Cross Street: 39th Street
Pier 79 contains vents for the Lincoln Tunnel Vent Shaft and a bus garage for New York Waterway. Pier 79 is undergoing construction to become a ferry terminal and will also include public access and viewing areas.
Construction is to begin late this summer on the six-slip, $30 million West Midtown Ferry Terminal on Pier 79 at the foot of 39th Street, which will wrap around the imposing ventilating towers of the Lincoln Tunnel. This glass pavilion will be immediately north of the existing New York Waterway terminal at Pier 78, a jumbled grab bag of structures and slips.
About 60 percent of the cost is being met by the federal Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century and 30 percent by the city’s capital budget, with the rest from the state and New York Waterway, which will also make an average annual lease payment of $750,000 over 30 years. Three slips will be controlled by New York Waterway and three will be open to other services. Operating costs will be defrayed in part by landing fees and advertising revenues. There will be 4,100 square feet of retail space.
The architects are William Nicholas Bodouva & Associates, designers of the four-year-old Terminal 1 at Kennedy International Airport. Thomas Balsley Associates are the landscape architects; Thornton-Tomasetti Group, the structural engineers.
The terminal has been shaped by more than passenger traffic, since it straddles the Lincoln Tunnel tubes and stands in the middle of the Hudson River Park and alongside the reconstructed Route 9A.
“We tried very hard in our design to make the building as open as possible, allowing both ferry terminal users and the public to move in and out easily,” said Darko Hreljanovic, the project designer. That includes plazas to the north and south, a cafe from which seating can spill outside in pleasant weather and an elevated walkway over the ferry slips so that pedestrians can trace an uninterrupted waterside path.
The main waiting room will be clad in a structural glass system for highest transparency. Curving vestibules on either side of the vent stacks are intended to signal the terminal entrance clearly and to create a kind of architectural transition between the 145-foot-high towers and the low-rise terminal and plaza, Mr. Bodouva said.
Community
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Pictures of West Midtown Ferry Terminal
West Midtown Ferry Terminal. 6 August 2005.
West Midtown Ferry Terminal. The building under construction – Orion Condominiums. 3 July 2005.
Construction started on the six-slip, $30 million West Midtown Intermodal Ferry Terminal at Pier 79 at the foot of 39th Street, which will wrap around the imposing ventilating towers of the Lincoln Tunnel. This glass pavilion will be immediately north of the existing New York Waterway terminal at Pier 78, a jumbled grab bag of structures and slips. 2 March 2003.
Pier 79 in April 2002.