Field pitched for Gansevoort Peninsula
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
The Hudson River Park Trust is
starting the design process for
Gansevoort Peninsula — and a
large multi-use sports fi eld is an option
being proposed by local youth baseball
and soccer leagues.
The pitch for a 2-acre playing fi eld
was made at a meeting of the Hudson
River Park Advisory Council earlier
this month.
Isaac-Daniel Astrachan, vice president
of the Downtown United Soccer
Club, made the presentation.
“It would be a full-size fi eld for a
myriad of athletics,” Astrachan said,
“football, softball, soccer, lacrosse. …”
The fi eld could also even sport a bubble
in cold weather, he added.
The leagues — collectively known as
the Champions — have started a petition
to push for a fi eld on Gansevoort.
Astrachan said that, in general, the
youth leagues need more playing space.
For example, the fi elds at Pier 40, at W.
Houston, “are not in good shape,” he
said. There are also concerns that parts
of Pier 40 could be shut down during
the pier’s ongoing repairs. Meanwhile,
Roosevelt Island’s sports fi elds are
closed, and the DeWitt Clinton pitch
will be closing, he added. And East
River Park’s baseball and soccer fi elds
also would go offl ine if the city forges
ahead with its hotly disputed plan to
raise that park’s height to protect it
from fl ooding and storm surges.
The Trust recently awarded a contract
for more than $5.3 million to
A design rendering of the Champions’ proposal for a sports field on
Gansevoort Peninsula.
James Corner Field Operations to design
a park on Gansevoort as part of
the 5-mile-long Hudson River Park.
Noreen Doyle, a Trust senior vice
president, told the Advisory Council
meeting that, while a designer was recently
picked for the peninsula, “We’re
not talking programming uses yet.”
The 5-acre peninsula, located two
blocks south of 14th St. on the edge of
the Meatpacking District, was formerly
home to a Department of Sanitation
garage for several districts’ garbage
trucks. Before that, it sported the ominous
sounding Gansevoort Destructor,
a massive incinerator for municipal
COURTESY ISAAC-DANIEL ASTRACHAN
waste. Going even farther back, for
nearly 70 years until 1954, it was the
West Washington Market, the city’s
major meat, poultry and dairy market,
in the days before modern refrigerated
supermarkets.
Gansevoort Peninsula is a remaining
parcel of landfi ll from when the Lower
West Side shoreline was extended out
to a 13th Ave. Much of that landfi ll was
later removed, however, because ships’
sizes had gotten so large they needed
more docking space.
Under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the
city pushed the state Legislature to approve
a plan for a marine waste-transfer
station at Gansevoort — basically, a
facility to barge recyclable trash from
Manhattan to recycling sites, thereby
reducing the number of garbage trucks
plying the city’s streets.
To this day, however, a key memorandum
of understanding, or M.O.U.,
that is required between the city and
state to allow the project to go forward
has not been signed. Basically, because
part of Hudson River Park would need
to be “alienated” — or removed — from
public park use for the transfer station,
it was agreed that the Trust should be
compensated for the loss. The fi gure
cited was $50 million. But the state has
balked at being asked to pay half this
cost, since the transfer station would be
a city facility.
The waste-transfer plan had called
for a perimeter road on the peninsula’s
northern and western edges that up
to 60 garbage trucks per day would
rumble over to access the transfer station,
where they would then dump their
loads into the waiting barges.
According to local political sources,
though, there still has been no movement
on the M.W.T.S. plan.
Asked by this paper where things
stand with that project, Madelyn Wils,
the Trust’s president and C.E.O., said
the Gansevoort park design plans will
just have to take into account the potential
for a marine waste-transfer station
perhaps materializing there someday.
“We’ll build around it,” she said.
Community sues to stop Two Bridges towers
BY GABE HERMAN
Local community groups and residents
fi led a lawsuit on March 22
against the city to stop the Two
Bridges developments from going forward.
Among those who fi led the suit in
Manhattan Supreme Court are Lower
East Side Organized Neighbors and
Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association.
The suit echoes the argument in
a December 2018 lawsuit by the City
Council and Manhattan Borough President
Gale Brewer. That earlier litigation
said that the plans should not have
been exempted from the public-review
process known as the Uniform Land
Use Review Procedure, or ULURP.
The City Planning Commission issued
the exemption because it said the
projects were “minor modifi cations” to
the existing permit for large-scale residential
development, or LSRD, in Two
Bridges — the area between the Manhattan
and Brooklyn bridges. That suit
also said a deed restriction required at
least one tower to be devoted to elderly
and low-income people.
The planned development would
include four new towers, including an
80-story building by JDS Development
Group; 62- and 69-story buildings by
L + M Development Partners and the
CIM Group; and a 63-story tower by
Starrett Group.
The suit fi led on March 22 said the
high-rise towers would not only alter
the neighborhood’s character, but increase
the pace of local gentrifi cation.
“Petitioners assert that this Project
presents the greatest challenge ever
faced by residents who wish to keep
Chinatown and the Lower East Side
affordable,” read part of the lawsuit.
“Simply put — they are afraid that the
Two Bridges LSRD large-scale residential
development spells the end of
affordability for the neighborhood.
“The scale of these four towers, and
the permanent negative impacts they
will cause on air, sunlight, subway congestion
and population density, as well
as loss of open space,” the suit also said,
“are at a minimum enormous changes
to the Two Bridges LSRD.”
Activists and residents also rallied
on March 22 on Centre St. outside the
courts in support of the lawsuit. Artist
Francisca Benitez was among those
slamming the behemoth buildings.
“We are not going to sit idle and
look at how our beloved city is taken
away and the public good is sold off
for developers’ profi ts, and corrupted
to make a very few accumulate even
more,” she declared. “We fi ght against
the dystopic future our city government
is imposing on us.”
The developers jointly released a
statement after the lawsuit was fi led,
saying the projects would create nearly
700 units of affordable housing. They
also said $40 million would go toward
upgrades to the East Broadway subway
station, including making it handicap
accessible; $12.5 million would be devoted
to repairs for a local public-housing
complex; and $15 million would be
spent to upgrade three local parks.
“At a time when projects delivering
tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds
of millions in community investment
are being opposed by anti-development
sentiment across the city,” the developers’
statement said, in part, “it’s important
to remember what’s at stake here,
all proposed after years of community
consultation, public review and environmental
analysis, and in compliance
with zoning that’s been in place for
more than 30 years.
“We look forward to the swift resolution
of this baseless lawsuit and to
starting construction,” the developers’
statement said.
In a recent Villager opinion piece,
Lynn Ellsworth, chairperson of the
Tribeca Trust and president of Human-
Scale NYC, argued against the projects,
saying that the displacement of current
residents they would cause would outweigh
any affordable housing offered.
With reporting
by Tequila Minsky
Schneps Media TVG March 28, 2019 3