All But Dogs Are Winners In BPC Community Outcry

By Andrea Appleton
POSTED JAN. 12, 2007

Battery Park City residents appear to have won many of the concessions they angrily clamored for last month, when they complained that state transportation officials and the Battery Park City Authority had not gone far enough in restoring planned amenities near the Rector Street Bridge.

The community gardens, basketball courts,  “Great Lawn” and dog run in the area are being redesigned as part of the reconstruction of West Street.

Residents learned several months ago that the Rector Street Bridge, built after Sept. 11, 2001, as a temporary passage over West Street, might be in place for years to come.

A permanent location for a bridge has yet to be found. This, at first, meant that the community gardens and basketball courts slated for the spot where the bridge lands would have to wait, or at the very least be much reduced in size. Other, permanent, aspects of the plan, including the lawn, were to become smaller. But after the committee and community members complained last month, DOT officials agreed to revise their plans.

State DOT officials, this time in the company of the project’s landscape architect, Signe Nielsen, appeared before Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Committee on Jan. 9 to present the revised design, which would remain in place until the bridge finally comes down. It includes 50 temporary community gardens and two temporary basketball courts, just as the permanent design had called for.

In response to a request by Downtown Little League President Mark Costello, the most recent plan returns the lawn, used by kids as a makeshift athletic field, to near its current size.

“You’ve done a good job answering all of our questions,” committee member Anthony Notaro told transportation officials. The committee unanimously passed a resolution in support of the revised design, with the exception of the dog run, the only feature that failed to please.

The redesigned dog run is about 100 square feet smaller than the current run, but larger than the one proposed at the previous meeting. (It would be in the same spot as the current temporary run, just south of West Thames Street along the promenade.) Nielsen, the designer, called it “very good-size.” But committee member Jeff Galloway, who also heads an organization of Battery Park City dog owners, claimed local canines are getting a bad deal.

“For dogs it’s like any other active recreation, more is better,” he said. “There’s no such thing as too much space.”

Galloway argued that the run could be expanded by taking over what now is a proposed 14-foot-wide buffer planned for the edge of the run that borders the promenade. “I don’t think we really need it. People come to watch the dogs, and you want the public to be able to interact.”

“The design concept,” said Chris Cotter, deputy director of the 9A Reconstruction Project, “is that if we can visually separate the public promenade from the rest of the amenities, it’s a more exclusive use.“

A cacophony of angry responses rose from dog owners in the audience. Finally, Linda Belfer, chair of the committee, proposed forming a working group, headed by Galloway, to study the dog run. Among the issues they will address with the designers will be the size, the type of surface material, and the possibility of eliminating the distinction between a small-dog run and a large-dog run.

“Nothing is written in stone,” Galloway later said. “I’m sure we’ll come up with a solution that is agreeable to everyone.” To join the working group, contact Galloway at bpcdogs@rundog.com.

Whatever bargaining dog owners hope to do, they will need to do it quickly. The state DOT will start the bidding process for the Route 9A reconstruction on Feb. 15, and construction is expected to begin in April.  It is not yet clear when construction would begin on the area in question.