THE LOST CITY T
The death of Pier 55 proves a tiny collective of busybodies can destroy the fun for all New Yorkers
HE collapse of Barry Diller’s Pier 55 dream is without parallel in the annals of wilful, malicious New York City obstructionism. There’s no glimmer of hope, no encouraging lessons to be drawn, no down-the-road silver lining.
Diller’s reasonable decision to walk away from a vision that had already cost him tens of millions of dollars more than he’d planned, and which might well never be built even had he sunk in tens of millions of dollars more, is a civic tragedy of Shakespearean scope. We’re left with the oftrepeated, defining word of “King Lear” — nothing.
And, as in the play, nothing will come of nothing.
Pier 55 would have brought the city and the world a magnificent recreational pier more like an island — a 2.7-acre oasis of rolling meadows and groves and a 700seat amphitheater 186 feet from the foot of West 13th Street, reached by two picturesque pedestrian bridges.
Because Diller and wife Diane von Furstenberg’s foundation would have pumped in $110 million, no strings attached, the $130 million project (as originally budgeted) would have cost the city a mere $17 million — or a one-time outlay of $2.02 for each of its 8.4 million citizens. Diller would pay for any cost overruns.
Pier 55 would have been a shimmering jewel in the necklace of reclaimed West Side/Hudson River parkland that stretches south of 59th Street. It promised a free and welcome, alfresco attraction open to all onthe site of long-rotting Pier 54, best known for receiving survivors from the Titanic in 1915.
Instead, the useless old hulk will remain as an aching reminder of what could have been — and what’s unlikely ever to be in the future, all because the City Club of New York, comprising a few wellfunded environmentalists, decided to champion the American eel.
In an interview with The Post, Diller fumed at the fringe minority who tanked his dream, claiming he blew “way more than $40 million” and “it’s totally wasted.”
“In return for not having a park and entertainment center that would have been used by millions of people, potentially,” Diller said, “they achieved the following: They made it so the American eel, a fish, would not be endangered.”
Never mind that both the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers, found the project harmless to aquatic life.
The City Club lawsuits were bankrolled by Douglas Durst, a normally civic-minded developer who’s given the city many excellent projects. But this time, he seemed driven in part by bad blood with the Hudson River Park Trust, the organization that manages the fourmile-long park and which forced him out as a board member of its fund-raising arm in 2011. (Durst declined to comment to The Post.)
The city has suffered many previous land-use calamities at the hands of rapacious developers, neighborhood “activists,” vindictive politicians and imperious judges. Most every time, we found a way to create masterworks on the ruins of misjudgments and disappointment.
The horrific demolition of the original Penn Station in the early 1960s led to the creation of a landmarks law that’s since saved scores of great buildings and neighborhoods from destruction.
Resistance to early 1980s plans to replace Times Square’s tawdry and crime-ridden storefronts with sterile modern office towers ultimately helped yield a plan for today’s vibrant scene that’s the envy of the world.
The Bloomberg administration’s ambition for an NFL stadium and convention center were shot down by Albany — but West Side rezoning that was intended to support it paved the way for the High Line Park and Hudson Yards.
But no such happy outcome is in the cards this time, and the realization is hard to take.
We forgot how a tiny band of well-heeled activists and a single, environmentally-absorbed judge could prevail over common sense and the will of the majority — including, for Pier 55, the entire West Village community, normally warring Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, and all of the city’s major newspapers.
Since the late 1990s, the city was on a winning streak over obstructionist campaigns to torpedo worthy projects. Among initiatives that prevailed over determined opposition: Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, Harlem’s Riverbank State Park and the Museum of Arts & Design at Columbus Circle.
But there’s no way to revive Pier 55 in any form. It was entirely a product of one man’s vision and one man’s fortune.
Diller, a former studio mogul at Paramount and Fox, told The Post that he was shocked that critics could “use the legal process to make their wildly tiny minority” prevail.
Now his dream is dead, and unlike in Hollywood, there won’t be a sequel.