They’ve been working on the rail yards; Lots of new ideas

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 8 / November 17 - 23, 2006

By Albert Amateau

Now that the proposed Jets stadium over the West Side rail yards is dead and buried — thanks to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the united opposition of local elected officials and civic groups — what’s next?

That was the question put to about 100 Clinton and Chelsea activists at a Wednesday roundtable conducted by the Hudson Yards Community Advisory Council, the Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yards Alliance and Community Board 4.

Without the stadium proposed for a platform over the Western Yards between 11th and 12th Aves. there remains the massive Hudson Yards redevelopment project, which the city approved last year for the area between 10th and 11th Aves from 30th to 43rd Sts.

The Western Yards as well as the Eastern Yards, between 11th and 11th Aves., belong to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The plan will affect the Clinton and Chelsea neighborhoods as far east as Seventh Ave.; the northern section of the High Line; the proposed $1.6 billion extension of the No. 7 subway to 11th Ave. and down to 34th St.; the Hudson River Park and Pier 76; and the expansion of the Javits Convention Center.

The topics at the Nov. 15 discussion included the promise of more than 1,000 units of permanently affordable housing and the threat of 70-story office towers rising on 11th Ave.

The future of the proposed Moynihan-Penn Station project and a new Madison Square Garden — separate but related to the Hudson Yards — also came up in the meeting.

“The city is moving very quickly on this project,” said Ana Levin, a member of Community Board 4, the Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yards Alliance and the Advisory Council. “The city wants development and public space. The M.T.A. wants money to run the subways. We need to make sure we get something that the neighborhood needs,” Levin said.

The joint city-M.T.A. review process for development over the rail yards calls for a March 7 deadline for determining the uses and sizes of buildings and open space. The M.T.A. will then request proposals from developers who could be selected by October 2007. The six-month uniform land use review procedure will follow.

The Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yards Alliance is calling for a “significant portion” of the Western Rail Yards (where the stadium was proposed) to be publicly accessible open space, planned as an extension of the Hudson River Park.

“The zoning [for the district] is not set, but don’t expect five-story residential buildings,” quipped Joseph Restuccia, a C.B. 4 member and head of the board’s Affordable Housing Task Force.

One member of the audience wanted to know why the rail yards are there at all, stretching from 30th to 34th Sts. between 10th and 12th Aves. She suggested that the M.T.A. should keep its trains at the Sunnyside yards in Queens.

“We could use all that [Hudson Yards] space for affordable housing and parks,” she said.

Speaking for the advisory council, Levin replied with a grin, “We’ve made a lot of extreme requests for the Hudson Yards but we’ve never had the nerve to go that far.”

The city also wants a plan for Pier 76 at W. 36th St. across from the Javits Center. The pier, now used as the municipal auto tow pound, is owned half by the city and half by the Hudson River Park Trust. It is planned as the temporary home of the Police Department’s Mounted Unit at the end of this year, and has been mentioned as the possible site of two Department of Sanitation marine waste-transfer stations.

An as-yet-undetermined location in the rail yards has also been mentioned as a possible rail waste-transfer station for the Department of Sanitation. Neither the rail transfer station nor the marine transfer stations on Pier 76 are in the city plans, but the plans could accommodate them, eventually, Restuccia said.

One suggestion in a list of development principles issued by the Hell’s Kitchen Hudson Yards Alliance calls for “multiple visions,” with different architectural styles, and allowing construction to advance in phases to adapt to changing conditions.

“It cannot depend on the success or failure of one big idea,” the alliance said of the area’s development.

The alliance reiterates the demand that 30 percent of housing space be permanently affordable — a provision that the city has promised to encourage voluntary participation through inclusionary zoning.

The No. 7 line extension, to be financed by city bonds, was not favored by most people at the forum. The present plans for only one station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. does not make the subway extension very useful for West Side residents, several people said.

Roxanne Warren, chairperson of Vision 42, calling for an auto-free light-rail boulevard for 42nd St., was only one of several people who urged that light rail would be cheaper and be in service sooner that the No. 7 extension.

Robert Hammond, a founder of Friends of the High Line, was one of several who urged that the High Line be integrated into the Hudson Yards plan north of 30th St. Another High Line supporter was anxious about reports that part of the High Line might have to be demolished and rebuilt to accommodate development plans.

“I’m opposed to any demolition. This is, after all, a preservation project as well as a park,” he said.

Although the High Line park from Gansevoort to 30th Sts. is secure, the line is in doubt north of 30th St. to 34th St., which still belongs to CSX, the railroad that acquired the line from Conrail, the previous owner. Friends of the High Line will have a forum on the High Line at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Bohen Foundation, 415 W. 13th St.

Residents of London Terrace and Penn South were prominent at the Nov. 15 meeting. Housing advocates and neighborhood groups were also out in force. Representatives of the M.T.A. and the Bloomberg administration attended but did not speak.

The Hudson Yards Community Advisory Council, mandated by the city’s Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, includes representatives from Community Board 4, elected officials and several West Side block associations. The Wednesday round table will be followed by others beginning early next year.