BY TOM FOX | The Pier 57 project has had a thousand lives, and a thousand different faces. The effort to redevelop the pier has dragged on for more than a decade and there have been many iterations of the plan.
The Hudson River Park Trust issued the first request for proposals, or R.F.P., for Pier 57 in 2004 and the winning bidder was not able to make their redevelopment plans work. In 2008, a second R.F.P. was issued and a new developer was selected in 2009. It is now 2016, Pier 57 has lain fallow for 12 years and, after all the discussion and delay, I am still left with three basic questions.
First, isn’t it strange that the Trust allowed the winning bidder of the 2008 R.F.P. to delay their proposed development for six years and add new principal partners? And isn’t it even stranger that the Trust then modified the allowable uses and program elements, and significantly lengthened the term of the lease, but did not release a second R.F.P. for public bidding?
The 2008 R.F.P. for Pier 57 precluded commercial office development. The Hudson River Park Act of 1998, which had not been amended at that time, ruled out commercial office development anywhere in the park.
The winning bidder, Young Woo & Associates, was selected in 2009 and their plans for a retail development at Pier 57 underwent an extensive environmental impact statement, or E.I.S. The developer tried for years to make the project economically viable with the retail activity originally proposed. However, they could not make it work in a way that gave the developer, and the Trust, the financial return they wanted.
In 2014, the Trust allowed Young Woo to bring in a major new partner, RXR Realty. Scott Rechler, vice chairperson of the Port Authority, leads RXR, and its president is Seth Pinsky, the former president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Including commercial office development and extending the term of the lease were recommended as changes that would make the Pier 57 redevelopment project more economically viable. The Trust lobbied the state Legislature to change the Hudson River Park Act to allow both, significantly altering the plan for Pier 57.
So, the Pier 57 development team has changed, the allowable uses on the pier are different than those initially proposed, and the lease term has been extended from 49 to 99 years. Despite all this, the Trust chose not to reissue a new R.F.P. after the Hudson River Park Act was amended.
One would think that New York State procurement law would require the Trust to go back to the market to see what type of interest this new set of development guidelines for Pier 57 would generate. At that point in time, tech industries were moving further west and the Whitney Museum of American Art was being completed on Gansevoort St. With the inclusion of up to 300,000 square feet of commercial office space in Pier 57, there should have been plenty of developers interested in bidding on the project and the Trust may have gotten a much better deal.
This may be an inconvenient truth, but the Pier 57 project now moving forward is very different than the project that was initially offered for public bid by the Trust. It appears that the public procurement process is being subverted and the Pier 57 project should be rebid in the state’s best interest.
Will Pier 57 include a marina — and if so, how large and what type and where will it be located?
I’ve seen many renderings of Pier 57 over the past six years. Some of the design plans have a large marina on the south side of the pier and others on both the north and south sides of the pier. The most recent rendering RXR presented to Community Board 4 had no marina at all. What marina facilities are planned for Pier 57?
If there is a marina at Pier 57, has the environmental review of its in-water impact recognized the cumulative impacts that would occur with the Trust’s plans to build the Pier 55 project, immediately to the south of it, at about the same time?
Did the environmental review for Pier 57 assess the project as if it were being constructed independently from the development of Pier 55? Initially that was the Trust’s plan. But with the delays in redeveloping Pier 57, that project will be under construction at about the same time as the adjacent Pier 55 project is planned to start.
Did the supplemental E.I.S. for Pier 57 — which should have been done last year when allowable uses were changed — consider the proximity of the Trust’s planned construction of Pier 55 as a 2.7-acre over-water island in the adjacent inter-pier embayment between Pier 54 and Pier 56?
The Trust is the landlord and beneficiary of both projects, which will be built more or less concurrently. Has this state-city park authority assessed the impacts of each of these in-water incursions being built in an estuarine sanctuary as if they were segmented into two separate projects? Or have they been assessed as basically one project? The in-water impacts of both would seem to be cumulative.
Fox was a citizen appointee to the West Side Task Force in 1986, and the West Side Waterfront Panel from 1988-’90; the first president of the Hudson River Park Conservancy (which completed the Hudson River Park’s concept and financial plan) from 1992-’95; a member of the Hudson River Park Alliance (which supported the Hudson River Park’s founding legislation) from 1996-’98; and a founding board member of Friends of Hudson River Park. He is also a plaintiff in a current lawsuit against the Pier 55 project.
