According to a discussion at a summer meeting of the Battery Park City Authority(BPCA) board, there may yet be an opportunity to revise the most controversial aspect of the plan to build resiliency measures in Wagner Park, but the potential scope of such modification appears to be limited.
At the July 24 BPCA board meeting, Gwen Dawson, the Authority’s vice president for real property, review the recent hiring of civil engineering firm AECOM, to implement the plan developed over the past three years by the architectural firm of Perkins Eastman.
The most contentious aspect of this design is a proposal to demolish the the current Wagner Park pavilion, and replace it with a multi-story structure that will also have a roof deck. These enhancements, along with the elimination of the arched passageway that provides a framed view of the Statue of Liberty in the current structure, will enable an expansion from the pavilion’s present size of 7,825 square feet to as much as 17,000 square feet. Under this plan, the restaurant space within the structure, which currently houses Gigino’s, would grow from the current 3,450 square feet to as much as 10,000 square feet.
As Ms. Dawson outlined the qualifications of AECOM to implement the plan devised by Perkins Eastman, BPCA board member Martha Gallo asked, “we’re using the original engineering study that gave us specifications such as we need nine feet of raised land or barricade to protect us from the water flooding southern Manhattan?”
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A rendering of the larger structure planned to take the place of the current pavilion,which has inspired spirited opposition among community leaders, who fear that the larger edifice will block the view and mar the landscape of the park.
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Ms. Dawson replied, “certainly we will have that as our starting point. They will actually advance those assumptions. They will double-check them. They will perform surveys to make sure that we know exactly what the elevations are at specific points. And they will also be in coordination with the Lower Manhattan coastal resiliency project to make sure that whatever it is that we’re doing is compatible with and connectable with whatever the City is doing with resiliency.”
Ms. Gallo pressed further, asking, “and is the assumption that this resiliency plan should include the replacement for the pavilion? Is that still up for discussion? Or is that going to be part of this set of optional designs?”
Ms. Dawson answered, “we will discuss that. There were certain conclusions drawn during the assessment project. Those will be revisited to an extent. So there will be an opportunity to raise questions and to request additional explanation or clarification as to what is required. Nothing that we have done thus far with this Perkins portion of the project is set in stone. But we will be taking — using that as a baseline to go forward.”
Ms. Gallo then asked, “and what’s the mechanism to keep the community engaged and up to date on the discussions?”
“There’s a very extensive community engagement portion of the process,” Ms. Dawson explained. “It’s spelled out in great detail and was a significant part of the selection process and evaluation process, as to keeping the community involved, and engaged, and communicated with on a regular basis in a variety of formats.”
To what extent this consultation with the community will allow for modifications of the plan to demolish the pavilion, which has inspired opposition from local leaders, is not clear. But Ms. Dawson’s use of the phrases, “revisited to an extent,” and, “nothing… is set in stone,” appear to imply at least some flexibility on this point.