SEAPORT PLAN
To The Editor:
Re: “New Tower plan disappoints opponents” (News Article, Nov. 20-Dec. 4):
Imagine you are one of the many millions of visitors to New York City and among the unique places you came to visit is the last actual historical Seaport site at South Street where the first settlements and piers grew in the earliest days and now remaining with nineteenth century buildings, multi-use museum, piers, ships, shops, tours, special celebrations.
If the current Howard Hughes Development Corp. controlling lessee (without bidding now for 56 years) is allowed to continue with its recently released plans for the historical district, visitors will experience a modern glass cube upscale mall now replacing Pier 17, a 494 foot mixed-use skyscraper in the river next to it, adjoining that a large, plush movieplex theater, the Seaport Museum moved from its current immediate viewing historical, activities buildings to another debasing location, basically replacing the old irreplaceable reality with another upscale, riverside expensive mall.
So what do we do when a huge real estate developer is given commercial control for almost nothing (3.50 a foot for priceless land whose market worth is at least hundreds a foot) with no provision to maintain or support it by a billionaire former mayor’s appointee to head the Economic Development Corp. directly responsible who has direct ties with Hughes Corp.?
As a proud people, we know a part of who we are and become is the result of knowing who we were and that is why history is taught and revered everywhere. The people of New York and its government should not allow calculating business interests to destroy the remaining real N.Y.C. historical symbol, the South Street Seaport (as was fought against and prevented in San Francisco
The Hughes Corp. is on the march:
One if by land (grabbing),
Two if by Seaport (destruction),
Three takes it all almost free.
Sy Schleimer
