Letters

To the editor:

As a former member of Tom Goodkind’s CB1 Affordable Housing Committee, I’m so saddened that he didn’t live long enough to see 90 West and 50 Murray Streets win their cases for Rent Stabilization.

But as I read 125 Greenwich Street is about to enter bankruptcy, perhaps the City can reclaim it, turn the entire horrid needle monster into affordable units and name it for Tom.

One can dream! Tom sure did. R.I. P.

To the editor,

The July 30 article (BroadsheetDAILY July30 “A Shore Thing HRPT Plans Beach and Historic Sculpture for Gansevoort Peninsula”) about the proposed design for the park on the Gansevoort Peninsular included the following statement: “The beach will be more for viewing the water than public bathing, owing to concerns about hygiene and safety”. In fact, the beach will have no direct contact with the water. The Hudson River Park Trust calls it an “upland beach”, which is just a fancy name for a glorified sandpit.

The arguments provided for not having a true beach are dubious, given that is there is a very popular public beach almost directly over the Hudson River in Hoboken. Thus it is unlikely that the harbor water in Hoboken is clean, while the water flowing past the Gansevoort Peninsular is not. Nor is it likely that the residents of Lower Manhattan are less safe when active on beaches than those in Hoboken.

The kayak launch proposed for the south side of the Gansevoort Peninsular is a shallow ramp, which means that persons launching or landing a boat will almost invariably have direct physical contact with the water in the Hudson River. It is unlikely that kayakers are somehow less sensitive to polluted water than the general public.

When the design for the proposed Gansevoort Peninsular Park was presented to CB2 on July 24 it was said that a beach would be hard to build on the south side of the peninsular because, absent a cove, any sand would quickly get swept away by incoming waves. It was not possible to dig into the land to create a cove because the nearby Spectra gas pipeline (coming from New Jersey and crossing the peninsular) needed to be protected by a certain amount of land.

The gas pipeline could easily have been positioned twenty feet to the north when it was installed a decade ago, but this did not happen. It is unfortunately too late to change the location now.