At 1133 Sixth Avenue, the Durst Organization is merging these two currents, popular public art and a sparkling new lobby, into a striking whole. The centerpiece of a new Gensler-designed lobby is an installation by light artist Leo Villareal, Volume (Durst). At 90-feet long, 12-feet high and 6-feet deep, the dazzling sculpture is Mr. Villareal's largest three-dimensional work yet. Floating near the top of the lobby, it not only enlivens the space but the avenue, as well, fully visible through the two-story windows facing out on the plaza between the International Center for Photography on one side and a bank on the other.

"I love the chance encounter," Mr. Villareal said at an opening reception for the lobby Tuesday night. "I love seeing people stopping in front of it, talking to their friends about, pointing." Even in the freezing cold of the past week, the sculpture, which morphs through organic shapes, was stopping people in their tracks.

Like many of his sculptures, Mr. Villareal created a custom computer program to control the play of lights through blocks and walls and circles and other forms, all inspired by early organic forms—it is digital art climbing out of the primordial soup. The program is set up so that the shapes and durations are random and will never repeat. "It's not on a loop, which is what I think makes it art," Mr. Villareal said.

The sculpture is comprised of 900 thin mirrored-stainless-steel blades that hang 12 feet down from the ceiling, each with 96 LEDs—86,400 in total, Mr. Villareal points out, more than he has used in any other piece. The high polish on the blades makes the piece sparkle from throughout the space, though it is truly best viewed from the street. That is where Mr. Villareal spent all weekend fine-tuning the program controlling the piece, parking his car out front as a refuge from the cold as he spent hours tweaking each strand, each form. During the opening, his laptop sat casually on the lobby's new onyx-fronted desk, whirring away with the new program.

Nearby Times Square is also an inspiration. "It's only a block away, so I wanted it to be reminiscent of the lights and the billboards, but to also be more refined and classy," Mr. Villareal said.

"It's fabulous," Douglas Durst told The Observer. "He did an incredible job and we're thrilled with it."

Mr. Villareal, who lives in the city, has seen his profile on the rise, especially in public, in the past year. His Bucky Ball was selected as the marquee piece for Madison Square Park in 2012, and a ceiling piece caps the recently opened connection between the Lexington and Sixth Avenue lines at Bleecker Street. His largest piece ever, on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, flips the switch this spring. The artist has also done similar, though less large, corporate work at the Time Warner Center and a number of properties in Washington, D.C.

Volume (Durst) is paired with the new lobby for the 1970s building built by Douglas' father Seymour Durst. The lobby was last refreshed in 1993, but very much in the style of the time, with dark terrazzo floors and almost blindingly polished travertine walls. Redoing the space is not unlike buying a new suit after a decade or two. The suit still looks nice, but the lapels are maybe a little big and outmoded, the hems a bit threadbare.

This being the Durst Organization, sustainability was important, so rather than rip everything out, the design team at Gensler hit upon a clever solution where they honed the travertine walls and put down a new epoxy on the floor, brightening and softening all the surfaces, creating a cleaner, smoother more modern look. Gaudy pendant lights were replaced with recessed lamps, and new elevator bays and cabs were added, trading dark wood for polished glass.

"We wanted to make the lobby feel like a gallery, make it feel clean and bright," Gensler designer E.J. Lee said. And it will feature art beyond Mr. Villareal's, hanging a rotating selection along the walls on the way to the elevators.

The biggest change was moving the security desk back and facing it and the wall behind it in back-lit onyx instead of wood. The security gates are now off to the side, rather than at the center near the desk, easing the flow of workers into the building. It is a benefit for the building's tenant, which is one of the biggest reasons for the new lobby.

The 1 million-square-foot tower, which is home to Bank of America, ACE Insurance and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, among others, is about to lose its biggest tenant, the GSA, which has 300,000 square feet on floors 2 through 10, which will empty out at the end of 2014. The Durst Organization will begin marketing the space this fall and hopes the new lobby will help entice tenants into this better looking building.

"It's a whole new building," Mr. Durst said. "For the third time now, it's a completely new building."]\

It is also meant for those who may never even set foot in the building.

"Some people may look at this from the street and think, 'Oh, it's just a light thing,'" Mr. Villareal said. "But then they find themselves transfixed, it's changing, it's a seductive thing. Suddenly you're coming back, you're bringing your family back, your coworkers, and you're all staring at this lobby. I've seen it happen already."

Messrs. Novogratz and Pietrantone enjoying the park. (FHRP/Flickr)

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.

Mr. Novogratz said he will continue to focus on expanding the donor base at Friends, among the controversial moves that drove off Mr. Durst. Previously, it has been more of an advocacy and oversight group, but increasingly it has been called upon to raise funds for the money-hungry waterfront oasis.

“I am excited to serve as the new Chairman of the Friends,” Mr. Novogratz said in a statement. “The next few years will be a critical time for the Park as we work together to combat the substantial financial and infrastructure challenges we face. My focus will be on expanding the number of donors for the Park’s operations and raising capital funds so that we maintain its status as one of New York’s premier parks.  We also need to make sure that this park, which is so important to the west side community, gets completed in a timely fashion."

The Friends also announced that A.J. Pietrantone, executive director of the Friends of Hudson River Park, will be stepping down, having successfully completed the new integration between the group and the trust. “I am confident that Mike will help to further strengthen and grow our assets, while ensuring a smooth transition for staff leadership as well," Mr. Pietrantone said.

“The Trust and the Friends enter this new phase of cooperation more aligned than ever,” said Madelyn Wils, director of the trust.

Play ball, write some code, sip a cappuccino. (Dattner Architects)

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

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. The plans were prepared by Dattner Architects, a response of sorts to similar schematics for housing drawn up by SHoP Architects for the Trust. They show tight little stacks of cars, cubicles, lawns and ballfields, a scheme that is not markedly different from what is there already, just with a few things moved around to make room for the offices. (The Observer could not attend the meeting but was provided with a copy of the proposal along with Mr. Durst's remarks.)

"We think this concept is compelling because the space available at Pier 40 for office use is exactly what is in greatest demand today by the fastest growing sector of New York’s Economy," Mr. Durst told the audience. "Tech firms want large floor plates, high ceilings, large windows and unconventional and interesting space."

The plan calls for consolidating parking in the middle of the ground floor, using car stackers, which would eliminate the need for parking at the edges of the building and on the upper floors. The plan would also boost the number of spaces to 2,000, increasing income as a result. Even with more cars, this move frees up the perimeter of the ground floor and the entire mezzanine level for some 415,000 square feet of office space and an additional 99,000 square feet of retail—an impressive spread about as big as a mid-size office tower.

The middle of the mezzanine level would still be occupied by two large ball fields while the entire roof would be turned into public open space. Currently half of it is given over to parking, with a mix of fields on top, but now, there could be vibrant plantings and six different tennis and basketball courts along the roof.

"Our concept is a relatively simple way to preserve the current uses of the pier and also provide the additional revenue to help the entire park," Mr. Durst said.

Another benefit, he argues, is that it will be easier to get changes to the act governing the park's operations to allow for commercial development than for residential. The whole reason the pier has any money making uses, rather than just being public open space like the rest of Hudson River Park, is that when the park was first created, it was mandated that its ongoing operations be funded by the park, rather than the city or state, and three piers were set aside for development, this being one of them.

The Durst proposal projects a net annual profit for the park of $10 million a year, almost twice what the pier has historically made for the park.

Mr. Durst stressed that he and Ben Korman, a fellow board member who could not attend the meeting but also supports the plan, were offering this as a proposal for the public, not for themselves. "We are presenting this concept today as interested citizens who care about Hudson River Park and its future, not as developers interested in building out this project," Mr. Durst said.

David Gruber, chair of Community Board 2, said the room was packed and many were genuinely interested in the idea, if still non-committal. "I don't have a horse in this race, housing or no housing, but what I liked about this reuse is, the idea of housing on the pier after Sandy—I don't know if anyone's thinking of that anymore," Mr. Gruber said.

Mr. Gruber said that it was important to have options for the community to consider, including housing, and the board would be convening a forum in February to debate them all.

"What I do know is, we've tried big box stores and Circ de Soleil, we've tried everything, and people are tired of waiting," Mr. Gruber said. "There's a real sense in the community that something has to happen and people just want to make sure they do the right thing."

Correction: A previous version of this article said the presentation was given at a community board meeting. It was instead presented at a meeting of the Hudson River Park advisory council.

A tweaked north side for Durst/Fetner's 625 West 57th Street. (Durst/Fetner)

Big, pointy apartments. (Durst/Fetner)

When Douglas Durst began deciding, yet again, what to do with the almost block-long property he owns at 57th Street and the Hudson River, City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden urged the developer to think big. A high-tech data center, a school and a hotel had all fallen through, so Mr. Durst had fallen back on that most reliable form of New York City development: housing.

Ms. Burden wanted something iconic, especially for a project on such a prominent street at such a prominent location right on the waterfront. With Hudson River Park right there, it ought to be iconic. Mr. Durst delivered something BIG indeed, hiring the Danish wunderkinds at Bjarke Ingles Group to design his project.

Yesterday, Ms. Burden got to put her official stamp on the project, when she and the rest of the City Planning Commission approved Durst/Fetner’s BIG pyramid. It was the second-to-last step in the arduous months-long public review process, in many ways made all the easier by a dynamic design that has made this arguably the most unusual apartment building in the city.

"Our approval will facilitate development of a significant new building with a distinctive pyramid-like shaped design and thoughtful site plan that integrates the full block site into the evolving residential, institutional, and commercial neighborhood surrounding it," Ms. Burden said before voting in favor of the project.

Contained within the striking design are 753 apartments in a building that tapers from CKCKthree stories along the river up to a pinnacle of CKCK38 stories. It has an unusual sloping aspect (technically a tetrahedron, not a pyramid) with a massive courtyard cut into the middle that is almost the site of a football field. The cutout also affords every apartment with an outdoor terrace, a feature that was especially important to Mr. Ingels.

The commission required a few modifications to the project, dealing primarily with how it is experienced from the street. There is a limit on the amount of signage and obstructions that can go in the windows of the retail lining 57th Street and the West Side Highway, to ensure transparency and a sense of activity that does not obscure what is going on inside. The fear is a blank wall would deaden the street life, as has happened ion places like Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.

The developer has made similar gestures on 58th Street to ensure vibrancy on what is otherwise a block-long stretch of almost blank building. Retail wraps the corners of the building, but otherwise, there is a lobby and a loading dock and little else.

Part of the reason for this is the building is located in the 100-year-flood plane, so the Con Ed substation cannot go in the basement but instead by located above-grade. The utility needs access to the facilities at all times, so they have to be on the street, and cannot go higher up in the building. The developer also argued that there is barely any retail on 58th Street as is, so forcing it into the northern side of the building would be impractical and difficult to lease.

The solution was to establish a retail space within the lobby located in that section of the building, and to also install glass vitrines along the blank parts of the façade that could feature plants or sculptures on a rotating basis, creating a more engaging streetscape.

"It's an important approval, and we're pleased with her support and input," Mr. Durst said in an interview.

Previously, the developer agreed to additional modifications when the project received approvals two months ago from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. That included widening the sidewalks and narrowing the driveway between 57th and 58th streets located in the middle of the block at the main entrance to the building. Durst/Fetner will also provide seating and landscaping in the space. The developer also agreed to improve a connection to Hudson River Park at 59th Street, a block north of the development. The connection currently passes under an overpass of West Side Highway, and the developers will work with the city and state departments of transportation to spruce up the space.

"In all, this is an exciting project on a pivotal site that will benefit its occupants, the neighborhood and the city as a whole," Ms. Burden said.

One aspect of the project that has yet to be addressed is how long the affordable units in the building will remain affordable. The development is being built through the city's 80/20 program, which means 20 percent of apartments will be reserved for low- and moderate-income families, while the remaining number will be market rate.

Currently, those units will only be eligible for less well-off families for 35 years. The community board desperately wants permanent affordability, but Durst/Fetner insists it cannot agree to such an arrangement because they do not own the land. The developers themselves are leasing it from a family that has owned the land for more than a century, and is now comprised of some 100 trustees Durst/Fetner must negotiate with about extending the affordability window.

But local Councilwoman Gail Brewer has insisted the developers had better get negotiating, because she is willing to torpedo the project at the City Council—the final step in the public review process, where Ms. Brewer will have almost total say over the project—if her constituents do not get what they want.

Sink or swim. (David Shankbone)

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.

On October 29, the very night Sandy hit, Mr. Durst, the iconoclastic developer, was scheduled to appear before Community Board 2 to present a study he had recently paid for out of pocket on the dilapidated Pier 40, the earliest centerpiece of the park.

The 14-acre pier, built just off Spring Street in 1964 as the New York base for the Holland America Line, has more than  2,000 parking spaces along with two massive ball fields. Also home to a kayak launch, two harbor cruises and the New York Trapeze School, the pier is not only an asset for the community, but also for Hudson River Park itself, as it generates some $6 million a year in revenues for the park trust.

But the pier has slowly become a drag on the park, its roof starting to crumble—leading to the closing of a rooftop soccer field and a number of parking spots—and the nearly 4,000 pilings holding up the two-story structure starting to give.

While Ms. Wils and the trust estimate the price of repairing everything to be as much as $125 million, Mr. Durst had planned to go before the community board and argue that the repairs could be made for only $30 million, and that they should be paid for as soon as possible with the trust’s money.

The meeting was rained out, and now Mr. Durst pegs his plan at $44 million, because he believes the central ball fields, along with some other important pieces of the pier’s infrastructure, should be elevated out of the floodplain post-Sandy.

Mr. Durst has long been a staunch advocate for the park, serving since 2002as chairman of the board of Friends of Hudson River Park, an affiliated group that acts as both a fund-raiser and watchdog for the trust that operates the park. He was also its largest donor, giving a total of $2.3 million over that span and frequently buying the biggest tables at the annual fund-raising gala.

Since the summer, Mr. Durst began to float an idea that the pier should be fixed up as soon as possible, with the parking consolidated to the lower floor, and the upper areas turned into office space for tech firms and art galleries. The ball fields and other facilities would remain intact.

Meanwhile Ms. Wils and other Friends board members have been pushing for an approach in which a private developer would come in and pay for the repairs, along with what is expected to be a transformation of the pier. It would no doubt be a grander project, but also a more expensive one, and probably a more privatized one too.

Housing has been bandied about as a sort of panacea—ever since Richard Meier built his Perry Street “lofts,” who wouldn’t want to live on the Hudson River waterfront?—but locals also hate the idea of allowing the park to become some millionaire’s backyard.

That is why Mr. Durst has been pushing his plan for adaptive reuse on his own. It is also why Mr. Durst quit the Friends board last week. His name has already been wiped from the advocacy group's website, along with that of vice-chair Ben Korman, who used to run the parking at Pier 40 and also quit the board in protest.

“There was a difference of opinion of the direction that the park should go in,” Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mr. Durst, told The Observer on Friday. “Douglas is still deeply committed to the park, but given his difference of opinion from the leadership of the park, it became impractical for him to continue with the trust and with Friends.”

One person close to the situation said this amounted to “a pissing match” between Mr. Durst and Ms. Wils, who was appointed president and CEO of the trust in June 2011. “He’s taking his ball and going home,” said the source.

But in many ways, the pair, who both share a passion for the park and its future, would not even be having this fight if Hudson River Park were not so desperate for funds, a conundrum that is at the very foundation of the park's creation.

It goes without saying that every open space needs money coming in, but for Hudson River Park, it is especially crucial. This is, after all, one of the first public-private, or “self-sustaining,” parks created in the city. Championed by Governor Pataki and launched through an act of the Legislature in 1998, Hudson River Park has become a popular model for fostering new parks, particularly for the Bloomberg administration.

The public-private model has taken hold everywhere from Governors Island to the High Line to Brooklyn Bridge Park, the idea being that the government pays the up-front costs of getting the parks built, but after that it is up to quasi-public agencies to keep them up and running, usually through a mix of commercial activities and fund-raising.

It is a controversial arrangement, since it can often mean that what was once public space must now be given over, at least in part, to private interests. But many supporters of the model, especially in this age of fiscal austerity, argue that without such arrangements, the parks would never get built at all. Those privatizers are winning for now.

On Monday, Brooklyn Bridge Park announced it was seeking developers for the third apartment complex to be built on public land on John Street, within the waterfront park, while a competition earlier this year to develop housing at Pier 1 attracted some of the city’s top builders. On Wednesday, prospective tenants for historic buildings on Governors Island, ranging from local chefs to national chains, will tour the island, hoping to open up shop in one of the 48 pre-Civil War structures. And when the third section of the High Line broke ground in September, nearly one-third of the construction funds came from the Related Companies and Oxford Properties, which are developing the Hudson Yards project the elevated park will surround. All of them are hoping to cash in on the parks, which will benefit the public too, but the question remains: who benefits more?

This is not how it always was. Look at the original urban park, Central Park, which was developed in part to buoy real estate values uptown, but was largely paid for and maintained by the public, as a public benefit that subsequently paid for itself through rising property values.

The Bloomberg administration last year touted the $2 billion boom that resulted from its $150 million investment in the High Line. But the city contributes almost nothing to the ongoing operations of the park—easily the most expensive for a park of its size, with a $9 million annual budget.

In 2008, The Regional Plan Association did a study that found the Greenwich Village segment of Hudson River Park had generated $200 million in economic development while only costing $75 million to build up to that point. Yet very little of that money was reinvested in the park. Meanwhile, capital funds from the city have fallen from a high of $42 million in 2008 to only $7 million this year, due to recessionary cuts at City Hall. Operating expenses for the park are roughly $14 million a year, almost all of it coming from the trust.

“The biggest thing that concerns me is that Hudson River Park was the first in this new, quote-unquote sustainable park model,” Holly Leicht, executive director of advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said in an interview. “What we’re seeing right now is not very reassuring for this model.”

This debate is at the heart of the fight between Mr. Durst and the rest of the park’s leadership. He wanted up-front investments to protect the park, while other board members wanted the private sector to pay—perhaps rightly so, since the park could barely afford even the $30 million-to-$44 million tab Mr. Durst had touted.

“If it was up to me, not one more dime goes into Pier 40,” Diana Taylor declared at a recent board meeting. “Period.” (In addition to being a Friends board member, Ms. Taylor is, of course, Mayor Bloomberg’s girlfriend and in some ways his surrogate.)

The problem is that the legislation that created the park—by virtue of it being the first—is the most restrictive of the public-private parks in the city. It limits residential and certain other types of development and caps leases at 29 years. In comparison, more than 1,000 apartments will be built as part of Brooklyn Bridge Park, with leases up to 99 years.

The trust has been lobbying Albany for years now to relax the restrictions, often to fierce outcry from locals, who oppose most forms of new development. (It’s the Village and Soho, after all.) So far, everything from an outpost of Cirque du Soleil to a Major League Soccer stadium has been proposed, but all have been sunk by neighbors.

The trust insists it does not favor housing, it simply wants that as one of the options on the table. “The community needs to understand that if they want a park, they need to be willing to do what it takes to maintain a park,” Ms. Wils told Crain’s in May, when she unveiled plans for a 115-room hotel and 800 apartments on the pier—but with expanded open space as well, a palliative to all that development.

“It’s never what you want to do, for sure,” said Rob Pirani, a vice president at the Regional Plan Association and member of the Governors Island Alliance, that park’s watchdog. “It’s the difference between a real estate project and building a neighborhood.” But he also conceded that without the public-private partnerships, public officials might not have agreed to underwrite these parks in the first place.

Meanwhile, the entertainment complex Chelsea Piers, the other big money-maker for the trust, has sued, alleging two decades of deferred maintenance on its piles. The repair costs have been estimated at $100 million, a price the trust could hardly afford. (The fact that there is an expensive place for people to rock climb, ice skate and drive golf balls on what is ostensibly public land, meanwhile, gets at the heart of the problems with this type of park. It’s a nice amenity for the neighborhood, but only for those who can afford it.)

There is some hope on the horizon, as the park’s third major commercial project, Pier 57, is finally getting underway after years of delays. Young Woo, a hip downtown developer, has teamed up with designers Lot-Ek, known for building with shipping containers, to transform the pier into an artisanal market. Cute, but again, commercial. There will be a public walkway around the pier and expansive open space on the 1.6-acre roof—but there would be even more public space without those stores. The proposal was just approved by the Community Board last week, the first step in the months-long public approval process.

“Despite these and other challenges, including the recent impact of Superstorm Sandy, the Friends and the trust remain wholly committed to working together to secure resources for the park and sustaining its future,” Ms. Wils and Friends executive director A.J. Pietrantone said in a statement released after Mr. Durst’s departure.

Ms. Leicht hopes they can pull it off. “I do think getting it right here is essential before we continue to forge ahead on these types of parks,” she said.

Adrift. (HRP Trust)

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.

Built in 1958 as an air marine terminal for the Holland America Line, Pier 40 is actually one of the younger protrusions from the park, and also the biggest, at 14 acres. But unlike its predecessors, Pier 40 has not been substantially rebuilt to accommodate its new uses, chiefly as a parking garage but also as a popular downtown ballfield (one of the few) as well as being home to a few harbor cruisers (Affairs Afloat and the Hornblower), a dog run, a kayaking company and a trapeze school. The parking alone brought in $5 million a year.

That was before the pier began to crumble. There has been growing concern over the piles holding up the pier, which have only been intermittently repaired over the years, and part of the roof has begun to collapse, closing one of the three ball fields. The Hudson River Park Trust, which runs the parks, pegs the cost of fixing the pier at $125 million, at least $80 million for just the piles. This is money the trust argues it can hardly afford to spend, and it wants to foster some new type of development, most likely housing, to help offset the cost.

Pier 40, located between Spring and LeRoy streets in the Village, has gone from a buoy to a concrete boot dragging the park down.

But Douglas Durst, chairman of Friends of Hudson River Park, a booster group affiliated with the trust, believes the cost of preserving the peer has been greatly exaggerated, and he has been pushing his own plans for the pier for months now, to shore up the piles and then adaptively reuse the structure, adding offices for tech firms to the mix of parking and sports, providing fresh funds and space for a booming Silicon Alley downtown. He has also proposed gallery space.

Mr. Durst even went so far as to pay for a study of the costs of repairing the piles, which was revealed this week in The Villager, where the developer pegs the cost at only $30 million, or as much as $44 million if money is spent to raise the ball fields, which he believes should be the case following Hurricane Sandy. (Ironically, his study was completed just four days before the storm hit, and Mr. Durst had been poised to present it to the local community board on October 29, the day Sandy made landfall in New York.)

Without support for his plan either at the trust or Friends of Hudson River Park, late last week, Mr. Durst left the group, stepping down as chairman. Already his name has been scrubbed from the Friends' site, as has that of Ben Korman, a vice-chair who also stepped down. Mr. Korman used to run the parking operation on the pier and supported Mr. Durst's plan.

"There was a difference of opinion of the direction that the park should go in," Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mr. Durst, told The Observer on Friday. "Douglas is still deeply committed to the park, but given his difference of opinion from the leadership of the park, it became impractical for him to continue with the trust and with Friends."

Justin Sadrian, a Friends board member and managing director at private equity outfit Warburg Pincus, was named acting chairman in the wake of Mr. Durst's departure, a promotion already reflected online.

Pier 40, flooded during Sandy. (HRPT/Flickr)

Mr. Durst believed that his expertise in matters of development was being ignored, and he had openly questioned the desire to build housing on the pier, which he told The Villager "doesn't work." Part of the problem, Mr. Durst argued, was that additional development would add to the cost of shoring up the piers—the more built up top, the more that must go down below to hold it up. He wanted the trust to spend money now to protect it, but other board members insisted there was no funds for such work.

“If it was up to me, not one more dime goes into Pier 40," Diana Taylor declared at a recent board meeting. "Period.”

One person close to the situation said this amounted to "a pissing match" between Mr. Durst and Madelyn Wils, who was appointed president and CEO of the trust in July 2011. "He's taking his ball and going home," said the source.

In a statement, Ms. Wils and Friends executive director A.J. Pietrantone said: "The Friends of Hudson River Park and the Hudson River Park Trust are extremely grateful for the many contributions of Douglas Durst and the Durst Organization to Hudson River Park  His philanthropy and advocacy for the waterfront and this distinct New York City amenity have had a profound effect on the quality of life for countless New Yorkers."

Mr. Barowitz said that Mr. Durst, who has not only provided his time to the Friends group but also his money as its biggest donor, would still continue to advocate for the park as a private citizen. Mr. Korman, who could not be reached by The Observer, will attempt the same, as he told Capital New York, which also reported the split.

"With the recent organizational changes made to the Friends, and my growing discomfort with regards to the Trust’s management, I felt that my advocacy would be more effective outside the Friends framework," Mr. Korman wrote in an email.

Losing two well-to-do backers seems like it could cause a serious blow to the park at a time that it is already desperate for funding, but another Friends board member said it should not have a material impact on the day-to-day operations of the Trust.

In many ways, this is a debate about the nature of how parks get built, maintained and funded in the city. New York has seen a number of public-private parks pop up in the past decade, from Brooklyn Bridge Park to the High Line. The city or state will help pay to build these grand edifices, but unlike Central Park or Prospect Park before them, the city takes little role in the new parks ongoing upkeep. Instead the parks are left to fend for themselves.

(Granted, most ever major open space from Central Park to Bryant Park now has some sort of conservancy, friends group or business improvement district that helps pay a good chunk of the costs for running it, ever since the city began divesting itself of this responsibility in the bankrupt 1970s.)

The argument over who should pay what is playing itself out here, as well. Mr. Durst and Mr. Korman believed the park should front the money to fix Pier 40, and then bring in new tenants to help cover those costs and add to the maintenance kitty going forward. But the bulk of the park's leadership insists it cannot pay for these fixes up front, and instead wants a private developer to come in and cover them.

In the past, there has been flirtations with everything from building schools here to an outpost for Circ de Soleil, all of which have been defeated for one reason or another, most usually through public outcry. Earlier this year the MLS had even considered it as a possible site for a soccer stadium, but transportation and crowding concerns from the surrounding community quickly stymied that idea.

Among the options the trust would like to see on the table is housing development, currently forbidden by the Hudson River Park Act of 1998, and SHoP Architects was even hired to make a compelling case for such a model earlier this year. The trust insists it is agnostic on which approach would be most suitable, and while housing would probably be the most lucrative—this is housing on the Hudson River waterfront, after all—locals tend to hate residential development, particularly on waterfront plots within public parkland (see: Brooklyn Bridge Park).

The trust has been working for the past year with lawmakers in Albany to try and revise the park act to allow for more types of development. Beyond restricting housing, the legislation limits leases to 29 years, which is seen as too short a time frame to attract a developer who would shoulder the costs of fixing up the pier as part of a larger development package.

But this may be the least of the park's problems at the moment. It remains without power six weeks after the Sandy storm surge washed over much of the park, including totally flooding Pier 40. "Most of our plants are O.K.," Ms. Wils said during a panel at a post-Sandy conference hosted by the Municipal Art Socity and Columbia on Thursday. "They're made to survive underwater, well not underwater, but they can put up with some flooding. I think we lost only five trees and a few plants."

"The buildings, however, did not fare quite as well," she said. "We're still without power, because we are on our own grid, and we've had to work on our own to restore that."

Meanwhile, there is some positive development news, as Pier 57, a cultural and shopping hub also long in the works at 15th Street, won approval from the local community board earlier this month. It will offer activities and access to the pier, as well as desperately needed funds to the park.

Whether something similar will get built at Pier 40, especially before the structure should deteriorate beyond repair, remains to be seen.

"Despite these and other challenges, including the recent impact of Superstorm Sandy, the Friends and the Trust remain wholly committed to working together to secure resources for the Park and sustaining its future," Ms. Wils and Mr. Pietrantone concluded their statement.

"Now with Douglas out of the way, the trust can start to work cohesively on fixing this pier," said the park source. The trust just has to convince Albany, and its angry neighbors, of the same thing.

Correction:A previous version of this story said the new acting board chair was Jason Sadrian, not Justin Sadrian. The Observer regrets the error.

Little help? (agent j loves nyc/Flickr)

The problems of Pier 40 are well documented by now. Once the golden goose of Hudson River Park, the pier is now so deteriorated, it costs more to maintain than it earns for the libertarian park. In two years, the pier might have to be shut down all together. With hopes of MLS soccer headed to Queens instead and a housing proposal on the rocks, what's a park to do?

Well, it looks like Douglas Durst to the rescue.

Acting as "a private individual with knowledge of residential development" rather than chair of the Friends of Hudson River Park, which supports a housing plan, Mr. Dust said he did not think this would work, according to the Post’s Steve Cuozzo. Instead, he wants to rejigger the parking to one level instead of three, freeing up room for additional profit generating development.

It would have the same number of parking spaces, currently 1,700, by converting it from a self-parking facility to one with attendants who would move cars into a three-level “stack,” which would fit into the existing ground floor with 20-foot ceilings.

Freeing up the second floor and roof would make room for 500,000 square feet of commercial space, Durst said. But he wouldn’t build or operate it himself; rather, the Trust would solicit proposals from other developers.

Given the area's booming tech sector, he seems to think this good be a good spot for a technology campus of some sort, or, pitching to the neighborhood's other historic strength, galleries and shops.

Mr. Durst argues this plan is preferable because office space is less contentious than residential development, and it might have an easier time getting approved in Albany, which must approve any changes to the pier's financial structure. If done right, it might not even need Albany's approval at all. Wouldn't that make life easier?

Stick to your back yard. (Durst Organization)

Leonine developer Douglas Durst might not be quite the public presence than his father Seymour once was—a regular in the letters to the editor column and on local talk shows, among other outlets for his restless mind—yet he still very much knows his way around a podium. Last week, he found himself in China, talking about New York, and he even seems to admit that the one investment his firm recently made just across the Formosa Strait might not have been its best.

"My experience is almost completely New York centric," Mr. Durst said at the China Alliance's US-China Investment Summit: Focus On New York Real Estate in Shenzen. "Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local."

He also, naturally, talked about his kids—it’s now a fourth generation business!—and how building sustainably not only provides better buildings, and thus better income, for them, but also a better world. There was talk of 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park, but nothing about the widely anticipated, mildly concerning West 57th Street pyramid. The full speech is below.

My grandfather and father were in real estate and my father had a strict policy of not buying anything that wasn’t within walking distance of his house.  I had the good fortune that he lived in mid-town Manhattan.

My experience is almost completely New York centric. Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local.

While some prefer to be diverse geographically, our diversity is over time. Our lease expirations are spread over time so that usually only 5 to 10 percent of our office portfolio expires each year, and the good years make up for the bad years.

This is not to say that one cannot invest over a diverse geography, but that to do so successfully you must have local talent involved.

I am very lucky to work in one of the most dynamic and challenging real estate cities.  My dad said to build in New York you need an architect, an engineer and two psychiatrists.

Today you need 2 architects, 2 engineers and 6 psychiatrists. The risk, competition and regulation is intense, but so is the reward.

New York has a unique formula for success.  For the past 400 years, from the earliest Dutch settlers to the 21st Century, the best and the brightest have come from across the globe to New York to make their fame and seek their fortune.

The city’s tolerance, openness, acceptance of newcomers and insatiable appetite for innovation and creativity has insulated New York from the stagnation that has plagued many of the older US cities.

In the past, workers moved to where the jobs were, but New York’s ability to attract young, educated talent has meant companies relocate here because New York is where the qualified employees are.

New York has always been a center for financial services, but the city also has thriving media, education legal, art and cultural sectors as well as a newly energized tech and new media sector.

The area south of the central Midtown business district was once a clothing manufacturing center, as these businesses left the area entered a dormant phase.

A few years ago, as tech start-up firms needed inexpensive office space they began populating South Mid-town.  Now vacancy is near zero, and rents are high.

This is the quintessential New York real estate success story.  Neighborhoods are transformed by the creative, talented and driven people that populate them creating opportunity for development.

New York’s critical mass of talent also provides opportunities for traditional development—more along the lines of “build first and the people will come.”

This is what my father and uncles did in the 1950s along Third Avenue and in the 1970s and 80s along Sixth Avenue.  Both thoroughfares were beyond the central business district when we began developing, but are now considered the heart of midtown.

Four Times Square and One Bryant Park are the Durst Organization’s two most recently completed projects comprising more than 3.7 million square feet of office space on the block bounded by 6th Avenue, Broadway, 42nd Street next to Time Square.

The site sits atop nearly a dozen subway lines and is within walking district of three of the largest intermodal transportation hubs in North America.

Besides the environmental benefits of locating close to public transportation these building will remain desirable for decades because of the simple fact that they are easy to get to.

***

We are a family-run company in a business that is well suited for family-run operations.  Our freedom from the disclosure dictates and need to demonstrate quarterly profits of a public company allows us to develop for the long-term.

We rarely if ever sell our assets and plan for our children and grandchildren, not for the next earnings report.

Our long-term investment strategy compliments our commitment to sustainability.

We build more efficient buildings not only because they use less energy, are less expensive to operate, and provide a more productive work environment, but because we are focused on providing not just an economic future for our children, but a healthy one as well.

Our latest investment epitomizes this policy.  Two years ago we purchased a $100 million equity position in One World Trade Center and also became the buildings’ manager, leasing agent and development adviser.

The short-term prospects for the building were challenging.   The building is perhaps the most complex ever built, the real-estate market has yet to recover and the competition for large tenants is intense.

When we became involved, the single tenant was Vantone’s China Center for less than 10% of the 3.1 million sqft. Despite these risks we believed that New York and Lower Manhattan is a great bet and the benefits of new and sustainable construction provide a critical edge.

With the recent signing of a lease by the US Government, the building is now over 50% leased 2 years before it opens.

The real estate investment world is rapidly changing. My father’s generation avoided partners and outside investors, but all of our recent developments include partners: The Port Authority at 1 World Trade Center, Bank of America at 1 Bryant Park, and Vantone at 855 6th Avenue.

In closing, I would like to say that wherever you invest, it is important to remember that real estate is a service industry, not a commodity.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I wish you good luck and am sure we will have a constructive and productive conference.

Within the BIG surprise was hidden a smaller one, revealed in planning documents filed when the project was approved two weeks ago, dubbed Development Site 2. Plans call for a 110-unit apartment building that backs onto the pyramid apartments, though it is unlikely it will be built in that form, if at all. Instead, it is a zoning technicality.

“That building is in the same zoning lot, so it has to get rezoned with everything else,” Jordan Barowitz, a Durst spokesman, explained. “For technical reasons, we have to keep it in there, so we decided to make it a residential building, to study the impacts.”

Currently, the building, at the corner of 11th Avenue and 58th Street, is a self-storage facility—a Manhattan Mini Storage, to be exact—with a few years left on its lease. It is one of those former industrial buildings that has been totally bricked up. When the lease comes due, the Durst Organization may extend it or look for an alternative commercial use, but the firm is unlikely to redevelop the plot for housing, according to Mr, Barowitz, at least in the form currently outlined in the rezoning.

This is in part because the proposed nine-story building, which would be built around the existing six-story structure, would block views from the new building as well as one Durst Fetner built five years ago, the Helena, which is in the southeastern corner of the lot, on 57th Street.

“We don’t know what we’re doing with that building yet,” Mr. Barowitz said.

Instead, the firm is proposing the 110-unit structure simply because the city's environmental review requires some accounting of what could go on the site, because both are on the same zoning lot. For technical reasons, Durst Fetner chose an apartment building even though they may or may not actually build one.

As for the rest of the block, the ULURP application reveals an unusually shaped building—called not a pyramid but a hexahedron. It measures 1.1 million square feet, with with 867 apartments, 151 of which are set aside for affordable for families making roughly $40,000 a year. Of the building’s remaining area, 80,000 square feet will be set aside for commercial uses, likely doctor’s offices and other community-focused space, while there will be 62,000 feet of ground floor retail.

A community facilities building of 28,000 square feet is proposed behind the storage facility and next to the Helena, and between those and the BIG building will run a driveway serving the two residential buildings. The project will have 285 parking spaces, more necessary than in some buildings, no doubt, given the nearest subway station is Columbus Circle, four avenues away.

More will be revealed tonight at the land-use hearing of Community Board 4, the fist public meeting for the project as it heads into the grueling seven-month public review process. Previously, the board had expressed mild support for the project, celebrating its design, but there may be some issues surrounding the affordable housing component.

In a statement, Douglas Durst mentioned the potential for the project to play a role in the continued transformation of the west side. "We are pleased that we have reached this important benchmark," he said, "and we look forward to working with the CB 4, City Planning and the City Council on this exciting project."

Photo by D Dipasupil/FilmMagic.

A note to our colleagues: Now may be a good time to stop sleeping in the office. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had The Observer on his mind yesterday at the Friends of the Hudson River Park's sping gala, reminding partygoers that FOHRP board chair Douglas Durst ranked fifth on The Commercial Observer's Real Estate Power 100, five spots ahead of hizzoner. "Look out for a visit from the city's building inspectors," he quipped, a friend tells us.

Mr. Bloomberg—his girlfriend Diana Taylor chairs the board of the Hudson River Park Trust—was on hand at Pier 26 to present Highbridge Capital co-founder Glenn Dubin with the FOHRP's Leadership in Community Enrichment award. It was no mere pit-stop on the evening agenda—Mr. Bloomberg stayed through dinner (goat cheese panna cotta and seared arctic char from Union Square Catering) and chatted with guests (who included Christy Turlington, Ed Burns and former-Gov. George Pataki).

Teen-aged children mean Mr. Dubin—who grew up in Washington Heights and frequented Fort Tryon Park as a boy—is spending less time at his country house these days, he told guests, and more time in the park. Though Mr. Dubin seemed partial to venerable Central Park, his track record as a philanthropist—Mr. Dubin was a founding board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, and more recently, the Eva and Glenn Dubin Breast Care Center at Mt. Sinai Hospital—and environmentalist instincts made him an apt honoree.

"You're looking for someone who can raise money, yes, but also someone whose ethos matches what the organization is trying to accomplish," said Michael Novogratz, a principal at Fortress Investment Group and Hudson River Park Trust board member. Mr. Dubin's stature on Wall Street helped bring fresh faces to the sold-out event, said FOHRP executive director A.J. Pietrantone, and the organization treated guests to cameos by park users. Intrepid members of New York Kayak Water Polo staged an exhibition off Pier 26 during the cocktail hour, and CBS This Morning co-anchor Gayle King—who hosted the festivities—was escorted onto the stage by a parade of dog-walkers. Mr. Durst entered by bicycle. "We wanted to give our guests the sense of fun and exploration that's at the heart of what Hudson River Park is all about," Mr. Pietrantone said.

The event raised $1.6 million towards the park's operating fund. Guests gossiped that a generous donor had made a $50 million pledge, but Mr. Pietrantone said that the organization hadn't received a gift at that level.