The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) will host a Concept Development Open House tonight (July 25), to share preliminary ideas about how to reconfigure the streetscapes on South End Avenue and West Thames Street, and to solicit feedback from the residents.
The session will take place at Six River Terrance (opposite the Irish Hunger Memorial and next to Le Pain Quotidien restaurant) from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. The meeting will not contain a formal presentation, but rather is formatted as a “drop-in” session, at which attendees can arrive at any time during the three hours, ask questions and offer opinions for as long or as short as they wish.
This will be the BPCA’s first public discussion of what changes it might undertake along South End Avenue and West Thames Street since hiring urban design consultant Stantec in June, 2015, for a fee $247,000. (There will be a second session held at the same location and time, one week from today, on Monday, August 1.)
“What the next two meetings will show is what the options that are being explored are,” said BPCA president Shari Hyman at last Wednesday’s Open Community Meeting, a quarterly event at which the Authority’s senior staff and some board members make presentations and field questions from the public. “What we want is a holistic approach that enhances the public space that is there, and maybe increases public space and makes it better.”
The BPCA and Stantec gave a presentation about the South End Avenue project at last week’s Open Community Meeting, which drew a crowd of more than 100 residents, but this review was limited to the results of a survey that the Authority commissioned among residents, workers, small business owners and tourists.
Among the results gleaned from responses by 568 Battery Park City residents were that just over half are satisfied with the overall pedestrian experience on South End Avenue, while 57 percent perceive a lack of space to relax or socialize in this corridor. Only 21 percent of these residents find storefronts in the area attractive, and just one-third are satisfied with retail offerings on South End Avenue. Among the suggestions that residents offered to remedy this situation were grocery stores offering higher quality and more affordable prices (60 respondents, with at least one specifically calling for a Trader Joe’s or Fairway), different types of food offerings (32), the need for a local hardware store (21), the desire for a coffee shop (18), and a request for fewer dry cleaners (7). (As a practical matter, the BPCA has no role in determining what kind of business tenants occupy retail spaces in any of the community’s commercial real estate.)
The survey also gauged residents’ opinions about the retail arcades within the study area — a series of colonnades that stretch from Albany Street, to Rector Place, to West Thames Street, widening what would otherwise be a very narrow (and heavily trafficked) sidewalk, also providing pedestrians with shelter during inclement weather, and shade during bright sunshine. These columned porticoes additionally offer shop owners space outside their front doors, where customers can congregate and merchandise can be displayed. Well over half of respondents to the residential survey (58 percent) said that the retail arcades along South End Avenue, “have a positive impact on the community, by offering shelter from wind and rain.”
Following the presentation of survey results, multiple speakers (both residents and business owners) voiced grave reservations about the possibility that these arcades would be eliminated, in order to create additional, indoor retail space. This prospect was first raised last year, when the BPCA hired Stantec. At that time, Gwen Dawson, the Authority’s vice president for real estate, said the arcades, “were originally part of the master plan and design guidelines, which tends to stifle the retail presence and activity,” adding, “the visibility for retail activity is very limited.”
Since then, an unrelated initiative recently gave the owners of more than a dozen Lower Manhattan buildings on and near Water Street the green light to take over more than 100,000 square feet of public space within arcades, and convert this to private, retail use. This controversial transformation of a onetime public amenity to private profit may confer on these building owners a benefit worth many tens of millions of dollars.
Near the conclusion of last Wednesday’s Open Community Meeting, Ann Schwalbenberg, a resident of 21 South End Avenue, asked whether the BPCA could — if it chose — move ahead with any plan to eliminate the arcades, or make other major changes to the South End Avenue streetscape, without approval from the community.
Authority spokesman Nick Sbordone sought to reassure her, saying “we cannot do this by imperial fiat. Anything we do is going to need the cooperation of the community, multiple New York City agencies, building owners, condominium owners, and the community at large.”
“I hear a lot about wanting more feedback, more engagement,” Mr. Sbordone continued. “This is the opportunity to engage. At both of these meetings and at further points down the road. If you want skin in the game, please put your skin in the game and take ‘yes’ for an answer. We want your feedback, please give it to us.”
Ms. Schwalbenberg pressed, “suppose my building does not want to change the arcade?”
Ms. Hyman replied, “this is not something where we can say, ‘this is going to be done, you must go along with it.'”
At that point, Martha Gallo (the only member of the BPCA board who lives in Battery Park City) interjected, “I hear you. I love the arcades. And this may very well happen in stages, where we grow into a beautification project of South End Avenue.” She cited, as a hypothetical, “first we widen some of the sidewalks and make the street narrower. Then enhance the lighting and have nicer planters and benches. I think the retail is the last part of what I’m interested in. I’m thinking a process where we’re going to get input.”
Ms. Dawson added, “we have no vehicle for imposing any change on a building without the building ownership’s desire and support to make that change. All we are doing is commencing a conversation, where there will be a range of options.”
Ms. Schwalbenberg pushed harder for an unambiguous answer, asking, “you cannot force a building that does not want to do this to the arcades?”
To this question, Ms. Dawson replied, “that’s right,” which elicited a round of applause from residents attending the meeting.