The owner of two historic skyscrapers in the Financial District is proposing to close the street that separates the buildings and turn the thoroughfare into a block-long retail plaza. The block in question in Thames Street, which stretches for 270 feet between Broadway and Trinity Place, just south of Zuccotti Park.
For decades, Thames Street has been more of an alley than a roadway, used mostly by delivery trucks. (It is accessible to vehicles only from northbound Trinity Place, and forces all its traffic to head south on Broadway, from which the next legal turn in either direction is almost half a mile away.) Thames Street bisects two towers, 111 and 115 Broadway, both designed by British architect Francis Kimball in the first decade of the twentieth century. Kimball’s other contributions to the Lower Manhattan skyline include the former Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway, the Empire Building, at the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street, and the Corbin Building, at Broadway and John Street, which was recently restored and incorporated into the new Fulton Center transit hub.
Both 111 and 115 Broadway are owned by a single company, Capital Properties, which has long hankered to monetize the untapped retail potential of more than 500 feet of building frontage located in the heart of the Financial District, and just steps away from multiple tourist magnets, such as the World Trade Center complex — which, in the aggregate, draw more than 14 million visitors per year. Currently, Thames Street is home to only two storefronts: Stanley’s Shoe Repair and Big Al’s Chicago Pizza. The remainder of both sides of the block are empty retail locations or service entrances for 111 and 115 Broadway.
Capital Properties president Richard Cohen envisions Thames Street a pedestrian market and restaurant hub similar to Stone Street, and has hired the architecture firm of Beyer Blinder Belle, which helped restore Stone Street in 2001. Capital Properties has also engaged a Philadelphia-based consultancy, The Lighting Practice (which designed illumination plans for the Statue of Liberty and the United States Capitol Dome) to envision street lights that will evoke the early 1900s, and brighten up one of Lower Manhattan’s most chronically eclipsed streets.
The proposal calls for repaving the road with granite tiles at the same level as the sidewalk, effectively eliminating the Thames Street as a passage for vehicles. This will entail approvals from multiple City agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, the Department of City Planning, and the Public Design Commission, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. (Both 111 and 115 Broadway are New York City landmarks.) The project will also require cooperation from other stakeholders, such as utilities that have infrastructure buried beneath Thames Street.
According to a presentation at the December 21 meeting of Community Board 1, Capital Properties hopes to have all the necessary approvals in hand by the spring of 2018, at which point it plans to being construction, with an projected date of completion around 18 months from now.