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on the waterfront

By Matt Chaban 1/17 5:47pm

on the waterfront

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His Ship’s Come In: Hedgie Michael Novogratz Named Chairman of Friends of Hudson River Park

The Friends of Hudson River Park have traded a real estate big for a Wall Street one.

Today, the West Side park booster group announced that Michael Novogratz, head of Fortress Capital, will take over from Douglas Durst, the former board chair, who left last month over a dispute about the future of Pier 40 and the direction of the trust that overseas the park.

Mr. Novogratz has been a board member of Friends for some time now, and an announcement calls him “an avid user of the park.” After all, the hedge fund manager and city’s foremost wrestling booster lives around the corner in a multimillion-dollar compound he has assembled at 110 Hudson Street in Tribeca. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/09 6:42pm

on the waterfront

Let's take this plan for a spin. (Dattner Architects)

Douglas Durst Floats Plan for Tech Offices and Galleries to Save Pier 40

Last month, Douglas Durst walked away from the Friends of Hudson River Park advocacy group over a disagreement with the trust that runs the Manhattan watefront park. The key dispute had been over what to do with Pier 40, the libertarian park‘s former cash cow that has become a drain as its pilings deteriorate and the parking garage cum ball fields ever so slowly sinks into the river.

The trust believes that housing should be among the options considered for shoring up the pier’s finances, and by extension its pilings, a move that would likely require a major overhaul of the pier. Meanwhile, Mr. Durst insists housing is undesirable and unnecessarily expensive, and the better option is to keep the pier largely as is, adaptively reusing the space to more efficiently house the roughly 1,400 cars that park on the pier, freeing up room to create commercial space, likely occupied by tech firms, art galleries and other decidely downtown tenants.

Last night, Mr. Durst presented his plan at a public meeting, where it was warmly if cautiously received. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/18/12 7:53pm

on the waterfront

pier 40 - david shankbone

Parks and Wreck: The Fight for Pier 40 and the Myth of Public Parks

When Sandy swept into the town almost two months ago, Hudson River Park—as its name might suggest—was among the places inundated by the swelling sea under more than a dozen feet of water.

The surge washed over the historic piers and brand-new lawns, filling skate parks, swamping ball fields, submerging mini golf holes and surrounding the merry-go-round. Yet much of the park, in the traditional sense, came through fine.”I think we lost only five trees and a few plants,” Madelyn Wils, president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust, said at a post-Sandy conference last Thursday.

It was the more manmade features, the development that undergirds the park and pays for its upkeep, that struggled to weather the storm.“The buildings, however, did not fare quite as well,” Ms. Wils explains. “We’re still without power, because we are on our own grid, and we’ve had to work on our own to restore that.”

This is only the latest, and in some ways the least, of the troubles on the waterfront, where a bitter disagreement between Ms. Wils and the park’s biggest backer, developer Douglas Durst, reveals cracks in the public-private model by which the city’s parks are so often built and maintained these days. These partnerships are both sustainer and straightjacket, leading to the creation of more parks in a generation, but also limited means to keep them up and running. Call them libertarian parks. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/17/12 1:08pm

on the waterfront

Waterfront wonder. (Bing Maps)

Dumbo Apartments Set Sail: Brooklyn Bridge Park Seeking Developers for Latest Controversial Project

How would you like to wake up to views of the Manhattan Bridge and Lower Manhattan beyond, a lavish waterfront park right outside? That is the vision Brooklyn Bridge Park is hoping will entice developers into the newest private development within the libertarian park. Today, the park released a request for proposals for a development at the nexus of John and Pearl streets in Dumbo. The project calls for no more than 130 residential units in a 101,000-square foot development that can rise no higher than 13 stories.

“The addition of the residential development at the John Street site represents a critical element of our park maintenance plan,” Regina Myer, president of Brooklyn Bridge Park, said in a statement. “This development will not only benefit the DUMBO community, it will further activate the northern end of the park.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/16/12 10:00am

on the waterfront

Adrift. (HRP Trust)

Sinking Pier 40: Durst Leaves Hudson River Park Amid Mutiny Over Its Future

Even before Hurricane Sandy buried it under more than a dozen feet of water, Hudson River Park was struggling to stay afloat.

The past decade had seen substantial progress on the long-planned park, made possible by the demolition of the old West Side Highway (which provided some of the initial funding) and the realization New Yorkers actually wanted to return to the waterfront (which provided the drive). By last year, more than 70 percent of the park had been completed, including many of the piers, transformed from places of work into ones for play, and the generous esplanade connecting them all, running from the Battery all the way up to Riverside Park.

But the grass is not always greener in a new park. Like so many other open spaces created in recent years, Hudson River Park receives limited public funding. Instead, it is expected to generate its own revenue through not only fundraising but also development within the bounds of the park, everything from floating restaurants to parking garages. Everything from rock climbers at Chelsea Piers to the tourists taking Circle Line cruises contributes in its own way.

At one time, Pier 40 was the park’s biggest single source of funds, but increasingly, it has become a drag on the park, and a dispute over its future has led to the departure of one of its biggest backers. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/21/12 1:50pm

on the waterfront

Battered and broken. (Mayor's Office/Flickr)

Zone A Zoning: Independent Budget Office Critical of Bloomberg’s Two-Faced Waterfront Developments

While the Bloomberg administration has largely come in for praise for its Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, questions remain over whether City Hall made things worse by encouraging waterfront development. The Independent Budget Office certainly believes so in a critical analysis it has issued looking at the seemingly hypocritical policy initiatives Mayor Bloomberg had championed.

On the one hand, the city had taken pains to reduce its carbon footprint as it acknowledges the dangers posed by rising sea levels and superstorms. At the same time, the administration continues to encourage new residential and commercial projects in the very areas it is wringing its hands over. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/01/12 3:53pm

on the waterfront

Wouldn't it be better to pay to protect, rather than rebuild? (Getty)

When It Comes to Protecting New York From the Next Hurricane, Mayor Bloomberg Suggests You Fend for Yourself

Mayor Bloomberg made it clear before Superstorm Sandy hit New York that he believed there was little that could be done to protect the city, at least in terms of stronger infrastructure. This was before half of Manhattan lost power, before the subways were flooded, before Breezy Point burned to the ground and not a little bit of chaos set in on the city.

Sure, life goes on, and many New Yorkers are making due, some quite well. Still, in the future, something ought to be done, right? The Observer has since talked with numerous planners who believe so, and some of whom have even proposed novel solutions to reinforce the city. And yet the mayor has thrown up his hands again, calling such proposals impractical even as Governor Andrew Cuomo talks of the need to redesign much of our physical infrastructure.

“In terms of our infrastructure, Bob Steele and I have talked about it,” Mayor Bloomberg said during a press briefing earlier this afternoon (Bob Steele is his deputy mayor for economic development). “Some of it is just a practical matter that you live on an island, you live very concentrated, there are economics involved, there are risks when you have those kinds of factors that you don’t have if you lived in a different place. Some cities have more risks from tornadoes and rivers that flood, they’re very different in the suburbs and upstate, they have a very different set of problems than we have today.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/31/12 1:35pm

on the waterfront

9 Photos

Going Dutch After Sandy

New New Amsterdam: Should New York Do Like the Dutch and Build Some Skyscraper-Sized Sea Gates?

The Observer has been reaching out to urban planners for the past few days now to discuss the issues with our waterfront development in the face of storm surges and rising sea levels. One of the very first people we called was Vishaan Chakrabarti, the director of Columbia’s Center for Urban Real Estate and a partner at SHoP architects. (You can read what others had to think in a story in today’s print edition, as well as in posts still to come.)

Mr. Chakrabarti previously served as director of the Department of City Planning’s Manhattan office, so he was around when much of the waterfront planning by the Bloomberg administration, and the thousands of condos that came with it, were taking shape. Mayor Bloomberg, at least before the storm hit, was fine with things proceeding as they were on the waterfront, with little investment in new protections and infrastructure, while former deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff, who helped hatch many of these plans, wants more of both.

Mr. Chakrabarti has taken a more urgent stance. “The thing we as a city have to understand is, we’ve been promoting all this waterfront development, and most of that waterfront development is happening in the zone that is getting evacuated right now,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’re talking about thousands and thousands of housing units. It’s fine for that housing to be there, but we have to figure out a way to protect it all.”

But Mr. Chakrabarti also has a simple solution. Well, if the world’s largest floodgates would qualify as simple. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/29/12 12:42am

on the waterfront

Judging by the lights, lots of people are still home. (Matt Chaban)

Luxury Living in Zone A: Williamsburg High Rises Ignore Evacuation Even as Landlords Lock Down Towers

“I love the water,” Blis Laurel said this afternoon, standing beside the choppy waters of the East River. A fierce wind was blowing in across the esplanade where the East River Ferry lands—when it hasn’t been docked to wait out a possibly horrendous storm. Ms. Laurel had ventured down from her apartment on Bedford Avenue to read and reflect, to take in the scene and the energy.

“Mother Earth is so powerful,” she continued. “I love to connect with her; I wanted to come down before the storm and feel the energy. And I want come out in the storm, too, and see what that feels like.”

Ms. Laurel was wearing a white- and rainbow-colored knit cap with white tassels and a green down vest. She had a chain around her neck with a crystal hanging from it. She is from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and thus well accustomed to the ways of a fierce storm. “Andrew was my first, when I was 3,” Ms. Laurel explained. “Hopefully I won’t be spending any time hiding in the closet again.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/18/12 1:51pm

on the waterfront

I'm FDR and I approve of this message. (Diane Bondareff)

Pols Can’t Resist Talking Politics at Ribbon Cutting for FDR Four Freedoms Park

It was not all somber speeches at the ribbon cutting for Four Freedoms Park yesterday.

Naturally, this was an event honoring one the nation’s greatest presidents, so there was bound to be some politics in the mix, not just quaint platitudes about FDR and recastings of the Four Freedoms speech as each speaker tried to rhetorically show up the others. What The Observer was not counting on was what sounded like a full-on stump speech for President Obama at the end of Bill Clinton’s remarks from the dais in the park at the tip of Roosevelt Island. He did everything but call out the president by name: Read More