Local Leaders Say Proposed Ferry Hub will Divorce Community from Water<\/p>\n
Members of Community Board 1 (CB1) have reservations about designs for a new ferry terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan that is being developed as part of the FiDi and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, which will rebuild the nine-tenths of a mile between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery with flood defense infrastructure. This initiative recently passed its 30-percent design milestone.<\/p>\n
Plans for the new ferry hub envision demolishing the existing Staten Island Ferry Terminal, and erecting a new building slightly to the west of the current structure\u2019s location, on the site of the existing U.S. Coast Guard headquarters (which will be torn down). Once the first half of the new building \u2013 to be constructed at a higher elevation and incorporate various flood-protection measures \u2013 is complete, Staten Island Ferry operations will be moved there and the existing ferry terminal will be demolished. This will make room for the new building to double in size, so that the adjacent Governors Island Ferry can move into the additional space. The new combined ferry terminal serving both Staten Island and Governors Island is budgeted at $1.6 billion, a price that has inflated by $100 million since last spring. (For comparison, the existing Staten Island Ferry building \u2013 which is relatively new, having been completed in 2005 \u2013 was delivered at a cost of $200 million.)<\/p>\n
The Battery Maritime Building, which currently houses the Governors Island Ferry, is a legally protected landmark and will not be demolished under this plan. It will, however, cease to function as a ferry dock, and instead be completely enclosed by flood walls. On the land side of the new ferry terminal and the Battery Maritime Building, the plan calls for refurbishment of Peter Minuit Plaza and the creation of new pedestrian plaza on a deck over the FDR Drive approach to the Battery Park underpass.<\/p>\n
The net effect of these plans will be to cut off the public\u2019s physical and visual access to the waterfront for a quarter of a mile, with that stretch of waterfront being occluded by large structures of steel and concrete. The exception to this will be a green roof\u201d atop the new ferry hub, which planners tout as an opportunity to manage stormwater runoff, cool the building, and \u201cfoster biodiversity.\u201d But this amenity will not be open to the public, in part because it is likely to house specialized gear such as irrigation equipment and solar power cells.<\/p>\n
At a January 12 CB1 meeting, members reviewed these plans. Laura Starr, who is also landscape architect, said, \u201cit\u2019s critical to be able to have continuous greenery from the Battery, over the roof of the Staten Island Ferry building and then around. What we need as residents here is continuous green space, not just a morsel of it here or there and then more pavement and more views that have been off. The public should be able to enjoy the best views in the City out to the harbor. Why should that be restricted?\u201d<\/p>\n
She continued, \u201cwe have to emphasize continuous green, because there\u2019s just so little of it. In Hudson River Park, there are little strips of green. Battery Park City doesn\u2019t have much immersive greenery. The Battery has immersive green, but this plan takes a lot of it away by blocking views with the new ferry building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Starr added, \u201ccutting off the circulation through green space is a travesty. We have this opportunity now to give Lower Manhattan its own Brooklyn Bridge Park and we\u2019re not doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chair Tammy Meltzer said, \u201cit is just a giant cement wall for the Battery Maritime Building. They\u2019re just walling it in. With so many smart engineers, why can\u2019t we find a different way to protect the Battery Maritime Building instead of cementing in the entire thing. This very much makes the building one for the haves and have-nots. You\u2019d never know there\u2019s water on the other side, because the entire building is privatized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosa Chang said, \u201cwhen I look at the ferry hub rendering, I have to admit it makes me really sad. When we look at the site plan for the overall perimeter, what bothers me about it is that you\u2019re walking behind the building for so long, it really does divorce you from any experience of the waterfront.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former CB1 chair Catherine McVay Hughes, who headed the Board during 2012\u2019s Hurricane Sandy and remains a local advocate for resiliency measures, told the Broadsheet, \u201cthe ferry hub is a necessary component of the FiDi-Seaport vision. I share the concerns that the hub will reduce waterfront views. The best way to compensate for that is to improve the waterfront experience nearby, by taking down the FDR Drive viaduct south of Brooklyn Bridge, while also greening the East River esplanade and related infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local Leaders Say Proposed Ferry Hub will Divorce Community from Water Members of Community Board 1 (CB1) have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-100429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}