New Board Member Sharon Pope

Gorman T. Reilly

CIVITAS welcomes new board member, Sharon Pope. Sharon is a long time resident of Roosevelt Island who served for 12 years as a full board member of Community Board 8 where she chaired its Housing Committee and represented the Community Board on the Advisory Council of Metropolitan Hospital Center. She now serves as a public member of Community Board 8. 

A graduate of Morgan State University, Sharon aptly describes herself as a committed urbanist. She is a former environmental planner with the Department of City Planning. She is also a former President of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association, representing the interests of some 10,000 residents and 20 different building councils. Her passion is community-based planning. For CIVITAS members she has led several informative tours of Roosevelt Island and the newly opened Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. 

What attracted Sharon to CIVITAS? Her quick response – “CIVITAS is an effective organization.” She values its commitment and tenacity in promoting lively and liveable neighborhoods. Among many compelling issues now engaging CIVITAS, she plans to devote her considerable talents as an urban planner to continuing to draw attention to the waterfront. The East River Esplanade, she explains, “can be made into a jewel of a park where residents of the Upper East Side and of East Harlem can relax and enjoy themselves.” 

To read the complete fall 2013 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/

Rockefeller University eyes platform over FDR

By Matt Chaban - Reprinted from Crain's New York Business

In a proposal to be formally unveiled Wednesday night, the Upper East Side school will unveil plans to build a two-story research building with a landscaped green roof and a conference center over the highway.

Rendering of a deck Rockefeller University would build over the FDR Highway.
Photo by Rafael Vinoly Architects.

Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side is preparing plans to grow, but with no space left on its campus, the school has come up with a tried and true solution: building new facilities on a deck the school would build over the FDR Highway.

The university, which stretches from East 62nd to East 68th streets along York Avenue, will unveil plans Wednesday night to build two small buildings on a platform over the highway along the East River. There will be a two-story research building measuring 160,000 square feet with a landscaped green roof and a conference center. The platform will extend roughly from East 64th Street to East 68th Street.

"The new building is critical to maintaining the university's excellent standards for research and teaching, by allowing for the recruitment of new faculty to replace those lost by attrition, and for the renewal of laboratory space that is outdated and poorly suited to modern science," said a spokesman in an email.

He stressed that the small buildings would not impede views of or from Manhattan, nor would they expand the university's size "in terms of personnel or activities." This is thanks to an innovative design from local architect Rafael Viñoly, where the two-story building will actually be built into the platform, so that the roof is level with the rest of the campus. This will create a larger quad without taking up space on the expanded campus. Whether the older research buildings will be replaced or redeveloped is still being determined.
This is the not the first time the university, established by John D. Rockefeller in 1901 to champion medical research, has expanded over the busy highway below. In 1987, a dormitory building opened atop a platform over the southbound lanes of the FDR between 62nd and 63rd streets. Five years later, a new research building was finished over both lanes of the highway at 64th Street. The new platform will extend from there all the way up to the northern edge of the campus.

The university is not the only institution to take advantage of cantilevered real estate: both the United Nations to the south, and Weill Cornell Medical Center directly to the north overhang the highway.

On terra firma, the university also has plans to convert a parking lot on the northwest corner of the campus, at East 68th Street and York Avenue, into a new athletic center, which will consolidate facilities from across campus. 

The project does not yet have a price tag or a firm timeline, though it will need zoning approvals before it can move forward. Wednesday night, the plans will be presented to the local community board's land-use committee, which will eventually vote on the project. The university already owns the air rights over the highway, so once it has the city's blessing, building should not be a problem. 

Hunter Armstrong, executive director Civitas, an Upper East Side advocacy group focused on open space issues in the neighborhood, said the idea was interesting, but it raised cause for concern over impacts on the adjacent East River Esplanade. “We’re trying to rescue the esplanade, which has long been neglected, so we have to be careful of the impacts of these cantilevers on our park,” Mr. Armstrong said.

The Rockefeller spokesman noted that it would be proposing improvements to the esplanade along the length of the campus as public benefit from the expansion, though it would require city support and planning to do so. One dream of Mr. Armstrong’s, that the university would open up its 14-acre campus to the public—a space that will grow larger with the new platform—remains unlikely.

“The nature of some of the work we do here, it’s not appropriate to the public coming onto the campus,” the spokesman said.

Mr. Armstrong feared the expansion could set a dangerous precedent, or accelerate one already under way. “I don’t want to see these cantilevered buildings becoming a model for all future development on the east side of the East Side,” he said. “They’re quite uninviting spaces and they can become echo chambers.” 

View the original article at Crain's New York Business.
and "Space-Starved East Side University Wants To Expand Over FDR" on Curbed NY.



 

 

Notification: Rockefeller University Expansion Presentation and New York Presbyterian Medical Facility Presentation

Left: Aerial view of Rockefeller University Right:  Rockefeller University looking North from East River Esplanade

Community Board 8 Land Use Meeting

Informational Presentation: Rockefeller University proposes to build a low research building (two-stories with rooftop pavilions) and a one- story conference center in air space over the FDR Drive adjacent to its campus, plus a one-story recreation building in the NW corner of the campus. Rockefeller University currently extends from 63rd Street to 68th Street between York Avenue and the FDR Drive.

Informational Presentation: New York Presbyterian Hospital will provide an update on its new medical facility that will be constructed on York Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets. They will discuss the overall project plan, construction timeline and logistics.

Discussion of refining and/or amending language to allow funding to also apply to the creation of public open space as well as existing parks in the Community Board 8 adopted MSK/CUNY zoning text amendment.

New York Blood Center
310 East 67th Street, Auditorium
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
6:30PM

For the most up to date information check: http://www.cb8m.com/calendar-meeting_date/2013-07

Reimagining the Waterfront is a CIVITAS-sponsored initiative to improve the East River Esplanade between East 63th and 125th Streets.  For more information visit: www.reimaginethewaterfront-civitas.com Call (212) 996-0745 or email info@civitasnyc.org to get involved.

NYC Benches on the Rise

Roberta Hodgson 

The elevated subway grates on East 116th Street are designed to prevent flooding and also serve as public art and a bench. 

“I came down the front steps of my house into a world that was sunny, warm and clean….

with benches, where mothers sat with their carriaged babies,” novelist E.L. Doctorow wrote recently in New York magazine, describing his Depression-era childhood in New York City.

Seventy five years later, benches still provide comfort and convenience in what serves as our common outdoor living room: the sidewalks of New York. The problem is that there are not enough benches to accommodate seniors, shoppers, and families looking for a spot to sit. Seniors often find it difficult to walk several blocks without a place to rest. And New Yorkers of any age appreciate a bench to sit on, chat with a friend or share an ice cream with a child. Interrupting the relentless pace of the city by stopping to sit and smell chestnuts roasting or to notice pear trees in bloom can only be good for everyone’s peace of mind.

Now a solution to the problem of too few benches is at hand–a new program from the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) known as CityBench. In order to increase the amount of public seating on our streets, DOT is now installing attractive and durable benches around the city, particularly at bus stops, retail corridors, and in areas with a high concentration of senior citizens. As DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explained in a recent interview, “New York has it all but it also needs places to take it all in.”

For Sandra Talavera, a social worker, resident of East Harlem and wife of CIVITAS President Felipe Ventegeat, this is not a new story. Over the past few years she worked with the city’s Department for the Aging, and has found that a major concern is the lack of seating in public areas. “The seniors,” she said, “actually just wanted a place they could sit down and rest close to their supermarkets and bus stops."  Working with the New York Academy of Medicine at 103rd Street, Community Board 11 and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, Sandra helped draw up a strategic plan to place more than 300 benches for seniors throughout the city. 

A DOT CityBench installed outside the Leonard Covello Senior Center. 

Stressing the importance of these plans, Ruth Finkelstein, senior vice president for policy and planning at the Academy explained, “For older adults, benches are exercise to get to, and they are social engagement and anti-depressants.” East Harlem was one of the first areas with a CityBench. Located outside the Leonard Covello Senior Center on 109th Street between First and Second Avenues, it is a comfortable open-sided, slatted bench with sturdy end bars in a sleek silver metal.Convinced that durable benches make streets more welcoming for everyone, encourage walking, and are a civic amenity, DOT has made CityBench available to the entire city.  

“One of the complaints about public seating was that it was too narrow,” says Ignacio Ciocchini, a bench designer with Chelsea Improvement Company. His designs for DOT have wide seats allowing for more personal space and room for a bag or pet. DOT welcomes experimentation with location and design. For example, a simple backless model bench relates well to other street furniture and costs about $1,800 to fabricate. Benches with armrests are useful both to help people to get out of the seat and to divide a bench so that more people can fit on it. Many benches are made of domestic carbon steel similar to that used on cars. This anti-rust design requires very little maintenance.

Anyone can request a bench by contacting citybench@dot.nyc.gov and filling out a form or by phoning (212) 839-6569. Priority bench locations include bus stops without shelters, senior centers, libraries, hospitals, and high-density shopping areas. Located online are detailed requirements about where benches may go for safety and engineering reasons. This program is funded by a $2.4 million grant from the federal government with the last 10 percent funded by the city. 

Private initiative can also give birth to a bench. Food Passion, Peter Walter’s store on Lexington Avenue, has a welcoming white slated bench on the sidewalk near the front door. Asked who paid for it, he replied, “we did because we enjoy seeing our customers, and for that matter anyone, enjoying the bench as they do everyday.” Asked about vandalism, he replied, “Not a problem.” DOT also states vandalism is rare and that the key to prevention is locating benches where adjacent shop owners and neighbors will assume some responsibility for their use and maintenance.  

Community Board 8’s office says that any store owner can put a bench on the sidewalk in front of their store as long as it is flush to the building, does not interfere with pedestrian traffic, and is removable. Eli’s Manhattan and other stores on Third Avenue have seen the benefit of sidewalk benches, and recently placed them in front of their shops. 

In the big picture, benches—both publicly and privately financed—fulfill some of the Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 goals to prepare the city for additional walkers on the streets and a more carbon-free environment.

To learn more, visit the Department of Transportation website: www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/citybench.shtml

To read the complete spring 2013 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/

 

Making the Case for the East Harlem Phase 2 Subway Extension

Benjamin Kabak 

Construction continues on Second Avenue subway tunnels, Summer 2012. Photo by The New York Times Magazine. 

Amidst the dirt and debris of Second Avenue, the explosions and disruptions to business and everyday life, the Upper East Side is undergoing a seismic change. With endless subway construction stretching back into the past and onward into a future that seems so far away, it’s hard to appreciate what a new subway line—or even just four stops of a new route—will mean for the city, but from Fifth Avenue to East End, change is going to come. 

The story so far is one of missed opportunities and endless waits. Few New Yorkers around today remember the IRT Second Avenue line, an elevated train route that met its demise in 1940. Amidst promises of a Second Avenue subway, the city tore down the structure only to be stymied in its planning. World wars, economic slowdowns, city-wide declines and Depressions, and a general lack of enthusiasm for transit projects pushed the Second Avenue subway further into the future. When enough federal funding finally materialized to get even a part of the project off the ground, the city received only a part of the full line it deserves. 

Currently, the MTA is working on Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway, and Phase 2 north to 125th St. should be next. The current phase is the world’s most expensive subway project, a four-stop extension of the Q train north out of 57th St. and Broadway to an unused portion of 63rd St. and Lexington and then up Second Avenue. for three stations to 96th St. At the cost of a cool $4.5 billion and a timeline, charitably, of about nine years from groundbreaking to revenue date, the Upper East Side will finally have its second subway line after an eight-decade wait. 

In an ideal world, as Phase 1 progresses, the MTA would be laying the groundwork for subsequent phases. It would be, in fact, another missed opportunity to stop here. Phase 2 of this four-phase project – the northern extension from 96th to 125th and Lexington – is next, and with much of the tunneling completed, the work should be easier to see through to a functioning subway line. Originally, the four sections were expected to cost around $4 billion each, but the entire line built at once wouldn’t have cost much less. Under today’s political and economic scene, four installments of $4 billion spread out over years or decades is likely easier to find than one lump sum of $16 billion. 

So as Phase 1 inches its way toward the finish line, now just four years away, what comes next? It’s a question most Second Avenue residents and business owners would rather not ponder. Those north of the current construction zone have seen their neighbors to the south suffer and likely aren’t looking forward to a similar fate. To ease congestion on the streets and overcrowding underground, though, the city needs to keep moving forward with the subway. So what comes next? 

A few months ago, MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu spoke to a group of transit activists and reporters prior to a tour of the 7 Line Extension, another MTA megaproject currently changing the face of the Far West Side. During his remarks, Horodniceanu mentioned the future of the Second Avenue Subway. For many years, MTA officials refused to speak much about Phases 2-4 of the project. They were focused on securing full funding guarantees for the remainder of Phase 1 and ensuring that this segment would survive to see the light of day after too many false starts. After three failed attempts at building the line, after all, and with billions of dollars in federal money on the line, the MTA couldn’t afford to let this opportunity pass. 

In late 2012, we can comfortably say that Phase 1 will open. The MTA has received too many federal dollars that are contingent upon finishing this project to turn back now. The future though is hazy as the MTA seems focused on maintaining and upgrading signal and track infrastructure in the next five-year plan and the federal government’s spending outlook may depend heavily upon the looming election and subsequent midterms. Yet, as Horodniceanu explained, the irony is that with some extra money now, the MTA could have built SAS up to 115th St.

Since preexisting tunnels connect from 99th St. to 105th and from 110th to119th, the MTA, said Horodniceanu “could now build stations at 105th St. and 115th St.” The cost would be a cool $750 million - $1 billion per station, but the only obstacle is the money. The environmental impact statements are completed, and the tunnels themselves are in place. In fact, some of the preexisting tunnel north of the future 96th St. station built in the 1970s will be used as tail tracks for the Second Avenue Subway line that will open in 2016.

Courtesy of Second Avenue Sagas

Unfortunately, the MTA isn’t going to build those stations any time soon. In fact, future phases of the subway line may never materialize. Earlier this year, Horodniceanu estimated that the remaining three phases may push the project’s total cost to $23-$24 billion. Seven years ago, the four phases combined were expected to cost a total of $16 billion. By the time the authority puts their shovels or tunnel boring machines into the ground, I’m sure that estimated total will increase to even higher levels. The costs of infrastructure projects in American aren’t decreasing any time soon. 

Essentially, the original decision to split the Second Avenue Subway project into four phases seemingly doomed it from the start. The origins of that decision these days have always been a bit murky. Some have said it came about due to pressure from Sheldon Silver and the realities of funding. The MTA didn’t think it could secure the dollars needed at the start to complete the subway line and tried to break the project into more palatable pieces. 

A New York Times story from 1999 tells a slightly different story: “Transit officials said they had limited the plan for new construction to upper Manhattan because of the engineering difficulties and expense of extending a new line under the more congested parts of midtown.” In this telling, it almost seems as those Phases 3 and 4 were simply for show. Phases 1 and 2 were easier and cheaper, but the charade of Phases 3 and 4 could keep hope alive. The truth is probably somewhere in between. 

Today, New York City must live with the impact of this decision. The Upper East Side will soon have Phase 1, and Phase 2 should see the light of day. It requires some blasting around station caverns and some tunneling near the ends. It provides a bellmouth – extra trackage and tunnels that make future expansion easier – pointed toward the Bronx and another aiming at the West Side and the 125th St. Fairway. It would connect with Metro-North and Lexington Avenue Line. It’s likely to be expensive but certainly necessary. It could also be years as no one at the MTA now is talking about it as a reality despite the foundation already in place. 

The future then is anyone’s guess. Upper East Siders should clamor for Phase 2. Now is the time to act, and using preexisting tunnels, it is seemingly the easiest to build. Phases 3 and 4 through Midtown and Lower Manhattan present their own challenges, but the MTA made this multi-phase bed 13 years ago. Today, as construction slogs forward and costs climb, New York must live with it even as part of the Second Avenue subway line finally moves from city lore to reality. 

Guest columnist Benjamin Kabak is the creator and writer of the blog Second Avenue Sagas: www.secondavenuesagas.com. 

To read the complete fall 2012 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/

Roosevelt Island: Yesterday and Tomorrow

"It is called Roosevelt Island. It is not yet a name on everyone's lips. But soon it will be."

Advertisement for Roosevelt Island in New York Post, Monday, December 23, 1974

Join CIVITAS in the first of a series of evening walking tours on Roosevelt Island led by urbanist Sharon Pope. Ride the iconic Roosevelt Island Tram across the East River for spectacular views of the river, Manhattan and Queens. The tour will explore the first residential buildings as envisioned by Mayor John Lindsay and architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, as well as Goldwater Hospital, site of the proposed Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute.

Event Details:

Tuesday, July 24 at 6:30 pm

Tour begins at Riverwalk Bar & Grill

425 Main Street, Roosevelt Island

Space is limited

RSVP by email at info@civitasnyc.org 

or phone at 212-996-0745

Suggestion Donation:

$10.00

Use Twitter? Follow @civitasnyc and find updates about the walk at #CIVITASnyc

Photo Credit: Konrad Fiedler/New York Sun

Call for Designs: East River Waterfront Competition

By Sharon E. Pope

Prepared for the CIVITAS Fall 2011 Newsletter

In September 2011, CIVITAS launched Reimagining the Waterfront, an ideas competition to tackle design problems on the East River Esplanade, 60th to 125th Streets. As we documented in our Spring 2011 newsletter, multiple sections of the Esplanade are in severe disrepair and even sinking into the East River. CIVITAS is proud to organize the competition with the growing number of public officials, neighbors and advocates who are calling for a better future for the waterfront park.

Reimagining the Waterfront is a first step toward developing a vision for improving the Esplanade. The CIVITAS team of volunteer architects and planners organizing the competition selected the boundaries East 60th to 125th Streets. This emphasizes the broad span of park between the Ed Koch Queensboro and Robert F. Kennedy Bridges and the role the Esplanade does, and could, play in many diverse communities.

Open to architects, urbanists, students and community stakeholders, the competition is intended to produce exceptional designs and ideas that profoundly enhance the public’s relationship with the park and river, and bridge the urban and the aquatic.

The waterfront is the transitional boundary between New York City’s hard and soft edges, between life on land and life on water. As such, urban waterfronts offer infinite opportunities to craft and maintain that relationship. In his book, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, writer Phillip Lopate stated “Any redesign on the waterfront must start from the premise of public access.” Competition design goals include public access, attention to active and passive uses, effective use of existing amenities, and neighborhood context.

The competition will be open to submissions through January 15, and winners will be determined in winter 2012 by a jury of renowned, highly-skilled designers, park advocates and representatives of the Upper East Side and East Harlem. Winning and creative submissions will be available on the competition website for the public to review and to envision an improved park in the future. Competition winners will receive monetary prizes and publicity for their top-notch designs.

It is important to distinguish between an ideas competition, such as Reimagining the Waterfront, and a design competition, which results in a commission for the winner and includes construction documents for the project. There is not yet money available for an ambitious redesign of the Esplanade, but CIVITAS’ goal for the ideas competition is to begin developing the necessary community and political support.

Fortunately, funding is already being allocated to make much-needed repairs to the Esplanade. Council Member Jessica Lappin has secured over $1 million to fix some of the worst sinkholes and to conduct an engineering study. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Council Member Lappin co-chair a task force of elected officials and government agencies to address Esplanade concerns.

CIVITAS is grateful for competition support, which includes grants from Council Member Lappin and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation. We will publicize the competition and the winning designs during 2011 and 2012 through public events, including an October 26 lecture by Lopate.

The grassroots citizen efforts of the Friends of the East River Esplanade, Community Boards 8 and 11, and Transportation Alternatives have helped raise the waterfront discourse through which the CIVITAS competition can explore designs and ideas of not only what is possible for the Esplanade but what can be dreamed for it as well.

On a recent cloudy day, an intrepid jogger was asked what he would like to see for the East River Esplanade. He gazed forlornly up and down the waterfront. He decided instead to discuss what he generally liked about the Hudson River and Riverside Park greenways. He is envious of West Siders, but that may change over the coming years as the East River waterfront is improved. Through the combined efforts of the competition and other stakeholders, the spotlight of scrutiny will help to formulate a long-term plan for the park incorporating definitive, targeted waterfront designs and substantial improvements. These actions will produce a waterfront that engages everyone. Only then will the Esplanade along the Upper East Side and East Harlem become, observes Lopate, “the place that will finally tell us we have arrived.”

Learn more about the competition at www.reimaginethewaterfront-civitas.com

Community Forum & Presentation on April 27

You are invited to a Community Presentation & Forum
The results are in!

In Winter 2011, CIVITAS and the NYU Wagner School administered a Community Engagement Survey to take stock of community views on neighborhood concerns and future needs of the Upper East Side and East Harlem.

We hope you will participate in the Community Presentation & Forum when we present the survey results addressing the following areas: Transportation, Land Use, Streetscape, and Environmental Quality

Wednesday, April 27, 2011
6-8pm
Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue (103rd street entrance)

RSVP required:
info@civitasnyc.org or 212-996-0745

For more information and project updates, visit: www.civitasnyc.org/publicneedssurvey <http://www.civitasnyc.org/publicneedssurvey>

Recent News Coverage on CIVITAS' Newsrack Initiative

CIVITAS speaks out against lax enforcement of vandalized and abandoned newsrack boxes and urges NYC Council to schedule an oversight hearing to address this issue. You can sign the petition at www.ipetitions.com/petition/newsracks and find recent media coverage at:

Our Town East Side
DNAinfo.com
WPIX11 News Video

Plan to attend and show your support at CIVITAS’ upcoming presentation on newsrack enforcement at the Community Board 8 Transportation Committee meeting:

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 6:30pm
New York Blood Center, Conference Room 1
310 East 67th Street, (Between First and Second Avenues)
New York, NY 10065