Letters

To the editor:

re: Liberty Park

The opening of Liberty Park is a beautiful addition to the ever-growing Lower Manhattan neighborhood. It will provide open space for all of the residential buildings in the area as well as a nice place for business people to take a break from the office.  The comparison to the High Line as an elevated park connecting neighborhoods is a great perspective to reconnect Battery Park City and the Financial District.  It was originally promised as a community amenity and pedestrian boulevard in deference to the closed streets and sidewalks due to the Vehicular Service Center for World Trade Center.

The Financial District and Battery Park City were literally torn apart on 9/11 because World Trade Center and its pathways connected the two seamlessly above, below and at ground level.  Liberty Park is one step towards the reintegration of knitting the neighborhoods together again.

I encourage all of the community to discover and enjoy the park as it is now and was intended.

Unfortunately, I am disappointed to hear that The Sphere will be moved to Liberty Park in a couple of months without dynamic community outreach or discussion and thus turning it into an extension of The Memorial.  Liberty Park is ideal as planned as it provides open space for the ever-growing lower Manhattan neighborhoods; an outdoor pathway across Liberty Street without being overwhelmed by the memorial park and its visitors and a connecting bridge for the communities.  This is an important part of a thriving Lower Manhattan and we need to seek more open spaces with a focus for our growing business and residential populations.

The Memorial Museum has recently stated that they have very low local New York attendance.  If the community is not engaging, why are we forcing a major artifact that is part of the memorial experience into the new community park?

There is no doubt that a permanent and respectful home needs to be found for The Sphere and there are acres of space already dedicated to the memorial both above and below ground.  Once again the community at large will be told to compromise on open space and it’s needs in deference to a situation where the Museum, the Port Authority and Sphere Advocates cannot come to a compromise in the 14 acres above ground or the hundreds of thousands of square feet below ground.

The Sphere should return home to the Memorial site but Liberty Park is not the Memorial, it is an urban pedestrian boulevard and park that knits together Lower Manhattan.