WestView

What We Would Really Like On Pier 40

January 2010

By George Capsis

In our December issue we offered 13 hard questions posed by the only two members of the Hudson River Park Trust board of directors who actually live in our community, Pam Fredericks and Paul Ullman. Pam and Paul wanted to know what we West Villagers were willing to tolerate in the way of Pier 40 uses and traffic making it possible for the board to sign a lease with a developer who would provide the $150 million needed to replace the corroding steel piles and seal the leaking roof.

WestView then threw open the discussion by asking what we all wanted on this sprawling pier, without regard to the profit-making activities a developer would need to pay off his considerable investment. In terms of time, with the need for a new Request for Proposal and an Environmental Impact Study and, of course, community review and resistance, we are talking about another two to three years with no guarantee of a winner — again.

In our questionnaire a group of uses floated to the top with no single winner-by-a-landslide choice, but the number one response was for a greenmarket. The Union Square Market is clearly successful doing business four days a week. A greenmarket open every day at the pier, with indoor shops in winter, could also be serviced by a fleet of boats with fresh produce, fish and shellfish from New Jersey and Long Island. A Pier 40 Market could be kind of a Fisherman’s Wharf and, like the Union Square Market, attract a bevy of world-class restaurants — with the added attraction of spectacular views of the Hudson.

This could be that world-class attraction that was the original goal for the Pier and something the West Village really needs and wants.

Also ranking near the top were indoor and outdoor pools. With treadmill gyms now a necessity for the Blackberry set, an indoor heated pool with lush plantings could become a weekend and evening resort and a place to meet right through the winter months. An outdoor summer pool could be housed on a one-acre barge and floated into place next to the pier at modest expense without disturbing other uses.

Public schools rated high in the responses, answering the concern of parents over the shortage of kindergarten and preschool seats experienced last semester, an issue well- publicized by WestView.

One of the great advantages to building a school or even a couple of schools on the pier is that the kids could use the sport fields and pool — a rare privilege (my son Doric had to climb over the fence to play in the PS 41 yard).

In the last RFP go-round the city agreed to build a school on the pier, but we have to assume that with our still interrupted economy that promise has become unstuck. In this same rejected RFP, West Village private school parents suggested that they were willing to raise funds to build a new private school on the pier. (I would think that a banker with his kids in breathtakingly expensive private schools would be very sympathetic to working out the financing.)

To speed things along, the city might rent space in this new private school. A 50-year city lease could further encourage private financing.

The swelling West Village child population may figure in the vote for a Kids Day Camp. In order to pay some of the highest market rents in the country, young parents must both work and then figure out what to do with the kids (come round to PS 41 at 3:00 PM and see how many nannies pick up the kids — not so in our day).

This reasoning extends to the high vote for a Youth Center. When we were asked, years ago, “How can you raise your kids in Greenwich Village?” I would respond, “Well, at least when they become teenagers they won’t run off to Greenwich Village.” But from observing our grandchildren, I have to wonder if kids have any idle time that would require or permit them to go to a youth center — they just go online.

In all the many developer proposals for the pier over the last 10 years there has been little or no recognition that it is after all a pier sitting on an estuary open to the ocean — why not make use of that fact? When it opened in 1963 it did so with a signed lease from the Holland America Line and was used for many years as a park and sail cruise facility in competition with the airlines.

So I was pleased to see Ferries to New Jersey and High Speed Ferries to the Beaches ranking high. You could ferry a shopping cart to New Jersey and shop at the giant cheaper supermarkets, or hydroplane out to Jones Beach or Fire Island in the fresh sea air while sipping a cold beer and thinking about all those suffering on the Long Island Distressway.

A Repertory Theater would let us on a summer’s evening walk down to the pier, have an early supper in a 3-star restaurant overlooking the setting sun on the river and then see a play by Shakespeare and end the evening on a rooftop café with dessert and coffee under the stars. (I have always thought that there should be a joint British and American repertory company so we might hear plays in a British accent and the Brits hear O’Neill in the American vernacular in London.)

Parks and Trees have always rated high, especially with older citizens who just want to sit and read or if the eyes have gone just sit and take in the river traffic — wow, a sailboat. In this, one of the oldest sections of the city, rent control and rent stabilization have forever imprisoned a large segment of the West Village population who, like their apartments, have grown very old. (The request for a Senior Center ranked 15th.)

A Marina with floating wooden walkways might be a relatively inexpensive and attractive use of the water adjacent to the pier. The yacht basin in front of the Financial Center lets us take a close look at the floating giant toys of the Madoffs who have yet to be caught.

A Museum ranks in the middle area and with Museums now becoming big business, who knows? Maybe a wealthy art patron or impresario will finance the pier.

A Concert Hall was a not-surprising choice, but one of the reasons the Related proposal was rejected was that they characterized it as “Lincoln Center South” and hence evoked all of the attendant auto and bus traffic. Two subway lines serve Lincoln Center very well but Pier 40 has none, so the best uses are those that can be reached on foot and by extending the M8 bus to terminate at the pier.

Since there is no nearby subway, whatever the eventual uses of the pier must be served by both the 8th Street and yes, Houston Street cross town buses. Right now there is a taxi stand at the entrance which should be a bus stop. It makes no sense terminate the M8 bus between Christopher and West 10th on the West Side Highway when six short blocks away we have Pier 40. Indeed, with hundreds of kids playing at the field every day and thousands of parkers paying over $5.5 million a year to park, the pier should have public transportation: It should have the M8 bus, and the number of buses covering the route should be doubled during daylight hours instead of the cuts we now are experiencing.

As the West Village loses more and more independent shops to high rents there is a fear that, like Bleecker Street, we will become a characterless enclave of national fashion chains. With the largest greenmarket in the city as an attraction, we could offer small independent shops and restaurants below-market rents.

The rest of the collated results of the questionnaire appear in this issue but it would appear that a greenmarket which requires minimal investment might be the answer to what do we do with Pier 40. And certainly nobody wants to get rid of parking, indeed increasing parking is the quickest and surest way of finding revenue to pay for the increased costs of operating the growing chain of completed piers.

Instead of spending millions to seal the leaks between the concrete slabs that form the roof, that money might be spent to add another tier. The roof of this tier could provide space to build the park that West Villagers longingly seek, and the now-protected roof and second tier could then be used to add 1000 or more cars, the revenue from which could pay the interest and principal on a tax exempt bond to repair the piles and build the new roof.

Which brings us to financing. The attitude of the park management is that the steel pile corrosion is not that bad; it could be years before we have a real problem; and anyway, if it collapses, the pier will collapse gradually so we will have plenty of notice; and there is nothing we can do about it and we still get our salaries no matter what. And the board is made up of revolving non-paid non-West Villagers who understandably have limited concern.

There is no question that the charter that demands the Park seek developers to make the enormous investment needed to make repairs in return for a long-term lease must be changed.

Even if the economy turned around tomorrow it would take three years to award a lease and another two to see anything on the pier — and given opinionated West Villagers, it could be another two years just to talk about it some more.

There is no question that under the current charter the HRPT board and the current management can do and will do nothing, but a greenmarket could appear this spring on Pier 40 and be serviced by the M8 bus.

It is a simple step but it is now up to you reading this to let it happen.

What do you want to do?

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