Public Discussion Shaped Park Resiliency Plans for South Esplanade and South Cove
The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) hosted a public meeting about its North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project on Monday, March 6 at Stuyvesant High School (345 Chambers Street).
The session gave attendees an overview of evolving plans for the creation of a flood-risk management system—one of three connected projects in the neighborhood—that begins near First Place and the Esplanade, where it links up with the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project. From this southern anchor, the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project (NWBPCR) proceeds along the Hudson River waterfront to the north side of Stuyvesant High School, turns into Tribeca, and terminates at a high point on Greenwich Street.
With early budget estimates pegging construction costs at approximately $630 million, the Authority’s plans for resiliency along the Esplanade divide the scope of the project into seven “reaches”—discrete stretches of waterfront and adjacent upland acreage. Tonight’s session (the tenth in a series of public discussions dedicated to NWBPCR) will focus on Reach Six (the Esplanade between North Cove Marina and South Cove) and Reach Seven (South Cove).
In Reach Six, the flood barrier system will be comprised of a combination of a flood wall that skirts the edges of the residential buildings lining the Esplanade and deployable structures located where three streets—Albany Street, Rector Place, and West Thames Street—dead end at the Esplanade.
At Reach Seven, preliminary plans call for South Cove to be encompassed (at edges of the buildings that surround it) by a flood wall, interrupted by deployable measures where First, Second, and Third Places terminate at the edge of the parkland.
In its December meeting, Community Board 1 (CB1) prepared a detailed response to the BPCA’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the North/West Resiliency project. Among the concerns that CB1 voiced about the resiliency design for the Reach Six section were “the impact of storm surge countermeasures on residential views and view corridors,” and “the potential for flood walls or deployable measures to block air intake ducts or ventilation for buildings.”
For more information about NWBPCR, please visit bpca.ny.gov/nwbpcr/ or email nwbpcrinfo@bpca.ny.gov.