BPC Dispute Settled: Bigger Playground and New Dog Run

A dispute over where to place Battery Park City’s first permanent dog run has apparently been settled, most likely paving the way for the dog run and a new toddler playground to be created on Monsignor Kowsky Plaza, between Gateway Plaza and the North Cove Marina.

Under a new plan, approved on May 7 by Community Board 1's Battery Park City Committee, a 3,000-square-foot dog run would be built in the area of the plaza above the police memorial, including what is now a children’s playground. The playground would be moved west to the area referred to as "the bosque," overlooking the esplanade, and significantly enlarged, from 400 square feet to approximately 3,500 square feet. New plantings and landscaping would also adorn the plaza.

The plan is a revision of an earlier Battery Park City Authority proposal that would have placed the dog run in the bosque area. That proposal sparked criticism from some Gateway Plaza residents, particularly from the Gateway 500 building, the closest building to the proposed run. Those residents worried about noise and the proximity of the prospective dog run to the existing playground.

A group made up of Gateway residents and Community Board 1 members worked last month with the Battery Park City Authority and Parks Conservancy and the architect who is designing the dog run to explore alternatives. The group suggested four alternate sites, which were either deemed inappropriate by the Authority or were owned by Brookfield Properties, which did not give an okay for a dog run to be built. So the team came up with the new design for the plaza site.

"It’s a good solution," said CB1’s Battery Park City Committee chair Anthony Notaro, a member of the group that worked on the proposal. "The dog run will be further from the building and will be aesthetically pleasing. And this is an opportunity for a significantly improved children’s playground, something that without this we would probably never be able to do."

"It’s an opportunity to unify the whole plaza," said Tessa Huxley, director of the BPC Parks Conservancy.
Design details for the dog run and the new playground still have to be worked out. But according to the concept plan drawn up by architect Claire Weisz, the dog run would be about 100 feet away from the Gateway 500 building, as opposed to about 15 feet away under the earlier proposal. Trees and a trellis with plants would be placed on the southern edge of the dog run to muffle noise.

The plaza, formerly called Pumphouse Plaza because it is the roof of an underground pumping station that used to provide heating and cooling water to the World Trade Center, had to be ripped up anyway to be waterproofed. The Authority hopes to begin construction work in October and to have the whole plaza finished by next May.

Some Gateway residents said they were not satisfied with the resolution.

"There are plenty of people at Gateway that are still not in favor of this," said Fran Miller, one of the outspoken critics of placing a dog run on the plaza, and a member of the subcommittee that worked on the plan. "We were not happy that the Battery Park City Authority and the Parks Conservancy said that there was no other space available. This is better than where it was going to be, but it’s still close to people’s windows." Miller lives on the fifth floor of the building.

The new plan must be approved by the full community board at its monthly meeting on May 21.