Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan (17 page)

“We can't know,” he said.

“Could they have adapted to the opposite shore?”

“That's what Ed Koch said,” Ludwig laughed, and reminded me how the then-mayor of New York had remarked, in his inimitably truculent manner: “ ‘Let 'em move to Joisey.’ ” Ludwig countered, “Look, you don't want to anthropomorphize these critters, they're pretty dumb. But they don't know New Jersey. The Hudson around Lower Manhattan seems to have the proper mixture of saltwater and fresh water that they like.”

The scientific debate may continue for years; the legal one is ended. I am struck that the fate of Westway was decided in court by some picayune inconsistencies of presentation and self-protective maneuvers typical of bureaucracy, some value judgments about what constitutes a significant adverse impact, which might have gone either way, and the judge's dislike of a witness.

THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY was a triumph of People Power over the Establishment. This time, however, the Establishment had the progressive vision and imagination, and the people, fearful and conservative, dug in their heels. Above and beyond the salutary effects on a community that had learned how to defeat the entrenched power structure, I am left with the sad reflection that New York City has entered its querulous middle age. It is ruled by a fractious civic culture, better suited to stop anything from getting built, than to respond creatively and energetically to the need for fresh urban solutions.

“We have erected the art of paralysis,” Louis Winnick, an urban analyst, reflected at the time on Westway's demise. “The city has lost its capacity to do monumental things.” The political climate of New York is littered today with prospectuses for important public works that have either been shot down or hang on in a twilight of indefinite deferral: the Second Avenue subway, the 42nd Street trolley, Governors Island, Westway, the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerators (or any sane way of dealing with our garbage, besides trucking it elsewhere). The metropolis that
gave us the Croton Waterworks, Central Park, steam under the pavements, and the Brooklyn Bridge is afraid to undertake something new. The public is chary and tired. They have been burnt too often. There is a lack of conviction when it comes to generating new urban tissue, which is understandable, since nowadays the big projects always come out slightly bogus, pompous, denatured, and suburban. Who is to say that Westway would not have ended up looking like an urban waxworks, as have parts of Battery Park City? Still, I think it was a lost opportunity, the kind that comes along only once in a century.

As Edward Logue put it (and I think he was right): “Were Westway built, it would not have many enemies.” The many enemies of an unbuilt Westway proliferated, however, in part because it remained an abstraction, a clumsy giant born of theory, unable to defend itself from charges of unreality.

THE DEFEAT OF WESTWAY brought many changes. Though the trade-off for mass transit came to only a few hundred million dollars, the infusion of capital did help the subway system improve: stations were redecorated, new trains and computerized monitoring equipment purchased. In the wake of Westway's defeat, communities across the country made out well in securing federal funds. The biggest recipient was Boston, whose sunken highway, the “Big Dig,” inherited the billions of dollars that were there to be spent by the Highway Trust Fund, thanks to Tip O'Neill's authority in Congress. As a costly (“the most expensive highway in history”) solution to heal the original rift and bring people to the waterfront, the Big Dig could be considered Son of Westway: it differed only in not building an outboard tunnel, but sinking the original perimeter highway in place and covering it over with a lid. There would be no disturbances of the aquatic environment; on the other hand, Boston traffic would be disrupted for over a decade.

As for landfill, it has become an utterly verboten, shudder-producing thought in New York City, at least for the next half-century,
*
which is
probably to the good. Any large structures proposed for piers or platforms, such as a football stadium or a museum on the riverfront's edge, can anticipate years of obstructive litigation because of the shadows they would expect to cast on water routes frequented by fish.

*
It is still used widely elsewhere, even nearby in Newark, New Jersey, where the port is being significantly expanded to provide more backspace for containers.

The high-rise development close to the Hudson River that the West Villagers feared Westway would bring (and which, in fact, Westway might have controlled better, given its need to compromise) has occurred anyway, in the face of zoning and landmark restrictions. Some community planning boards approve larger buildings because of their star-architect cachet
—vide
, for instance, Richard Meier's vitrine-like twin towers, on West Street and Perry. For the most part, the West Village got a slew of view-blocking high-rise apartment houses faced in hideously bland, chunky orange brick, with shower-sized balconies.

The old West Side Highway has remained in place, only now it is reconfigured as Route 9A, an “urban boulevard.” Parts of this roadway are 140 feet wide, meaning you can't get across them in one light, short of breaking the hundred-yard-dash record, and it takes a minimum of two lights with a baby carriage.

WITH WESTWAY
'
S DEMISE, the old, decaying piers became the focus of plans to convert the waterfront to recreational use. Once thought nuisances and eyesores, these rotting structures were suddenly imbued with tremendous nostalgic value. In part it was the charm of ruins, and in part a more practical consideration: since no new structures could be built into the river, and since any replacement road for the West Side Highway would leave skimpy land at best for a waterside park, these piers represented significant splinters of potential public space. Whatever had once been a pier, however chewed-up by neglect or shipworms, could be “restored” (that is, reconstructed to its outermost original point and redecked) and turned into a place to stroll, bike, surfboard, or fish. Indeed, these piers were seen as offering New Yorkers a novel Sensurround experience of the river, by allowing them to leave the shore and go farther “into” the water for purposes of contemplation. “At the end of the day, Hudson River Park
is
the piers,” I was told by Mike Ludwig, the marine biologist who had helped defeat Westway. Ludwig and Al Butzel were among the anti-Westway advocates
who decided to salvage something positive from the campaign, and put their energies into building Hudson River Park. Marci Benstock, on the other hand, steadfastly opposed the new venture. Butzel and Benstock, former comrades-in-arms, fell out and became bitter enemies.

I spoke to both parties—separately, of course. Al Butzel was rangy and tall, wore blue jeans and a casual shirt, had glasses and a character-filled face, good-looking in a Sam Waterston way; eye contact very direct, with a slight smile playing around the lips, which marked his willingness to entertain opposing perspectives, though occasionally his intensity seemed to vibrate into a tremble. I feel an immediate rapport with him, as though he were a double of myself if I had gone into the law (as I had originally planned), or vice versa, if he had become a writer (as he has at times wanted to be).

He seemed smitten with the Hudson River, and eager to talk about it. “The Hudson is a great river. It's very unusual to have a great metropolitan area on a great river that connects the hinterland to the ocean. The Seine and the Thames are important because of the cities they flow through, but they're minor compared to the Hudson. It's a big river, bigger than most on the Eastern seaboard. The ocean works a long way inland. It's an estuary, a fjord. It has great historical significance—it was thought to be the key to the American Revolutionary War, then there's West Point—and incredible commercial history, especially after the introduction of steamboats shifted the waterfront from the East River to the Hudson. And artistic significance: the Hudson River School of painters saw it as the image of God's America. Baedeker compared the Hudson to the Rhine and said it was finer, because the Rhine had been so industrialized, whereas much of the Hudson is still picturesque and pristine.”

I switch the topic of conversation to his participation in the Hudson River Park, and the skepticism he picks up in my voice pains him somewhat.

“Sure, Hudson River Park is only a few acres, no one would mistake it for a large park space,” he says. “But it's an experiment: the only park that has ever been built as a park space on piers. Very few cities are lucky enough to have so much public space along the waterfront. Cities like Boston or Baltimore have some nice open spaces, but they're dominated by commercial and residential use.”

“And Hudson River Park will be dominated by Route 9A,” I interject.

“I understand your objections, but the trees that the Department of Transportation put in along Route 9A will provide an overhang and give the park visual separation someday. It's like that famous photograph of ice skaters in Central Park and the Dakota apartments in the background: today you wouldn't see the Dakota because the trees would be in the way. Okay, I'll admit that the Department of Transportation forgot to put in an irrigation system, so many of the trees they planted on 9A have already died. No one wants to take care of these trees, neither the DOT nor the Hudson River Park Trust. But they'll figure it out. And then you'll have a real, separate sanctuary. Look, this city is very intense. It needs places of retreat. I can imagine Socrates out on the piers with his students.”

What about bringing some urban activity down to the water's edge?

“I'm not entirely opposed to commercial activity in the park, the way Marci Benstock is. I was for the proposal to keep three of the piers moneymaking, to help support the park. I would also hope that more maritime activities get associated with the piers. To be perfectly honest, clean air and clean water are not really the issues that drive me. But I feel deeply about wanting people to have the capacity in this city to connect with the world of water around them. To experience the river.”

MARCI BENSTOCK has been characterized alternately as the heroine who slew Westway, an inspiration to environmental activists everywhere—and a paranoid zealot who does not know when to stop fighting. Marci, as everyone, friend or foe, calls her, is a youthful-looking, attractive woman in her early fifties, whose blackish shoulder-length hair is cut with trademark bangs cut straight across the forehead. The day we met, she wore a black sweater with a necklace of red and black carved stones, and a full, flaring houndstooth skirt.

I explained that I was not an investigative journalist, but thought her viewpoint was invaluable nonetheless in any discussion on Westway and the Hudson River Park.

She corrected me: “It's not a park. I call it the Hudson River Development Project. We're not just talking about what happens on the land. It's what happens under the surface of the water that matters for coastal systems. It's simple: you don't put structure in floodplains. The
Hudson River is the ocean estuary part of a floodplain. Why don't they place their development in underutilized or vacant parts of the city inland? It makes no sense. Besides, water has such a destructive effect on a build-ing's foundations; you have to keep repairing.”

“So why do they want to do it?” I ask blandly, accepting for the moment her conspiratorial “they.”

“It's an enormous boondoggle. Hudson River ‘Park’ and Route 9A are part of a long-range development scheme to turn the river into real estate. They'll do it by building out into the water, they don't care how—plat-forms, piers, floating platforms, landfill. The Army Corps of Engineers has already issued permits for major construction in the river as part of the Hudson River Park Trust and Route 9A.”

“I was under the impression state legislation prohibits building in the Hudson.”

“I've seen the permits! You have to know how to read them. I've had thirty years' experience and training. I have copies of them in my purse,” she said, pointing to a rather large black handbag. As she did not offer to take them out, I did not ask to see them. Anyway, the moment was not right to interrupt her flow. “As further proof, the Army Corps has authorized the wholesale rebuilding of forty-odd piers with public funds. However nice an experience it may be to wander out into the water, you don't need more than five or six walking piers in Manhattan. Certainly not forty.”

“I agree. So what do they want to put on these piers, in your view?”

“Housing, tall buildings, retail, other commercial use. The timetable for projects like these is very long. At first they say it's just to provide public access to the water. The excuse of having three piers that generate revenue for the park is just a crock. The amounts those three piers would generate is minuscule compared to the profits at stake. Views of the river are worth a lot in New York. A massive construction project like this will only become somewhat apparent by the end of five years, and only really apparent after ten.”

As she sees it, construction firms, dredging and pile-driving companies, and construction unions form a powerful lobby “that make a living by turning water into land, give big political contributions, and the politicians pay them back by assigning them contracts on the waterfront, and setting
up public authorities to funnel the pork. Private companies could conceivably put up the investment, but they prefer to use public funds. Money that flows through public authorities is notoriously hard to trace, and does not require as much accountability. The public authorities mutate and change initials, but they're still the same beasts. The same thing happens with stadium construction. Some private investors get burned, but a few at the top make out like bandits. That's how Roland Betts and Tom Bernstein, who now run the Chelsea Piers, made George W. Bush a millionaire down in Arlington, Texas. The reason the state is pushing to put stadiums on the water is that there's more pork when you are creating the site as well as building on it. Why are they scheduling all these marinas? Marinas have been going bankrupt in the other boroughs, but suddenly they have several planned for Manhattan. Because they want to choke up the habitat and turn it into real estate.”