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FiDi Is Leader by Far in Residential Growth By 2013, the population of Lower Manhattan will be nearly double what it was in 2000. Almost half of those people will live in the Financial District. These are the findings of a just released Community Board 1 population study of its neighborhoods—the South Street Seaport/Civic Center, Tribeca, Battery Park City and the Financial District. The study projects that between 2000 and 2013, the population will grow from 34,420 to more than 63,000. The Financial District alone will increase by at least 240 percent, with more than 19,000 new residents expected by 2013.
“It’s shocking to me to see the Financial District having the largest share of the residential population of our four neighborhoods,” said Jeff Galloway, chairman of CB1’s Planning and Infrastructure Committee. “It kind of sneaked up on us.” The study’s author, Basha Estroff, a community planning fellow at Columbia University, said the actual population will probably be even higher. Nineteen pending construction projects—13 in the Financial District—were not included in the study because the number of units is not yet known. She said they could add as many as 5,150 more residents to the projected 2013 population, with 3,500 living in the Financial District. Much of the population surge in that district, Estroff said, is due to the conversion of office towers to residential housing. “A wave of claustrophobia is coming over me just thinking about it,” CB1 member Diane Lapson said after hearing the report. The population projections for 2013 for Tribeca, Battery Park City and the Seaport/Civic Centerwere significant but not so staggering. The study predicted Battery Park City’s population growing by 56 percent (4,105 new residents), Tribeca’s by 45 percent (3,422 new residents) and the Seaport/Civic Center’s by 18 percent (nearly 2,000 new residents). “It’s crazy,” said CB1 Financial District Committee chairman Ro Sheffe. “In 2013, if you took the Financial District out of Manhattan and plunked it in another part of the state, it would be the tenth largest city in New York.” Financial District Committee co-chairman Michael Skidmore said he was anxious to see the next CB1 study, which will include an inventory of community services such as schools and libraries in the four neighborhoods which, in just five years, are expected to comprise at least 65 percent of the district’s total population. “This is the single most important issue facing this board,” said member Bruce Ehrmann at the meeting of the full community board. CB1 members living east of Broadway had often complained that the board focused on meeting the needs of Tribeca and Battery Park City at the expense of their neighborhoods. This study, they said, should help change that. “If 2000 was the decade of the West,” Sheffe said, “2010 needs to be the decade of the East.”
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