City Asks Locals to Advocate for FiDi-Seaport Master Plan
City planners are encouraging Lower Manhattan leaders to spread awareness of the six overlapping resiliency projects around Lower Manhattan in various stages of planning and construction, with emphasis on advocacy for the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan.
Jordan Salinger, deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, reviewed project timelines and budgets for Community Board 1 on November 18. Moving counterclockwise around Lower Manhattan from east to west, the first of these is the Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience, budgeted at $350 million. It is under construction and expected to be complete in the fall of 2026. Next is the Seaport Coastal Resilience, for which $229 million has been allocated. This is expected to begin in 2026 and finish in 2028. The third project, the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, is described as the “missing link.” Covering the nine-tenths of a mile between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery, this resilience project is expected to cost upwards of $5.4 billion, but no funds have yet allocated and no timeline for start or finish has been announced.
Rounding the Battery, the Battery Coastal Resilience will protect Battery Park. It is budgeted at $200 million and is now in progress, with a projected finish in the summer of 2026. The South Battery Park City Resilience project, which will safeguard Wagner Park and Pier A, along with a sliver of the Financial District, is costing $296 million, and slated for completion in the fall or winter of 2025. Finally, the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency project will protect the coastline from Wagner Park through the northern section of the community, and stretch into Tribeca. Its preliminary budget is $1.5 billion, with groundbreaking expected in the second half of next year, and completion slated for 2030. All of these are known collectively as Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience (LMCR). This constellation of plans is bookended on either side by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Study, which is formulating plans for the West Side of Manhattan, and the East Side Coastal Resiliency initiative, which covers the East River waterfront from Montgomery Street up to Midtown.
The so-called missing link is the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, the most complicated and costly phase of the LMCR vision. Estimated to take a minimum of 15 years to construct, the plan focuses on “passive” flood defense, which translates into refashioning the landscape and elevating the riverbank to create a physical barrier that will slow or stop flood waters. City planning teams are now working to move the FiDi-Seaport Master Plan from a conceptual vision to an actionable capital project.
Its components and estimated costs include shoreline extension ($1.5 billion); a new ferry terminal that will serve both Staten Island and Governors Island (also $1.5 billion); flood walls ($1.2 billion); reconstruction of South Street, along with erection of community-focused buildings ($475 million); the creation of new piers ($400 million); a new heliport, as well as a pump station ($275 million); and the creation of several new urban plazas ($125 million).
These estimates net out to $4.1 billion in “hard costs” (physical construction), $800 million in “soft costs” (fees for professional services); and $480 million in “contingency” funding (to cover unforeseen expenses). But Mr. Salinger cautioned that if construction on the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan is significantly delayed, its cost could rise to as much as $12.2 billion.
Funding such a project is likely to pose a significant challenge. In this context, Mr. Salinger outlined two scenarios, which he termed “optimistic” and “conservative.” The rosier projection envisions the City and State contributing $825 million and $930 million to the budget, respectively. In this version, the rest of the tab would be picked up by three federal agencies: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ($2.4 billion), the U.S. Department of Transportation ($1.2 billion), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency ($54 million).
The conservative scenario envisions the same $2.4 billion from the Army Corps, but only $700 million from Department of Transportation, and $4 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In this version, Albany contributes no funding, and the City’s responsibility rises to $2.3 billion.
Mr. Salinger warned, “the cost of inaction is catastrophic,” and noted, “if the FiDi-Seaport Project is not implemented, the cumulative costs of flooding will cause a total of $20.3 billion in damages.”
Alexis Taylor, the vice president for climate resilience at the City’s Economic Development Corporation, added that much of the funding the Adams administration hopes to accrue from Washington “is discretionary. It came out of either the Inflation Reduction Act or bipartisan infrastructure legislation. We hope that those programs continue to exist, and we will continue to apply to them for that discretionary funding.” This underscored the uncertain prospects for federal aid as the transition to a new presidential administration (which is avowedly hostile to climate remediation measures) is imminent.
As she urged Lower Manhattan leaders to advocate for the FiDi-Seaport Master Plan, Ms. Taylor concluded the presentation with a direct request: “Honestly, your input and advocacy, which is one of the reasons CB1 is so important, will really be what helps to sustain this project. We really rely on you to help move this project towards implementation.”
“Doing nothing here,” she said, “is not an option.”