edition to that neighborhood. The difference is that the 59th Street space, if I remember correctlly, was unused before then. The problem here is that the space under the Lower FDR is already being used. Hundreds of buses park there every day. Without that space, they will be circling Lower Manhattan streets belching fumes, or parking illegally on our tiny streets down here. Where else are they going to go? I think that is the first issue which CB1 needs to look at, before wasting its time with pretty renderings from SOM.

[TLOZ Link5]

Hasn't the LMDC addressed that situation? A bus terminal is part of the transportation plan.

[ZippyTheChimp]

No.

The WTC facility will be a bus garage to handle (barely) the expected increase in tour buses.

A bus terminal was needed long before 09/11 to handle commuter buses. The city should have addressed the problem while route 9A was being constructed. I don't see how they can ignore it if the space under the FDR is developed.

[Edward]

Two ferries and an airplane on the East River.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/waterfront/east_river/east_river_5july04.jpg

[krulltime]

:P cool catch there!

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.downtownexpress.com/

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_74/city.jpg
Rendering of a plan to convert the Peck Slip parking lot used by Fulton Fish Market trucks into a plaza with a reflecting pool by Richard Rogers Partnership, SHoP Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architect.

City floats tower-park idea for the East River

By Josh Rogers

After a half century or so of new East Side waterfront plans, city officials think they may have an idea that won’t end up with all of the others – that is, sleeping with the East River fishes. They are now considering building seven apartment towers over the F.D.R. Drive to pay for an additional 12 acres of park space in Lower Manhattan.

The plan also includes creating the “Champs Elysées of the Lower East Side,” building a pedestrian-cycling ramp connecting Battery Park to the East River, building new park spaces on Peck Slip and Pier 15 near the Seaport, and adding pavilion spaces under the F.D.R. for things like cafes, studios, cultural spaces, and community centers. This part of the plan would not require the towers and could be completed in phases over the next three to five years. It is expected to cost at least $100 million and be paid for mostly with federal, post-9/11 money administered by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

Amanda Burden, chairperson of the City Planning Commission, told Downtown Express that she was hopeful the L.M.D.C. board would authorize the money by the end of the year.

The tower plan is considered a longer-term project. Up to seven narrow towers, perhaps as tall as 400 feet, would rise from the street through the center of the elevated F.D.R. The apartments could generate several hundred million dollars of revenue needed to build and maintain about 12 acres of new park space over the river. Even though the slips would cover more of the water than the traditional piers in the Hudson River Park, city consultants say they would be designed to be friendly to marine life and the slips would have fewer structures in the river than piers. The State Dept. of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers have long been reluctant to approve projects that involve rebuilding or repairing piers because of the effects to fish.

The buildings would cover a six-block area and be near Old Slip, Gouverneur La., Wall St., Pine St. and Maiden La. They would line up with the streets to create clear access to the river, and protect whatever river view corridors exist in spite of the elevated roadway.

The seven proposed buildings combined, would be a maximum of about 1 million square feet. City officials, who presented the plan to a Community Board 1 committee Wednesday, said they were open to building fewer or smaller buildings, but that would also mean the new park space would be reduced. They believe they can finance two square feet of park space for every three square feet of apartment space, although detailed financial plans with various options are still being studied.

Michael Davies, a director of Richard Rogers Partnership, a British architectural firm working on the project, said the plan would help New York catch up to other cities by making better use of its rivers.

“The waterfront is way below the stature of this great city,” Davies told C.B. 1 members. “[This will] turn it into the front yard for Downtown.”

Some nearby building owners and their representatives are beginning to react negatively to the tower part of the plan, concerned about the loss of river views and the effects to the F.D.R., which would be reduced by one or two lanes.

“To me the drive is an asset,” Harry Bridgwood, who manages the massive office building at 55 Water St., said in a telephone interview. He said prospective commercial tenants typically want to make sure that black car limousines will be able to get to and from the building quickly. Condo owners at 3 Hanover Sq., who opposed a proposal several years ago to build a trading floor office tower on 55 Water St. on an elevated plaza, may also raise objections.

Many people at the meeting reacted favorably to the general park aspects of the plan, while objecting to some of the specifics.

Randy Polumbo, who lives and works in the Seaport, said he has to constantly clean his windows because of car fumes from the highway.

“We don’t really have a view corridor, we have an F.D.R. corridor,” said Polumbo. “The F.D.R. is so ugly. I feel like you are threading this large intestine through this jewel.”

Polumbo, who owns his building, said he thought the roadway should be taken down altogether. He went on to say that if Lower Manhattan had “to sell its soul” to accept more large buildings, it is important to make sure the buildings are architecturally significant and that some of the grit of the historic Seaport neighborhood be preserved when the Fulton Fish Market leaves toward the beginning of next year.

City Planning’s Burden told Polumbo: “I loved what you said.”

As for taking down the F.D.R., consultants did consider it but decided not to do it because it would have required an eight-lane, street-level roadway. The Downtown Alliance and C.B. 1 did a joint study of the area several years ago and concluded that the F.D.R. should not be taken down and the area underneath could be used for pavilions similar to the city’s current plan. The study also considered closing a few lanes of the roadway to create a walkway. Now the reduced lanes may be used to create space for residential building cores.

The apartments would be attached to the core and cantilever over the highway with waterfront views to the east and no western windows facing Lower Manhattan’s skyscrapers. The apartment floor plate would be small, about 5,000 square feet, which could accommodate several apartments per floor.

Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects said the buildings could be built without closing any additional lanes of the F.D.R. The lowest level apartments would be over the roadway and be the equivalent of five stories off of the ground.

The first phase improvements designed by Rogers Partnership, SHoP and landscape architect Ken Smith, include the pedestrian-bicycle ramp connection near the historic Battery Maritime Building, a reflecting pool plaza to replace the Fish Market parking area on Peck Slip, rebuilding open space on Pier 15, a tree-lined boulevard along Allen and Pike Sts. (what Pasquarelli likened to the Champs Elysées), a better southern entrance to East River Park, the F.D.R. pavilions, and could include things like 1,000 birch trees and a small beach area near the Brooklyn Bridge.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_74/city4.jpg
A look at the proposed pavilions to be built under the F.D.R., above and what the area looks like now, below.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_74/city5.jpg

Paul Goldstein, C.B. 1’s district manager, said the short term plans were “under-whelming” because so much of the money is being used for the Maritime ramp. “I think we are deferring everything for 10 or 20 years,” said Goldstein. He said the plans for open space on Pier 15 looked to be geared to accommodate tall ships and not the most pressing park need on the East Side – play space for children.

City Planning officials stressed that it was still early in the process, but seemed much more willing to design something different for Pier 15 than not building the Battery building connection. The city spent $36 million to restore the building’s exterior but the interior still needs a major investment to convert it into a new use. Ferries to Governors Island also leave from the building.

For many years, Burden has been a strong advocate for creating a continuous esplanade around Manhattan and said the ramp was an important piece to the goal.

She said the Maritime Building ramp would be considerably less than $50 million, although precise figures have not been worked out.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, Manhattan office director of City Planning, said the city is still talking with the L.M.D.C. about whether the state-city agency is willing to cover the costs of the ramp.

Like Burden, Chakrabarti said he is confident a large amount of L.M.D.C. money is coming soon for the first phase of the project. “We are optimistic about that,” he told board members. “As we go into the more ambitious schemes, there is no identifiable funding.”

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_74/city3.jpg
The city hopes to build a ramp in this area near the Battery Maritime Building so pedestrians and cyclists near Battery Park can get to the East River esplanade easily. Some residents fear the costs may be too high for a short term project and should be put on the backburner in favor of other park improvements.

That’s why the residential buildings would be needed, he added. The city expects to issue long-term ground leases to developers, similar to the way Battery Park City was constructed. For 30 years, Downtown’s East River waterfront was zoned to be land-filled and create an east side version of B.P.C., but the plan never got close to being approved by the Army Corps and the zoning was changed in the 1990s.

Carl Weisbrod, president of the Downtown Alliance and a L.M.D.C. board member, said he is happy to see the movement to improve the waterfront, but he has reservations about the tower idea.

The first phase would require moving the tour buses and cars that currently park under the F.D.R. Moving the parking lot has long been a goal of C.B. 1, the city and others, but there is still no alternative site.

If the parking lot is moved, it would set up pavilion space for retail near well-traveled streets like Wall and Fulton, and opportunities to bring in cultural and community spaces near other streets, Chakrabarti said.

Goldstein wanted to know what was in the works for the adjacent areas. The L.M.D.C. has been looking to make improvements along Fulton St., but has not yet presented its ideas to the community board and the next use for the Fulton Fish Market buildings remains up in the air.

City officials said a children’s play area is planned for Burling Slip as part of the Fulton St. plan. General Growth Properties is in the process of taking over control of the Seaport mall as part of its recently-announced purchase of the Rouse Corp., said Bob Balder, who works in the mayor’s office. Once the sale of Rouse is complete, General Growth will own Rouse’s right of first refusal to redevelop two of the market buildings. Balder said this provision in the city’s mall lease wouldn’t take effect until the market relocates to the Bronx early next year.

Davies said, “when the Fulton Fish Market leaves, [Peck Slip] becomes a great New York square.”

Community Board 1 is planning to schedule a meeting to discuss the plans further and City Planning officials are expected to present the plan to Community Board 3 on Oct. 13 at 6:30 p.m., 466 Grand St.

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

Downtown Express is published by
Community Media LLC.
Email: news@downtownexpress.com

[billyblancoNYC]

About time. The FDR and West Side H'way = BIG waste of space. Too much to demo or tunnel, build over. I just bitched about this to my wife, again, yesterday. Hopefully it will get done and be superb in design, since it will redefine that postcard downtown skyline.

[NYatKNIGHT]

It's frustrating that the city's oldest, most historically significant stretch of waterfront is still awaiting a definitive development plan, but at the very least there ought to be a walkway/bikepath that connects Brooklyn Bridge to the Battery. Right now it's an obstacle course at best. I thought for sure that at least something temporary would have been part of the work going on around the Battery Maritime Building.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.downtownexpress.com/

Can the waterfront improve much if the F.D.R. stays?

By Kit White

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_75/waterfront.gif
Courtesy of Richard Rogers Partnership/ SHoP Architects/ Ken Smith Landscape Architect
Rendering of the city’s proposal to build cafes under the F.D.R. Drive.

For decades, the East River shoreline between East River Park and Battery Park has languished as a forgotten remnant of a misbegotten vision to encircle Manhattan in a maze of roadways that denied access to its greatest asset. No major city has made so little of so much and taken so long to try to recoup its loss. With a plan unveiled last Wednesday, the city’s Economic Development Corp. and the City Planning Commission have finally turned their attention to creating a master plan to reclaim the south shoreline.

Richard Rogers Partnership of London and SHoP Architects and landscape architect Ken Smith of New York have laid out a long-term scheme to beautify and revitalize the riverfront and connect it with East River Park on the north and on the south at Battery Park. The southern connection to Battery Park is an elaborate, ramped park-scape whose structural and design complexity clearly reflects the teams’ belief that it represents the most critical element of the entire design. Additionally, the design calls for treating the underside of the F.D.R. Drive with lights and glass pavilions to house cultural and community amenities.

Using the existing elevated highway as their leitmotif for the waterfront’s potential, they further proposed the possibility of building slim residential towers above the F.D.R. as a means of raising revenue for the creation of up to 12 acres of park extending over the river. The design, as the three teams presented it, unfolded with a certain ineluctable logic: save money by leaving the elevated highway in place and exploit it for its developable space. As powerful as that logic is, it is the plan’s terrible trap and a fatal flaw that leads this design in the wrong direction.

According to the designers, there are two reasons to leave the F.D.R. in place: cost of removal and a shortage of space beneath the elevated roadway for enough lanes to accommodate traffic. For those who know the area, the rationale seems defective. The F.D.R. is an unsightly physical and visual barrier to the waterfront. If we are serious about reclaiming the waterfront for public access, then half-measures should be rejected. Do we really care about reconnecting to the shoreline, or do we simply wish to spend millions of dollars on what looks like a half-hearted attempt to make do with a bad situation?

The amount of traffic that courses under the F.D.R. down South St. is minimal and the elevated portion of the drive south of the Brooklyn Bridge is grossly underutilized. The claims that an eight-lane South St. would be required to accommodate traffic if the elevated roadway was removed seem exaggerated. Even six lanes would probably be unnecessary between the Brooklyn Bridge and the underpass. Four lanes should be able to handle the traffic in that stretch and if there were drop-off lanes by the Seaport then there would be no problem.

Additionally, if New York is serious about retaining its place as a great city of the world, then it must address the very real possibility of a future with less traffic, not more. The argument for the necessity of more and larger roads sounds suspiciously like the hyperbolic claims used to advance the ill-fated Westway project in the late ’70s. We now have the more humane and less costly solution to that failed argument, and Manhattan is better and more livable for it.

There is also something unsettling about the proposition that in order to have a public amenity as critical as a vital shoreline, private financing through jury-rigged towers atop an aging eyesore is the only way. There was a time when we did not feel that important public amenities had to pay their own way or that they were envisioned as extensions of the private sector. When the architect Richard Morris Hunt proposed that Central Park have elaborate entrance gates solely along Fifth Ave. across from the homes of the City’s wealthiest citizens, the park’s designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, quit in protest. It took years for the city to woo him back and his steadfast belief that the park was a gift to the people from the people is his great legacy to us. We should heed his example.

That the C.P.C. and E.D.C. have undertaken a master plan for the south shore is admirable and long overdue. But it offers little in the short term for the city’s beleaguered Downtown residents who have little parkland to call their own. Even over the life of this plan, there is little nature promised without caveats costly to its integrity as a true public space. Is this a plan for a real shoreline with the promise of parkland, or is it an elaborately masked proposal for more development? This plan seems to offer a vision of the future with very little vision in it.

Kit White is an artist and designer who restored his building in the South St. Seaport and lives in the neighborhood.

Downtown Express is published by
Community Media LLC.

Email: josh@downtownexpress.com

[ryan]

Jane Jacobs argued this point years ago: fewer roads means less traffic. The westside highway was removed, and it didn't kill that area - look at the real estate boom in the far west side now + all the riverfront parkland... NYC is too car-oriented.

[alejo]

have you been in LA?

[Kris]

February 1, 2005

Long, Green Pathway Planned Along Brooklyn Waterfront

By DIANE CARDWELL


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/p.gifedestrians and cyclists, limited only by their own hamstrings and quadriceps, could one day travel 22 miles along a waterfront greenway from North Brooklyn to Coney Island, under a plan to be unveiled today.

The vision of strolling or whizzing past bustling parks and quaint row houses or taking in panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline, Governors Island and the open sea still faces several hurdles. But as government officials, private businesses and community advocates look to remake the city's waterfronts, the greenway plan, like a 24-speed Specialized Sirrus rolling downhill, is gaining momentum.

The plan was developed by Brooklyn Greenway Initiative and the Regional Plan Association. It would use a protected pathway and parkland that city planning officials have incorporated in a proposal to rezone the industrial waterfront in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. It would also pass through Brooklyn Bridge Park a joint city-state project.

The city's Department of Transportation is scheduled to begin construction in the fall of a two-lane bike path running along Columbia and Van Brunt Streets from Cobble Hill into Red Hook.

And tonight, planners are set to present the first conceptual design for seven miles of pathway that would link South Williamsburg to Sunset Park and an existing path on the Shore Parkway, as well as to Manhattan greenways across Brooklyn's three East River bridges.

"We saw this as a once-in-a-century opportunity to get continuous public access to the waterfront," Milton Puryear, co-chairman and director of planning at the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, said of the planning effort. "It's a window of opportunity that will close pretty quickly once development gets more momentum."

The plan, in the works since the late 1990's, grew out of community efforts to create a waterfront path in Red Hook, Mr. Puryear said. Although the proposal dovetails with the city's plan to create 350 miles of bicycle and pedestrian paths through and around the boroughs, it has been complicated by Brooklyn's industrial and postindustrial landscape.

Property along the waterfront is controlled by several public and private entities, planners said, with property lines frequently running in the midst of the proposed pathway. As a result, planners said, the route at times comes inland, as it does to loop around the Navy Yard, and runs along city streets.

Still, the greenway has captured the imaginations of residents, business owners and elected officials. Borough President Marty Markowitz, for instance, helped the group secure money from a state waterfront revitalization program for the public planning process.

Robert Pirani, director of environmental programs at the Regional Plan Association, which completed the technical aspects of the plan, said that the greenway could serve as a powerful magnet to an area whose future is very much up for grabs.

"All up and down the waterfront, there are proposals for new uses and for maintaining historic maritime uses in a new way," he said. "The harbor as a whole is one of the great region-shaping areas in the metropolitan area." Given the right amenities and access, he said, "The harbor can be a reason that people decide to live and work in New York City instead of the fringes."

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[TLOZ Link5]

Excellent. Some neighborhoods along the way, like Bay Ridge, already have waterfront access. This is a great idea but too long in becoming reality.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The Greenway is excellent from Bay Parkway to Owls Head, completely isolated from traffic. But the Bay Ridge neighborhood has poor access to its own waterfront. In the 2 mile stretch north from the Verrazano, there are only a few pedestrian bridges over the Belt Parkway. Too bad, because the entire length of Bay Ridge along the road is parkland.

http://www.pbase.com/zippythechimp/image/20972881.jpg

[NewYorkYankee]

This is good news. Im glad that Manhattan and Brooklyn are seeing the value of their waterfronts.

[billyblancoNYC]

This is good news. Im glad that Manhattan and Brooklyn are seeing the value of their waterfronts.

There are actually a ton of major and minor waterfront development plans all over the city, with most creating new recreation space and housing. It's a major and long overdue shift for the city, but years from now, it will be pretty amazing...I hope.

[Kris]

Manhattan Waterfront Greenway (http://nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/mwg/mwghome.html)

[billyblancoNYC]

Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway:

http://www.brooklyngreenway.org/

[Kris]

March 2, 2005

Along the East River, Everything Old Is to Be Made New Again

By DAVID W. DUNLAP (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DAVID%20W.%20DUNLAP&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DAVID%20W.%20DUNLAP&inline=nyt-per)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/t.gifhe Bloomberg administration has shown in detail for the first time how it would reconnect Lower Manhattan to the East River waterfront, now a place of skimpy amenities and looming obstacles, chief among them the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

"This crucial link is absolutely essential to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan," said Amanda M. Burden, director of the City Planning Department, which is preparing the East River plan. She is also chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, which was shown the proposals on Monday.

A new two-mile esplanade and bicycle path - no less than 40 feet wide in most places - would run along the river, linking Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan Island to the East River Park, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Benches, tables, planters and trellises would line the planked walkway.

More than a dozen small, boxy pavilions for shopping, recreation, cultural programs and community gatherings would be built under the F.D.R. Drive, each with about 10,000 square feet of space. Some might have facades that could be opened in summer. The elevated highway viaduct would remain, but its underside would get new lighting and cladding to improve its appearance and acoustics.

The missing Pier 15, south of Fulton Street, would be rebuilt, using a steel truss to permit far greater distance between pilings. The upper surface of the three-quarter-acre deck would be shaped into hillocks and terraces, covered with landscaped plantings. A clam shack might even complete this naturalistic scene, planners said whimsically.

Public space would be reclaimed in the wide, wedgelike former boat slips along South Street. Now serving as small streets and parking lots, these slips could convey a strong sense of maritime history. Peck Slip, for instance, might have a shallow 4,000-square-foot pool at its center that could be used in winter as a skating rink.

The most ambitious proposal involves moving the mouth of the Battery Park underpass ramp about 350 feet north, just beyond Broad Street. That would create a one-acre plaza in front of the landmark Battery Maritime Building.

"The key win is a great public place here," said Michael J. P. Davies of the Richard Rogers Partnership in London, which has been working on the East River plan for almost a year with Ken Smith of Ken Smith Landscape Architect and Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli.

The latest version of the plan will be shown soon to Community Boards 1 and 3.

The city expects to ask the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for $150 million to finance the proposals, which Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said in a brief telephone interview were "definitely achievable."

Mr. Doctoroff said, "One of Lower Manhattan's competitive advantages is the fact that it's surrounded on three sides by water." Battery Park City and the renovated Battery Park already offer public access on two sides, he said, adding, "We want to complete that."

Of the city's requested $150 million, $60 million would go to build the esplanade and improve the F.D.R. Drive viaduct, said Raymond Gastil, director of the Manhattan planning office. Rebuilding Pier 15 and renovating Pier 35, Pier 42 and the north side of Pier 17 would cost $40 million. Fourteen pavilions would cost a total of $30 million, and reclaiming the slips would cost $10 million. The city is not seeking the $65 million needed to move the underpass entrance, but will look for $10 million to pay for the engineering studies.

It is unclear how much the city can expect. "There are a vast number of demands on the L.M.D.C.'s limited remaining funds," said Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for the development corporation, "and the demands being made by the city alone exceed available monies. Our first priority remains the creation of a fitting memorial."

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[ZippyTheChimp]

East River Waterfront Study (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/erw/index.html)

[NYatKNIGHT]

March 11 - 17, 2005
www.downtownexpress.com (http://www.downtownexpress.com/)

Board likes East River plan changes

By Ronda Kaysen
Ronda@downtownexprss.com


After half a century of floating plans for the East River waterfront, it looks like the Bloomberg Administration may have finally sunk anchor with Community Board 1. The Department of City Planning unveiled detailed plans to redevelop the waterfront at a Monday night C.B. 1 meeting, to the delight of many board members.

“It is safe to say that we are very enthusiastic about this plan,” Waterfront Committee chairperson Linda Roche said at the joint Waterfront-Financial District Committee meeting. “Especially the Battery Maritime Building.”

Perhaps the most dramatic — and well-received change — is to the Battery Maritime Building. The plan calls for moving the mouth of the Battery Park underpass ramp about 350 feet north to Broad St. Moving the ramp away from the Maritime Building would create three-quarters of an acre of open plaza space — a scarce resource on Downtown’s East Side.

City Planning has decided to seek separate transportation funding for the Maritime Building component of the project, although Rachaele Raynoff, a spokesperson for the department, declined to site specific funding sources in an interview with Downtown Express.

Roche and other C.B. 1 members had been concerned that too much money in the project’s first phase would be devoted to connecting the bike path with the West Side at the Battery Maritime Building rather than improving the East River esplanade itself.

“This is a crucial plan to strengthen Lower Manhattan,” City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden said at the meeting. “The East River waterfront is one of the most essential waterfronts in the city.”

The design also includes as many as 15 pavilions under the F.D.R. Drive, which would be used for shops, community and cultural programs and recreation centers. In an effort to transform the highway viaduct into something other than an eyesore, the plans would include adding lighting and cladding.

The demolished Pier 15 would be restored using sparsely placed pilings to better protect marine life. The pier would have an upper and lower deck, with a landscaped, sloped terrace above and space for boats to moor below.

“We would like to rethink the way we build piers,” Michael Samuelian, director of Lower Manhattan special projects for City Planning said at the meeting.

In a marked change from the October proposal, the residential towers proposed to sit atop the F.D.R. Drive are now gone from the renderings and the plans. But a reflecting pool on Peck Slip, which could be used as a mini ice-skating rink in the wintertime — and was originally met with skepticism by board members — still remains.


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Pier 15 near the South Street Seaport would be rebuilt into park space that would also accommodate ships under the city’s plan for the East River waterfront, above and below.


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Rendering of the proposal for the East River esplanade.



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Renderings by ShoP/Richard Rogers Partnership/Ken Smith Landscape Architect

[NewYorkYankee]

I didnt see a completion date...anyone?

[Edward]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-rive0905,0,673808.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

JUSTIN DAVIDSON
STAFF WRITER

September 5, 2005

To walk the East River waterfront from the Battery to the Williamsburg Bridge is to pick one's way through a derelict but magical terrain of heart-swelling views, parking lots, red-brick memories of New York City's stevedore past and stretches of cracked asphalt slick with fish slime.

But if Amanda Burden, the persuasively enthusiastic commissioner of city planning, is to be believed, this two-mile strip will soon be transformed into a glimmering, romantic esplanade. Financial barons will sit on benches and do lunchtime deals by cell phone. Residents of Chinatown will hold martial arts classes and painting exhibits in well-lit glass pavilions tucked under the FDR Drive. The waterfront will throb once again, with leisure instead of labor.

"The most important thing is to give people access to the river," said Burden, standing under the elevated highway that cuts between the river and the cliff-like housing projects of the Lower East Side. She surveyed a triple barrier of chain-link fence, parked trucks and a carpeting of litter. "Right now, they can't get there."

And when they can, what will they find? A rarefied team of architects that includes the British Lord Richard Rogers, the New York-based firm SHoP and the landscape designer Ken Smith has furnished the city with some specific, if preliminary, visions. The underside of the FDR Drive will be metal-clad and exuberantly lit, to make it rather more like a gleaming canopy and less like a grimly functional overpass.

The strip of park will extend out onto reconfigured piers, including an undulating, multi-leveled boardwalk veiling the Sanitation Department's truck maintenance facility at Pier 35. The waterfront also will extend its fingers upland into the city with a series of landscaped medians and open plazas.

Lubricating the transition from rosy vision to reality is a $150-million grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency that oversees the efforts to rebuild after 9/11. The waterfront is not part of the World Trade Center site, and its problems did not originate with terrorist attacks.

But the framework of post-9/11 reconstruction provided the project with money, a rationale -- revitalizing lower Manhattan -- and a new sense of urgency. And, compared with the monstrous cost and difficulties of forcing towers, train stations, memorials and museums to bloom out of the bedrock of Ground Zero, beautifying the waterfront seems like a cheap and easy way to increase the area's allure, both for residents and corporate tenants.

"In five or 10 years, lower Manhattan will be not only the emotional part of the city, but it will also be the place that everyone wants to be," says developer Frank Sciame.

Sciame is backing that prediction with his own private projects. He has renovated a collection of 18th century buildings along Front Street and on Peck Slip, a square that is now filled with cars but that Burden and her staff at City Planning envision transforming into a green-fringed plaza around a reflecting pool.

More audaciously, Sciame proposes to build 80 South Street, which is not so much a traditional luxury apartment tower as a concoction of stacked, off-kilter cubes -- vertical townhouses for the very rich. The architect is Santiago Calatrava, who designed the equally flamboyant World Trade Center PATH station now under construction.

"Without the bold moves by the public sector at Ground Zero -- the Calatrava station and all the great buildings that will be there -- I would never have planned a building like 80 South Street," Sciame said.

Recovering from catastrophe may be the latest impetus for rehabilitating the south-facing strip of Manhattan's shore, but the East River Esplanade is only the latest in a 40-year history of grand plans. Earlier proposals ranged from an FDR memorial by Louis Kahn to a housing complex for nearly 10,000 families, a Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry and a floating mountain bike playland. If the new plan is built, it will be because it is not some mountaintop visionary's idea, but the distillation of dozens of meetings with local community groups.

"This plan shows that you don't necessarily need enormous pieces of architecture to make the East River a totally different place," said Raymond Gastil, director of city planning for Manhattan. "It's real, it's doable and it will change the city's edge."

Two other developments might help nudge the plan toward realization. The first is the closing of the Fulton Fish Market, which will relieve the neighborhood of a good deal of truck traffic and some particularly overripe odors. The second is the takeover last November of the failing South Street Seaport mall on Pier 17 by General Growth.

The Chicago-based real estate company also has the right to lease the empty fish market, and it has hired the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle to explore options for extending the mall into other buildings. The company's plans will have to mesh with those of the city.

"Whatever General Growth wants to do, they'll have to come to us [for approvals], so we have a lot of leverage," said Michael Samuelian, who oversees all lower Manhattan projects at the Department of City Planning.

Most large-scale public works projects in Manhattan have to wade through a quicksand of opposition; this one seems to be gliding on an air cushion of optimism. One point in the plan's favor is that its ambitions more or less match its resources. Still, one of its most ardent supporters, Carter Craft, director of the advocacy group Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, warned that the money could easily bleed away in half-measures.

"You can spend $150 million really quick and not have a lot to show for it