Garden Gets Going

Ground Broken on New FiDi Park, After a Decade of Planning

Local leaders ceremonially break ground on the new  Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza Park in the Financial District

A planned new public space that Lower Manhattan community leaders have been advocating for since 2009 took a significant step closer to being realized on August 23, when ground was broken for Elizabeth Berger Plaza Park, which will be bounded by Greenwich Street, Edgar Street, and Trinity Place, along with an exit ramp from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

At the ceremony, New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver said, “the new park will feature a contoured lawn, raised berms, paved pathways, plantings, new seating, and open space for gatherings and programming. This project will reroute traffic and remove excess roadbed.”

City Council member Margaret Chin: “This plaza is going to be a wonderful, iconic open space. And we’re going to have several hundred students in a couple of years at the Trinity School, who will enjoy this space, too.”

City Council member Margaret Chin said, “this plaza is going to be a wonderful, iconic open space. And we’re going to have several hundred students in a couple of years at the Trinity School, who will enjoy this space, too.” This was a reference to the new public elementary school currently under construction on Trinity Place, immediately adjacent to the site of the new park. Ms. Chin allocated $2.85 million for the park, out of a total budget of $6.7 million.

The new park will be formed by combining two existing, smaller plazas, and eliminating a two-lane exit ramp from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which runs between them — thus creating a single, larger public square. One of the two spaces, Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza (which will lend its name to the larger, combined park), is located on the north side of the exit ramp, and surrounded by Edgar Street, Greenwich Street, and Trinity Place. Formerly known as Edgar Plaza, this space was renamed in December, 2013 to honor Elizabeth Berger, the former president of the Alliance, who died in 2012, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin: “This wasn’t just what Liz did for a living. She lived and breathed this neighborhood. She was passionate about it, and spent all of her time thinking about how to make it better.”

The second space, known as Trinity Plaza and situated on the south side of the exit ramp, is a forlorn, irregularly shaped expanse of concrete that is bordered by Trinity Place on the east, but largely cut off from the surrounding community on all other sides by fencing and guard rails for the tunnel. The exit ramp that currently lies between them vents traffic from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel onto Trinity Place, but is replicated by another, nearby ramp that directs vehicles exiting the tunnel onto Greenwich street. The value of both ramps is limited by the fact that they are closed to traffic during the morning rush hour, when drivers are most likely to utilize them.

The two-lane exit ramp from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel takes up 2,500 square feet of open space. Once eliminated and absorbed into a single plaza created by combining those on either side, the resulting new park will have an area more than 29,000 square feet. The traffic that currently uses the ramp slated for removal would still be able to rejoin Trinity Place by making right turns onto either Edgar or Rector Streets.

Community Board 1 chair Anthony Notaro: “Liz Berger’s impact will be here for years, in term of culture, history, and the school now being built behind us.”

At the August 23 ceremony, Anthony Notaro, chair of Community Board, chair of Community Board 1 (CB1), said, “Liz Berger’s impact will be here for years, in term of culture, history, and the school now being built behind us.”

Jessica Lappin, president of the Downtown Alliance, which has spearheaded the push for the new park, said, “this wasn’t just what Liz did for a living. She lived and breathed this neighborhood. She was passionate about it, and spent all of her time thinking about how to make it better. She would not let any opportunity pass without advocating for something she thought was really important for this neighborhood.”

Ms. Lappin added that, “Liz had so many wonderful ideas. But it often takes a long time to bring good ideas to life. When you have a vision that involves connecting the World Trade Center through Greenwich South to the Battery, that doesn’t happen overnight.”

A landscape layout showing the areas for grass, shrubbery, flowers, and groves of trees envisioned for the new park.

The Parks Department announced in 2016 that it had completed a design for the new park, featuring a shaded meadow, banks of flowering plants and shrubs, and groves of trees, including conifers, dogwoods, cedars, cypresses, and red oaks. These would be surrounded by granite and flagstone surfaces, as well as classical design elements, such as the hooped benches that the Parks Department designed for the 1939 World’s Fair. According to the Park’s Department’s website, construction on the park is scheduled to begin shortly, and is slated for completion in August, 2020.

As chief of the Downtown Alliance from 2007 through 2012, Ms. Berger, who was a tireless civic champion of Lower Manhattan, helped lead the Downtown community just as rebuilding from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 kicked into high gear. Beginning in the fall of 2012, she reprised this role by helping shepherd the neighborhood through the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Along the way, she presided over the launch of innovative initiatives like Re:Construction, which turned building sites into large-scale canvases for public art. She also established programs that proved critical to Lower Manhattan businesses, such as the Back to Business grant program, which raised and distributed more than $1.5 million to 100-plus Lower Manhattan businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy. Ms. Berger also worked to enhance quality of life for people who live and work in Lower Manhattan by expanding the Alliance’s free Downtown Connection shuttle bus service, and launching free w-fi service in public spaces throughout Downtown.

Elizabeth Berger

Ms. Berger had deep roots and a long history of leadership in the Downtown community.  A resident of the area for more than three decades, she served on Community Board 1 from 1999 through 2005. She also served on the board of directors of the Trust for Governors Island and the Municipal Arts Society.

In 2007, Ms. Berger recalled for the Broadsheet standing in front of Tribeca’s P.S. 234 on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes struck the World Trade Center, and reflected on her position with the Downtown Alliance (where she served on the board for several years before taking over as president): “I’d spent 18 years helping to build this community. This role is an incredible way to continue the rebuilding — beyond bricks and mortar.”