The Hudson River Park Trust held a public hearing last night at the Hudson Guild Auditorium at 119 Ninth Avenue on the three submitted plans to redevelop Pier 57 on the Hudson River.
The pier is located between 15th and 16th Streets and was built in 1954 for Grace Lines after a fire in 1947 destroyed the previous pier on the site and injured about 200 firefighters. After W. R. Grace Company sold its shipping line in 1969, the pier, which is just to the south of the Chelsea Piers complex, was used as a bus garage and maintenance facility by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The proposals were from The Related Companies, the Durst Organization and C & K Properties, and YoungWoo & Associates and the park trust will accept written comments about them through April 14, 2009.
In 2005, the trust selected a proposal by a joint venture of the Witkoff Group, Plaza Construction and Giuseppe Cipriani to develop the pier into a fashion emporium with showrooms, shops, a marina and restaurants and a 70,000-square-foot "event space." The project was known as "Leonardo" and would also have included a rooftop club and a community educational facility and a floating swimming barge and possibly a bridge from the rooftop park to the High Line elevated park. The Witkoff Group eventually pulled out of the project and the Trust issued a new "request for proposals" last summer.
The trust is also considering the redevelopment of a large waterfront site, Pier 40, several blocks to the south where The Related Companies had submitted a proposal to create a venue for Cirque de Soleil and the TriBeCa Film Festival but community groups campaigned against it on the grounds that it would generate too much traffic and would interfere with its use as a soccer field and parking facility.
The 40-page Related proposal would include "robotic" parking, a food hall marketplace, and a promenade encircling the pier. "As envisioned, Pier 57 will be among the special and accessible places that make New York great - a place that can hold seasonal fashion shows, bring a holiday ice skating rink to the waterfront, provide a venue for film festivals and host world-premiere film screenings, become the home for a new Hudson River Park Yoga-on-the-Roof class, or just be the backdrop to a stroll along the river," according to Related's submission. Elkus Mandredi Architects is Related's architectural firm for the project and Field Operations is the landscape architect.
The 60-page proposal by Durst and C & K Properties maintains that "Manhattan still lacks a waterfront attraction comparable to Chicago's Navy Pier" and claims that it "pays particular attention to engaging a multigenerational public; one of our core tenants if the Children's Museum of Manhattan." "Hudson Gardens @ Pier 57" will become "an iconic part of the city's waterfront" with various "sail"-like fabric elements, "exotic building structures" and "unique nightlife."
Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn architects are the project designers.
YoungWoo & Associates recently built the nearby Chelsea Arts Tower and is constructing the 16-story residential condominium building where most apartments incorporate a room to garage a car at 200 Eleventh Avenue. According to its 86-page proposal, one of the project's major tenants will be Urban Space Management USA, which has created indoor and outdoor retail facilities at Grand Central Terminal, and Union Square and numerous other locations. Other major tenants are Phillips de Pury & Company, the auction house, and the TriBeCa Film Festival.
LOT-EK, which is headed by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, is the design architect for the project. It designed two impressive low-rise buildings last year in Beijing, a very striking, four-story building with a blue-metal mesh facade with angled windows at Sanlitun North, and an orange-metal-mesh facade structure with jutting containers and scaffolding-like frames in alleys at Sanlitun South.
The pier is located between 15th and 16th Streets and was built in 1954 for Grace Lines after a fire in 1947 destroyed the previous pier on the site and injured about 200 firefighters. After W. R. Grace Company sold its shipping line in 1969, the pier, which is just to the south of the Chelsea Piers complex, was used as a bus garage and maintenance facility by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The proposals were from The Related Companies, the Durst Organization and C & K Properties, and YoungWoo & Associates and the park trust will accept written comments about them through April 14, 2009.
In 2005, the trust selected a proposal by a joint venture of the Witkoff Group, Plaza Construction and Giuseppe Cipriani to develop the pier into a fashion emporium with showrooms, shops, a marina and restaurants and a 70,000-square-foot "event space." The project was known as "Leonardo" and would also have included a rooftop club and a community educational facility and a floating swimming barge and possibly a bridge from the rooftop park to the High Line elevated park. The Witkoff Group eventually pulled out of the project and the Trust issued a new "request for proposals" last summer.
The trust is also considering the redevelopment of a large waterfront site, Pier 40, several blocks to the south where The Related Companies had submitted a proposal to create a venue for Cirque de Soleil and the TriBeCa Film Festival but community groups campaigned against it on the grounds that it would generate too much traffic and would interfere with its use as a soccer field and parking facility.
The 40-page Related proposal would include "robotic" parking, a food hall marketplace, and a promenade encircling the pier. "As envisioned, Pier 57 will be among the special and accessible places that make New York great - a place that can hold seasonal fashion shows, bring a holiday ice skating rink to the waterfront, provide a venue for film festivals and host world-premiere film screenings, become the home for a new Hudson River Park Yoga-on-the-Roof class, or just be the backdrop to a stroll along the river," according to Related's submission. Elkus Mandredi Architects is Related's architectural firm for the project and Field Operations is the landscape architect.
The 60-page proposal by Durst and C & K Properties maintains that "Manhattan still lacks a waterfront attraction comparable to Chicago's Navy Pier" and claims that it "pays particular attention to engaging a multigenerational public; one of our core tenants if the Children's Museum of Manhattan." "Hudson Gardens @ Pier 57" will become "an iconic part of the city's waterfront" with various "sail"-like fabric elements, "exotic building structures" and "unique nightlife."
Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn architects are the project designers.
YoungWoo & Associates recently built the nearby Chelsea Arts Tower and is constructing the 16-story residential condominium building where most apartments incorporate a room to garage a car at 200 Eleventh Avenue. According to its 86-page proposal, one of the project's major tenants will be Urban Space Management USA, which has created indoor and outdoor retail facilities at Grand Central Terminal, and Union Square and numerous other locations. Other major tenants are Phillips de Pury & Company, the auction house, and the TriBeCa Film Festival.
LOT-EK, which is headed by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, is the design architect for the project. It designed two impressive low-rise buildings last year in Beijing, a very striking, four-story building with a blue-metal mesh facade with angled windows at Sanlitun North, and an orange-metal-mesh facade structure with jutting containers and scaffolding-like frames in alleys at Sanlitun South.
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.
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