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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Keeping the public trust Hudson River Park Trust spokesperson Chris Martin was mistaken when he said, “Whether the [L.G.B.T.] drop-in center would be part of any one of the development plans will be up to the individual developer or developers” of Pier 40. That decision, and any other decision regarding use of public park space, should ultimately be up to both the Hudson River Park Trust and the neighboring community served by such use. Private developers don’t perform this function; that’s why we havegovernment — to be responsible to the people it is intended to serve. Hidden deep in the recent Chelsea Now article about the possibility of a 24-hour center at Pier 40 for L.G.B.T. youth is a telling statement from the Hudson River Park Trust: “Whether the drop-in center would be part of any one of the development plans will be up to the individual developer or developers.” This simple statement gives credence to the fears of the many people who opposed the passage of the Hudson River Park Act a decade ago because they felt it would create a slippery slope allowing developers and commercial interests to take control of the park, circumventing community input and deciding who the park welcomes and who it does not. Would decisions about whether small-boat access and sports camps are part of pier life also be left to the developer? Fortunately, the statement is also contrary to the words and intent of the act. The Trust was created to build and manage a public park, not to lease public land to developers and give them full control over its uses. The act that created the Trust anticipates that the Trust will obtain operating income from limited commercial uses of specific parts of the park, including Pier 40. But with the purpose of preventing private interests from controlling vast areas of a park whose acreage is mostly water, leases were limited to a maximum of 30 years. The Trust was not allowed to incur debt or expend funds to attract or support any business within the park. It remains the Trust’s obligation and purview to determine, in consultation with community boards and elected officials, the uses of the park, including its commercial nodes. The 30-year maximum lease protects the park because financing major real estate development of the kind that would threaten public control of the park is generally impossible in that time frame. Achieving the goal of financing the operations of the park with revenues produced within the park but without effectively selling off public lands will always be a challenge: a challenge that will require creative solutions; a challenge that will require bringing our community together, not driving it apart; a challenge that offers the opportunity to take a narrow strip along the river and make of it a great and truly public park; in short, a challenge the Trust should embrace, not shirk. A recent public relations campaign organized for the Trust by The Marino Organization seems directed toward an effort to get the state Legislature to allow longer leases in the park so that The Related Companies proposal that does not meet the requirements of the Pier 40 request for proposals can be shoehorned in. It is improper for the Trust to direct scarce public resources to an effort to get the act changed in a way that is contrary to the purposes the Trust was created to promote, contrary to the desires of the people of the city, whose enjoyment of river, fields and paths would be diminished, and contrary to the wishes of the legislators in the districts adjacent to the park. During the debate prior to passage of the Hudson River Park Act, local youth sports groups, enticed by specific promises of public fields to be built at Pier 40 with public funds, played a significant role in achieving the public support needed to get the act passed. Some said we were selling out the interests of the community. But we believed that the great need in our neighborhoods for places for children to play sports justified an imperfect arrangement whereby the park would be supported by limited commercial uses. Now we are united with many of the people who opposed the park act to protect the very parts of the act that were included to assure the park would remain public open space forever. Let’s welcome the L.G.B.T. youth group to the effort to keep the park a park, and let’s urge the Trust to open the pier doors to help them provide services our young people need. The evening was dedicated to the M.T.A.’s presentation of its highly questionable project, which has been quietly lurking in the background. The project entails building an aboveground subway emergency ventilation plant in the landmarked West Village Historic District. Unfortunately, this same area also contains the proposed new St. Vincent’s Hospital and Rudin luxury condo tower-and-brownstone projects. As proposed, these three projects would be built at the same time, further subjecting this landmarked district and people who live in it to an unconscionable amount of noise, dirt and traffic jams. Vibrations from the M.T.A. project would also endanger the old homes within this area. The M.T.A. must come out of the shadows, hold truly open and well-publicized meetings, and give the community the opportunity to be a part of this process. At Thursday’s meeting, representatives from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and Community Board 2 raised many excellent questions. The M.T.A. needs to answer each and every one of them.
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