Only in Dreams
Pier 55 lesson: Fund the basics, then the frills
TWO global cities, two sets of philanthropists willing to pay for riverfront gardens created by the same superstar designer, Thomas Heatherwick. Both projects abruptly canceled within the past month, after tens of millions of dollars spent and years devoted.
New York and London often do the same things at the same time — and now they’re deciding to
not do things at the same time. It’s a lesson for donors who genuinely want to help their towns: People are exhausted with grand ideas, and want back-to-basic investment in public works.
In New York last week, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, the married media and fashion tycoons, pulled support for their 5-year-old project to build a tree-filled park and performance space on a new pier along the Hudson River Park downtown.
Diller, who says the couple spent $40 million, lashed out at opponents who sued to stop the project, telling The Post that “what they have gained” for the public — nothing — “is pathetic.”
Last month, the supporters of a similar “Garden Bridge” across the Thames in London, spearheaded by “Absolutely Fabulous” actress Joanna Lumley, were in the same dark mood. “It is a sad day for London because it is sending out a message to the world that we can no longer deliver such exciting projects,” they said in cancelling their own half-decade-old initiative.
Yes, it’s sad. In both cases, people genuinely wanted to spend their own money to do something for their cities, and seem genuinely perplexed about the lack of public enthusiasm.
The reality is that just as you can’t sell something people aren’t buying, you can’t give away what people aren’t taking. So why were people apathetic toward these gifts, rather than grateful, as many city residents were with projects like the High Line?
First, both garden projects suffered huge cost overruns, going from $130 million to $250 million on the Hudson, and from $80 million to nearly $300 million on the Thames.
In New York, a big part of that was legal costs, and construction glitches caused by legal wrangling, as it was expensive to start work only to stop again. But not all of it was legal costs.
And though donors ponied up a lot, the projects required public money. So it was unavoidable to ask: Is this the best use, in New York’s case, of $35 million in taxpayer cash?
That question becomes even NICOLE more important GELINAS to answer when you consider the fact that the Hudson River Park is nearly 20 years old — but not complete. The cost to finish it up — about $200 million, spread over several years — isn’t all that great in the context of city and state budgets that together exceed $200 billion annually.
It’s unwise to build fancy new things before finishing the old first — something the public, stuck on ever-delayed subways and studying in libraries without air conditioning, has absorbed.
West Siders were never opposed to the Pier 55 project as Londoners were to the Thames project. The attitude was nothing like the neighborhood’s universal animosity to former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Olympic stadium there 15 years ago — which was a terrible idea.
This time, they just didn’t seem to care either way — making it easy for fairly limited opposition to kill it.
It doesn’t help that the West Side has lots of new, nice things. If you want to stroll among cre- atively arranged trees and avoid the High Line crowds, go to the Irish Potato Famine memorial nearby.
Donors like Diller, understandably frustrated, shouldn’t give up on grand projects. But they should acknowledge that now, maybe, is not the time.
People have seen startling change over the past 20 years; the entire city is different. Meanwhile, New York has neglected what it should be doing. It’s natural to need a break and retrench.
Diller admirably wants to repurpose the rest of the money he was going to spend on the pier. Why not spend some of it to finish building the Hudson River Park? The existing park needs playgrounds — playgrounds that need names — and there’s more work to be done on Pier 40.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the legacy of a Greek shipbuilder, set a good example last week, when it donated $55 million to the New York Public Library to renovate the existing Mid-Manhattan circulating hub.
People don’t need radical upheaval at the library, as the NYPL learned a few years back, in canceling its own overly ambitious plan, which would’ve involved closing and selling the Mid-Manhattan branch. They just need a nicer library.
Incremental improvements can re-whet the public’s appetite, someday, for bigger, better ideas.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Twitter: @nicolegelinas