Analysis of Governance and Funding Models Seeks to Maximize Value and Community Control
While Lower Manhattan is situated between two remarkable waterfronts, only one of these has benefitted from a coherent vision for public access and benefit. In this context, the Hudson River Park’s emergence over several decades as a world-class open space has only underscored the contrast with the East River waterfront, where the absence of an overarching plan and a single governing structure for 17 acres of public land have yielded piecemeal progress and untapped potential.
This dilemma is the focus of a new analysis, the “Feasibility Study for a Contiguous East River Waterfront Park,” produced by David Ludwig, a master’s degree candidate in urban and community planning at the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, who also serves as the Community Planning Fellow for Community Board 1 (CB1).
At the July 14 meeting of CB1’s Land Use, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee, Mr. Ludwig presented his study and noted, “the East River waterfront is set to undergo massive changes over the course of the next few decades. The FiDi-Seaport resiliency plan has yet to begin. And while the plan does promise to create new open space south of the Brooklyn Bridge, this is the lowest priority of the project. And it’s set to take 15 to 20 years to fully implement.”
“While these projects are clearly necessary,” he added, “they also threaten to put even more pressure on the little active and passive recreation space that’s currently available in the area. Meanwhile, the sites along the East River are administered in a piecemeal fashion by an alphabet soup of City – and sometimes federal – agencies. Much of the revenue that’s generated in this section of the East River, rather than being invested back into maintenance and administration, returns instead to the City’s general fund or to the private tenants leasing land along the waterfront.” He said various sections of the East River shoreline in Lower Manhattan are controlled by the City’s Park Department, its Department of Transportation, Economic Development Corporation, Department of Sanitation, and Fire Department.
For his analysis, Mr. Ludwig studied four models of governance that could be applied to the East River waterfront in the effort to create a single park – the Central Park Conservancy, the Bronx River Alliance, the Hudson River Park Trust, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. He notes that Hudson River and Brooklyn Bridge models took decades to coalesce, and both required the enactment of special legislation, a process that often takes sustained lobbying over many years. The Central Park Conservancy paradigm is dependent on large donations by wealthy individuals and foundations, which cannot be assumed to play a similar role in Lower Manhattan. He also notes that all three organizations allow for very little control of the parks they govern by the local community. “So, the Bronx River Alliance presents the most analogous organizational type for the East River, because of their emphasis on the community control,” Mr. Ludwig concluded.
He added that the City’s Economic Development Corporation (which oversees most of the East River waterfront), “says, ‘we don’t do parks administration, that’s not our business,’” and that they “want a trusted partner who can engage in this kind of work. And so, it would involve working with them and developing partnerships with whatever small nonprofits, small community organizations are already in existence around the study area. Consolidating their voices and establishing a common set of goals would be the first step.”
Among the opportunities presented by the East River shoreline, Mr. Ludwig noted that the New Market site (between Pier 17 and the Brooklyn Bridge), “is ideal for a community-focused recreation space,” which would remedy the problem that “indoor recreation spaces are completely absent from the waterfront, making winter activity impossible.”
Noting that businesses at the Battery Maritime Building, Piers 11, 15, and 36, and the Tin Building generate $4 million per year in rent that is paid into the City’s General Fund, Mr. Ludwig suggested that this money go toward operations and maintenance of a new East River Park. “Just that revenue alone amounts to $235,000 per acre,” he said, which is almost as much as the Central Park Conservancy spends per acre, and more than double the comparable metric for the Hudson River Park Trust.