NYCkayaker FYI Pier 26 update (from Downtown Express)

[D]

Thank you for that very informative article.  Most
interesting.

Dan McLaughlin
President 
Hudson River Water Trail Assoc.

--- Ken Gray <Kgray2 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Volume 19 Issue 44 | March 16 - 22, 2007
> 
> Larger restaurant would push some kayaks out of
> Tribeca boathouse
> 
> By Skye H. McFarlane
> 
> 
> When Community Board 1 Waterfront Committee
> chairperson Julie Nadel started up a Pier 26 Task
> Force, she merely wanted to examine the details of
> the proposed park space and make a few suggestions.
> 
> 
> What she and the Task Force found in the current
> pier plans has the Waterfront Committee crying foul
> and demanding a seat at the Hudson River Park
> Trust’s design table. 
> 
> 
> “I had no idea that I had literally opened Pandora’s
> box,” Nadel said Tuesday, after bringing the Task
> Force’s findings before the Waterfront Committee
> Monday night.
> 
> 
> According to advocates, the plans — which show a
> two-story, 229-seat restaurant surrounding a
> boathouse that is too small to store several types
> of kayaks — are symptomatic of the Trust’s seeming
> unwillingness to include the public in its park
> planning. Furthermore, they pointed out, the Trust
> may have violated two sections of the Hudson River
> Park Act in creating the plans.
> 
> 
> Nadel started the Task Force back in December after
> it came to light that there was no funding to
> construct the boathouse and estuarium on Pier 26, in
> the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park. Before the
> old, deteriorating piers in the section were closed
> for demolition in late 2005, the Downtown Boathouse
> organization had offered boat storage and free
> kayaking out of a basic shed on the pier. The River
> Project had run a similarly low-key educational
> center to study the Hudson River estuary environment
> (thus giving rise to the term “estuarium”).
> 
> 
> The Trust’s conceptual plan for the park’s Tribeca
> section has long included putting a boathouse and an
> estuarium back on the pier, with operators to be
> determined during a later bidding process. However,
> Nadel, who also serves on the Trust’s board of
> directors, had heard from friends in the boating
> community that the new boathouses built by the Trust
> farther upriver had problems. Boaters have said the
> docks are too high to serve kayakers, and the
> plumbing was not only expensive, but it doesn’t work
> very well because it is built on a pier, instead of
> on land.
> 
> 
> Nadel and the Task Force wanted to head-off such
> problems at the new Pier 26 boathouse. They also
> hoped to make the structure less expensive and more
> eco-friendly by eliminating frills like indoor
> showers and year-round heating. If there was no
> funding, Nadel said, then why not make some positive
> changes? But when Nadel asked to see the current
> plans for the pier, she was first told that the
> Trust staff could not locate the detailed plans.
> Later, according to Nadel, Trust president Connie
> Fishman said that the pier might receive additional
> funding from the Lower Manhattan Development
> Corporation, which gave the Trust $70 million for
> the park’s Tribeca section. The Trust was ready to
> bid the plans out for construction on April 1 and
> therefore no changes could be made. 
> 
> 
> The Trust did not respond to repeated requests for
> comment for this article.
> 
> 
> Eventually the Task Force was given access to the
> plans, which contained detailed renderings of the
> boathouse and restaurant, but no drawings of the
> pier as a whole and no renderings of the estuarium.
> Several Task Force members surmised that the lack of
> estuarium plans stemmed from an earlier,
> behind-the-scenes effort by Fishman to designate the
> Beacon Institute, a creation of former Governor
> George Pataki, as the estuarium operator. While
> Beacon had created some designs for the space —
> which were never shown to the public — the Trust
> itself had apparently produced no plans of its own.
> 
> 
> After viewing the plans, the Task Force decided that
> it could no longer merely make design suggestions.
> The Waterfront Committee agreed.
> 
> 
> “We should tell them to cease and desist,” said
> Linda Roche, referring to proposed April 1 bid-out.
> 
> 
> “We need to remind people that we had this pier
> taken away from us,” said Ro Sheffe.
> 
> 
> By the estimation of Jim Wetteroth, head of the
> Downtown Boathouse, the boathouse in the Trust’s
> plans is 30 percent smaller than the old Pier 26
> boathouse. More critically, it is 9 feet narrower,
> with kayak storage slots designed to house boats up
> to 14.5 feet in length along both walls. While the
> space would be a tight squeeze for the open-top
> kayaks often used by beginners, it would not
> accommodate the longer, narrower boats used by more
> advanced paddlers. High-end kayaks can reach up to
> 18 feet in length.
> 
> 
> Beyond a unanimous desire for a more functional
> boathouse design, the group agreed that the
> 10,000-square-foot restaurant would gravely alter
> the use and feeling of the pier. While there was a
> restaurant in the conceptual plans that the Trust
> presented to C.B. 1 in 2002, Roche, who was the
> Waterfront Committee chairperson at that time, said
> that the earlier restaurant was much smaller and did
> not have a second story. 
> 
> 
> A resolution passed by the board in July of 2002
> affirms that point, as it mentions enlarging the
> pier’s second-floor “observation deck.”
> Additionally, a more detailed resolution passed by
> the Waterfront Committee in June 2002 expressed the
> desire that the restaurant be “secondary” to the
> pier’s other uses and not a “destination” eatery.
> Both resolutions expressed C.B. 1’s desire to
> collaborate with the Trust in developing more
> detailed plans for the Tribeca segment. However,
> according to C.B. 1 records, the Trust never brought
> any additional plans before the board until the Task
> Force demanded them in early 2007.
> 
> 
> As several Task Force members pointed out Monday
> night, the Hudson River Park Act, which created both
> the park and the Trust, states specifically that
> Pier 26 is set aside for park use. Any commercial
> activity on the pier, the act says, is to be
> “incidental to public use.” The act gives the
> examples of concession stands and information booths
> as incidental uses.
> 
> 
> “When you have 220-something seats in a restaurant,
> it’s not looking like a concession stand. It’s
> looking like a commercial establishment,” said
> committee member Albert Capsouto, a restaurateur
> with a background in architecture.
> 
> 
> The committee members said that the Trust’s lack of
> collaboration with C.B. 1 also violated the spirit,
> and possibly the letter, of the Hudson River Park
> Act. In the event of “significant action” such as a
> request for proposals or a lease-out, the act states
> that the Trust must present its plans both to the
> public and to the local community board, with 30
> days advance notice. In general, the Trust is
> directed to have regular, “meaningful” consultation
> with the public and Community Boards 1, 2 and 4.
> 
> 
> On Monday, the committee passed a strongly worded
> resolution rejecting the Trust’s current plans,
> demanding that the Trust not bid out the plans, and
> insisting that the Trust’s designers work with “Pier
> 26 Task Force members as ongoing participants in
> every decision regarding Pier 26.”
> 
> 
> If the full board approves the resolution on March
> 20, Nadel said she plans to send a copy to her
> colleagues on the Trust’s board, as well as a slew
> of local politicians. She has also asked Fishman to
> come to the Waterfront Committee’s March 26 meeting
> to answer questions about the planning and funding
> of the pier. After opening Pandora’s box, Nadel,
> fittingly, is left with hope that the situation will
> turn out for the best.
> 
> 
> “The Trust could have saved a lot of money if they
> had just stuck to spirit of the park legislation and
> shown 
=== message truncated ===>
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Dan McLaughlin
www.hrwa.org


 
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