WFC Owners Present West Street Plan to Save Retail Tenants By Carl Glassman Just about everyone seems to have something to say about the proposed burial of West Street. But some voices are likely to be heard above others. Brookfield Financial Properties, owners of most of the World Financial Center, certainly will be one of them. The giant realtor, which has more than nine million square feet of Downtown office space, has been shopping around a proposal for putting West Street underground. The firm claims its plan will cost less and take a shorter time to build than others that have been suggested. Above all, the developer says its design will improve the “dreadful” state of its retail tenants in the World Financial Center. “Our tenants will not stay here unless they see dramatic improvements and life coming back to normal as soon as possible,” said Larry Graham, a Brookfield vice president, in a presentation last month to Community Board 1’s World Trade Center/Transportation Committee. Graham argued that busy West Street keeps customers away. Brookfield’s plan to submerge the highway beneath a “quiet, respectful street system” of four lanes, with green space in the middle, would bring the troubled businesses to life, he said. Design and construction would take three-and-a-half years, with six months of visible construction. Graham estimated the cost at under $1.2 billion, about one-third to one-half the estimate for other tunnel plans. Accompanied by a team of prominent consultants (the designers of Battery Park City’s revised master plan, the engineers that rebuilt West Street and the world’s largest civil engineering firm) Graham explained that construction could take place beneath a temporary roadway, with utilities pinned beneath that road rather than moved to the side during excavation. He said that the longest disruption would be six months, rather than years. Reaction to the Brookfield plan was mixed, reflecting the conflicting sentiment over any West Street plan that would create another construction site in the neighborhood and possibly make driving into and out of Battery Park City more difficult. “It seems like this might be a very expensive and disruptive undertaking to maybe improve the connections a bit,” said CB1 district manager Paul Goldstein. “Even though it sounds like we have a lot of money Downtown, is this such a great need that it should take over 10 percent of the total pie when there are so many needs throughout Lower Manhattan?” John Dellaportas, who leads the Coalition to Save West Street, called the plan “a bit of a farce.” “While they proposed that taxpayers build a tunnel to the doorstep of their complex, they offered nothing in return.” But Elizabeth Berger, a resident of Lower Broadway and a CB1 member, said Brookfield had a “forward looking idea.” It is hard for parents and nannies to cross West Street to get to Battery Park City parks, she said, and submerging the highway “unifies” Lower Manhattan. “It brings the waterfront to the rest of Downtown.” Merchants who have reopened in the World Financial Center said in interviews that business was down as much as 70 percent from pre-Sept. 11, and they favored anything that might help. “That highway is like a wall. It always has been,” said Jerry Macari, who recently reopened his store, Urban Athletics. He said that even before Sept. 11, he would sometimes meet customers at the subway and walk them across the street to his store. Now, he said, it’s worse. “A wide connecting space would be great. I say anytime you need to build a bridge, there’s a problem. We’re an island over here.”