CB1 Committee Urges City To Start From Scratch on Seaport Park Design

The "Kids Zone" of the Taste of the Seaport, a recent fundraising event for Spruce Street and Peck Slip schools. It is events like this, CB1 member Jason Friedman argued, that are possible because of the wide-open and empty street. The redesign, he said, should keep the space as open as possible. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Seven years ago, Community Board 1 pushed for more greenery at the Seaport’s planned Peck Slip Park. Now a CB1 committee is calling for quite the opposite––a plainer, simplified cobblestone plaza.

The current design for the two-block-long plaza, between Front and South Streets, includes grass, flowering plants and shrubs on one of those blocks. Back in September, Laurence Mauro, the Parks Department’s program director, came to CB1’s Seaport Committee to talk about the plan, which also features a stone plaza with tables and chairs and includes the stone outline of a ship. Steps would dip below street level as if into the boat’s belly. Sculptural steel “ribs” would evoke those of a ship.

But committee member Jason Friedman––an architect who had argued against the design at that meeting––returned this month, armed with a PowerPoint presentation and a forceful argument for scrapping the whole, long-delayed plan.

The committee agreed and has drafted a resolution calling on the Parks Department to halt its current scheme.

“The space might be better just kind of open, more cobblestone, more sensitive to the historic district, preserving the slip as a contributing historic element in the South Street Seaport,” Friedman said.

Friedman suggested that the more flexible space could accommodate merchant-sponsored activities, a Greenmarket, or public art projects, to name a few.

Amanda Zink, owner of The Salty Paw, a nearby pet supply shop and boutique, said that the Seaport district does need more green, “but not there.”

“When you say green, I think it would mean no dogs allowed,” she said. “I think you [should] keep it open and flexible so the dogs can use it, the Greenmarkets can use it. It just needs to be protected somehow.”

Paul Hovitz, co-chair of the board’s Youth and Education Committee, said Friedman’s proposal would be welcomed by the three schools in the area, the Spruce Street and Peck Slip public schools, and the Blue School, all of which have little or no outdoor play space.

Opposing sides formed in 2006, when a plan for the park was first proposed. There were those who said the Seaport was in great need of green space and others who argued that a park was not historically appropriate for the landmark district. In April 2007, CB1 pushed the city’s Parks Department to redesign it, because the plan too strongly favored the the less green plaza side.

Committee chair John Fratta, backing Friedman’s argument, said the Seaport is not what it was back then.

“We took a lot of time on this last resolution in 2007,” Fratta said. “We got it right, but from 2007 to today, the area has changed, the population changed.”

Only one committee member, Joe Lerner, opposed Friedman’s proposal.

“To me, a park means grass,” he said. “Just open space is not good enough.”

“I live around the corner and I miss green space,” Seaport committee co-chair Marco Pasanella countered. “But I also see that there’s a real need in Peck Slip for this kind of flexible community space. And I see how much people are using it.”

“I don’t have any problem with them going back to the drawing board,” said Hovitz, “because, in fact, the space is excellent just the way it is.”

A Parks Department spokesman has yet to comment on the committee's proposal for a rethinking of the design.