The Bloomberg administration today released a 190-page report to clean up and redevelop the city's 520 miles of waterfront property over the next 10 years and it outlines more than 130 projects to be undertaken over the next three years including more than 50 acres of new parks, 14 new esplanades and a new ferry service.
Most of the project will be paid for through water rates collected by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which will oversee $2.57 billion worth of the projects. The rest, around $700 million in development projects slated to start before Bloomberg leaves office, will be funded by taxpayers. The money for those projects, like the remainder of Brooklyn Bridge Park and the East River Esplanade, has already been allocated.
Among the newly-announced projects are a reconstruction of the public access pier at 44th Drive in Long Island City, a new public waterfront esplanade at the Beach 80th Street Marina in the Rockaways and a new restaurant to replace the old floating docks at the Dyckman Street Marina in Inwood.
The waterfront plan was required by a bill passed by the City Council in 2008 and City Council speaker Christine Quinn said that it does "not call for significant new city or state spending," according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Patrick McGeehan.
The "action agenda" of 130 projects scheduled to begin during the three years remaining in the mayor's current term including finishing the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the East River Esplanade.
Separately, the article continued, about $1.6 billion in improvements to the city's wastewater treatment plants should help reduce pollution in the waterways.
Roland Lewis, chief executive of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which represents groups with commercial and recreational interests along the waterfront, said, "The city has come a long way from when we were paving over that graving dock in Red Hook where Ikea was built," the article said, adding that Mr. Lewis, whose organization sued to save the dock beneath Ikea, likened its loss to the role that the destruction of the original Pennsylvania Station played in the city's preservation movement.
"It was sort of a wake-up moment," Mr. Lewis said, according to the article, adding that the dock still existed under the Ikea parking lot and could be uncovered and used again someday." Mr. Lewis said the recession that slammed the brakes on a lot of building plans also helped the alliance's cause. "The economy," he said, put the brakes "on some of the waterfront development that was going forward at breakneck speed." "There was a little bit of kismet," he added, "that the call for a re-evaluation of the waterfront happened at this moment."
The introduction to the report, which is called "Vision 2020," notes that "after decades of turning our backs on the shoreline - allowing it to devolve into a no-man's land of rotting piers, parking lots, and abandoned industrial sites- New York made reclamation of the waterfront a priority" and in 1992 the Department of City Planning issue the New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. "In recent years," the report said "we've opened parks and greenways on the waterfront, built new housing, restored natural habitat, and fostered all sorts of recreation from kayaking to rollerblading," adding, however, that "problems remain on the waterfront, including uneven development, crumpling infrastructure, and the contaminated areas known as brownfields....Some neighborhoods are still cut off from the waterfront."
More than 1,000 people participated in workshops and meetings on the plan last year, according to Amanda M. Burden, the director of the city's department of planning, who said that "our water is the connective tissue between our boroughs and is, in effect, our Sixth Borough."
Most of the project will be paid for through water rates collected by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which will oversee $2.57 billion worth of the projects. The rest, around $700 million in development projects slated to start before Bloomberg leaves office, will be funded by taxpayers. The money for those projects, like the remainder of Brooklyn Bridge Park and the East River Esplanade, has already been allocated.
Among the newly-announced projects are a reconstruction of the public access pier at 44th Drive in Long Island City, a new public waterfront esplanade at the Beach 80th Street Marina in the Rockaways and a new restaurant to replace the old floating docks at the Dyckman Street Marina in Inwood.
The waterfront plan was required by a bill passed by the City Council in 2008 and City Council speaker Christine Quinn said that it does "not call for significant new city or state spending," according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Patrick McGeehan.
The "action agenda" of 130 projects scheduled to begin during the three years remaining in the mayor's current term including finishing the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the East River Esplanade.
Separately, the article continued, about $1.6 billion in improvements to the city's wastewater treatment plants should help reduce pollution in the waterways.
Roland Lewis, chief executive of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which represents groups with commercial and recreational interests along the waterfront, said, "The city has come a long way from when we were paving over that graving dock in Red Hook where Ikea was built," the article said, adding that Mr. Lewis, whose organization sued to save the dock beneath Ikea, likened its loss to the role that the destruction of the original Pennsylvania Station played in the city's preservation movement.
"It was sort of a wake-up moment," Mr. Lewis said, according to the article, adding that the dock still existed under the Ikea parking lot and could be uncovered and used again someday." Mr. Lewis said the recession that slammed the brakes on a lot of building plans also helped the alliance's cause. "The economy," he said, put the brakes "on some of the waterfront development that was going forward at breakneck speed." "There was a little bit of kismet," he added, "that the call for a re-evaluation of the waterfront happened at this moment."
The introduction to the report, which is called "Vision 2020," notes that "after decades of turning our backs on the shoreline - allowing it to devolve into a no-man's land of rotting piers, parking lots, and abandoned industrial sites- New York made reclamation of the waterfront a priority" and in 1992 the Department of City Planning issue the New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. "In recent years," the report said "we've opened parks and greenways on the waterfront, built new housing, restored natural habitat, and fostered all sorts of recreation from kayaking to rollerblading," adding, however, that "problems remain on the waterfront, including uneven development, crumpling infrastructure, and the contaminated areas known as brownfields....Some neighborhoods are still cut off from the waterfront."
More than 1,000 people participated in workshops and meetings on the plan last year, according to Amanda M. Burden, the director of the city's department of planning, who said that "our water is the connective tissue between our boroughs and is, in effect, our Sixth Borough."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
6sqft delivers the latest on real estate, architecture, and design, straight from New York City.
