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.

We decided to set this up after we heard a lot of concern from neighborhood residents and businesses about how often and what sort of events will be allowed in the plaza.

The new plaza formation is a pilot program to ease traffic issues and increase pedestrian safety, so plaza use as event space is obviously a very important issue to discuss! While there may be feedback on the pilot project itself, that is larger issue that CB2 will be holding meetings on in the future.

A representative from Horatio Street Association will attend. What opinions would you like represented? What questions would you like asked? Do you want events at night, clowns, performances, art shows, salsa lessons, readings for children, dog shows, live bands, fashion shows, a landing pod for spacecraft? The one use that was discussed at the planning meeting for the plaza was a greenmarket one afternoon (say 3PM – 9PM).

The one use so far was the Google Art Party.

Now we, the community, can voice our opinions about use. Post your comments to the blog or email them directly to Christine Quinn’s office:
kseely-kirk@council.nyc.gov

I wanted to let everyone know that there is a man who, for many days, has been sitting in the basketball area of Seravelli Playground (Horatio Street and Washington/8th ave) leering at children. He recently has moved to the picknic tables in the actual playground. And yesterday he said to a young teenager “the children are hot”.

The police came and told him he is not to be in either the basketball area or the playground and escorted him out (my sitter saw him hanging out on the street corner 10 minutes later.) The police told us that if he returns to the park to call 911 – that is the best and fastest way to get the police to come (don’t call the precinct or 311). Be one the look out because he may go to other parks.

He is average height, brownish grey thick hair, maybe 40s or 50s, white, heavy set – especially around the stomach.

New Hearing on MTA ‘Emergency Ventilation Plant’ Project for Mulry Sq., 7th & Greenwich Ave.: The MTA’s plans to construct an emergency ventilation plant at this busy intersection has drawn great criticism from GVSHP and many others. The site is immediately adjacent to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where another large multi-year construction project is being contemplated, there are fragile historic buildings nearby which could be adversely impacted, the plan could require construction of a six-story tall ventilation shaft, and a recent similar MTA project nearby on West 13th Street involved years of delays and disruption. Additionally, GVSHP has raised the possibility of alternatives which it is unclear if the MTA has fully contemplated.

Prior public hearings on the proposal were scarcely publicized and attended. At State Senator Tom Duane’s request, a new hearing has been scheduled on the proposal for Monday, September 24th, giving the broader public an opportunity to find out more and provide feedback.

HOW TO HELP:

*COME TO THE PUBLIC HEARING ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24th at 6:30 pm at St. Vincent’s Hospital’s Cronin Auditorium, 170 W. 12th Street. Go to www.gvshp.org/MTAMulrySqLet7-07.htm and www.gvshp.org/documents/MTAVntltnPlntMulrySq7-07.pdf for letters you can use to help raise questions and express concerns about the plan at the hearing.

For those of you following the redesign of the Seravalli Playground/Park, please note that Chris Crowley has been assigned to the project and he will do a formal scoping walk-through on Thursday, September 20th at 10am (in the park).

To catch up on this process – - click “Seravalli Playground” on the right or at the bottom of this tag to read all the previous posts about this project.

And now, the MTA is looking at building a ventilation plant in Mulry Square that could be as high as 6-stories in Mulry Square. GVSHP has expressed concern over the impact on traffic and on the fragile surrounding buildings, as well as complications that could arise from the forthcoming construction across the street at St. Vincents. Additionally, one of the two spaces that MTA is considering for the six-story plant is a space that neighborhood activists had rallied to turn into public space: the MTA lot at 61 Greenwich Avenue, most known for the chain link fence which surrounds it and is decorated by the “Tiles for America” created by artisans the world over as a memorial for the victims of 9/11.

July 26th is the last day to submit comments to MTA on their Draft Scoping Document. GVSHP, everyone’s favorite neighborhood watchdog has a sample letter online that you can email or print and mail to the MTA.

Ok, so, onto the actual story. You may have noticed that 9th Avenue is being torn up and that little stretch of 9th Avenue from 14th to 16th street that went North is gone for good. DOT is in the process of splitting 9th Ave into two portions (both south-bound), with a partition in the middle, and also adding a bike lane to the east side of 9th Ave (eventually to continue down Hudson). This is a temporary configuration of the space that they plan to study before making it permanent.

Meanwhile, the Greater Gansevoort Urban Improvement Project (good God, what a mouthful), after months of study and input from the community, has come up with a brilliant proposal (that they presented to the public last month at CB2 Traffic & Transportation) for a re-design of the Gansevoort Plaza and surroundings (including a slightly different configuration of that stretch of 9th Ave) that aims to increase pedestrian safety, increase public space in a usable manner, decrease traffic congestion and yet maintain the lovely open feel of the Plaza that makes the area so unique….

Here are some of the key points of their plan as I understand it:

1. RAISE our gorgeous belgian pavers in the Gansevoort Plaza to sidewalk level (on Gansevoort Street from Hudson to Washington; on 9th Ave from Gansevoort to W. 13th). THIS WOULD NOT HURT OUR GORGEOUS BELGIAN PAVERS. (phew!) This allows them to use part of the plaza as extended sidewalk/pedestrian/public space and the other portion for cars, without actually removing or breaking up the massive expanse of belgian pavers that give the plaza so open and unique a feel. Cars would be separated from the public by the use of ballards or some other barrier with minimal visual impact.

2. Reverse some street directions to create better flow.
Here is where THE WORST MAP EVER, is actually helpful. Pink is traffic flow and direction. Green is traffic in the 5MPH zone. BLUE is reclaimed pedestrian space. Of note:
- Reverse Gansevoort to flow East only for the section west of Greenwich .
- Reverse Little West 12th to flow EAST only for the section west of Hudson

3. Reduce traffic speed to a 5MPH zone for Gansevoort b/w Hudson & Washington and Greenwich b/w Gansevoort and West 13th. (This zone is indicated by the green lines). Cars would drive up a steep bump into the zone (from the East: on Gansevoort at Hudson or from the West on Gansevoort at Washington), alerting them to the speed change. There would be a bump on the way out as well (to the west: on Little West 12th or to the north on Greenwich at West 13th)

Results? Safer (shorter) street crossings, better traffic flow and an additional almost 3 acres of new open public space – - maybe even enough space to put a Night Green Market (night = 3pm-9pm) in the Gansevoort Plaza area.

What I love about the GGUIP proposal for 9th Ave is that instead of creating open space in the middle of 9th Ave as in DOT’s current configuration (because, really, who likes to hang out between two lanes of traffic?), they have created open space that connects to the sidewalk, which I can imagine people really using and enjoying.

I also like their proposal for the Gansevoort Plaza. By raising the Belgian pavers, they keep the current sidewalk line and the large expanse of belgian pavers in the plaza, but they also reclaim the vast majority of the space for pedestrians while leaving space for (slow) traffic. The plan aims to use something like ballards to create a barrier between the car space and the people space.

I should admit that I’m not sure what the effect of this plan would be on traffic on Horatio Street. By allowing cars to turn left onto Gansevoort from Washington, Horatio is no longer the first left-hand (east-bound) street out of the MPD. Which sounds like we’d have much less of the noisy, honking traffic exiting the MPD.

However, after the cars turn left onto Gansevoort, they are forced north on Greenwich, right through the heart of the MPD and the 5MPH zone and can’t exit until 14th street. If they actually want out of the MPD, Horatio Street will still be the first left-hand turn out that allows them to avoid the 5MPH zone …

Even if this would have a slightly deleterious effect on Horatio Street because of an increase in obnoxious late night traffic noisily leaving via our street, I’m still behind the plan. I applaud this initiative for finding ways to increase public space for people while maintaining the necessary traffic flow and the unique character of this area. Kudos.

This is a community plan for re-claiming public space, and addressing pedestrian safety and vehicular congestion issues, on Ninth Avenue between 16th Street and Gansevoort Plaza.

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?