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Tribeca Piers To Be Completed Thanks To New State Funding Worries over funding for the completion of Tribeca’s Piers 25 and 26 were calmed last month with the announcement of a $42 million infusion of additional public funds, to be split between Tribeca and Chelsea portions of the park. Connie Fishman, the president of the Hudson River Park Trust, told Community Board 1’s Waterfront Committee that the money will be enough to complete the renovation of Pier 25 and to finish the underwater and structural elements of the new Pier 26 up to the level of the sub-deck. The remaining money necessary to complete the renovations, roughly $9 million, is expected to come next year from the city’s annual appropriation to the Trust. “It’s a very modest leftover,” Fishman said. Designs for the new Pier 25 include a field for active play, beach volleyball courts, a mini golf course, a skate park and a playground. It will also provide docking for historic ships, while a mooring field to the south will have space for more than 60 boats. A boathouse, where kayakers can again embark onto the river, is planned for Pier 26. Fishman said the new money will allow for a design change for the boathouse that was requested last spring, after community members argued that the initial design was too small. Asked if the redesign would include work on a new maritime research center, or “estuarium,” much like the River Project that also had been on Pier 26, Fishman said it would not. “There’s a redesign portion that would create a bigger boathouse, but it’s not money that would also design the estuarium,” she said. CB1 Waterfront Committee chairwoman Julie Nadel, who has long advocated for reestablishing an estuarium on the pier, called the center “a little bit of an orphan right now.” All but $1 million of the $21 million of state money appropriated to the Tribeca section of the park comes from the capital projects fund in the recently passed state budget. The balance will come from the city: $20 million in pledged matching funds with the last $1 million promised two years ago by Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Last year, the state budgeted only $5 million to the park. Fishman said she was grateful to Speaker Sheldon Silver for shepherding the state money through budget negotiations. Former Governor Spitzer had initially made the park funding dependent on the sale of land near the Javits Center. Fishman said the Trust doesn’t yet have completion dates for either pier, but that the abundance of funding this year guarantees both projects’ completion.
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