Tribeca Promenade to WTC Site Proposed

By Carl Glassman
POSTED DEC.4, 2006

A group of green-minded Tribeca residents is proposing a bold new plan to turn Greenwich Street into a tree-lined pedestrian promenade, connecting Tribeca to the World Trade Center site.

Friends of Greenwich Street, the  non-profit group that maintains the street’s gardens and trees from North Moore Street to Duane Street and plants new trees in other parts of the neighborhood, submitted a $20 million request last month to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.The application was among those submitted for a share of $45 million in LMDC “community enhancement funds.”

 “We think it is important to welcome future WTC visitors who, following their visit to the Trade Center Memorial, will very often wish to explore Tribeca…” Friends of Greenwich Street president Steve Boyce wrote in his introduction to the proposal.

Two design firms with major Lower Manhattan projects to their credit—SHoP Architects and Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects—have signed on to the proposed project. No designs have been drawn up, but the proposal suggests including revenue-generating kiosks and open-air cafes, new seating and signage, and plantings and trees along the now barren stretch north of Barclay Street.

Signe Nielsen, who lives and works in Tribeca, was the landscape architect for the “Greening of Greenwich Street” (now called “Phase 1”). That project, completed in 2000, narrowed the street by half and created trees, planters, benches and new pavers along the west side of Greenwich, from Chambers to  Hubert Streets. She said there is good reason to extend the landscaping, where visitors and others will exit the World Trade Center site beyond 7 WTC.

“People are logically going to pick Greenwich Street to walk up,” she said. “Church Street is miserable and Broadway is nothing to write home about. With the planned Barnes and Nobles and Whole Foods on Greenwich Street [between Warren and Murray Streets], that’s a huge deal. Then, farther up, there’s the great restaurants and outdoor cafes that make Tribeca fun.”

Along with its designers, Friends of Greenwich Street has gathered an eclectic advisory board from along the street that includes Citigroup, the Tribeca Film Center, Stellar Management (owners of Independence Plaza), the Washington  Market Park’s board of directors, P.S. 234 PTA, and Bank of New York.

“We want to show that we have the community together with us. We’re not a lone wolf,” said Mark Winkleman, a Tribeca architect who is spearheading the plan with Steve Boyce. “We’re a group that’s going to come up with the solution for Greenwich Street and we need to bring in the stakeholders.”

As far back as the late 1980s, the city had planned an elaborate “greening” of Greenwich Street that was to stretch from Hubert to Barclay Streets. There was money to pay for it, from a special tax fund set aside when the corporate tower at North Moore and Greenwich Street (now the Citigroup building) was constructed. Additional money came from the corporate anchor at the other end of the street, Bank of New York.

In 1995, it was revealed that the city had nearly depleted the fund. Eventually the city restored enough money for the modified “Greening of Greenwich.”

Back then, no one could have imagined that Greenwich Street would extend not only to the World Trade Center site, but through it, with huge new residential projects along the way. That is what makes the new proposal all the more compelling, say its backers.

“How do we start to deal with all the cars and pedestrians and merchants, and reconnect this with the World Trade Center site?” said Bill Sharples, a principal in SHoP Architects. “Ultimately it will happen, but on whose terms?”