Coming in 2012: Andrew Haswell Green Park
By Dan Rivoli
Posted by Our Town on February 17, 2010 · View Comments
The design for a new park along the East River was unveiled Feb. 11 to the oohs and aahs of Community Board 8 members.
Right now, the spot is an abandoned, industrial stretch of land above the FDR Drive, between East 60th and 63rd streets. In the past, it has been used as a heliport and sanitation garage. The plan is to transform this space into a park with greenery, a lawn, benches, chairs and a pavilion. This project was born out of the community board, which started crafting a plan for the space in 2002 and received City Council approval for the project in 2006. The first phase of the plan—a dog run, green space and seating—is already complete.
When all three phases are finished, the park will span from East 59th to 63rd streets, and possibly even farther south. Future portions of the project include renovating the interior of the sanitation garage and developing the land beneath.
Renderings of Andrew Haswell Green Park, named for the 19th-century city planner and civic leader who created the plan to consolidate New York City.
The estimated cost of the 1.29-acre park is $4.5 million, and it will likely be financed with state grants and city money allocated by Borough President Scott Stringer and Council Member Jessica Lappin. The park is expected to be completed by February or March 2012, should the bidding process and construction, slated for 2011, move forward according to plan.
“Having successfully completed Phase 1, we are expanding construction on this brand new park, which will give the midtown east community a much-needed recreational oasis along the waterfront with spectacular river views. We are especially grateful to the local elected officials who have provided the funding to create this unique open space,” said Parks Department spokesperson Cristina DeLuca, in an email.
“It’s wonderful to see how it’s matured into something that will be beautiful,” said Paul Buckhurst, the planner for Board 8’s 2002 proposal.
Public comments at the meeting were generally positive; one attendee said the plan would bring a “little Central Park to the area.” The board committee that drafted the original park proposal voted unanimously for a resolution in support of the designs presented by the Parks Department.
“I hate to say it, but it’s almost perfect,” said Barry Schneider, a board member.
The park will be named after Andrew Haswell Green, an obscure 19th-century city planner and civic leader who created the plan to consolidate New York City by annexing Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to New York City, which was composed of Manhattan and parts of Westchester that are now the Bronx. His other notable accomplishments included supporting the design for Central Park, forming the Metropolitan Museum of Art with private funds and being selected comptroller after the Boss Tweed scandal. He is credited with turning around the city’s finances and using his personal money to pay city workers. The only memorial to his legacy is a bench in Central Park.
There will be two entrances to Andrew Haswell Green Park: one on York Avenue and East 60th Street that was once a temporary onramp for the highway, and a second entry point from the East 63rd Street pedestrian bridge.
Michael Auerbach, president of nonprofit environmental group Upper Green Side, said that the park will hopefully connect the neighborhood’s waterfront to the rest of the East Side through a greenway that is currently incomplete.
“It just makes the East River greenway so much better,” said Auerbach, who is also a board member who favored the park designs. “It’ll provide a great anchor, a destination, a place to be, for people to gather.”
The park plans certainly are awesome and sexy what with sweeping stairs and waterfalls amongst other aspects; however, I notice one glaring omission which I certainly hope was an oversight on the part of the planners, because although not sexy and putting function before form, there is one single VERY important item missing that severely limits the usability of the park and that affects every member of the community who ever hopes to use the park and WOMEN and CHILDREN in particular.
Our community waterfront park needs a BATHROOM. We need a bathroom today. The closest public bathroom to the park is about 4 city blocks away — that in 20 Sycamores Playground located on York Avenue — and that is slated to close this month. There are no businesses on York Avenue and the next closest bathroom is at Starbucks on First Avenue at 60th Street.
I say this affects women and children in particular, because–due to an anatomical difference– men are currently able to relieve themselves either in the East River or the Sandy Dog Runs (which because of on-going drainage problems are an open cesspool).
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give the community (and WOMEN and CHILDREN in particular) a truly usable beautiful waterfront park by including a BATHROOM in the Phase 2 plans. We need this today — not in some far flung future phase as yet not on the books or budgeted for.
needs a bathroom
This is great! Really it is.
But we have to keep in mind that when it comes to the Greenway, 99% of the work will have to be done from 38-59 streets. The two blocks from 59-61 will be built on exiting land and only require refurbishing (including activation of the bathroom in the old heliport – part of the Phase II plan form the beginning, according to my source in CB8, to answer the other two commenters here).
To get a Greenway for bikers, walkers and bike commuters, we will need to use the caissons in the river, add to the FDR below 54th to 41st, and pave, replace and widen the rotting pier from 38-41.
Until we do that, bikers will continue to face the most dangerous detour in the city through the Gap area.
There is a CB6 Waterfront/Land Use committee meeting on March 3, in classroom C or D (TBA) at 7:00. Transportation Alternatives and East Coast Greenway will be represented. Will you?
This article (and perhaps our local politicians) have mischaracterized the site when it states:
“Right now, the spot is an abandoned, industrial stretch of land above the FDR Drive, between East 60th and 63rd streets. In the past, it has been used as a heliport and sanitation garage. The plan is to transform this space into a park with greenery, a lawn, benches, chairs and a pavilion.”
The pavilion is an already EXISTING park (Pavilion Park) that was built only 16 years ago in 1994 for $2.1 million dollars. In 1995, a large, expensive piece of sculpture by Alice Ayecock was added. Right now, and since 1994, Pavilion Park has housed a beautiful open seating park with spectacular views as well as a popular dog run (separate and distinct from the controversial dog run built as part of Phase I).
My question is WHY would beautiful Pavilion Park need millions of dollars of renovations after only 16 years of use? While the plans are spectacular, perhaps the money could be better spent during such difficult financial times. How do our politiicians rationalize using state funds on such a project while at the same time existing State Parks are being closed for budget cuts?
Perhaps a better use of the funds would be to continue to develop the true “abandoned water front” by renovating the building below Pavilion Park, by giving our Upper East 60's park (and community) something it is desperately in need of — BATHROOMS.