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Battery Park City Authority To Lease Pier A The Battery Park City Authority Board of Directors voted to approve a deal to lease and redevelop the nearby Pier A at their monthly meeting May 6. Under the terms of the 49-year lease (with four optional 10-year-extensions), Battery Park City will take over control of the pier from the city, renovate it, and find tenants for it that could include retail, offices and restaurants. Originally built in 1886, just after the Brooklyn Bridge, to service other docks in the harbor, Pier A served a number of functions in its day. It was taken over by the Police Department as a place from which to patrol the harbor. Later it was the headquarters for fireboats. The clock tower was erected in 1919 as one of the city’s first memorials to veterans of the First World War. When Battery Park City was formed in the 1970s, control of Pier A, which is immediately to south, was retained by the city. The pier, which is listed on the National Historic Registry, has gone unused for decades, however, and has fallen into disrepair. An effort in the 1990s to revive the pier stalled over a disagreement between the city and Wings Point, a private developer. Wings Point spent $20 million in renovations before the city barred it from the pier for failing to pay its rent. James Gill, chairman of the Battery Park City Authority Board of Directors, said he was pleased to finally have a chance to do something with the pier, a goal he has pursued for many years. “I think this is going to be a fantastic facility that’s going to enhance New York City for years to come,” he said. The Authority will pay no rent under the terms of the lease, and the city will fund up to $30 million in redevelopment. But as a lessee rather than a lessor, the Battery Park City Authority will be in the inverse of its usual position. Rather than granting long-term leases to developers and leaving the construction to them, the Authority will be in charge of its own development, and will have to run many of its decisions by its landlord. The city will have final approval over any tenants the Authority finds, and if renovation costs exceed $30 million, city approval will be necessary for any other work. Alexandra Altman, the Authority’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel, said the $30 million estimate was derived from the former tenant. “We are a little uneasy about that number,” Altman conceded, “but we have no basis for any other number.” Still, Altman said, “We are certainly optimistic that we can mange these risks.” Not everyone on the Authority’s board of directors was so sanguine, however. “The best thing that could happen to this pier would be for it to be hit by a limited, specific tsunami,” said board member Charles Urstadt. “If this were a private venture, it would be questionable.” Urstadt said the degree of control retained by the city under the terms of the lease could leave the Battery Park City Authority holding the bag. Robert Mueller, another director, agreed. “There’s too much control the city has over this,” he said. The lease requires the Authority to try to lease the pier’s ground floor space to the National Park Service for its ferries to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Making room for the ferries will require the construction of a floating dock at the western end of the pier. Altman said the office, restaurant and retail tenants would be on the second and third floors. The authority also considered museums as possible tenants, but Gill said that after the New York City Fire Department declined to relocate their museum to the pier, he decided that other museums would not be appropriate on the site. The priority for now, however, is to begin renovations. The concrete foundations of the pier were built around a timber lattice, which, now more than 100 years old, has largely rotted away. Foundation repairs are expected to take at least a year. Renovations to the building itself will take another year after that before any possible tenants can move in.
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