Trade Group Scraps Plans to Build a Park

 by Barry Owens


The traffic island at Canal, Laight and Varick Streets has long been the promised site of trees, benches and greenery-a welcome oasis for pedestrians caught in the center of Holland tunnel traffic.

This traffic island at Canal and Varick Streets has long awaited park construction. Photo: Allan Tannenbaum

Yet unlike nearby Canal Park, whose opening last month marked the culmination of a long neighborhood fight to rescue the space from oblivion, (see story, page 20) the creation of the so-called Renaissance Park at the traffic island was left to well-meaning designers a world away from Tribeca. Last month, the city's Parks Department conceded that those plans for park space, in the works since 2001, have been scrapped.

Plans for the park were drawn up on a single Saturday in April 2002 in suburban Chicago by a group of landscape designers from the American Landscape Contractors Association (ALCA). The trade group was to pay for construction and maintenance, a gift to the city in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Members of ALCA told the Trib last year that the association hoped that construction of the park would begin in October.


But the gift turned into a bit of a boondoggle as time and again the designs, which included a memorial fountain and paving stones etched with the names of all 50 states, failed to pass muster with the city's Art Commission.
The commission, which must approve changes to city-owned property that are visible from the street, reviewed the plan three times. A spokeswoman with the commission said that the plans were never formally rejected, but that suggestions were made, including that the association consult with a local artist.

"They wanted me to make a little fountain thing and I wasn't so interested in that," said sculptor Elyn Zimmerman, who designed the memorial for the victims of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center that was destroyed on Sept. 11.

"There were a lot of meetings," she said. "We kept sketching, but nothing they were willing to accept and make into a real plan."
Trade association's rendering of the park that the Art Commission rejected.
Zimmerman said that she was finally told, "Thank you for your ideas but I think we're going in another direction."

Jennifer Hoppa, a Parks Department planner, announced last month to the Tribeca Committee of Community Board 1 that ALCA had walked away from the project. Now, she said, the city may "resurrect" its original, simpler park design with trees and benches. That plan had been drawn up in 2001 but was set aside following Sept. 11.

CB1 voted to use part of a $20 million allocation for Downtown parks from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to help make it happen.

A spokeswoman for ALCA, which has been absorbed by a larger trade association, the Professional Landcare Network, did not return calls to the Trib last month.

If nothing else, the triangle is a safer place to walk now. Sidewalks have been installed, street lights were relocated, and work was done on the curbs in preparation for the park. But at least for another winter, it will remain a dusty eyesore.

"What is critical is that the space be done," Tribeca Committee member Albert Capsouto told the Parks Department's Hoppa. "We don't have to go into water fountains and all sorts of grandiose designs. I think what we really need is a place for people to walk through, to sit down, and to have as a safe haven on Canal Street."