BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | This building getting “glassed,” isn’t the latest luxury residential high-rise from Jean Nouvel or some other “starchitect,” but the Department of Sanitation’s new Hudson Square mega-garage.
For the past couple of weeks, workers have been installing the exterior glass on the massive building’s southern facade, on Spring St.
Once completed, the garage, which stretches north from Spring St. for two to three blocks between Washington and West Sts., will house all the garbage trucks from three city Sanitation districts, those serving Community Boards 1, 2 and 5.
Once the Spring St. facility is finished, the city will relocate to it the garbage trucks that are currently based on Gansevoort Peninsula, in the northwest corner of C.B. 2 near W. 13th St. That move will, in turn, allow the Hudson River Park Trust to convert the 8 acres of Gansevoort Peninsula into a park, as part of the 5-mile-long Hudson River Park along the Lower West Side waterfront.
Completion of the Spring St. mega-garage is anticipated by next spring. Community residents in Hudson Square and Tribeca fought the so-called “Tower of Garbage,” saying it violated fair-share provisions by loading too many municipal services into one neighborhood. They argued that the garage should be downsized and house only two Sanitation districts’ worth of garbage trucks, but, in the end, the city prevailed.
