55 Water Street: New Plaza Designs

[asg]

On a side note this revamped plaza effectively kills a 500,000 sq.ft. addition to 55 Water Street.

1 MARCH 2001

The investment bankers Goldman Sachs are planning to replace the elevated plaza at 55 Water Street with a new addition including several large trading floors. The development would use air rights transferred all the way from the South Street Seaport district.
"To build the new 13-story, 750,000- square-foot [69,700 m²] trading structure, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Goldman Sachs would eliminate the elevated plaza and alter the north tower, adding 35 feet to its height. The trading floors would have 56,000 square feet [5,200 m²], an extraordinary amount of room in the cramped financial district."And as usual, the city and state will be milked for corporate welfare.
"The project's cost has been estimated at $850 million. The company might apply for financial incentives from the city and state. Completion of the building is expected at the end of 2004."
The banking firm has already leased spaces from a host of buildings across the Financial District.
"Besides the headquarters at 85 Broad Street, Goldman Sachs leases large blocks at 10 Hanover Square, 1 Liberty Plaza, 180 Maiden Lane, 1 New York Plaza, 32 Old Slip and 77 Water Street."
The company is proposing to provide funds for neighbourhood improvements.
"To make up for the loss of open space, Goldman Sachs would pay for $5 million in improvements nearby. It would furnish a 1,300-foot stretch of East River esplanade, from Old Slip to the Battery Maritime Building, with a bike path, a walkway and seating; landscape a barren public area in front of 55 Water Street; and contribute to the renovation of Vietnam Veterans Plaza on the south side of the tower."
A part of a futuristic plan, the plaza hasn't been a total success, not least due to owners' actions through the years.
"Fifty-four steps above street level — and even farther off the beaten path — the plaza is one of the largest privately owned public spaces in New York."
"Escalators to the plaza have frequently not worked in the past (and were not operating yesterday and Monday). In the 1980's, when 55 Water Street was owned by Olympia & York, stairways to the plaza were barricaded for years."
"Today, it is isolated, barren, usually deserted and sometimes downright scary. A concession stand has long since been boarded up and the fountains silenced."
(I can agree on the scary part, while taking the plaza image last May, I was definitely working faster than normally...)
But the residents in the 205 co-ops of the 3 Hanover Square are against the proposition, partly because of lost river views.

""It is somewhat ironic [...] that part of the reward for neglecting a public plaza is giving the ownership the right to not only eliminate the public space but to add a 750,000- square-foot building on the site.""

Source: The New York Times, 28 February 2001



7 Mar:

The tower plans have been swiftly reversed and Goldman Sachs will let the lease fall through.
"The company's withdrawal puts 1.38 million square feet at 55 Water Street back on the market — more space than in the entire Chrysler Building. It will be vacated in 2003 by J. P. Morgan Chase & Company."
The owner of the building is expecting to get the space easily sold nevertheless:
"Other prospective tenants have already spoken up since Goldman Sachs made its decision known on Monday evening, said Edward J. Kulik Jr., the head of real estate for the Retirement Systems of Alabama, which manages the state's pension programs and owns 55 Water Street."
The owners haven't, however, completely ruled out a later-day tower addition to the plaza.

Source: The New York Times, 7 March 2001

TRIBECA TRIB JUNE 2002

Community Meeting June 26 on 55 Water St. Plaza Redesign


A year after Goldman Sachs abandoned its controversial plan to construct a building on the elevated public plaza behind 55 Water St., now the city’s most massive office tower, the complex’s owners have decided to redesign the plaza into "a vital destination that contributes to the cultural life of Lower Manhattan."

The owner, the Retirement System of Alabama, is sponsoring a design competition with the Municipal Art Society to come up with a plan to make the isolated, unadorned plaza into an attractive public amenity for Downtown residents, workers and tourists.

To solicit input from Downtown residents, the owner and the Municipal Art Society, together with Community Board 1 and the Alliance for Downtown New York, are hosting a community meeting on June 26 at 6 p.m., in the conference center on the concourse level of 55 Water St.

Residents are invited to hear the owner’s plans for the plaza and to share their input on what they would like to see in the 41,000-square-foot space, which commands views of the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge and Governor’s Island. Anyone interested in attending should contact Mandy Knox at the New Water Street Corp. (which manages the building for the owner), at 747-9120 or mknox@55water.com.

The deadline for preliminary submissions from architects and urban planners is July 8. Six finalists will be selected in July and given $10,000 stipends to come up with more refined plans by mid-September, and a winner will be chosen in late September. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2003.

More information on the project and the design competition can be found on the Municipal Art Society’s website.

[BigMac]

New York Times
October 19, 2005

An Elevated Plaza Finally Worth Going Up to See

By DAVID W. DUNLAP


With the moon floating over Brooklyn, the enormous lantern at the end of the boardwalk at 55 Water Street assumes its place in the East River's nocturnal landscape.

Lower Manhattan, a place of brooding valleys, has reclaimed a precious slice of sky.

This silvery harbor sky unfolds over a gentle dunelike hillock, with a boardwalk at its crest, on a one-acre public plaza more than 30 feet in the air over the East River waterfront. The elevated plaza at 55 Water Street, one of the largest and least-loved privately owned public spaces in New York, is to be rededicated tonight after a three-year, $7 million renovation.

Marking the new plaza in the cityscape is a 50-foot-high lantern of translucent glass bands, illuminated from within by light-emitting diodes and visible from Brooklyn Heights, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; from the heliport at Pier 6, the ferry landing at Pier 11 and the square-rigged Wavertree sailing ship south of Pier 16; from Governors Island, Old Slip and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

The renovation was overdue.

The 55 Water Street plaza, which opened in 1972, was so plagued by Spartan design, poor planning and indifferent maintenance that few protests greeted a plan in early 2001 by Goldman Sachs to replace the landscaped area with a new building.

"When the public could care less about putting a box on it filled with Goldman traders, you knew it was depressing," said David G. Bronner, chief executive of Retirement Systems of Alabama, the state pension fund that has owned 55 Water Street, New York's largest office building, since 1993. After Goldman decided not to build there after all, the pension fund decided to revive the plaza. In 2002, in cooperation with the Municipal Art Society, a civic group whose concerns include public space, the landlord sponsored a design competition.

Rogers Marvel Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architect won.

Their work was cut out for them, beginning with the street-level entrance to the plaza, sandwiched between the 13-story north building of 55 Water Street, now occupied entirely by HIP Health Plan of New York, and the 54-story south tower.

Here were long escalators and a staircase that offered no clue to passers-by that they were welcome upstairs or would be rewarded by an ascent.

Those intrepid enough to go up anyway were greeted by a brickyard. A flat, empty space was embraced by a semicircular curving brick wall that blocked the remarkable view. Above and beyond that was a terrace with two dozen trees, reached by narrow staircases at either end, from which one could finally see the East River panorama.

At one time, there were at least a few amenities - like a concession stand, pools and fountains - as part of the trade-off under which the elevated plaza yielded a 410,000-square-foot development bonus (roughly six and a half tower floors). But the stand was shuttered, the pools were emptied and, under the ownership of Olympia & York in the 1980's, the whole plaza was closed to the public for several years.

To lure people back, the architects have radically altered the Water Street approach, replacing the long escalator and staircase with a series of four smaller stairways and four shorter escalators, better lit and punctuated by terraces and overlooks.

"The designers have transformed a forbidding escalator into a celebratory and wonderfully imaginative ascent," said Amanda M. Burden, the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission.

At the top of the steps (the plaza can also be reached by elevator through the lobby), visitors are now greeted by a gently inclined surface that appears to be a dune, dotted with honey locusts and black locusts and ornamental grasses.

At the top of the dune is a boardwalk, paralleling the East River, made of broad planks of ipe, a Brazilian hardwood. Through the stainless-steel cable balustrade, sunlight sparkles on the choppy waters below.

"You come here and it celebrates something: New York City," said Jonathan Marvel of Rogers Marvel. "The whole ascent is part of the drama of having a new horizon line as you reach the top."

The boardwalk leads up to the lantern, called the Beacon of Progress, at the far corner of the plaza. Though contemporary in design, it recalls the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse that once stood on this block, atop the Seamen's Church Institute.

"It marks the site again with a consequential feature," said Rob Rogers of Rogers Marvel. (The lighthouse was moved to the South Street Seaport Museum after the institute's building was razed to make way for 55 Water Street.)

One more surprise is in store: a seven-tiered concrete amphitheater forming an L around a large lawn blanketed in an artificial grass made by FieldTurf.

"You can do a lot in an acre," said the landscape architect, Ken Smith.

The lawn takes the place of what was to have been an ice-skating rink. That, and a 100-person elevator, were eliminated from the project because of cost.

Under its agreement with the City Planning Commission, the landlord will sponsor at least 12 public events a year on the plaza. "We envision people throwing blankets on the turf and we'll do movies for them," said Harry A. Bridgwood, executive vice president of the New Water Street Corporation, a subsidiary of the pension fund. A food cart will arrive next spring. In addition to the benches, there will be 80 movable chairs and 20 tables.

Frank E. Sanchis III, senior vice president of the Municipal Art Society, admired the view of Governors Island yesterday morning. "It's a million times better than it was," he said of the plaza. "This is a perfect example of a beautifully designed privately owned public space. But we also need to provide them with activities so that the public uses them and gets used to using them."

New Yorkers can find their own uses, too. The lighting consultant, Jim Conti, was working inside the lantern one evening last week when he emerged to find a couple on the boardwalk - thinking they were unobserved - holding hands and kissing tenderly.

"I wonder," said Vincent M. Lee, the project architect for Rogers Marvel, "when the last time there was a moment like that on the plaza at 55 Water."



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[BigMac]

From Tropolism:

[Edward]

Beacon of Progress - the 50-foot-high lantern of translucent glass bands, illuminated from within by light-emitting diodes on the elevated plaza at 55 Water Street.

[czsz]

It looks grotesquely out of place. It's like a garish lava lamp in a morgue.

[Jake]

Why is this called the beacon of PROGRESS?

Why is it that strange color?

Why are there shrubs instead of trees?

Why are there only a few benches?

If 55 was trying to make themselves a Winter Garden-ish type public activity place they've failed miserably, nothing like some peace and quiet right atop the FDR.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Yet another vastly improved park. I like the Beacon of Progress, an eye-catcher for an inconspicuous park.

[lofter1]

Plus when the improvements of the East River Esplanade are built down below at street level then the new "Beacon" will not seem so out of place.

[Citytect]

Looks good to me. I mean, it's not spectacular, but it's a lot nicer than it was before. I see many benches along the boardwalk. And the boardwalk itself is a nice addition, allowing you to go out to the edge a take in views of the bridges. I like the way the concrete walkways mimic the look of the boardwalk.

[czsz]

Plus when the improvements of the East River Esplanade are built down below at street level then the new "Beacon" will not seem so out of place.

Egad, what does this mean...more neon pink?

[Fabrizio]

Does that night-time scene above really need an in-your-face pink wall of lights? It looks like the boardwalk in Atlantic City.

"Beacon of Progress" is even cornier than "Freedom Tower".

[lofter1]

Egad, what does this mean...more neon pink?

Not necessarily more pink, but definitely more light (this is the area just beneath 55 Water St.) ...


Improved East River Waterfront Esplanade with pavilions and FDR cladding
(Image courtesy of SHoP:Property of the City of New York)

[czsz]

It looks like the interior of Penn Station without walls. And what's with the boxed-in ballerinas?

[lofter1]

For more info on East River plan go here: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...2&postcount=33

And the full plan at City Planning website: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/erw/index.shtml

[BigMac]

"Beacon of Progress"
October 19, 2005

From Curbed: