Not cool, but don't let it ruin the rest of the memorial park. (NY Post)

People are enjoying themselves at the 9/11 Memorial and the Post (as always) is mortified.

They’re treating it like a national playground.

At the National September 11th Memorial, tourists balance coffee cups and soda bottles on the parapets bearing the names of the dead.

Parents hoist their children to sit on the bronze plaques, while other visitors splash water from the two waterfalls onto their faces to cool themselves on a hot summer day.

On the plaza, tourists break out lunch foods and lie on their backs.

While The Observer agrees spilling drinks, scratching and sitting on the great bronze fountains is indeed disrespectful, even deplorable behavior, bemoaning the picnics is going too far. When the World Trade Center site is eventually finished (assuming it ever will be), there will be a brand new eight-acre park in the heart of downtown—a place, like so much of Manhattan, that is starved for open space. It is a destination to rival Bryant Park or Union Square.

The centerpiece of this space will be the memorial. It deserves all due deference, but it should not be treated as a cemetery. Thousands of bodies may be interred on these 16 acres, but just as children frolic on the National Mall, the Vietnam and Korean war memorials are no worse off for it. The same goes for the 9/11 Memorial.

The Post bemoans the lines, praises new security guards cracking down on untoward behavior, even throws around the dreaded d-word: "Disney." But heaven forbid the site should feel any more like a prison than is already anticipated. When the construction barriers finally come down, the lines will be gone, people will come and go as they please. They will pray and they will play, and that is how it should be.

No one is complaining about the return of commerce to the site, at least no longer. Instead, the concern is getting those towers off the ground and occupied. The same should go for the memorial. It is a place for reverence and remembrance, but also to enjoy the weather and the company of our fellow Americans. To entomb the site would be to doom it. As so many scaremongers like to declare, if we let that happen, then the terrorists will have won.

Was it enough? Not according to the project's opponents, two dozen or so of whom showed up at the council this morning to waggle their hands in the face of the assembled pols (cheers, boos and hisses were forbidden, so they were left with jazz hands, like an Occupy protest).

“I’m really disappointed,” Community Board 2 chair David Gruber said after the land use committee voted 19-1 in favor of the modified plan. “I really felt the plans was not modified enough. NYU, with the tacit backing of the mayor, felt they could do whatever they wanted.”

He said the community did not get a single major concession from NYU, among them a hope that the Mercer building on the north block would be eliminated entirely. It was something everyone from the board to council members to The Times' architecture critic had asked for, but NYU said it was impossible given the huge underground building it was building on the north blocks for classrooms and labs.

"In order to for it to work, we have to be able to access it, for ingress and egress," Alicia Hurley, the NYU VP shepherding the project, told The Observer. "People have to be able to get in and out."

University president John Sexton applauded the plan in a statement, of course, as well as Councilwoman Margaret Chin, in whose district the project lies. "The city's land use review process is designed to take into account the views of many stake holders and today's vote demonstrates that this process works," he said.

Not everyone was in agreement on that count, including a number of the members of the land use committee, who said they did not like the deal that had been reached, but out of deference to Councilwoman Chin, they would support her compromise. Even she seemed to believe it was somewhat problematic. “To be perfectly honest,” she said, “no one got everything they wanted. This was a compromise, but it was arrived at rationally and in good faith.”

Councilman Dan Halloran of Queens said that the entire land-use process needed an overhaul of some sort, as evidenced by the downsides in NYU's plan. "I hope and trust in Margaret's good stewardship of her community that this deal does not go awry, but this body should be concerning itself with the bigger issues that have not been dealt with, and that get dealt with piecemeal every time these things come to the floor," he said. "I would encourage all my colleagues to support Margaret in this but also to look to the future because the city, it's development, it's infrastructure is badly in need of a total look by this body and we need to do that sooner rather than later."

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (and would-be councilman), called NYU's compromise a flat-out mockery. "The changes they made make it less bad, but not enough to make it even remotely acceptable," he said, adding that his group would be exploring "all options" to challenge the rezoning.

Meanwhile, NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan also remained opposed. From their statement: "We are deeply disappointed that our Councilmembers did not listen to the vast majority - the whole community, including NYU's own faculty, as well as thousands of New Yorkers citywide - who totally oppose this reckless overbuilding plan, which will destroy the character of Greenwich Village, wipe out two precious acres of green space, bankrupt NYU itself, and stick our students with the $6-billion bill."

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who represents the area, applauded the changes, but also said that 505 LaGuardia Place, a Mitchell Lama housing complex, must remain so, and the council should continue to negotiate with the university to keep it that way.

The project did garner plaudits from other sectors. Rick Bell, executive director of the AIA New York chapter, which has its offices across the street from the super blocks, as a smart urban plan. "The AIANY is pleased that the revised placement of the LaGuardia and Mercer buildings will lead to greater public access to the adjacent open space next to these structures," he said. "More people will be able to enjoy the well-designed courtyard and place spaces."

Holly Leicht, director of New Yorkers for Parks, also complimented the open space arrangements. "While there is still work to be done on the open space plan, New Yorkers for Parks is pleased these improved public open spaces will be more accessible and welcoming, serving a broader spectrum of New Yorkers, and be better maintained than the current open space."

Perhaps the most interesting commentary of all came from Staten Island. Councilman Vincent Ignizio chastised NYU for its prior work in the Village but hoped this could truly be a break wherein it begins to do better.

"Now the real work begins for the community, and for you, NYU," he said. "This community clearly has an issue with you, and now is your opportunity to begin a new day and wipe the slate clean and say, 'We are responsive to them.' Because clearly what we heard today, whatever you guys do, whether they're for it or against it, it's that the community does not believe that NYU has been a good neighbor. You start that rebuilding process today, I hope."

Kings Cross Central, one of London's newest "private estates."

Until last fall and the occupation of Zucotti Park, privately owned public spaces, or POPS, were a mystery to most New Yorkers. Ever since, people have been debating the fate of these spaces and what the city should do to ensure their accessibility at the same time to public is expected to behave themselves.

But it turns out such contentious urban space is not the sole preserve of New York. As a recent report in The Guardian reveals, our arch-nemesis London has been grappling with "private estates."

Over the past decade, large parts of Britain's cities have been redeveloped as privately-owned estates, extending corporate control over some of the country's busiest squares and thoroughfares. These developments are no longer simply enclosed malls like Westfield in White City or business districts like Broadgate in the City of London – they are spaces open to the sky which appear to be entirely public to casual passers-by.

It appears from the scale of the change that privatisation of space is now the standard price of redevelopment. There are privatised public zones across Britain, including Brindleyplace in Birmingham, jointly owned by the property firms Hines and Moorfield, and Liverpool One, owned by the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor estate. In Exeter, Princesshay is described as a "shopping destination featuring over 60 shops set in a series of interconnecting open streets and squares". The spaces here are owned and run by the property group Land Securities and the Crown Estate, which manages the monarch's property portfolio. Land Securities also owns Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, a waterside complex of shops, bars and restaurants. Bishops Square, which includes Spitalfields market, two squares and historic streets in east London, was sold to JP Morgan asset management in 2010.

There are, of course, significant benefits to the redevelopments, though some worry that Britain's landscape is being slowly redefined by private ownership in two ways. As the Occupy protest highlighted, private owners can refuse right of entry to members of the public, closing off swaths of the city.

Critics also warn that these spaces are being designed on a corporate model that favours ornament – and high levels of footfall for retailers – while community spirit and sustainability are not a priority.

It's a long piece, and interesting for the similarities and differences between their system and ours. Still, it's good to know we're not alone in suffering the oppression of our corporate overlords.

The developers vying for the right to develop Pier 1, that’s who.

While all of the teams vying for the 100,000-square-foot project have found hotel operators and are prepared to make a go of a waterfront hostel, some bidders, as well as those who considered the project but ultimately decided not to make a pitch for the plot, have told The Observer that having a hotel is a drag on the project.

“It’s a great view, sure, but it’s far from mass transit, it’s far from a lot of activity, you’re basically between the BQE and the park, and that’s about it,” one participant said. “There’s Dumbo, but Dumbo isn’t exactly jumping after dark.”

According to bidders, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the city-backed agency responsible for the open space and the development underwriting it, is unwilling to nix hotel space from the project’s requirements because it is outlined in the original agreement between the city and the state. Changes would require approval in Albany, which was hard to get in the first place, and therefore officials are afraid to open the process up again and risk any unexpected consequences.

At a time when New York City is seeing record number of tourists, it seems hard to believe that hotels would not be a hot commodity. But it has more to do with long-term, reliable income streams and, more crucially, banks general unwillingness to lend to developments in the city at the moment. Adding a hotel to a project makes it that much more complex of a deal and thus a harder sell.

That is why events spaces—bars, ballrooms, conference centers—are prominent features of many of the hotel proposals submitted by developers. They add reliable income that takes advantage of the waterfront and skyline appeal.

"It wouldn't be a prime, prime location, but it is a good location," Roland Demilleret told The Observer. A managing director at hotel consultancy HVS, Mr. Demilleret actually consulted on some of the projects, and he said there was a general excitement among the hotel operators but less so among the developers.

"The only problem I see for the site is it's far from the business districts," Mr. Demilleret said. "It won't draw the commercial client, but the leisure client will still come." He also said that hotels in Brooklyn still tend to be price-sensitive, less a first choice than a cheaper alternative to Manhattan, so the room rates cannot be too high. "As long as you keep it small, it will work," Mr. Demilleret said. "I don't think a 400 room hotel would work there." The plan currently limits hotel rooms to between 170 and 225 rooms, the apparent sweet spot.

"We think a hotel is a great fit with the project and the site, and we have never thought twice about including it," Brooklyn Bridge Park spokeswoman Ellen Ryan told The Observer last week.

Still, these challenges have not deterred the final three teams still in the running, Dermot, FXFowle and Hyatt with space set aside for the St. Anne's warehouse theater; Toll Brothers, Rogers Marvel Architects and Hampshire Hotels; and Starwood Capital, Alloy Development, Bernheimer Architecture and nArchitects. (The winners were reported recently by Crain’s.) Not making the cut were bids from RAL, Extell Development, Two Trees and SDS Procida.

An announcement for the winner is expected in the next few weeks.

All three winners offer proposals with high-wattage design behind them, which is counter to what some competitors had said was a bias toward money above all else. It is an attitude that makes sense, given the conservancy’s desperate need for funds to keep the park afloat—85 acres of parkland, much of it built on piers, does not pay for their own maintenance.

Other entrants said that design has been an important part of the competition, pointing to the presence of notorious nitpickers Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commissioner, and James Polshek, chair of the Public Design Commission, as signs that quality architecture is just as important as the promised payment. “Some entries were definitely dismissed because they were not good enough,” one source said.

It echoes a commitment conservancy president Regina Meyer outlined to The Observer during a tour of the park in the fall, just before the finalist were announced. "In terms of design and pedestrian experience, we were real clear this was very important to us," Ms. Meyer said standing on the path between the lush park and the vacant development site. "We don't want anything to undermine our huge public investment in design already."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Created by some of the greatest landscape architects of their day, these spaces are, to put it mildly, challenging. Like the modernist architects redefining what buildings should look like in the middle of the last century, so too did these landscape architects, favoring viny slopes and more concrete than vegetation in places. At the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, Alan Sonfist's Time Landscape, which to most New Yorkers may look like an overgrown thatch, is actually a celebrated space taught in design and art schools around the world.

These "parks" need, if not improving, at least updating. That is a big part of N.Y.U.'s pitch to the community as it works to rezone the area, one of the most vicious Village NIMBY fights since Robert Moses built these superblocks half a century ago.

Still, does that mean N.Y.U. can bend the truth when talking about the project?

Last month, the University announced that its plan would create a whole swath of new, wonderful open space in this quiet corner of the campus and the Village, an exciting new amenity rivaling Washington Square Park. A celebratory press release declared “N.Y.U. will present its plans to add a net new 3.1 acres of publicly accessible open space to Greenwich Village, an increase that will improve the area’s open space ratio.”

This suggests a major net gain of open space for the neighborhood, one about one-third as big as Washington Square Park. Crunch the numbers, that is not actually the case. It is one thing to knock down a building or transform a parking lot into a park. It is another to take one park and turn it into another park.

After all, the superblocks already boast a good deal of open space, onto which N.Y.U. is planning to build new buildings. Just because the open space that is there now is not perfect does not mean it does not exist. But in the university's opinion, because this land is generally uninviting and inconvenient, this means the new open space is essentially the only open space. Greenwich Village, you are welcome.

"We are making publicly accessible [existing] open space that is not—and is not perceived—as publicly accessible now," university spokesman John Beckman told The Observer.

Still, this ignores the fact that this is already N.Y.U. owned land, and many of the impediments in place that the university cites, such as fences and locked gates and requisite visitor passes, could merely be done away with by the institution. The public space would not be the best, but it still underscores the fact that there is not nearly a net open space gain on the scale the university is suggesting.

N.Y.U. critic-in-chief Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said in an email that he remains suspicious of the school’s promises for its open space.

Basically what they are doing is saying that virtually none of what you and I would call ‘open space’ on the superblocks now is ‘public open space’ for a variety of reasons, but they are claiming that virtually all of the tiny amount of open space that would be left after they are done building their four huge new buildings would be considered ‘public open space’ even though nearly all of it would be owned by N.Y.U., and the tiny piece of it that would be given to the parks department N.Y.U. would maintain an easement over, so they could build under it, dig through it, park construction equipment on top of it, and close it to the public for years at a time at will (which they admit they would do).

To the university's credit, it is creating some amount of new open space, and it is no doubt better.

One of the common assumptions about this land deal is that because N.Y.U. is building new towers on its open space, this will mean a reduction in open space. This actually turns out not to be the case, though, as the university’s architects astutely point out. The footprint of the crescent-shaped academic buildings planned for the Washington Square Village superblocks measure 28,000 square feet, which would occupy a good deal of the 1.5-acre open space located between the two apartment slabs. But it turns out that driveways and parking lots and a small retail building on LaGuardia Place actually occupy more land than the proposed towers.

"If one adds up the surface parking areas, the Green and Wooster Street driveways, the mail services driveway, it adds up to 35,700 square feet," Mr. Beckman said. "In other words, nearly 8,000 square feet more."

Holly Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, agrees with the university that the quality of the space presently available is considerably worse than what is on offer, and therefore the numbers bandied about by the university do not necessarily matter. “There will be legitimately more, better public open space than what is currently there,” she said in an interview. “It will be more inviting, more obvious, with no need for membership passes or other impediments.”

Ms. Leicht did share some of Mr. Berman’s concerns, though, specifically what regulations and guarantees will be in place to ensure the open space remains publicly accessible, since it is privately owned land—not quite Zucotti Park, but not far from it, either. “What kind of controls will be in place, what are the specific regulations to ensure reasonable public access,” she said. “That is something we will be looking at very closely as the public review continues.”

Mr. Beckman ensured that a restrictive declaration, the technical term for thee rules governing such spaces, would be implemented, but those details are still to be worked out as the university's rezoning makes its way through the public review process. "The answer is 'yes,' there will be a restrictive declaration that will govern, among other things, the open space," Mr. Beckman said.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Think of the children! (Save Ruppert Park)

Upper Upper East Side residents have been locked in a development death match with The Related Companies for a few months now, ever since the company decided to exercise its right to build a residential tower on the site of a playground it has maintained for the past 25 years. Actually, 28 years.

Recently, Related decided to close Ruppert Playground, but the community is fighting back because there are no immediate plans to redevelop the site. Rather than let Related take its ball and go home, though, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has stepped up to the plate and potentially throwing up some hurdles that could bring greater oversight, and possibly concessions, to the site.

In a letter sent to the Community Board 8 chair Nick Viest on January 18, Speaker Quinn wrote that she fully expects the developer to engage in the city's Uniform Land Use Review Process, or ULURP.

"I am aware of the Related Company’s plans to build a high-rise building on what is now Ruppert Playground in Manhattan Community Board 8," the letter reads in part. "I believe that a full ULURP is required for the development of Ruppert Playground. I also believe that any new building on this site would be a major land use decision, warranting a rigorous ULURP process. For these reasons, I will strongly oppose any efforts to bypass the ULURP process."

The the final vote on such reviews lies with the City Council, of course, and Speaker Quinn in particular. This does not mean the tower, which could rise to 50 stories will not be approved, but it will give the community more leverage to fight for open space and other measures.

Speaker Quinn had expressed support for the project before, when it was announced that Related would be partnering with Mt. Sinai on building a cancer research center in the building's base. Related spokesperson Joanna Rose pointed to this as part of the reason the project should be allowed to continue. "Not only will we be able to offer a first of its kind facility in the region enhancing New York City’s reputation as the leading destination for cancer care, but we will also create hundreds of jobs and critical affordable housing," she wrote in an email.

Related had not planned on going through ULURP, and is said to still considering its options on how to proceed. Previously, the company had looked to a letter issued by HPD in April 2009, for whom it managed the property, that said the site was ready for redevelopment through a prior Land Disposition Agreement, which suggests no ULURP was required.

There has been a lot of letter writing going on.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

This'll do. (City Review)

Michael Kimmelman returned to the public realm for this week's column, where he all but declared what appears to be his raison d'etre going forward: "We’ve been so fixated on fancy new buildings that we’ve lost sight of the spaces they occupy and we share," he wrote in the Sunday Times. But instead of Zuccotti Park and protest spaces, this time Mr. Kimmelman turns his attention on Midtown, where he ambles about with the esteemed planner (and mayoral soothsayer) Alexander Garvin.

Together, they argue that the city needs to do more to plan these spaces, which are largely designed ad hoc, if at all, by the developers who own the properties. They point to Holland, that godhead of urban enlightenment, as a prime example from which to learn:

The Dutch today put together what they call “structure plans” when they undertake big new public projects, like their high-speed rail station in Rotterdam: before celebrity architects show up, urban designers are called in to work out how best to organize the sites for the public good. It’s a formalized, fine-grained approach to the public realm. By contrast, big urban projects on the drawing board in New York still tend to be the products of negotiations between government agencies anxious for economic improvement and private developers angling for zoning exemptions. As with the ill-conceived Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the streets, subway entrances and plazas around Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where millions of New Yorkers will actually feel the development’s effects, seem like they’ve hardly been taken into account.

It is a very good point, one the developers would no doubt argue against, even if it is for their own good. Look no further than the High Line, which has been a boon to development in Chelsea, even if the landlords betwixt the elevated park fought for its demolition for years. Messrs. Kimmelman and Garvin raise the potential of closing 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, a measure that would no doubt be fought just as hard as the proposal to close 34th Street, which was defeated earlier this year.

And yet consider the success of Times Square and Broadway, which have seen retail rents rise and public satisfaction grow. Like a temperamental child, builders and landlords do not always know what is best for them. By making the space surrounding their buildings more appealing, the buildings themselves will rise in value. The rise of quality architecture and sustainable design only underscore this fact. People will pay for quality, especially in a city with such high demand for property like New York.

Far superior—and developer-built in Williamsburg, no less. (WaterfrontCondo.wordpress.com)

The Observer is reminded of something Mitchell Moss, the N.Y.U. open space guru, has told us on more than one occasion, that the city should be building neither roads nor bike lanes but instead expanding the sidewalks. This is our front yard, he likes to say. (Again, cf. Times Square.) But it is also important that these lawns on not weedy and full of crab grass.

Given the right constraints, however, the city's developers can actually do good. Even if Atlantic Yards will be a public space disaster as Mr. Kimmelman seems to suggest, Bruce Ratner has pushed his architects at SHoP to create the best space around his arena possible, even if it is not nearly enough space.

Things have been getting better, too. Messrs. Kimmelman and Garvin point to the Citicorp plaza, built in the late 1970s as a decent model, while the one across the street, is not, but keep in mind that the new public plazas tend to outshine the old, which were first inaugurated in the 1960s. Then again, august examples exist as well, such as Rockefeller Center or the Seagram Building, so developers do not always follow the best leads.

That is where the city comes in.  The Williamsburg waterfront, derided in an aside by Mr. Kimmelman, has actually shown a great deal of promise. The waterfront esplanades and open space surrounding the buildings there have become popular destinations, jam packed with fisherman, flea markets and, most recently ferry goers. The problems actually lie with the spaces the city has tried to create, such as Bushwick Inlet Park, a sizable waterfront complex that has languished due to budget constraints. Is privatization of the public realm good? Rarely, though it does have its merits.

At the Edge, Northside Piers and 184 Kent Street, a genuine waterfront is blossoming. It may lack the grandeur of the centrally planned Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the lampposts and benches might not match, but it still follows strict guidelines set up by the city that have created an inviting public realm. It is a hodgepodge, but so is New York.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

At 52,000 acres, all those front- and backyards account for almost twice as much as the city's 28,000 acres of public parkland, which are not included in the Sutainable Yards' count. That makes for a surprising amount of greenspace in the Big Apple. Morris said his next goal is to get New Yorkers to start thinking as sustainably about their yards as they do their groceries and lightbulbs.

I think there are a lot of New Yorkers who want to be green. They might look at a small bit of open space in front of or behind their house and say, "Well what good could this do?" But the more information we have about the environmental benefits of these spaces, the more we see that cumulatively, tremendous benefits can be realized.

Maybe this is where Walt Whitman got the inspiration for Leaves of Grass.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo