Going Coastal

Several New York community advocacy groups are opposing a $1.7 billion expansion plan for the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s Far West Side, claiming it will block waterfront access.

The Municipal Arts Society, a nonprofit organization focused on cultural affairs in New York, has joined with the American Planning Association’s New York Metro Chapter, Citizens Union, Friends of Hudson River Park, Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association, New Yorkers for Parks, and the Waterfront Park Coalition to author a letter urging Gov. George Pataki and the Empire State Development Corp. to redesign the expansion.

The new center, designed by London’s Richard Rogers Partnership, Chicago’s A. Epstein & Sons International, and New York’s FXFowle Architects, will increase the total exhibit space from 790,000 sq. ft. to 1.3 million sq. ft., and extend the complex northward to W. 40th Street. The opponents argue that the expansion will limit New Yorkers’ access to the waterfront with a “massive barrier” six blocks long, conflicting with a city goal to redevelop Manhattan’s West Side waterfront with an emphasis on public use, primarily through Hudson River Park.

The letter also states that the design would impair access to water transit in Manhattan. The groups suggested that the architects revise the plan to reduce its scale and open up access to the waterfront.

In addition, the arts society and the Hells Kitchen association filed a lawsuit this spring against the Empire State Development Corp., the agency overseeing the Javits Center expansion, claiming that a broader 2.45-million-sq.-ft. development plan proposed in April, which includes areas around the center, was not examined during the original environmental impact statement review. The existing EIS covered an earlier design of the Javits Center expansion prepared in tandem with plans for a $2.2 billion football stadium to the south that would have been home to the New York Jets, a project that was scrapped last summer after state officials blocked it.

According to the arts society, the revised Javits development plan would overburden the area with noise, pollution, and traffic. It is calling for the completion of a new EIS.

New York Construction News