BPC Calls For Extending Bridge's Last Stand

By Barry Owens
JULY 3, 2006

The Rector Street pedestrian bridge was not built to last. The pre-fabricated steel structure spanning West Street went up in a rush, and with a minimum of fuss over design and materials, six months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Already, wooden planks on the west side exit ramp are showing signs of rot.

The idea in 2002 was to quickly construct something that could provide Battery Park City residents with safe passage across the highway—never mind that it cast a shadow across a park and landed squarely in the neighborhood’s community gardens. A permanent bridge, perhaps farther south on West Street, would come later, and all would be restored. But plans to remove the “temporary” bridge have hit a snag.

Though the span stands in the way of both the state’s West Street reconstruction project and a plan to redesign the park and restore garden plots to the neighborhood, the Battery Park City Authority is calling for the bridge to remain at least three more years.

“No one is suggesting that the Rector Street bridge should be a permanent fixture,” Jim Cavanaugh, president of the authority, told the Trib. “We are looking to extend its life until there is a plan for another bridge [to replace it], or more than one bridge.”

So far, there is no plan for another bridge.

The reconstruction of West Street, being overseen by the state’s Department of Transportation, will add a lane of traffic to both the northbound and the southbound sides of the highway and will include new sidewalks, landscaping and park space along Battery Park City’s eastern edge. Construction is scheduled to begin in nine months and continue through the summer of 2009.

As part of the project, the Rector Street bridge had been scheduled to come down in 2008. But because there is no replacement bridge drawn into the plan, the Transportation Department, at the request of the Battery Park City Authority, is considering extending the bridge’s life by at least another year. That could necessitate changes to the new park that was scheduled to be created after the bridge was removed in 2008.

Chris Cotter, manager of the West Street project for the Transportation Department, explained this to the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1 last month. The committee had spent months debating what kind of park space should be created on the bridge’s west side when the structure comes down. Some of the features that were agreed on, like basketball courts and community gardens, could be lost if the bridge and its long exit ramp remain in place during the park’s construction, said Signe Nielsen, who designed the park with the understanding that the bridge would be gone.

Cotter said the Transportation Department would look into the possibility of building the park later than originally planned, after the bridge is removed. That is not likely to happen until after 2009. Or, Cotter said, the park could be built around the bridge as it stands today, but with significant changes to Nielsen’s design.

That design restores 54 garden plots and features two half-court basketball courts, a children’s basketball court, a playground, a sandbox, and a toddler area. A smaller section of the park across West Thames Street would hold a water maze for kids, more community gardens, a dog run with separate spaces for small and large dogs, and an ornamental lawn of tall grass.

“Everything is full steam ahead as if the whole park is being built as scheduled under this construction contract,” Nielsen said late last month.

The Battery Park City Authority was on schedule, too, to replace some of the rotting wood on a bridge that has out-lived its intended life span.