CB1 Committee Rejects Plans for Pier 26

By Carl Glassman
POSTED MARCH 13, 2007

A task force of Community Board 1 members rejected plans by the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) for a boathouse and restaurant on Tribeca’s Pier 26. A resolution passed by the group on March 12 calls on the Trust to scrap much of the plans and start over, in consultation with the board and others who use the piers.

The Task Force, assembled by Julie Nadel, chair of the board’s Waterfront Committee, hopes to have a say over the structures and operations on the rebuilt pier, which also is expected to include a marine study center. For now, however, there is no money for any public amenities on Pier 26, located near Hubert Street. The Trust has applied to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for funds to build the structures.  The group criticized the boathouse plans as both overly fancy and too small and complained that the Trust was creating detailed plans for a restaurant while ignoring the marine center altogether.

An estuarium, the River Project, was on the pier for years before it and the Downtown Boathouse were closed for rebuilding in 2005. They say the restaurant violates the Hudson River Park Act, which prohibits commercial enterprises on the pier.

The plans show a two-story building, with an 8,700 square foot ground floor, split between the boathouse and the restaurant. The latter includes seating for about 220 people, including space for 100 diners on the pier, 80 inside the restaurant and 35 on an upper deck. The 5,600 square foot rooftop deck, to be used for public seating, extends over the restaurant and the boathouse.

The boathouse would occupy 5,200 square feet and include amenities, such as showers, heating  and toilets, that were not provided in the shed that the kayakers on Pier 26 had used for many years.

Jim Wetteroth, who ran the Downtown Boathouse’s public kayaking program before Pier 26 and Pier 25 were closed, said the new boathouse would be about one-third smaller, with half the storage area for kayaks. The original boathouse, Wetteroth said, served its purposes well in the years since it was founded in 1987. He said he wants to see another simple structure on the pier when it is rebuilt. The proposed amenities, he said, will make the structure unnecessarily expensive.

“The boathouse is just a support building for public activity,” Wetteroth said. “It shouldn’t be elaborate. The exterior should look attractive and the interior should be plain and fireproof.”

Nadel, who serves on the HRPT board, has been an outspoken critic of the agency’s handling of plans for the pier, which she complains has ignored public opinion. She believes scaled-down plans would be easier to fund, simpler to maintain, and quicker to put up after the pier is rebuilt next year.

She and others complain that mistakes were made in the design of a boathouse on Pier 96, and they don’t want them repeated on Pier 26. “We need a seat at that table so they don’t go do this again,” she said of the construction drawings, which the task force reviewed at the March 12 meeting.

Chris Martin, a vice president and spokesman for the Trust, takes exception to the claims that the Trust has ignored community wishes, citing the involvement of CB1 and others in the process and the board’s 2002 resolution in support of the Trust’s concepts for the pier. He defended the “fancy” items criticized by the boaters, saying the boathouse is meant to be around for 50 years and has to “change with the times.”

“A shower is not going to make or break the building of the boathouse,” he said. “If anything, it will make it better and more useable by more people.”

The group said the Trust should provide interim use of the piers after they are reconstructed, even if funding for permanent structures has not been found. “It could be a prefab building. How much could that cost?” said Nadel. “But get something back as soon as possible for the public. And not a restaurant.”

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