NYCkayaker -Millionaires move to save Pier 40

[mike]

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_230/millionairesmove.html 
When the Pier 40 Working Group proposed a few months ago that public funds -
instead of monies generated by large-scale private development on Pier 40 -
be used to maintain Hudson River Park, Henry Stern, a member of the Hudson
River Park Trust's board of trustees, blasted the idea as "socialist." 
The Working Group - and community members, too, for that matter - didn't
understand the park's financial realities, Stern said at the Trust's August
board meeting, echoing the opinion of some others on the state-city
authority's 13-member board.
Since socialism clearly is not the Trust's favored economic model, a new
group is taking the opposite approach, pledging to privately raise up to $30
million to repair and maintain Pier 40. 
The 14-acre pier at W. Houston St. is currently the focus of intense
community concern as the Trust's second attempt in three years to pick a
developer for the pier comes down to the wire. 
The new group, the Pier 40 Partnership, has a core membership of 20 parents,
all of whom have children who attend local schools - both public and private
- in the Village, Tribeca and Chelsea, and play in youth sports leagues at
Pier 40. More than a few of them are wealthy, high-powered finance types and
entrepreneurs.
"We're not oppositional," stressed Rich Caccappolo during an interview at
his office on W. Broadway in Soho. "We want to help. We love what H.R.P.T.
has done up and down [the waterfront] with the park. We'd hate to see Pier
40 be a huge misstep."
"Pier 40 is the reason a lot of people have told me they've stayed in the
city - young and old, across all economic levels," added Jill Hanekamp, who
joined Caccappolo at the interview. 
While "not oppositional," in Caccappolo's words, he said they do want to get
one message across to the Trust loud and clear: "That we are completely
against the Related proposal and that we want to find a different approach
to developing Pier 40." 
Caccappolo is the new president of the Greenwich Village Little League, has
been a board member of the Downtown United Soccer Club and is an active
parent at P.S. 41. Before starting up Creative Commerce, an Internet
investment firm, he was part of the team that built iVillage Inc., the
world's leading online destination for women.
Diana Taylor, the Trust's new chairperson, recently met with the group and
told Downtown Express there were "big ifs" as to whether the group could
raise the money. 
Other leading members of the Pier 40 Partnership include Craig Balsam, of
Razor and Tie, a record company on Sullivan St.; Gary Ginsberg, News
Corporation's executive vice president of investor relations and corporate
communications; Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, a venture-capitalist
firm specializing in technological investments; Donna Zaccaro, a video
producer; and Roger Ehrenberg, of Monitor 110, Inc., an Internet
media-rating service. Not all among the group are so affluent.
"Millionaires and paupers" said Hanekamp with a laugh.
Hanekamp is a civil-rights attorney with two children at Village Community
School. Caccappolo helped organize the massive turnout in early May at P.S.
41 for the big public hearing on Pier 40, attended by more than 1,500
people.
Following the hearing, the Pier 40 Partnership formed and since then has
been meeting every Tuesday morning over breakfast, usually at Le Pain
Quotidien on W. Eighth St.
More at link