Since I am a member of the CB2 Parks and Waterfront Committee, I will be asked to pass some kind of judgment on the new park proposed for Pier 54, (at West 14th Street,) based on a donation of around $150 million from Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg. It looks spectacular, and even if we, the community get to use it mostly in the daytime, it will be a blessing. But what rankles me is that this project has been underway for three years; it even included an architectural competition. I served on a Working Group suggesting legislation to help revive Hudson River Park, and chaired both the Hudson River Park Advisory Council and the CB2 Waterfront Committee for part of this time, and I was told NOTHING. Perhaps we will get to tweak the proposal a little bit, but we are essentially being presented with a done deal. This is a marked change from how the park was developed in the past. The entire Village segment was redesigned by a Community Board based group, working with the Trust’s architects. We changed the park radically and helped make it what it is. Parks belong to the people of New York, and planning change in those parks should involve the public, no matter how beneficent the gift. Hopefully our new CB2 leadership will bring us back there. And if I rotate back as Chair of the Advisory Council in April, I will insist upon it as well.
