Design unveiled for AIDS monument in the Villager

Hudson Park now enters a second phase

Robert Balachandran got a well-deserved standing ovation from the board of directors of the Hudson River Park Trust and a roomful of park activists last Thursday when he announced is to stepping down as the Trust’s president.

The applause and praise for Balachandran by the board he served for four and a half years and by the park activists he worked with on various projects was not merely a polite gesture, but heartfelt. This was because Balachandran, himself, always had his heart in the right place when it came to the Hudson River Park.

Balachandran first deserves credit for helping bring about the Hudson River Park Act, which created the rules that govern the park and the Trust itself, a 13-member body with five appointees by the governor, five by the mayor and three community representatives by the Manhattan borough president. As a legal counsel to Governor Pataki, Balachandran was closely involved in negotiating the terms of the act.

As the park’s chief administrator, Balachandran completed the majority of what was in front of him when he entered the job. He got the Greenwich Village segment of the park, a $59 million project, finished, albeit a bit behind schedule, but the job was magnificent. The other sections of the park between Chambers St. and 59th St. have been designed. Programming in the park has expanded dramatically, with free movies, concerts and dancing, opening up a whole new cultural frontier on the waterfront.

Balachandran’s enthusiasm was one of the best things he brought to the park. He was its biggest cheerleader. His hands-on approach was also laudable. As he said in his parting remarks, he couldn’t drive by the park at night without hopping out to close a gate or fix something.

One area where Balachandran could have used improvement, however, was in his interaction with the community. The proposed ice-skating rink near Pier 40, pushed for by Governor Pataki as a rebuilding amenity for Lower Manhattan, was a case in point. While most would say an ice-skating rink is desirable, the process — or lack thereof — in which the rink was presented to the community for review rightfully came under heavy criticism. The location was poorly planned, as well.

And there are larger issues that still need to be addressed, such as redeveloping Pier 40 with a world-class park and finding at least another $200 million to build the rest of the park — $70 million of that hopefully to come from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., to be used to construct the park’s Segments 3 and 5, south of the Village.

Perhaps it’s a fitting time for a change at the Trust. Balachandran completed the first part of the mission. For doing so, he has our gratitude and we wish him well in the private sector.

Now, Connie Fishman, the Trust’s former vice president, now its new president, will have to focus on the next stage and achieving some difficult goals. A longtime New York City resident and former City Hall insider, perhaps Fishman innately has more sense of the importance of the community’s input. We encourage her to keep the community in focus — and involved — as the park progresses.