The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) approved more than $20 million in funding at its Monday meeting of its board of directors for a pedestrian bridge over West Thames Street to Battery Park City, according to a report day by The Broadsheet Daily by Matthew Fenton.

"This is terrific news," said Community Board 1 (CB1) chair Julie Menin, who also serves on the LMDC board. Ms. Menin led the fight earlier this year to have more than $200 million of federal funding, originally allocated to the LMDC to defray the cost of utility reconstruction Downtown, redirected to what she calls "critically important, worthy projects for the residents of this community."

Ms. Menin cited the West Thames pedestrian bridge - a design for which was unveiled in June 2009, only to have the Bloomberg administration cut funding for the project a few months later - as one example of the kind of project that will be funded by this money, the article said.

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said in a statement, that "after a year of leading the effort to build a pedestrian bridge at West Thames Street," he was "extremely pleased that we have succeeded in getting the funding approved. Improving safety along dangerous intersections at West Street has been a top priority for me and this latest decision is one that could well save lives. With the successful opening of PS 276 this past September, children and their parents will now have a safe and reliable way to cross over West Street at an intersection that sees heavy traffic, particularly trucks and other large vehicles coming and going from the World Trade Center site."

The LMDC will channel this money through Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), which oversaw the design process and will now manage construction of the new bridge. BPCA president Gayle Horwitz told the Broadsheet, that "once built, this important bridge will provide pedestrians critical access over West Street and connect Battery Park City to the rest of Lower Manhattan. This is truly great news for the downtown community."

"The design, by SHoP Architects, calls for a 'lenticular truss' structure, a graceful arc of winding chords that loop over, under, and around the deck. It will be accessed, on the Battery Park City side, by both a staircase and a block-long ramp that will provide handicapped access. On its eastern side, the bridge will be reachable by a full-service elevator and a 'stramp' - a combination ramp and cascading staircase that features a very gradual slope," the article said.

Although funding was the chief remaining obstacle preventing construction of the bridge, the article continued, "many other questions remain about when and in what form it will be built. The original design called for an open deck, which member's of CB1's Battery Park City Committee criticized as providing no shelter from the elements. Additionally, a daunting roster of stakeholders will have to sign off before construction can begin: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (owners of the Battery Garage, alongside which the eastern end of the bridge will land), the City and State Departments of Transportation (which share jurisdiction over the roads the bridge will span), the Hudson River Park Trust (which controls the land on which the bridge's western end will land), and the City Planning bureaucracy (which must approve the design)."