Pier 40 Plan Taking Shape
Friday September 19, 2008 | New York City
A round-the-clock drop-in center for LGBT youth, wind turbines and solar panels, a middle school, "a new Caffe Cino," a spot for community-based boating, more services for seniors, and assurance that vintage cars won't be dinged by parking lifts were among the many requests - in some cases, more like demands - by community members at the first full public hearing on the new Pier 40 redevelopment proposal on Monday evening.
About 175 people packed the auditorium of the Village Community School on West 10th Street for the hearing.
Noreen Doyle, vice president of the Hudson River Park Trust, the state-city authority building and operating the five-mile-long riverfront park, which contains the sprawling, 15-acre Pier 40, at West Houston Street, offered a timeline for the plan's potential approval. Doyle said the Trust is currently reviewing the retooled proposal recently submitted to the authority by Urban Dove and CampGroup, along with the Pier 40 Partnership.
"It could be a couple of years [from now] before we would enter into a binding lease with this team - if they were selected," she said.
Paul Travis, of Washington Square Partners, a consultant for the developers, said the plan is now budgeted at $430 million, lower than previously contemplated. Among the plan's key features - preservation of the pier's playing fields; the ongoing operation of the main courtyard field during construction; a trio of four-foot-deep, stainless-steel pools added on the pier's eastern rooftop; three public high schools, plus possibly a private high school; consolidation of the pier's parking into a smaller area by using lifts; small-scale retail, sports-related and other types; and a fairly large event space that would be in frequent use on the pier's south side.
Keen Berger, a Community Board 2 member, said a middle school is what is really needed for the overcrowded school district. But Jai Nanda, executive director of Urban Dove, said the School Construction Authority has told them they want high schools on the pier, even though it has not explicitly ruled out a middle school.
Travis added that a conservancy for the pier, which would raise money for Pier 40, operate it, and basically serve as the master leaseholder - subleasing space to for-profit and nonprofit tenants - remains an essential part of the plan.
Pier 40 is expected to be financially self-sustaining and generate at least $5 million a year for the Trust. The parking - which already brings in $5 million per year - schools, event space, and retail are all primary revenue generators.
Impossible to miss in the crowd were about 40, pink-sash-wearing members of FIERCE, the Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals For Community Empowerment, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth who currently flock to the Christopher Street Pier, five blocks north of Pier 40. FIERCE is asking that a 24-hour, drop-in center for LGBTQ youth be included in the Pier 40 plans. The group notes that an estimated 40 percent of homeless youth in New York City are LGBT.
Nanda said their financial scheme for the pier, which is a modest one, simply can't fund a community center. Arthur Schwartz, chairman of the Community Board 2 Waterfront Committee, suggested that some of the new public school and gym space in the project would likely be available for FIERCE's purposes.
But afterward, Glo Ross, a FIERCE community organizer, expressed skepticism that the group would ever get use of school space on the pier, and said the group will continue to push for their own designated space. She said FIERCE definitely aims for a 24-hour facility, noting that another use on the pier, the parking operation, is round-the-clock.
FIERCE was a key player in the community coalition that defeated earlier proposals for a gigantic aquarium and The Related Companies' Cirque du Soleil mega-entertainment complex.
Tobi Bergman, president of Pier Park and Playground Association, or P3, a group that has operated on the pier for 12 years, currently running youth baseball programs there, stressed that people shouldn't lose sight of the big picture, noting that the community had rallied to block those unacceptable projects. The community will get to keep the huge sports field treasured by local parents and youth sports leagues, Bergman noted.
Others, like longtime West Village residents Jim Fouratt and Robert Heide, active over many years in the gay arts and political scenes, said the pier needs more cultural uses, harking back to the neighborhood's bohemian heyday. Heide suggested a space for plays, poetry, and a cup of coffee - "like we used to do in the Village" - along the lines of the old Caffe Cino, opened in 1958 and, in time, the city's first Off-Broadway theater.
Fouratt argued that the sports-happy pier needs to be more senior-friendly. But Dattner assured him that the walkways around the 800-foot-by-800-foot structure will remain open for rambling, while the ramp up to the rooftop will be an easy grade, and there will be passive recreation space on top of the pier.
The pier's overall height will increase between 40 and 70 feet along the east and west sides, as one new story will be added. Dattner said no new structures will be added on the pier's south rooftop, since they want to preserve the amount of sunlight hitting the fields.
Boating advocates from the Village Community Boathouse and the Stuyvesant High School rowing team asked for assurance that they'll have a space in a renovated pier. The boathouse currently pays $1 rent for its space on the pier's southern side.
The Community Board 2 committee members, joined by Marc Ameruso, a representative of Community Board 1, crafted a resolution listing many of the community's wishes for the plan. Schwartz said foremost are the requests for a space for LGBT youth and for community boating. The committee recommended conditional approval of the Pier 40 plan.
CB 2's full board will vote on the committee's resolution on September 18, at its meeting at SEIU 32BJ, 101 Sixth Avenue, between Grand and Watts Streets, 22nd floor. The meeting will start at 6 p.m.