A River Study Center for Tribeca, Long Delayed, Gets Renewed Push

Left: The River Project's Wetlab at Pier 40, with its 35,000-gallon flow-through aquarium system, is both a marine biology field station and a science center for the public to learn about animals native to the local river environment. Right: A new building for the River Project is slated to go up on the lot between Piers 25 and 26, between the esplanade and West Street. Photos: Hudson River Park Trust (Wetlab); Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib (building site)

The long-stalled plan to create a river study and education center in Tribeca is getting a boost. 

The Hudson River Park Trust is set to seek designers for The River Project’s new home, known as an estuarium. It’s a hopeful step towards raising the elusive funds for the building, near Pier 26 at North Moore Street, that the Trust has sought for some 15 years. 

A request for proposals from potential designers, who would create an interior plan and architectural renderings for the building, will be sent out by the end of the year, the Trust said.  

“We still don’t have a building design and we still don’t have all the money for the building, and I can assure you we have tried many, many, many times to get money for this building, as we have for other sections of the park,” Trust president Noreen Doyle told Community Board 1’s Waterfront, Parks and Cultural Committee last month. Having a “high quality design” will help entice potential funders, she added. Until then, Doyle said, even the projected cost of the building is unknown.

The 10,000-square-foot structure would house a large room containing tanks for aquatic animals native to the Hudson River estuary, two classrooms, a science lab, and office. Consultants have determined the building’s mechanical and other special requirements for supporting live animals, the technical details that will inform the designers’ proposals. The center would be located on the north side of a planned sturgeon-themed playground [1] that is expected to be built next year. (Hudson River Park Friends recently raised the $3.5 million needed for construction.)

An early design concept for the building could be presented to the community next spring, Doyle said.

The River Project [2] is now housed at Pier 40, near Houston Street, where it has remained since the original Pier 26, its home for 30 years, was demolished in 2005. Founded and headed by Cathy Drew, the River Project merged with the Trust when Drew retired two years ago.

There’s been little financial hope for the project since 2014, when Potsdam, N.Y.-based Clarkson University, in partnership with the Trust, would have covered operations [3] of what then was to be a $50 million, 20,000-square-foot building. But the deal fell through [4], to the frustration of many who had waited years for an estuarium in Tribeca. The center is required by the 1998 state legislation that enabled the Hudson River Park’s creation.

The estuarium, Doyle said, “has been in the plan for the Tribeca area since the dawn of time—or since the dawn of park planning time. We view it as one of our obligations to fulfill as part of the core design of the park.”