It’s the Return of the Fulton St. Transit Hub! Nearly a month to the day since the MTA promised to build something at Fulton St., we have another round of Fulton St. Transit Hub news. How fun.
Toward the end of last week, while we were mourning the death of congestion pricing, word leaked out that the Empire State Development Corporation had proposed combining two long-delayed Lower Manhattan projects — the Fulton St. Hub and the performing arts center slated for the World Trade Center site — into one mega-project in an effort to get the ball rolling. Representatives from both the Joyce Theater, the site’s future tenants, and the MTA expressed lukewarm supprt, at best, for this proposal.
“We have to look at any possibility, but we are still committed to being part of redevelopment at the World Trade Center site,” she said to The Times. “The reason we were selected in the first place still stands: to be part of a performing arts center that was going to activate and animate the area.”
The Alliance for Downtown Manhattan was less diplomatic:
Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business group, said she was dismayed by Mr. Schick’s proposal. “We want what was promised — which was an architecturally distinctive, above-ground transit hub with retail — and we want it built now,” she said. “To change the design and the purpose of the building will cause substantial delays.”
Ms. Berger said the station’s function as a “commercial crossroads” would make the site problematic for a performing arts center…“You have 250,000 people coming in and out of that station every day, and it will be 300,000 after the connectors are built,” she said. Ms. Berger added that it would be difficult for trucks carrying scenery or remote broadcasting equipment to navigate the surrounding side streets, which are narrow.
The MTA’s architects at Grimshaw weren’t too pleased with the proposal either. “Transportation infrastructure makes lots of noise and vibration,” Andrew Whalley, director of the firm in New York, said. “A performing arts center requires a certain amount of acoustical isolation. They’re not natural bedfellows.”
Meanwhile, as the arts and subway debate goes on — there’s a 30-day study in the works — the MTA says that they’re making progress even as the estimated completion date is now 12 to 18 months later than originally scheduled. They also think that they’ll be able to build the whole hub as planned but that it will cost more. And I know a great deal on a bridge available for sale.
4 comments
I don’t understand the need for a study for this situation. Architecturally, it will be very hard to put the performing art center there. I would actually like it if it was there and it somehow made the hub a place to go to artistic wise as well as shopping wise… oh well.
At least they are trying to do something.
I wonder why the MTA can’t sell the air rights to the land to a developer (with provisions for station entrances) so they can build a shopping center or small office tower above the station. Seems like a more cost effective way of developing the land.
“We want what was promised…and we want it built now,”
She then stamped her feet in anger and promised to hold her breath until she gets what she wants.
This smells like a trial balloon. It’s not a serious proposal yet.