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SITE City eliminates one of three Coney Island Creek sites for ferry landing
50 cents
we’re trying to do is help people
who have the worst commutes
currently,” he said.
The announcement falls
in line with the agency’s initially
announced plan to build
the dock closer to the mouth
of the waterway, near W. 31st
Street, which spokeswoman
Stephanie Baez said was the
tentative location for the dock
in January, when the mayor
fi rst announced plans for the
People’s Playground ferry,
which will make a stop in Bay
Ridge before sailing to lower
Manhattan in what offi cials
estimate will be a sub-40 minute
trip by 2021. But the agency’s
plans have remained in
fl ux since then: at a February
meeting with the local Community
Board 13, Rose announced
that offi cials were
in fact studying sites within
a 10-block swath of the creek,
stretching from W. 23rd – W.
33rd streets, to determine the
best spot for the berth within
that stretch. And at the Monday
night meeting, Rose said
the agency had only actually
studied the three aforementioned
sites, including the one
at W. 21st Street.
Local advocates from a
group called the Friends of
Coney Island Creek Ferry and
Landing fi rst proposed dropping
a dock at W. 21st Street in
2013, when they led a successful
test run in a 150-passenger
vessel to the site from Battery
Park. And Borough President
Eric Adams endorsed the location
in a December 2017
statement supporting the rezoning
of a nearby block, and
BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
Call it dead in the water.
City offi cials have eliminated
one of the three sites in
Coney Island Creek that they
studied as a possible location
for a ferry landing, honchos
announced at a community
meeting in the People’s Playground
on Monday night,
adding that they will instead
install the dock at one of two
sites in the neighborhood’s
West End and that they do not
plan to offer a shuttle to transport
riders to the beachside
amusement district.
The waters around the site
at W. 21st Street and Neptune
Avenue are both too shallow
and too narrow to accommodate
one of the city’s vessels,
according to a senior project
manager at the Economic Development
Corporation, the
quasi-governmental agency
tasked with growing the city’s
economy that operates the
ferry system.
“As you move into the
creek, it gets shallower,” said
Doug Rose. “Not only is the water
depth a challenge, but it’s
also maneuverability — our
boats are quite big…it’s just
really problematic for us.”
Rose said at the May 6
meeting that the vessels cannot
sail in less than nine
feet of water, and the waters
around W. 21st Street measure
only about four feet deep,
according to the federal Offi ce
of Coast Survey . The senior
project manager added that
offi cials instead plan to drop
the dock near the mouth of the
waterway, where the waters
are closer to 12 feet deep, at
Wall of Remembrance founder Sol Moglen, right, took in the festivities at the annual tribute, which offers
a space for the families of the fi rst responders who died in the 9/11 attack to celebrate their legacies.
For more, see page 12. Photo by Steve Solomonson
Continued on page 12
Never forget
either the fi shing pier in Kaiser
Park near W. 31st Street,
or at W. 33rd Street and Bayview
Avenue, which the most
recent feasibility study noted
poses “operational risks” and
challenges due to shifting
sands and the width of the waterway’s
entry point.
And the proximity of the
W. 21st Street site to the subway
station six blocks away
also made it an undesirable
location for the landing, since
honchos intend for the boat to
improve the commutes of people
in the peninsula’s transitstarved
West End, near the
sites at W. 31st and W. 33rd
streets, according to Rose.
“W. 21st Street is also closest
to the subway, which intuitively
might seem like a good
thing, but with the ferry what
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