Dept of Sanitation Garage in Hudson Square

[bigkdc]

As has been discussed in many threads here, plans have finally come out for a new sanitation garage in hudson square. The plan is to build 3 facilities in the area with the largest being in the UPS parking lot at the corner of Spring St and West St. Evidently the plan is for a joint use facility for UPS and the dept of sanitation that will be 140-150 feet high.

The proposed plan is in its early stages but the fight has already begun as there is a big turnout planned by the friends of hudson square at a hearing on the project on Jan 31.

It will be interesting to see how all of the folks who have purchased milion dollar plus condos in the area will react as news gets out. More details on the project can be found at the following link:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dsny/downloa...s/MJLMN125.pdf

[lofter1]

It might be very difficult to win a fight against this plan.

DSNY is under order to remove existing facilities from the Piers / Hudson River Park. A large site is need to consolidate those facilites.

There seems to be one other option at 11th Avenue / W. 30th Street, but with plans for Hudson Yards that seems like the less likely site.

From the document:

The Proposed Action is consistent with the existing mix of land uses, and the garage is an as-of-right use under the existing M2-4 zoning ... would be within the requisite floor-air ratio (FAR) of 5.0; however DSNY would seek special permits for height variance and relief from streetwall and setback requirements ...

However, if built this facility might turn the Urban Glass House into one of the biggest "luxury development" turkeys in all of NYC.

On the other hand if a well designed building with a "green" roof were built it could be a great benefit to the community at large.

Some maps showing the proposed facilities / traffic patterns ...

***

[lofter1]

Curbed, in its own inimitable way, has a big report on this today; here are the visuals -- go to the link for the text ...

West Soho Paradise Threatened by Sanitation

Tuesday, January 9, 2007, by BL

[bigkdc]

There was a proposal back in 1999 to do something similar but the city and ups could never agree on how to make it work....

I am reading this as a garage for storing and fixing trucks - this isnt going to be a garbage processing site, is it?

[ZippyTheChimp]

^
Yes. It is replacing the truck/salt storage facility now at Gansevoort.

[lofter1]

But NOT a garbage processing site ...

1.1 Project Description

DSNY is proposing to construct and operate a new garage facility in lower Manhattan on a site generally bounded by Spring Street, Washington Street and West Street. The new garage would consolidate operations at the proposed site to provide better service to the local community districts, achieve an economy of scale, replace outdated facilities, and improve operational efficiencies. It would also enable DSNY to comply with its legal obligation to vacate the Gansevoort peninsula, 2 Bloomfield Street/427 Gansevoort Street, within the recently established Hudson River Park, which currently holds garages for Manhattan Districts 2 and 4, and which will in the future temporarily house up to two other Manhattan garage districts pending completion of new facilities but will at no time hold more than three Manhattan garage districts...


The new multi-story garage (approximately 427,000 gross square feet of space) would be located on an 85,450 square foot- (sq ft-) site that is currently owned and used by the United Parcel Service (UPS) for truck trailer staging and parking (known as the Equipment Staging Lot) as part of their Manhattan South Facility operations...

The overall UPS Package Distribution Facility operations would remain as they currently are. There would be no change in their existing operations. The number of UPS trucks, trailers, other vehicles and employees would remain at their present levels...

There would be a maximum of 128 pieces of DSNY equipment operating out of the new garage. The total number of employees on a peak day over three shifts would be about 231 (including 191 sanitation workers). The peak number of employees working out of the new garage during any individual shift would be 108. The facility would operate 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

DSNY truck and equipment access and egress to the DSNY garage would be via West Street and Washington Street. The configuration of West Street in this location allows for queuing of trucks and equipment, when needed. Vehicles exiting the garage at this point would turn north onto West Street. DSNY would also be able to enter and exit the new garage via Washington Street (one-way in a southerly direction) at the northern end of the site. DSNY employees would enter and access the garage from Washington Street at mid-block...

The DSNY salt storage facility (Block 600, Lot 29) would be located just north of the new garage for ready access to the vehicles and equipment. The covered facility would have a maximum storage capacity of 6,500 tons of salt. Loading operations would take place from the Washington Street side of the facility. There would be two aboveground storage tanks for liquid calcium chloride used to melt snow and ice...

[bigkdc]

Has anyone seen anything on how the city and UPS are working together on this? Seems odd for the city to make a proposal on land they don't own. I assume the city would give UPS some sort of tax break in exchange for entering into this situation?

[ZippyTheChimp]

^
I think it was UPS that initiated the deal, in light of what they were facing.

The lot was underutilized. UPS had been trying to sell all or part of it, but retain a presence for truck staging. The city wanted the land for the garage, and could have used Eminent Domain to acquire the property.

It's not clear to me who will own the garage. The scoping document states that the DSNY will be the lead agency in the DEIS, and one of the alternatives to be discussed is a sanitation garage without UPS..

The condo owners are really stuck, but they should have looked at a zoning map and researched neighborhood issues before buying. I posted about the city's plans for a garage a year ago. The Urban Glass House is on a corner of a C zone (bounded by Canal, Washington, Spring and Hudson) that is surrounded by M zones.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Found some information:



City to build garbage truck parking tower in Hudson Square

By Albert Amateau

The Department of Sanitation wants to build garages on three sites, one of them owned by United Parcel Service, in the Hudson Square neighborhood where six luxury residential towers have risen in the past few years.

The project would require joint use of the 85,450-square-foot U.P.S. parking lot on the north side of Spring St. along West St. behind the U.P.S. Washington St. truck-loading facility. Sanitation would build a garage 150 feet tall — 13 feet taller than the new, 12-story, Philip Johnson-designed Urban Glass House directly across Spring St. from the site. The garage would store garbage and recycling trucks, snow plows and salt spreaders on the upper level, and U.P.S. would use the lower level for the staging area for its Manhattan South sorting and dispatching operation.

The garage would be home to trucks from three Sanitation districts, including those currently on Gansevoort Peninsula, as well as those from the Sanitation garage on the south side of Spring St. at West St. Under a legal settlement, the city must remove its garbage trucks from Gansevoort by 2012 so that the peninsula can be redeveloped as part of the Hudson River Park.

Norman Black, U.P.S. public affairs director, said the city was threatening to take over the property under eminent domain, so the company made a deal.

“We’re a reluctant participant in this project,” he said. “We said we’d agree to the current proposal if the city got all the necessary approvals,” Black said. “Questions about ownership [of the new garage] haven’t even begun to be addressed yet.”

The site is a relatively quiet parking lot during the day, but at night serves as the crucial staging area for trucks that pull into the U.P.S. building as soon as loaded trucks pull out. Without the staging area, U.P.S. would have to move the entire operation, Black said.

Also part of the D.O.S. project is the demolition of the existing Sanitation garage at Spring and West Sts. and replacing it with a truck-washing and refueling facility that would accommodate four 4,000-gallon diesel fuel tanks, a 4,000-gallon unleaded gasoline tank, a 4,000-gallon ethanol tank, a 2,000-gallon hydraulic oil tank, a 2,000-gallon motor oil tank and a 1,000-gallon waste oil tank.

The third part of the project calls for converting an existing parking garage on Washington and Clarkson Sts. into a covered shed to store 6,500 tons of road salt with two above-ground storage tanks for liquid calcium chloride used to melt snow and ice on city streets. This would replace the salt shed on Gansevoort.

Artist Julian Hatton, who lives nearby on Broome St., said “I used to paint the sides of those [U.P.S. and Sanitation] trucks a while back.” He was not concerned about the more recent residents to the neighborhood who have moved into the new luxury buildings.

“The people that live in those condos need to have a little bit of disruption to their lives, it’s like you need to have a trust fund in order to even get one,” he said,

But Francis Dosne, who owns Manhattan Graphics nearby, said: “I am sure it will cause a major traffic problem for residents in this area, there is no doubt about that.”

Sanitation will conduct a public scooping session on the project from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wed., Jan. 31, in the Rosenthal Pavilion on the 10th floor of New York University’s Kimmel Hall, at 60 Washington Sq. S.

Community Board 2, which originally supported Sanitation’s proposed takeover of the U.P.S. site, reversed itself a year ago under new leadership. Friends of Hudson Square, a neighborhood group headed by David Reck, a C.B. 2 member, has always opposed the project.

With reporting by Priya Idiculla


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[bigkdc]

TRUMP DUMPS ON SOHO'S TRASH PLAN

By RITA DELFINER
January 16, 2007 -- Donald Trump is ready to talk trash to help his future SoHo neighbors take on the Sanitation Department.
The city agency wants to build a 150-foot-tall garage on a site roughly bounded by Spring Street, Washington Street and West Street that would house 106 trucks.
It would be located several blocks from the site where Trump plans to build the Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium at 246 Spring St.
"I don't like the trucks, the fumes, the traffic from the standpoint of the community," Trump said, saying he sympathizes with concerns voiced by some neighbors.
"If the community wanted help, I would certainly help," he added.
The Donald stressed that he has no personal objection to the proposal, declaring, "It doesn't impact [our building] because it's five blocks away. Five blocks in New York City is an eternity."
The Sanitation Department plans to share the garage with the UPS, which now has a facility there.
The department's plan also calls for putting a refueling station with nearly 30,000 gallons of fuel and oil in a separate building at Canal and West Streets.
"That's lunacy," David Reck, president of Friends of Hudson Square, said. "It would be a perfect terrorist target that would burn up TriBeCa, Hudson Square and the Holland Tunnel all in one big shot."
rita.delfiner@nypost.com

[lofter1]

The Donald knows what he's talking about when it come to TRASH

[ZippyTheChimp]

Sanitation parking tower plan reignites C.B. 2 feud

The city plan to build a garbage truck parking garage tower in Hudson Square has reopened a feud at Community Board 2 over whether the area should get more Dept. of Sanitation trucks.

Last week’s Downtown Express article on the proposed garage incorrectly stated that C.B. 2 recently reversed its late 1990s resolution in support of siting a Sanitation garage on the U.P.S. parking lot at Spring and Washington Sts. In fact, Arthur Schwartz, C.B. 2 Waterfront and Parks Committee chairperson, a year ago, had proposed a resolution supporting the lawsuit by Friends of Hudson River Park to force the city to get its garbage trucks off Gansevoort Peninsula, which likely would have moved the trucks to the U.P.S. lot. The move would allow a park to be built on Gansevoort as part of the Hudson River Park. But Schwartz’s resolution failed after a discussion by the board, mainly because some newer members didn’t take kindly to the idea of the garbage trucks being relocated to the Hudson Square lot.

Noting he grew up in Hudson Square back when “rats were as big as cats,” Phil Mouquinho, who owns the nearby P.J. Charlton restaurant on Greenwich St., said at the time, “The area is just starting to gentrify,” and that an influx of garbage trucks could threaten further upscaling. The earlier C.B. 2 resolution supporting just one Department of Sanitation garage at the site still remains on the books, however. But the latest proposal by the city — for a garage for not one, but three garbage truck districts, plus the U.P.S. trucks, a jumbo fuel storage depot and a salt shed on two other sites to boot — is likely to provoke even more opposition from the 50-member board, only about five members of which remain from the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, Schwartz and David Reck, who sparred over the initial resolution on the U.P.S. lot, are, eight years later, once again on opposing sides of the new proposal for a 150-foot-tall mega-garage. Reck is leading a coalition against the garage plan, including his group — Friends of Hudson Square — along with the Tribeca Community Association, the new Urban Glass House condo tower, the Ear Inn and other local restaurants and businesses, and the area’s “major landlords.”

“I am a park supporter,” Reck said. “I just don’t feel that dumping it all [the garbage trucks and facilities] in one neighborhood is fair. They want to move three garbage truck garages down here — plus a salt pile. We’re going to become like the garbage center.” Reck added the fuel depot, located near the Holland Tunnel airshaft, would also be a juicy terrorist target. “There’s 29,000 gallons of flammable stuff there.” They will be filing a lawsuit, he vowed.

Schwartz countered that the only residents negatively impacted would be those in the Urban Glass House just south of the site. “If David Reck wants to defend luxury housing Downtown — this is super-luxury housing — that’s fine,” Schwartz said, adding he’s sure Reck’s lawsuit will be well funded by developers’ money. “What’s David’s alternative — using the [U.P.S.] lot to build luxury housing?” he added.

“The Urban Glass House people are very upset about this,” Reck assured.

Speaking of developers, Reck can also count Donald Trump in his corner. On Tuesday, the New York Post reported that Trump, who’s trying to develop a condo-hotel a few blocks away on Varick St., said he’d offer the community his help in fighting the massive garage. Reck said he hasn’t personally talked to The Donald about it yet.

As for Schwartz’s statements about real estate money behind his lawsuit, he said, “Arthur’s not relevant here. He doesn’t live in the neighborhood, and we’re going to do our own lawsuit.”

Coincidentally, Schwartz, who’s thinking of moving, said that six months ago he looked at a unit at the Urban Glass House and the broker claimed to know nothing about the garage when Schwartz queried him about it. “Either he didn’t know or wasn’t telling,” Schwartz said.

The city will hold a public hearing on its plan Jan. 31 at 60 Washington Square South at 7:30 p.m.

— Lincoln Anderson

Downtown Express is published by
Community Media LLC.
145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10013

[bigkdc]

somehow it does not seem fair to put the burden of 3 districts worth of garbage trucks on 1 district. that being said, life isn't always fair...

[projectsnyc]

Clearly CD5 is an after-thought in this proposal, it was not slated for the UPS site in the original agreement hammered out back in 1999 (rather there was to be a site at 29th-30th Street or Hudson Yards area). DSNY is being disingenuous inflicting the pain of trucks "commuting" to midtown Manhattan upon the West Village.

There is also genuine (commonsense) concern about 29,000 gallons of fuel atop the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, and another 13,000 gallons buried one block nearby. Also, why is there a gas station on the southern side of Canal Street so close to the Tunnel?

Finally, if the salt-pile shed structure in CD3 (under the Manhattan Bridge) is so under-utilized (it was empty up until early January and is now 1/4 full), why not use this as a central distribution node for CD's 1, 2, 3 and 5?

We need to break this proposal down into its component parts...

[CBTwo]

I don’t get it. I realize the DSNY must vacate the pier they are on now due to legal reasons, but it doesn’t make sense to tear down an existing facility, although it needs some upgrading, and build another at a different location, only in order to build a new park. It would appear an easier solution is to just build a new recreational pier.

How is the Hudson River Park Trust going to pay for a new park and maintain same? It seems they can barely maintain what they have now.

"The bottom line is" (if I may quote Bloomberg) there is no park down where the relocated DSNY garage is to be relocated. Pier 40 is not a park. It is a recreational facility used by players from all over the city. Plus the strip of Hudson River Park from the tennis courts up to Clarkson Street has been a storage junkyard for HRPT since before 9/11. When are they going to clean up their mess and give some amenities back to the area residents?