Fight Brews Over Plans to Reinvent Hudson Pier

N.Y. / Region

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Under a proposal for Pier 40 on the Hudson River, a parking garage would become an entertainment center housing the Cirque du Soleil.



Fight Brews Over Plans to Reinvent Hudson Pier
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: May 3, 2007

A Hudson River pier built for ocean liners but now used mainly as a parking garage would become home to a large entertainment complex with permanent sites for the Cirque du Soleil and the Tribeca Film Festival as part of a proposal that has encountered significant opposition in Greenwich Village.

The $626 million plan by the Related Companies to turn sleepy Pier 40 — now the site of the garage and a few sports fields — into a cultural complex attracting 2.7 million visitors annually has been derided by its opponents as “Las Vegas on the Hudson.”

In addition to a theater for the Cirque du Soleil and a 12-screen cinema, the plan for the pier calls for an 1,800-seat music hall, a 28,650-square-foot event space and a glass-enclosed winter garden, as well as shops, restaurants, more athletic fields and more than 2,000 parking spaces.

The proposal originally included a 15,000-square-foot “beach club” modeled after the SoHo House, a members-only club in the meatpacking district, but that idea has been scrapped.

A public hearing on the proposed complex, called the Pier 40 Performing Arts Center, is scheduled for tonight. A coalition of Greenwich Village groups have vowed to quash the plan, setting up a potential showdown between residents of one of the city’s most activist neighborhoods and Related, one of the city’s most politically connected developers.

Opponents of the plan say a performing arts center would bring traffic congestion and pollution, clash with the scale of the neighborhood and relegate popular athletic fields to a windy area on the two-story pier building’s roof.

“I think every strata of the neighborhood is opposed to this: the old guard, who has sought to retain the area’s character, the newcomers who live in the new buildings, the sports leagues who want more recreation space,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “There aren’t many things they all agree on, but this is one.”

But Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for the Related Companies, said the plan would increase the amount of park space and could avoid creating traffic problems that would spill into the rest of the neighborhood.

“This plan could be a real win for New York and a true amenity to life downtown,” Ms. Rose said in a statement. “It increases the amount of space available for recreation by over 40 percent, while offering tremendous access to the waterfront, over five acres of passive open green spaces and vibrant cultural amenities, including a home for the Tribeca Film Festival.”

A competing consortium of developers has proposed a second plan, which would cost $145 million and would be known as the People’s Pier. The plan, which has drawn less community opposition, calls for building a high school, three swimming pools, shops and restaurants and additional space for parks and athletic fields.

The Hudson River Park Trust, the city-state agency that operates the park that surrounds Pier 40, said it must develop the pier to generate revenue for the upkeep of the five-mile park, which snakes along the Hudson from Chambers Street to 59th Street and is still under construction.

The park, chartered in 1998, was intended to be self-sustaining, with most of its revenue coming from activities on its piers. For example, the garage on Pier 40 brings the trust about $5 million annually. Each development proposal for Pier 40 would add several hundred parking spaces to the 1,800 already there.

“The question of that site for me is, How do we create a proposal that has economic viability, jobs and revenue for the rest of the park?” said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, who appoints three members to the trust’s 13-member board of directors. “We have to have something that does not overwhelm the park and the neighborhood.”

Pier 40 was built in 1954 for the Holland America Line as a commercial shipping terminal, but that function was made obsolete by commercial air travel.

The 14-acre pier, at West Houston Street, was used for storage, offices and a bus depot before it was converted to a public parking garage. In 1999, a soccer field was built atop the pier building, and other sports fields and park space have since been added. A trapeze school established at the pier several years ago would be retained as part of both proposals.

Over the years, plans to build a hotel, apartments, a flower market and a branch of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum at the pier have been proposed and rejected.

In 2003, the park trust called for new development ideas, but eventually rejected proposals for museums, television and film studios and an aquarium. One of the proposals, a plan to put a “big box” retailer on the pier, led to particularly fierce opposition in the neighborhood.

“You have a lot of people who border the park with an interest in having something developed that is great, and is worthy of the New York City waterfront,” said Christopher W. Martin, vice president of the park trust.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/nyregion/03pier.html