Madelyn Wils, president and C.E.O. of the Hudson River Park Trust said last week that plans for the new estuarium on Pier 26 are developing. The Trust will be sending out a request for proposal in the next month to prospective operators of the park’s future wet lab and educational facility.
Wils said the goal is to have a premier research institution or consortium of institutions who can provide operating funds come to the pier.
“We’ve talked to all of them,” including Cornell, Columbia, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and the Stevens Institute of Technology, across the river in Hoboken, Wils said. “Now we’re waiting to see who’s interested.”
Included in the recent proposed amendment to the Hudson River Park Act is an allowance for an increase in building size on Pier 26, up to 12,000 square feet. This could help attract one prospective institution whose operators, Wils said, expressed a need for a two-floor structure should they decide to come to Pier 26.
Wils said the completion of a two-story estuarium building would be advanced through fundraising, not with Trust capital.
— Cynthia Magnus
