The Parks Department has not yet received the funds they need to put out a bid. They expect to get the funds in a couple of weeks at which point they can put out the bid. The bidding process takes about 5 months so, if all goes well, plans will be in place by December of 2009. Since they can’t begin work in the winter, nothing will be started until the spring of 2010.

The original budget for the park re-construction was $2mm. Now, apparently, it will cost $2.5mm. If the Parks Department doesn’t get the money, they will have to scale the project back.

The park will take about one year to be completed. The DEP will be back in the summer of 2010 (while the park is being re-constructed) and they will rip up Gansevoort AGAIN and will continue working there for the next 27 MONTHS!!! I don’t know what they will be doing exactly, but I was told that if I wanted a hot shower with any water pressure I should want them to finish there work.

By my calculation, the park will be done (being optimistic) in April of 2011 and the noise and dirt from the DEP will be done sometime in the summer of 2012. So if any of us still live here, we will finally be able to enjoy the park again.

Tobi Bergman, who was leading the meeting from CB2, said that he wished he had said no to letting the DEP access the water tunnel through the park in the first place. Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

So here’s the skinny: Since our community playground, Seravalli Park, won the lottery as a host for the 5 year dig to create Shaft 27B of Water Tunnel 3 (ooh, I’m so smart and technical), we get 2 MILLION dolllars to rebuild the park after the water tunnel shaft is complete. Whenever that may be – the original finish date was Sept. 2007, and I believe we’re currently up to a Summer 2008 date. 2009 date – but I’ll check and get back to y’all.

At a meeting of CB2 last night in which public input on the Park was requested, I learned the following:

- NOT PART OF THE 2 MILLION BUDGET: Certain items will be done as part of the construction deal and do not have to be paid for out of the 2 million dollars:

Planting 6 replacement trees along Gansevoort, Replacing the Tall Fence along Gansevoort, Repaving and flattening the torn up ground part of the park, Replacing the Belgian Pavers on Gansevoort Street, Redoing the torn-up sidewalk on Gansevoort Street
- CAPITAL MONEY: This 2 Million bucks is CAPITAL money and must be used as such (ie, it cannot be used for maintenance items like a planting fund or a full-time attendant)

- PROCESS: The Parks Department will hire a landscape architect to make the design. The feedback collected last night will be written up and given to the Parks Dept, which will hopefully pass it onto the Landscape Designer. Then there will be a SCOPING meeting – not sure if public is invited to that. Then the landscape architect will present his/her DESIGN PLAN to the public at a CB2 meeting for comments/critiques/suggestions/feedback/etc.. CB2 will pass a resolution and maybe the plan will be revised and the process repeated.

- COMFORT STATION (that’s public toilet to those of us not versed in Parks Dept. lingo): If the Comfort Station is touched at all, then it has to be renovated up to current standards, which means Handicap Accessible. Apparently, making the comfort Station handicap accessible would take the lion’s share of the budget (educated guessers put the cost at 1.6 million dollars). There appear to be no plans to use the money to renovate the Comfort Station. People also really wanted a full-time attendant for the comfort station. According to one person’s experience the best way to get that is through private fundraising offered to teh city to supplement such a persons salary.

- MULTI-USE – the one thing that everyone agreed to is that they love the multi-use of the park. There are a number of teens who hang out at the picnic tables in the shade of the trees, and I would bet those trees have provided a screen for quite a few first kisses. Boys of all ages (and a few girls) crowd the baskeball hoops. Younger kids and parents hang out on the swings and playground set. The elderly and the generally lazy folk like me lounge on the benches. Nearby schools use the baseball diamond for sports, and in the twilight hourse you see families with young kids playing catch, learning baseball, tennis, lacrosse… And, dogs frolick throughout while their owners catch up with their neighbors (note: the whole dog in park thing is apparently illegal -i’ll address that separately). There are a few practitioners of Tai Chi who can regularly be seen in the Park, and on special occasions a marching band practises drills (I love those days when I get seranaded by a marching band – no actually, I really do love it!)

Some of the ideas that had support for the redesign included:

GREEN: Lots of people advocated for more greenery (softness) incorporated into the space – be in on the periphery, around the kiddie playground, in a separate (shaded) seating area…. etc…

COMMUNITY BUILDING QUIET SPACES: People would like to see community gathering areas, like the picnic tables and ‘conversation’ areas (in which benches/chairs face each other to enable conversation) in a communal area, not just in the kiddie playground where use is restricted to Children and Adults accompanying Children. One person suggested Chess tables.
KIDDIE PLAYGROUND: It is under-utlized and not age varied. Make it more accessible to toddlers by adding a softer ground surface for toddlers and swings/bouncy things appropriate for toddler age. Make it more easily accessible to users by moving the Playground Gate to the South Side of the Park where most of the residents come from (North is the commercially zoned MPD), and so that to get into the kiddie playground you don’t have to navigate your small children through the muscled gods playing on the basketball court. Make the kiddie playground safer by fencing out the Comfort Station to create better lines of sight for parents (no more hiding behind the Comfort Station) and not having everyone who wants to use the Comfort Station have to trek in and out of the kiddie playground. There was also a good suggestion to move the Picnic tables out of the Kiddie playground so that the kiddie playground really is just for “CHILDREN and ADULTS ACCOMPANYING CHILDREN,” and so anyone who wants can use the picnic tables within the rules of the playground. Have a drinking fountain in both the playground area and the main park area so both sets of users have access.

BASKETBALL – Basically the basketball rocks and we want to keep what we have and continue to let the boys in the neighborhood (and the adult boys in the neighborhood) work off their steam on the court. The one suggestion (brilliant, I think) was to switch out one of the full size basketball hoops to a short one that would be more used by the younger set (as he said, the grown men wouldn’t be caught dead playing at an 8 foot(8 foot?) basket).

BASEBALL DIAMOND – This got a little interesting. At the very end of the meeting people started to question whether they really wanted a baseball diamond anymore and whether or not it is underutilized. Some people expressed concern over having an adult size league leading to adult games leading to balls flying over the fence. Some felt that the large open space of the baseball diamond created a unique open feel in the park that they didn’t want to give up. Someone pointed out that if there wasn’t a baseball diamond the fence wouldn’t need to be so high and harsh looking. Other suggestions for part or all of this space included:

MINI Baseball Diamond: a mini’ diamond that would cater to families, but not allow full-size adult games.

VOLLEYBALL: Apparently these VBALL courts have been successful in parks on the LES. The idea is to be more Female-athlete user friendly.

DOG RUN: People with dogs who live in this neighborhood honestly do not have a nearby dog run. There are a few PRIVATE dog runs, but none for the public. They would like to put a small and large dog run on the west side of the park, along Hudson Street. While I think there is a serious necessity for a dog run for them, I’m very concerned about the amount of noise that would be caused by a formal dog run. I hate to say ‘not my backyard’ but that is sort of my thought on the matter… Couldn’t some of the old loading and unloading docks for the now defunct meat-packing plants be converted into dog runs? Those are commercial areas, so the noise shouldn’t be an issue for nearby residences since there aren’t really any…

And a few other notes of interest that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else in this REALLY long entry:

1. Hours – People would like the playground to stay open later. Currently the playground gets locked by the Parks Dept during their nightly rounds. Depending on the order in which the parks are closed on any given night, the closing time can vary considerably. A neighborhood can set their own opening and closing hours, but they then have to take responsibility for locking up and opening up each day. Locking up includes kicking out anyone in the park.

2. Signage – Lots of people don’t know what the Water Tunnel construction is. Better signage is necessary.

3. I didn’t mention this at the meeting as I just found an article about it – but I do wonder what changes will be necessary to the landscape when the water tunnel is finished. If I recall correctly, the water tunnel will leave behind two hatches and one 14 inch diameter 10 foot air vent. I don’t know if those are still planned and if so, where they are planned for – the sidewalk, street or in the park?

OK. I’m now TOTALLY exhausted from this LENGTHY write-up. Please respond with your comments about what you would and wouldn’t like to see in the park. What works? What doesn’t?

If you want to be a part of the process, get in now and help shape the actual process!

CB2 meetings are open to the public, so get on down there and find out about our precious park!

CORRECTION: The meeting for community outreach is Tuesday, 5/15 at 6.30pm at Housing Works!

Looks like the great explosions in the bottom of the big dig aren’t so bad after all. Phew! Check out this article from The Villager with lots of fun technical details about the dig as well as (keep reading, all the way, there it is!) a QUOTE FROM YOURS TRULY!!

Julie Culver keeps her ear to the community by maintaining the Horatio St. blog. One entry on the tunnel blasting is adorned with a dramatic photo of a fireball exploding.

“I know it’s necessary to keep clean water, which is really important,” Culver said. However, she admitted, “I’m a little nervous about what the impact of the noise is going to be.”

xoxoxo,
julie

Our little disaster site in the Seravalli Park will shortly move into the “blasting” period, which is scheduled to commence on Monday April 24th and will last for a period of two to three months. [Correction per Bruce Solomon - the flyers say the blasts will be under Hudson and Gansevoort streets, the site of Shaft 27B. But the actual fenced in construction site is mostly the corner of Seravalli Park, which borders Hudson and Gansevoort. Will the blasts happen in that fenced in area or are they actually progressing out into the street? I guess we'll know once we feel it.]

This phase of construction requires the USE OF EXPLOSIVES.

Each blast lasts about 10 seconds and no more than two blasts are anticipated each weekday between 9am and 5pm.

This stuff is so serious that they actually sound warnings before they blast – - – so yes, you can run for cover. Warning signals are:

1 Long Whistle = 3 minutes to blast
2 Short Whistles = 1 minute to blast
3 Long Whistles = All Clear

All shaft sites will be reviewed at the next meeting, on Tuesday May 9th at the LGBT Community Center at 6:30p.m. So, er, I guess that’s where you go for more info or to complain.

PS – FOLKS, I work during the day – but I’m very curious to hear what the blasts are like. Do your dishes rattle? Can you hear it? What’s it like? Write in and tell – for inquiring minds do want to know…

Do you think the Prostitution issue, especially at the corners of Horatio Street and Greenwich Street and Jane Street and Greenwich Street could be addressed AGAIN?

Ditto the endless all night horn-honking?

I recently contacted the Sixth Precint to inquire who controls where the construction site at Gansvoort and Greenwich places their construction office trailers. The two gigantic ones on Greenwich Street are a traffic nightmare, not only blocking part of a narrow street but also preventing traffic from observing each other. It would make sense to have them around the corner, where the site workers [illegally] park their cars during the day.

Finally, after nearly five days [some went without service for more], we now have phone service restored. It seems Verizon refuses to address a permanent solution to this problem which often happens in heavy rain and snow.

Residents have been writing in about the noise, and some are a bit more convinced about a lack of change than others:

“I walked by the Gansevoort Hotel today. I saw that they did something to the slats in the offending vent. It actually looks like someone took a hacksaw and just went at it. The noise is reduced – now it sounds like a strong wind instead of an airplane. I doubt it violates the standards of the DEP. I would ask others to take a listen and see what they think. I’m afraid I’ve become so sensitive to the noise that I can’t be objective anymore. ”

“No, there is no change. The water shaft workers start at 7:00 AM and quit at 3:00 PM so you get the full effect of the ventilation system at the hotel from then, through the night and until morning. The work on the shaft is only sporadically noisy but the roar from the hotel never stops.”

How do you weigh in?

PART I (April – June ’05) – Utility Relocation, Shaft Collar (concrete ring @ top of shaft), Freeze Pipes, Drill Raise Bore Pilot Hole and Utility Hole, Chamber Ground Support

Part II – (July – mid-Dec. ’05) Freeze Ground / Raise Bore

Part III – (mid-Dec. ’05-Jan. ’06) Shaft Construction, Soil

Part IV – ( April-Sept. ’06) Shaft Construction, Rock

Part V – (Oct. ’06 – Setp. ’07) Shaft Piping and Chambers

I suppose at that point they’ll begin construction to give us back the street and the playground. And I’m sure that will be done just as expediently as all the other projects.

Mon, 5/2, 6:30pm, WATERFRONT COMMITTEE
AIA, 536 LaGuardia Pl. b/w W.3rd & Bleecker, Common Room 1st Floor
Gansevoort Pier recycling and transfer station proposal.

While there are compelling environmental reasons (the reduction of truck traffic through city streets) to establish marine transportation for garbage and recyclables, the prospect of up to 65 trucks per day, including private commercial carters at night, arriving to dump trash and recylables is not appealing.

According to an informative article in The Villager, “State legislator, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, is withholding support, at least for now. She told the Jan. 3 meeting that she resents the encroachment on designated riverfront parkland. “Community Boards 2 [covering the Village] and 4 [covering Chelsea] have the least amount of park space in the city,” said Glick. “To have it nibbled away by commercial uses and now nibbled away by municipal uses is a little weird,” she added.”

Mon., 5/2, 1:00pm, TRAFFIC&TRANSPO/14TH ST TASK FORCE
Man. Board Conference Room, 3 Washington Square Village, 1st Floor
The Great Dig (aka 3rd City Water Tunnel/Shaft 27B) in Seravelli Playground.

Click here for my rants on this project and the importance of getting involved. Seriously, we need community involvement in this or else it may go even more haywire…

Tues., 5/3, 6:30pm, 14TH ST/GANSEVOORT MARKET AREA
Housing Works, 320 W. 13th Street, 4th Floor Dining Room
Stop sign resolution for West 13th St. & 9th Ave (NE & NW Corners)
huzzah!

Mon., 5/9, 6:30pm SIDEWALKS, PUBLIC FACILITIES & PUBLIC ACCESS
DDSO, 75 Morton St. (b/w Hudson & Greenwich St.) Activity Center
Sidewalk seating licenses for PM and BAR AND BOOKS:
PM requests outdoor seating for 12 tables and 29 seats. As we all know, PM backs onto Horatio Street and there were major noise problems and community antagonism in the beginning that new management has really addressed quite satisfactorily (to my knowledge)… If the café seating is for the club, where in the world will they put the red carpet? More likely, café seating is indicative to me that the rumors of them opening a restaurant in the space next door might be true (rumors of Emeril float through the air). Restaurants can be good neighbors, but there are a ton of potential problems that make it really important for new restaurants to be in open communication with the community. Let’s get those lines open from the get-go and ensure a RESPONSIBLE neighbor!
Bar And Books on Hudson, between Horatio and Jane is also requesting a renewal for their sidewalk seating. I gotta say, I hate the smell of those stinky cigars as I walk by there, and next to children’s shops, no less… but I don’t really think there is anything that can be done about that. *long suffering sigh*

Tues., 5/10, 6:30pm, BUSINESS
DDSO, 75 Morton St. (b/w Hudson & Greenwi ch St) Activity Center
SoHo House – 24 9th Ave is up for renewal of their liquor license.

We learned at the Hotel Gansevoort meeting that a lot of the noise complaints issued to them should actually have been directed to soho house. Should we bring this up? Does it continue to be a problem, or have they followed the positive model set by Hotel Gansevoort in regard to controlling the noise during rooftop parties?

Thurs, 5/19, 6:30 pm FULL BOARD – Report of Nominating Committee
NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Place Room 703
Political Insanity
Ok, I can’t even begin to sum up the insanity of the board nomination and under-handed scheming and layers and layers of intrigue, some of which have been stripped away to reveal that: 2 CB2 board members and supporters of Macpherson (considered by many the candidate on the side of neighborhood activists, rather than just commercial concerns) were recently not re-appointed to the board by Manhattan borough President C.Virginia Fields. She refuses to state her reasons for not re-instating them. That sounds fishy given it takes two votes away from Macpherson and Fields is backing Derr for CB2 chairman. (are you confused and disgusted yet?)

There is a light at the end of the tunnel: CB2 member Brad Hoylman who initially was going to run for chairperson “agreed to drop out provided both MacPherson and Derr follow three reforms he is advocating. Hoylman is calling for full disclosure to the board of any correspondence between state or city agencies; that only a third of the Business Committee members be owners of liquor licenses or individuals in the nightlife industry; and that the 500.-ft hearing rule, or Padavan Law, be properly enforced for new liquor license applications.” That sounds like good common sense to me. Info and quote from the marathon article in The Villager for details on the sliminess of politics.

To see the full calendar (this is just a selection, I know, I know) check out the CB2 website.