HUDSON RIVER PARK @ 20
Downtown’s Sports Pier Caught in Squeeze Play BY SYDNEY PEREIRA Thirteen years ago, tens of thousands of square feet of artificial-grass turf was rolled out inside the courtyard of Pier 40. Downtown families rapidly transformed the new playing field into a Village fixture for children’s sports. The courtyard field followed a smaller rooftop field that had been installed around five years earlier. In 2018 — 20 years after the creation the Hudson River Park — the kids who grew up playing sports on Pier 40’s fields are now nearing adulthood, on the way to college, and even coaching the next generation of young athletes. One of those teens is Katharine Fox, a 17-year-old rising high school senior, who fell in love with soccer on Pier 40. She played nearly two hours daily with Gotham Girls Football Club, and later the Downtown United Soccer Club (DUSC). The pier became integral to her family’s weekends together. Her dad, Paul Fox, a board member of the DUSC who coached her soccer and softball teams, recalls Saturday mornings meandering through the Village to
Photo courtesy of DUSC
Downtown United Soccer Club players hone their skills and teamwork on Pier 40’s FieldTurf artificial-grass playing field in the pier’s huge courtyard. The capacious pier is in sore need of repairs, but work has started to fix up its corroded steel support piles.
the mammoth W. Houston St. pier with two kids in tow. “It’s a great way to share the neighborhood with your children,” he said. Without the pier — just a scooter ride away from the Foxes’ Village home — Katharine doubts that she would have been as involved with sports throughout her childhood.
VERRAZANO BRIDGE TREK
UP P
CONEY ISLAND ODYSSEY
ER
Y BA
RED HOOK RIDE
LE ADDork
P ew Y
LIBERTY QUEST
GOVERNOR’S ISLAND LANDING
.com
Nanhattankayak m
FREEDOM TOWER TRIP
nR
iver P
a rk
SURF CITY
Huds o
RIV ER
PIER 84 BOATHOUSE
RENTALS
HU D SO
MKC @ PIER 84
SECRET BEACH ESCAPE
N
W 42nd Street
BE GI ZO NNE NE R
EA ST
RI CIR MA VE CU NH R MN AT AV TA N IGA TIO N
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
GW BRIDGE JOURNEY
SUSHI TRIP
PALISADES PICNIC Manhattan Kayak + SUP Routes Beginner Intermediate Advanced Elite
ALPINE ADVENTURE
20
May 24, 2018
“It probably would have been a hard pass,” Fox said of the possibility of traveling daily as a 7-year-old to Randalls Island, Roosevelt Island or beyond. “In the city, it’s so hard to find space — ridiculously hard.” “It allowed me to become the athletic person that I’ve become now,” she said of the park’s “family sports pier.” But looming over local youths’ ongoing enjoyment of Pier 40 is the challenge the Hudson River Park Trust faces in keeping the aging structure afloat. The pier’s corroded pilings — the steel columns upon which the pier sits — have long been in desperate need of repair. In late April, repairs began on the pier’s pilings using $100 million that the Hudson River Park Trust received last year for selling 200,000 square feet of air rights from the pier to the St. John’s Partners development project across the West Side Highway. The pilings’ repairs are expected to cost $104 million, according to Madelyn Wils, the Trust’s president and CEO. The repairs needed at Pier 40 go far beyond the pilings, though. In recent years, the Trust has completely redone or replaced the entire sprinkler system and fire alarms, plus added a new firesuppression system, along with new lighting in the garage — just to name a few. Bricks are sliding off the north side of the pier-shed building, which also needs to be repaired, according to the Trust. “I’m talking millions and million and millions of dollars,” Wils said. “This is just current work.” Under the Hudson River Park Act of 1998, the park is expected, “to the extent practicable,” to generate its own
revenue and be self-sustaining, paying for its own maintenance and operations. This year, though, the government took a larger role in funding the park’s completion — Governor Andrew Cuomo allocated $50 million for it, so long as the city matches it. Pier 40 generates around 25 percent of the 4-mile-long riverfront park’s operating funds. But that doesn’t include how much is spent on Pier 40 each year. In the past six years, the pier’s maintenance has cost around $40 million, Crain’s reported. “It brings us income,” Wils said of Pier 40, “but we end up spending a lot of money on continually fixing the pier.” The long-term revenue problem of Pier 40, Wils believes, could be solved through the development of office space on the pier. “It’s the least impactful of all commercial uses,” she explained. The original Park Act doesn’t allow that type of use at Pier 40. “We need a legislative change,” Wils said. But some leaders of Downtown sports leagues fear that development plans for the 14-acre pier could wind up meaning less field space for future generations of young players — at least in the short run, if not longer. “If Pier 40 were to close [for its redevelopment], it would be a disaster,” Isaac-Daniel Astrachan, another DUSC board member, said. “What probably would happen is, we would have to either shut down our operations or reduce the players.” Last year, a Community Board 2 (CB2) working group tasked with evaluating the future of the pier, recommended that any legislation change to allow currently unpermitted commercial uses — such as office space — must “be balanced by changes that maximize public open space and assure public control of the park.” “Commercial offices may be reasonable if their high value reduces the total floor area of a project, but other commercial uses that enhance the park and support important community needs should also be included as part of any redevelopment,” the CB2 working group concluded their November 2017 report. Those uses should include park- and community-enhancing uses, like small restaurants, performances PIER 40 continued on p. 24 NYC Community Media