Demolition Announcement Sparks Call for Hold on Seaport Development Plans

Photo, supplied by the city's Economic Development Corp., shows the cooler structures on the Tin and New Market Buildings that are slated to be demolished due to deteriorating conditions.

Suddenly announced plans by the city to demolish portions of two former Fulton Fish Market buildings this summer left a coalition of preservationists and community leaders “deeply troubled” over the city’s handling of the buildings that have long been at the center of a development controversy.

A week after those plans became public, Community Board 1’s Seaport Committee signed off on a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio—written by Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy and also signed by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, the Historic Districts Council, Save Our Seaport and other organizations—that condemned "the egregious absence of transparency and public review of the plans for the Seaport" and called for all development activity in the district to be put on hold. (The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

Howard Hughes’ Corp.’s plans for the Seaport, if approved, calls for the New Market Building to be demolished to make way for a controversial 494-foot-high residential tower. The historic Tin Building would be dismantled and reconstructed, with an additional floor, 30 feet back from its current location. The Tin Building lies within the Seaport Historic District and changes to it require Landmarks Preservation Commission approval. The New Market Building lies just outside the district.

“Past developers have not delivered promised revenues or district wide revitalization,” the letter reads. “We fear that the current absence of comprehensive planning allows development to head in the wrong direction again and squander the potential of this remarkable resource. We demand an opportunity to get this right.”

“There is an enormous amount of confusion about where things stand there,” Breen said in a phone interview. “It is in all our interests to get together and make the administration clear about our concerns.”

Only the former cooler areas, sheds that run along the back of both buildings, are “in imminent danger of collapse and must be demolished,” an EDC spokeswoman said in a statement last week, calling the demolition “emergency work.” In the meantime, the statement said, the city might have to demolish both buildings, in full or in part, pending further inspections and approvals.

City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer have already called for the Howard Hughes Corp. and the city present a comprehensive plan for the Seaport’s redevelopment before the city approval process begins. This latest move by the city has raised another red flag among some community leaders, who see this as a possible first move to sidestep the process altogether.

“[It] is just the tip of the potential iceberg,” said Roger Byrom, chair of Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee, which passed a resolution last week that “condemned” the EDC for what it said was a failure to inform the community about its plans and calling on EDC officials to meet with them and explain their intentions. 

The EDC spokeswoman insisted that nothing is being done without the necessary approvals. The demolition of the coolers is expected to take place in July or August, after all approvals are granted from the applicable agencies, including the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the Army Corps of Engineers and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), she said. Remediation and abatement of hazardous materials must occur prior to any work at either building, she added.

“This emergency work has no bearing on any future plans for the Tin and New Market sites,” she said in a statement. “Any plan that deviates from as-of-right zoning must go through the city’s public approvals process.”

But according to a May 14 Crain’s article, internal EDC memos in April showed that the city had intended to demolish the buildings, until its plans were thwarted when they became public.

The spokeswoman maintained that a “full or partial demolition” could take place, but only “according to the appropriate procedure” with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the State Historic Preservation Office.

CB1 chair Catherine McVay Hughes told the Seaport Committee that she spoke with Richard Cote, the senior vice president of asset management for the EDC, who informed her that “he knew there was a problem [with the buildings] several years ago.”

That is clear from a 2010 EDC inspection report obtained by the Trib that concluded that the Tin and New Market Buildings, as well as the West Apron (which used to serve as the loading and unloading facility for both buildings), are in overall “poor” condition and have “widespread advanced defects including heavy marine borer and fungal rot deterioration.” For nearly $10.9 million, the report concluded, the city could undertake projects to help stabilize the crumbling facilities. Those projects never happened.

“They put zero amount of money into maintaining these buildings and allowed them to deteriorate,” said Michael Kramer, a leading critic of the Hughes Corp. plans. “We had Sandy, there was FEMA money available, there was insurance money available. None of that money [went] to bolstering these buildings. They’re being allowed to decay so they can make the argument that they have to be demolished.”

Kramer and other critics claim that construction at the neighboring Pier 17, where the developer is building a new mall, may have contributed to the deterioration of the Tin and New Market buildings.

“There is no indication that HHC’s construction played any role in worsening the structural condition at either pier,” the EDC spokeswoman responded in an email. “Their work is being carefully monitored via vibration sensors.”

Representatives from the EDC are expected to come before CB1’s Landmarks Committee on Thursday, June 11, to discuss their work on the Tin and New Market Buildings. (Hughes Corp. representatives are due to attend the Seaport Committee on Tuesday, June 16, to speak about the status of their plans for the Seaport Historic District, which CB1 reviewed in February, issuing a mixed bag of approvals and disapprovals.)

Committee chair Roger Byrom said local neighbors were the first to notify CB1 about the work on the Tin and New Market Buildings, and that the EDC gave the board no notice.

“It’s very disconcerting,” Byrom said, “that after all of the input we’ve had as the community board, as the Seaport Working Group, that EDC continues to just feel that it’s fine for them to just work in isolation and not even have the courtesy to explain what’s about to happen, and only our residents who are quick to see something and say something are raising the alarm.”

“We’re being transparent,” the EDC spokeswoman said in a phone interview. “We’re letting people know there’s a problem and emergency work is most likely necessary. We will do that work, and then reassess what has to come next.”