Hudson River Park Advisory Council Meeting
November 27, 2007
City Center Comptrollers Office

Meeting came to order at 6:15.
Bill Bergeron represented for the Guild.

Pier 40
The majority of time was taken up with an informal presentation of Pier 40 Partnership. Representatives of the group, and their advisor HR+A, outlined the status of their ongoing, self-funded, study to achieve the goals set out by the HRPTA working group recommendations. This is a direct response to the public meeting in May where the community rallied against the two RFP responses to develop Pier 40.
The group was given the go ahead by the Trust to fund their own study with the stipulation that they would not implement the plan thus they are not competing with the RFP proposals as such but developing an alternate approach that the park could undertake. They are very earnest concerned citizens who are involved in a number of other groups, like the little league, that currently utilize the Pier. They have until Dec 15th to make a formal presentation of their findings. They are humbly optimistic that the goals can be achieved but still do not have all of the components in place.
They currently believe that 400,000 square feet of the pier would be developed for revenue generating uses and that expanding the parking at Pier 40 from the current 2000 to 2800 spaces is the lowest impact way to achieve the goals of the community. The only design details they noted were that they felt the existing walkways would be widened and that the amount of open space at the pier would be increased. They foresee maintaining the ball fields in their current locations.
The barrier they have yet to solve, but are working on, is how to finance the rebuilding of the pier and how to phase that reconstruction. The Trust currently estimates the immediate repairs needed at Pier 40 to be $25 – 35 million which would simply maintain the building at its current state of use.
They answered some questions from members of the public as well as board members.

Arthur Schwartz, who chaired the Pier 40 working group, expressed his gratitude to the group by making a short impromptu speech about just how unprecedented it is within civics to have a group of citizens respond to the situation as they have and to do so with such a high level of dedication.

SANITATION:
The other big item was that a presentation was made, by Michael Kramer and other members of the Community Sanitation Steering Committee to point out that the sanitation department is planning a huge, $300 – 400 million, garage at Spring and West Street to comply with the park act which pushes them out of the facilities they have now. A DEIS was issued on November 7th which lays out the sanitation departments plan. The point was made that this is a horrendous blight being borne by one community due directly to the park act. They would like the HRPTA to advise the HRPT to become involved in this ongoing issue.
A board member made the situation clearer which is that the park needs millions for the redevelopment of pier 40 and here is a pile of cash about to be spent which could underwrite the park even if they only agreed to have a portion of the sanitation traffic routed to Pier 40. The Park act does not allow this so it would require new legislation. This will be followed up in next months meeting.

SAFETY:
Marc Ameruso intends to create a working group for this issue. The working group will study what other parks around the world have addressed these issues and would ultimately create a recommendation to the Trust to adapt and implement further safety along the park and in the adjacent water areas. The Guild has volunteered to be part of this working group as did Nancy Brous.

PIER 26:
It was briefly noted that Judy Nadel had applied to the DEC for a grant to study how an estuarium would impact the site. She made this request via a CB1 working group. The DEC has yet to respond.

In addition it was noted that $10 million dollars was recently appropriated, via the Army Corp of Engineers, which could be applied to the rebuilding of Pier 26 at least for infrastructural uses. Applications for this money cannot be made until 2009.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
A board , member of Friends of Hudson River Park, brought up the need to study the environmental impact of the park and what could be done to improve its ‘greenness’ generally. In addition to conservation, it was expressed that this is an educational issue as well. This will be an agenda item for next time and a list of potential ideas and improvements as well as what other parks are doing will be forthcoming.

Pier 57
This will also be added as an agenda item for next month. (This was one of the revenue generating sections of the park and is currently stalled at the city level due to some indictments of key players.) The chair will be looking to have a representative from the city to come before the board and discuss the status and process to move this development forward.