Why limit the choice to this spot off Tribeca -- especially as it is illegal under existing law to develop this part of NY Harbor?
Instead let's fill in a big chunk off the east river, and another big plot in front of that dull Trump group on the UWS. How about all that wasted water at the Brooklyn Navy Yards and Gowanus Creek and all along Greenpoint? Perfect for more housing. Plus there's those useless little inlets east of LaGuardia airport. Could build all sorts of stuff there.
When you think about it there's just too damned much water all around. In fact, how wasteful it would be not to fill in the East River all together (aside fom something trickling underground to allow for needed circulation).
After all -- if Manhattan was intended to be surrounded by water it would have been made that way
i think its not justified
I think we need to be careful about destroying the environment. If its a choice between upzoing some areas of Tribeca/Chinatown or destroying the Hudson marine environment, why is there even a debate?
When we first build the landfill for Battery Park City, don't forget the Hudson was a pile of toxic sludge. Now that its nice, we should keep it that way. Sometimes, we should learn from past mistakes - polluting the Hudson was one of the worst decisions New Yorkers ever made.
Why is landfill necessarily destroying the environment?Originally Posted by investordude
Isn't it more environmentally sound to build dense in Manhattan than to build sprawl in the suburbs?
Hope no one is referring to Queens / Brooklyn / Bronx as "suburbs" ...
Let's build dense in Queens & SI before we start filling in more Manhattan riverfront.
Besides, how dense do we want Manhattan to be?
NYC Density: 27,083/sq mi
Manhattan: 66,940/sq mi
Queens: 20,409.0/sq mi
Brooklyn: 34,916.6/sq mi
Bronx: 31,709/sq mi
Staton Island: 7,587.9/sq mi
Well, they really kinda are (especially the more distant points).
Land in Manhattan is more valuable that in the outer boroughs. If it's so valuable, let 'em build more. Let's say the city built another BPC size fill on spec, and they sold it on the open market, how much would it be worth? probably a few billion (and probably a few billion more than it would cost to build).
Let's build dense in Queens & SI before we start filling in more Manhattan riverfront.
NYC in general, and Manhattan in particular, are all about density. They should push it as hard as possible, and build the infrastructure to support it.
Besides, how dense do we want Manhattan to be?
NYC Density: 27,083/sq mi
Manhattan: 66,940/sq mi
Queens: 20,409.0/sq mi
Brooklyn: 34,916.6/sq mi
Bronx: 31,709/sq mi
Staton Island: 7,587.9/sq mi
Although I love living in BPC, from an urban planning perspective the notion of building another one seems like a real dud. This money that Urstadt is raving about is not going to be generated out of thin air, it is going to be redirected from other potential economic activity / real estate development. This is what they do in other cities -- namely, tear up cropland and forest while leaving their existing urban areas to rot. Here, the Hudson River is precious open space. The City should continue (as the Bloomberg Administration correctly has been doing) to direct development dollars to redeveloping all the brownfields and other blighted areas, particularly in the outer boroughs.
Urstadt is older than Steinbrenner.
Sure there is a whole lot of current wasted waterfront in the city, as lofter said. However, real estate is all about location of land resources rather than the resources themselves. Sure they can develop the existing waterfront in the numerous inlets east of LaGuardia Airport; however, such a distant area will give nowhere near the high revenue that BPC generates. If the city is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars dumping earth into water, it makes the most sense to do it along the waterfront of arguably New York's most affluent neighborhood, right alongside the project that proved and keeps proving that there are millions upon millions to be made for the city from creating new land. If anything, it's best to spend city and state dollars where they would be certain to generate the most revenue.
Location, location, location.
This began when Urstadt first suggested that the WTC debris be used as landfill in the Hudson (where the barges were located that transported the material to Fresh Kills), creating an extension to BPC.
Toxic material notwithstanding, he has turned the original proposal into a cottage industry, speaking about landfills wherever he gets the opportunity. Now it's a non-contiguous landfill north of pier 26, which is contrary to the original idea to extend a neighborhood. The landfill would not be a neighborhood, but an isolated platform, something that could be done at other locations.
Since the Hudson is a federally regulated waterway, the chance of overcoming an environmental challenge is nil. Even pile driving for HRP can only be done over existing pier footprints, and only from May through October.
Location, location, location seems to be anywhere near water - Queens West, Red Hook, Coney Island, Dumbo.
a sledgehammer when you need a nail
You can always make more Manhattan land by upzoning. There are still a lot of low rise factories and storage facilities within convenient walking distance of downtown that could be upzoned to be a full scale C6 district.
This idea of tampering with the Hudson - I mean why not just fill in the whole area to Jersey City? Who needs a river - I mean shouldn't we care more about people than fish?
I think you've got to have limits when dealing with beautiful waterways like the Hudson. We shouldn't destroy the streams and rivers of our nation unless we've explored other options first, and opening the Hudson like this is a slippery slope to developers all over the country filling in our nations rivers with condominiums. Is that really reasonable?
And besides, upzoning natural Manhattan means you're building on granite instead of landfill, which probably means you can build bolder and taller buildings.
Article is fine. I only object to the title. Nothing "poignant" about 9/11. Did the Times title editor take the day off?
Queens yes, SI? Not until there is a hydrofoil replacing the 30min Ferry with a 5 min trip, even then if you live further down the island it could take hours and 3 different commutes.
Community Board 1 votes against new Hudson River landfill
21-Nov-07
Community Board 1 voted last night that "additional landfilling is a ruinous public policy and should not be considered under any circumstances in Battery Park City, including South Cove, Hudson River Park, or any other location in the city."
The vote was taken in response to a recent proposal by Charles J. Urstadt, the former chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, that a 2,000-foot-long section of the Hudson River waterfront north of Battery Park City should be the site of a landfill that would almost duplicate the landfill development at Battery Park City, which is widely regarded as one of the world's finest waterfront urban developments.
Four members of the board voted against the resolution and two abstained but the number voting in favor of it could not be determined since the board's district manager, Noah Pfefferblit, only asked for a show of hands and did not announce the tally. The number of hands raised in favor of the resolution, however, was clearly a vast majority of the board members present. Earlier in the evening, he did take one roll-call vote on a different matter with the result of 33 to 18, but when someone pointed out that there are only 50 members on the board a second vote was taken with the result of 22 to 18.
The resolution maintained that when the Authority was created in 1969 it had a mandate to create "a distinctive mixed-use neighborhood that middle income residents could afford." "This original promise," it continued, "has not been kept and Battery Park City is steadily moving towards a complete makeover with predominantly market rate rentals and luxury private apartments dominating the housing market there, including the recent controversial evictions at 333 Rector Place."
In their great book, "New York 1960, Architectural and Urbanism Between The Second World War and the Bicentennial," (The Monacelli Press, 1995), Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman noted that "low-cost housing advocates were angered that only 1,266 of the 21,000 housing units were earmarked for the poor" in the Harrison, Conklin and Johnson plan that was released in April, 1969. That plan called for spectacular hexagonal skyscrapers skybridges and megastructures.
In November, 1979, Alexander Cooper and Stanton Eckstut released a new plan for Battery Park City that has been closely followed and is notable for its handsome esplanade, continuation of the city's street grid and design guidelines that sought to foster designs based somewhat on neighborhoods like Riverside Drive and West End Avenue.
The resolution noted that Federal courts and Congress cut off funding for the Westway project that would have created waterfront parks on the Hudson River, mostly because of concerns by Marcy Benstock that striped bass in the Hudson River might not like an altered environment.
The Community Board's resolution said it "does not believe that, in the 21st Street, the benefits of landfilling, however gloriously described by its vocal advocates, outweigh the serious fiscal, public safety and environmental impact it would have on local communities and the City as a whole." "The reality of global warming," it continued, "is already putting coastal communities at risk, and with the creation of more landfill to build additional structures, would further increase those storm and flooding damage hazards, in addition to endangering the river's living marine resources."
The resolution did note that "Historically, until the end of the 19th Century, some peripheral land mass for lower Manhattan was created by landfill, and remarkably, much of the early landfill came from the City's garage." The resolution did not make any mention of some spectacular landfill projects in Dubai.
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^ None of this offers a compelling argument not to extend BPC.
Nice to see that the NIMBY idiots who populate the community boards are at least consistant. To bad that waste of taxpayer money wasn't eliminated at the last charter revision.
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