The Lost Waterfront of New York

This article is the result of research sponsored in part by NOAA, Office of Sea Grant, U.S. Department of Commerce, under grants to the New York Sea Grant Institute. The author expresses his appreciation to Robert Warren and Robert Berne for their valuable suggestions.

 

Abstract

No integrated municipal policy exists for managing the New York City waterfront. Despite much rhetoric and many proposals to renew the city's coast, the municipal government has done little to improve the city's coastal shoreline. External organizations and citizens' groups have been largely responsible for efforts to improve the use of the city's coastal resources. This article assesses the role of the city government and analyzes the factors affecting its performance in coastal management. It proposes new policies to foster local initiatives and encourages private and public cooperation in the revitalization of the coast. Given the size and diversity of the city's coast, an incremental strategy may be the most feasible and sensible approach to recapture the city's lost waterfront.

 

Introduction

The New York City waterfront differs dramatically from most urban coastal areas in the United States. In terms of size, its shoreline is far more extensive than that of any other city in the country. In addition, municipal ownership of much of the waterfront allows the city to exercise direct control over the use of substantial portions of the land abutting the East and Hudson Rivers and the Atlantic Ocean. Historically, maritime trade has played a major part in the city's development. Despite these distinguishing features, there is no integrated municipal policy currently in existence for managing the city's shoreline. Planning for coastal resources and their linkage to the overall development of New York City is not an issue of serious concern for either citizens or public officials. The coastal initiatives that have been undertaken to date have been sporadic and uncoordinated; they have had little, if any, impact upon the quality or productivity of the marine environment of the nation's largest city.

Ten years ago, there were vast hopes for the revival of portions of the waterfront with massive apartment, commercial, and office complexes such as Battery Park City, Roosevelt Island, and Manhattan Landing. One prominent architect predicted that these developments would create a "New Venice."(1) Yet little has been done over the past decade to realize these expectations. During the same period, the city also attempted to increase the volume of passenger and cargo traffic in its port facilities but with very limited success.

What is clearly the city's greatest natural resource - the waterfront - has languished primarily because the city government has failed to provide leadership or even effective management of those substantial portions of the coast that are municipally owned. This article examines the ways in which New York City is organized to deal with its shoreline, factors affecting its performance in that task, and strategies that might be adopted to improve the city's capacity to utilize its coastal resources.

Shoreline Scale and Diversity

The city's 548 miles of shoreline encompass a diverse group of water bodies, rivers, straits, canals, bays, creeks, and portions of the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The length and complexity of its natural characteristics exceed that of most cities and many states. In terms of land use, the areas immediately adjacent to the shore are heterogeneous and reflect a great variety of economic, social, and cultural preferences.(2)

Some of the city's best maintained and most expensive neighborhoods, such as Riverdale and Brooklyn Heights, as well as some of its worst in terms of decay and poverty, like East Harlem and the South Bronx, line the waterfront. There are also a number of specialized subcommunities situated on coastal sites which fall between these extremes. Huge apartment complexes, like Starrett City in Brooklyn, have been built over wetland areas. The densely populated Upper West Side of Manhattan has an image closely linked to Riverside Park which abuts the Hudson River north of 72nd Street. Breezy Point continues to be an active and vital colony of beach bungalows and cottages while there is an enormous concentration of nursing homes and senior citizens' housing projects located next to the boardwalk in Far Rockaway.

New York's 17 miles of public beaches provide an important safety valve for millions of residents during the summer months. The city's beaches attract almost the same number of people on a holiday weekend as the Yankees and Mets do during an entire season. Coney Island remains the city's premier amusement park and Sheepshead Bay is an active area for sports fishing and charter boating. The city has more than 10,000 acres of waterfront parks which comprise 41 percent of the city's total parkland. Over 100 city parks are on the coast, ranging in size from playgrounds of less than one acre to Pelham Bay Park which exceeds 2,000 acres in size. And the Statue of Liberty, a landmark which once greeted thousands of immigrants entering the United States, is now one of the city's major tourist attractions. It is located on Liberty Island in the heart of New York Harbor.

Port facilities are scattered along the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island coasts. Cargo warehouses and transfer terminals designed to support shipping activities are located nearby as are industrial plants which still depend upon access to waterbome goods and materials. The region's two major airports, John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia, are located on Jamaica and Flushing Bays, respectively. The Fulton Fish Market, the region's major wholesale fresh fish market, is located in lower Manhattan on the East River and the city's largest fresh produce market is situated at Hunts Point on the Bronx River. Major railroad yards are next to the Harlem, Hudson, and East Rivers while oil and gas transfer and storage terminals are located on Westchester and Newton Creeks.

New York also has unspoiled wetlands and open space on Jamaica, Eastchester, and Little Neck Bays. The largest enclosed body of water in New York City spans the south shores of Queens and Brooklyn, Jamaica Bay. It is approximately 20 square miles in area and supports an extensive system of tidal marshes. Despite the intensity of development that characterizes New York City, undeveloped coastal areas can still be found in each of the city's five boroughs.

Shoreline Ownership

As might be expected, the ownership of land along the waterfront is in both public and private hands. Under a charter issued in 1668 by Governor Dougan, the city obtained title to much of the land within its boundaries, including shorelands. Although a large portion of this property was sold subsequently, the city retained the coastal sections and leased docks and piers to private firms.(3) This policy has continued to the present. Thus, much of the Manhattan and Brooklyn shoreline in addition to the waterfront parkland are municipally owned.

Historically, the United States Department of Defense has been a major waterfront landholder. Among the remaining military reservations are Fort Totten in Queens, Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, and Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, all of which are in prime waterfront locations. Although the once-active Brooklyn Navy Yard has been turned over to the city government, the U.S. Coast Guard still controls Governors Island in upper New York Harbor. Also at the federal level, the National Park Service administers the Gateway National Recreational Area which encompasses 20,000 acres in New Jersey and New York, including areas in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. Other significant portions of the shoreline are owned by the Penn Central Railroad, Consolidated Edison, and numerous oil companies and industrial firms.

Municipal Management

The City of New York has authority to exercise substantial control over its coastal areas despite the diversity of use and ownership. Municipal functions which are directly related to the city's water boundaries include the planning and development of marine cargo terminals; the provision of recreational facilities in coastal sites; and the management of the city's publicly owned shoreline. In addition, New York's land use controls, building code, and environmental regulations affect privately owned shoreline parcels.

While the city is extensively involved in coastal-related activities and has significant authority over coastal resources, no one city agency has the responsibility or has been assigned a lead role in formulating and carrying out a municipal waterfront policy. Formal coordination among the various functional and regulatory agencies with powers affecting the coast is largely absent. However, the city's management problem is even more fundamental. Several key agencies have failed to produce positive benefits for the municipality from the coastal-related activities which they directly control. Part of this condition can be attributed to factors outside the city's control but much of it must rest with the local government itself.

New York City's Department of Ports and Terminals has formal responsibility in the City Charter for the management of the city-owned portions of the waterfront. The Charter states that the Commissioner of the Department has "exclusive charge and control of the wharf property owned and possessed by the city…."(4) Until 1970, state law limited the management of city-owned waterfronts and waterways to the sole function of aiding "navigation and commerce." In that year, the State Legislature amended the General City Law to allow cities to manage their waterfront "for any business, commercial, maritime or public purpose."(5) This amendment expanded the authority of the Department of Ports and Terminals to develop new uses of the shoreline. However, prior to 1970, when the Department had clear authority to develop maritime uses, it was inordinately slow in introducing modern shipping facilities in the City of New York.

The city's Environmental Protection Administration influences the waterfront most directly through its water pollution control activities. More than 70 percent of the city's sewers carry both sanitary and stream flows. During a heavy rainfall, thousands of gallons of sewage bypass the treatment plants and empty into the city's waters. The EPA is the city's lead agency in preparing an area-wide waste water treatment management plan.

Responsibility for formulating policy for the physical, social, and economic development of the city rests with the Department of City Planning. The Department has frequently called attention to the waterfront through reports and workshops but with little response from city decision-makers.(6) The City Planning Commission has acted to preserve natural areas in the coastal zone by establishing special districts in Riverdale and Staten Island. The city's fifty-nine Community Planning Boards also play an active role in decisions affecting the waterfront through their participation in the land use review process. Finally, the Planning Department has been designated as the primary agency to carry out work for the State of New York's coastal management program in the city. In this case, however, its draft proposal for inclusion in the State's program does not make a clear or compelling argument for an urban perspective in coastal management.(7)

The Parks Department has responsibility for the more than 100 waterfront parks of the city. Even so, these areas have not been managed on a systematic basis and recreational facilities within the parks have deteriorated as a result of poor maintenance. The Department of Transportation also has coastal involvement. It operates the Staten Island Ferry Service, the nation's largest waterbome commuter system in terms of passenger volume.

A detailed list of the city agencies whose activities are related to the shoreline is presented in Table 1. None of these agencies have a mandate to manage all of the city's coastal resources. As noted, the Department of City Planning has produced a number of planning proposals which specifically deal with the shoreline but none have been formally adopted. In August 1977, the New York City Waterfront Management Advisory Board was created by the Mayor to advise on commercial, residential, recreational, and other forms of development of the city-owned waterfront property. Yet the Board, which is composed of representatives of business, labor, and community groups, did not meet once during the first year and a half of its existence.

 

Table 1. Municipal Agencies with Authority Over the Use of the City Waterfront

Agency Function Department of Buildings Enforces building laws on land uses within the coastal zone Department of City Planning Is responsible for land use regulation and supervises the state coastal management program Department of Environmental Protection Manages the city's water supply and is the sewage disposal system's primary agency for protection of physical environment Department of General Services Supervises construction of all city public works; acquires and manages real property within the city Department of Health Enforces health care; has licensing and permit authority over numerous land and water uses Department of Housing Preservation and Development Is the primary municipal government agency in residential development and manages city real property devoted to housing for urban renewal purposes Department of Parks and Recreation Manages plans, acquires and maintains city's parks and recreation areas; leases marinas on park property Department of Ports and Terminals Has exclusive jurisdiction over waterfront property owned by the city; has authority to rebuild such property Department of Sanitation Manages city's solid waste facilities, regulates dumping of fill on land and under water Department of Transportation Regulates use of city's public streets and highways and all privately owned airports, heliports, and airplane bases in city; operates Staten Island Ferry Department of Economic Development Develops policies for city's economic development

External Agencies

Before looking more closely at selected city management practices, it must be noted that the shoreline of the City of New York is substantially affected by the actions of other and larger government agencies which have their own priorities as well as the capacity to constrain or facilitate those of the city.

The decline of passenger shipping and the advent of containerization have further weakened New York City's maritime industry. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, created in 1921 through an interstate compact, has authority to operate within an area that encompasses the northeast coast of New Jersey and much of the five boroughs of New York. The scale, expertise, and financial resources of the Port Authority have allowed it to dominate port planning and development in the region. It has effectively responded to the demands of new shipping technologies, particularly containerization, and has become the leading handler of containerized cargo in the nation. This has been accomplished, however, by shifting port activities to New Jersey sites. Today, New Jersey has 24 container berths while there are only six in New York City.

Although the Port Authority has extensive fiscal resources and substantial political power, it has not undertaken the development of multi-use coastal facilities that could combine port functions with other commercial or recreational activities to counterbalance the withdrawal of transport activities. Thus, the Port Authority has deliberately taken much of the desirable marine traffic to New Jersey without reinvesting in new waterfront uses in the city.

Traditional water quality and wetlands management programs which are under the jurisdiction of state agencies also affect the city's shoreline. For example, the Department of Environmental Conservation is the state's primary agency for managing land, air, and water resources. The Division of State Planning within the Executive Branch is the lead state agency in coastal management and is responsible for the preparation of the state's coastal management program. Although the state coastal management program is concerned with such issues as public access and economic development, it has not explicitly addressed the distinctive needs of the urbanized portions of the state's coastline.

Numerous federal programs impinge upon the New York coast. A detailed description of federal agencies involved in urban coastal management is included in Cowey's article which appears elsewhere in this issue. While they have facilitated various functional activities, there has been little coordination among those federal agencies that influence urban coastal development.

Municipal Marine Policy

External agencies may place constraints upon the city but they have not prevented municipal agencies from creating a system of coastal zone management. New York's failure to establish a coherent approach to the utilization of coastal resources has been costly for the city. Major initiatives affecting the shoreline tend to come from other governmental units which effectively leave the city in the position of reacting to externally generated priorities rather than the reverse. Individual city agencies frequently undervalue and, at times, forfeit opportunities for turning substantial portions of the coast owned by the city to greater advantage for the city and its people. Finally, the failure to adopt explicit coastal management policies means that the city will have little likelihood of breaking out of this pattern of lost opportunities and poor return on what is done.

Calling the Shots

Generally, major projects that occur on the New York waterfront result from the actions and priorities of external public agencies which must then be accommodated by the city. Almost all of the proposals for the revitalization of the city waterfront have either come from federal and state agencies or have been generated in response to external initiatives. The New York State Urban Development Corporation has been active in promoting waterfront renewal in New York City since its inception. An early UDC study "was set up to take an overall look at New York City's waterfront and to identify significant development opportunities within a planned context."(8) Roosevelt Island, a new town-in-town on the East River is a product of UDC as are the Harlem River Houses which were built in conjunction with the state-sponsored Roberto Clemente State Park. Battery Park City, which is built on 100 acres of landfill off lower Manhattan, is another product of that era. The completion of the project has been delayed as a result of changes in the demand for office and housing space. In 1978, the federal government issued $68.5 million in mortgage insurance to Battery Park City, and it is expected that this will stimulate housing construction by private developers on the landfill. However, serious doubts remain about the long-term financial viability of the project.(9)

Westway, the proposed 4.2 mile interstate highway to be built on landfill along the Hudson River, has largely been designed by a team of consultants working under a joint city-state agreement. During the 1977 Mayoral campaign, Ed Koch strongly opposed Westway but since taking office he has reversed his position and endorsed the project as part of an agreement with Governor Carey, who favors the project. Although Westway has been considered primarily as a highway, its most important effects will be on land use adjacent to the shoreline. One hundred-eighty acres of landfill along the Hudson River will be created as part of the project with approximately one half planned as a park. Neither the state, which will own the land, nor the city has given serious attention to how the rest of the area will be used.

Efforts to increase recreational uses of the waterfront have also been initiated by external groups rather than by the municipal government. Operation Sail, which was conducted as part of the Bicentennial celebration in 1976, was conceived and carried out by an ad hoc organization with virtually no assistance or input from the city government. Gateway National Recreation Area, which was created, in part, as a result of efforts initiated by the Regional Plan Association, contains several city parks and beaches which were conveyed to the federal government in an attempt to improve the overall management and maintenance of valuable shoreline areas. Except for the South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan, there has been almost no effort to link the city to its cultural and historic role as a maritime center.

The city has also been extraordinarily slow in developing modern container shipping facilities. It was only after the Port Authority had attracted most of the region's container cargo traffic to its facilities in New Jersey that the city government initiated plans to build new container terminals in New York. The Howland Hood container ship terminal in Staten Island and the proposed Red Hook container port in Brooklyn are products of the city's belated efforts to develop modern container facilities within New York City.

The Management Record

New York City is not simply being buffeted by the actions of external units. It seldom accrues sufficient benefits from those portions of the coastline which it directly controls. Few cities own as much waterfront park land, yet most of it is virtually inaccessible, undermaintained, and short of facilities. A 1978 audit of Manhattan's 79th Street Marina, which is under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department, said that the Marina "is in run down condition, badly in need of repair and renovation. It has suffered from years of neglect both by the concessionaires and the Parks Department."(10) Although the Parks Department has a special administrative section for the management of the world-famous Central Park, it has no comparable unit for dealing with its shorefront parks. Thus, little has been done to increase the type or amount of marine recreation activity in the city's shorefront parks which are frequently unsafe and often unused. Such increased activity could potentially attract more users and thereby reduce the all-too-common expressions of fear and anxiety that are associated with the municipal parks. Two of the city's major fiascoes in coastal management have occurred in Coney Island and the Rockaways where urban renewal programs have contributed to the decline and decay of a renowned amusement area and a thriving recreational community.

Although there is growing interest on the part of private firms and community groups in the revitalization of the waterfront, the city's governmental structure often inhibits and delays the development of new waterfront uses. Rather than facilitate and encourage citizen initiatives and private entrepreneurs, the city, through its rules and regulations, impedes imaginative plans for coastal renewal. For example, the Department of Ports and Terminals prohibits living on board boats in the city and, as a result, while live-aboard communities in New York have not been eliminated, they have been actively discouraged.

There are many "horror stories" about the difficulties associated with private-sector development on the city shoreline. After a decade of efforts to overcome bureaucratic inertia, the River Café - a floating restaurant in Brooklyn Heights - was opened in 1977. The restaurant, which pays $15,000 a year rent to the city, has replaced a parking lot which yielded just $3,000. Although New York is the nation's center for international cuisine, it is ironic that there are still so few notable dining facilities on the city's shoreline.

Another private-sector development which has recently been completed is Waterside, a housing complex built on a six-acre deck over the East River. When Waterside was first proposed in 1961, the City Planning Commission rejected it as too "futuristic." Enormous governmental and financial obstacles confronted this innovative housing project and thirteen years were required from the date of the first proposal to the completion of construction.

The inability of the city to respond to new shipping technology is most visibly demonstrated by the Chelsea Piers, a $25 million break-bulk cargo facility built by the city when the shift of containerization was at its height. These massive piers which sit on the Hudson River have never been used by a cargo ship.(11) Today, Brooklyn and Staten Island are regarded by the city administration as the most promising sites for marine terminals.

A vast amount of potential cargo shipping facilities exists on the Brooklyn waterfront and current plans call for the revitalization of the Bush, Northeast Marine, and Brooklyn Army Terminals. At present, these areas have no direct rail linkage and their development will depend upon a planned overland rail connection.(12) The future of this project, however, is not clear. There is no firm completion date for the rail system. Further, cargo must now be carried from New Jersey rail terminals by truck to Brooklyn docks.(13) Conrail, which has jurisdiction over the reorganized Northeast railways, has not established a needed car-float facility to allow cargo to be transported across the harbor on water from New Jersey to Brooklyn. While the city has been quite active on these issues, it has had little success in obtaining adequate rail connections.

Municipal Ownership and Leasing

On the face of it, the city's greatest opportunity for coastal development should be with those areas that it directly controls. However, the Department of Ports and Terminals seems either unaware of the potential value of the municipally owned waterfront property or unable to manage it in such a way as to maximize either economic revenues or social benefits. Changes in the pattern of port activity have left the city with large amounts of coastal land and structures that arc no longer used for shipping. However, no serious consideration has been given to how the city might adapt to the consequences of technological change. Municipally owned piers are now often utilized for parking and storage and many of these have become the sites of arson, violence, and other illicit activities. In cases where the city has leased waterfront parcels, the record also leaves much to be desired.

Urban coastal properties in major metropolitan centers can be among the most expensive land in the area. Any private owner of large waterfront tracts could be expected to carefully evaluate the highest economic use to which the land could be put. If, instead, the owner is a municipality with a policy of leasing such holdings, it also could be assumed that efforts would be made to maximize revenues from uses that were most consistent with enhancing the economic base of the city.

In New York's case, the opposite seems to be true. The leasing of city-owned waterfront land has been the result of a series of individual decisions concerning particular parcels rather than being part of an overall leasing policy. In fact, no comprehensive inventory of New York's waterfront holdings is available. The most current data that could be obtained are from 1975 and, as noted below, are incomplete. However, the information is sufficient to provide a general picture of the city's leasing practices.

Excluding shoreline parks and several large scale projects still in development, the Department of Ports and Terminals has the responsibility for managing 621 waterfront parcels.(14) Over 500 of these are located in Manhattan and Brooklyn with major concentrations on the Hudson River south of 72nd Street and on both sides of the East River. City records that are accessible for 1975 have information on the area size for only 387, or about two-thirds, of these parcels. They total 20.2 million square feet; the equivalent of 465 acres. Table 2 shows how the parcels are distributed among the boroughs. Almost all of the land, 94 percent, is located in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Table 2. Area of City-Owned Waterfront Parcels by Borough and Body of Water, 1975*

Area of Parcels (in millions of sq. ft.) Percent of Total Borough Manhattan Brooklyn Bronx Queens Staten Island Total: 8.2 10.9 0.3 0.4 0.5 20.2 40.3 54.0 1.4 2.0 2.3 100.0

Body of Water Hudson River East River Upper N.Y. Bay - Narrows Rockaway - Jamaica Bay All Other Total: 6.1 2.8 5.7 5.2 0.5 20.2 40.3 54.0 1.4 2.0 2.3 100.0

*Based on 500 of 621 parcels for which data are available. Note: Columns may not sum to totals shown due to rounding. Source: Mitchell L. Moss and Matthew Drenne, The New York City Waterfront: An Analysis of Municipal Ownership and Leasing of Public Land, Final Report to the New York Sea Grant Institute, December 1977.

Table 3 contains a detailed breakdown of the types of lessees utilizing the waterfront land. Public-sector lessees are concentrated in Manhattan. All together they account for approximately 44 percent of the borough's 8.2 million square feet. At the same time, almost 30 percent is either vacant or the lessees are unknown. Outside Manhattan, haulage, warehousing, and commercial firms lease 8.5 million of the 12.1 total.

Table 3 Area of City-Owned Waterfront by Type of Leasee, 1975* (in thousands of sq. ft.)

Leasee All Boroughs Manhattan All Other Boroughs

Government       Municipal Agencies Public Authorities Federal Agencies State Agencies 2,533 1,074 115 3 - 1,074 115 3 35 - - - Total: 3,725 3,690 35

Non-Profit Intitiutions 274 252 22

Non-Government by type of use Marinas Cargo Fishing Individuals Passenger-Tourist Haulage-Warehousing Commercial Firms Industrial Firms Dock Railway Parking Firms Public Utilities Penn Central Other 1,550 917 270 180 140 4,849 4,230 689 483 390 96 35 166 101 209 - 15 137 334 214 310 - 390 95 27 136 1,449 708 270 165 3 4,515 4,016 378 483 - 1 7 30 Total: 10,908 1,503 9,400

Vacant and Lease Unknown 2,258 2,258 -

TOTAL: 20,249 8,167 12,082

*Based on 500 of 621 parcels for which data are available. Source: Mitchell L. Moss and Matthew Drenne, The New York City Waterfront: An Analysis of Municipal Ownership and Leasing of Public Land, Final Report to the New York Sea Grant Institute, December 1977.

The average annual lease price charged by the city for 129 Manhattan waterfront parcels is $1.04 per square foot. By contrast, equivalent private parcels in Manhattan generate an estimated $2.69 per square foot. Thus, the city's price is about 39 percent of the equivalent market price on similarly located private waterfront land. Using a rather conservative market price of $2.00 per square foot, the city loses an estimated $8 million a year in income from its Manhattan waterfront property alone.(15) While neither publicly nor privately owned Manhattan waterfront land has a premium price, the Department of Ports and Terminals still undervalues the former. The Department's staff has engineering experience and skills but there are few resources allocated to the management and leasing of the city waterfront.

Conclusions and Recommendations

New York City has neither a well-defined policy nor a structure for formulating and implementing programs in the coastal zone. This state of affairs is the result of several processes: an inordinately slow response to technological changes in shipping; poor management of the publicly owned waterfront; a lack of effort to stimulate marine-related recreation; an institutional gap between a planning department with little authority over the waterfront and functional agencies with formal authority but limited resources and narrowly defined priorities.

A conventional response to such a dismal situation is to recommend the centralization and consolidation of municipal authority over the planning and development of the waterfront. But, given the magnitude of New York's shoreline and the overall pattern of mismanagement, it may simply not be possible to do everything at one time. An incremental agenda is both more feasible and sensible. As a first priority, the city should try to do one key task well, namely, the management of the municipally owned waterfront. These tracts of land and water are already under the direct control of the city and their improvement in terms of economic use and environmental quality could have a synergistic effect on adjacent privately held areas.

An initial step that the city must take is to establish an accurate, reliable and up-to-date information system for the waterfront property it owns. Remarkably, none exists. Action, however, has been undertaken by the Department of Ports and Terminals to create automated records and is a prerequisite if the city is to formulate and carry out a more productive leasing policy.

Public ownership and long-term leasing of coastal parcels for private development have been effectively used elsewhere. In Marina del Rey in Los Angeles County and Mission Bay in the City of San Diego, for example, leasing has been used to facilitate multipurpose commercial, residential, and recreational uses of shore areas that have resulted in substantial public income and stimulated private development in the area. In Manhattan, ground leaseholds on privately-owned land have been used in the development of numerous office buildings. There is no reason why such a management technique could not be adopted by the City.(16)

Municipal ownership and long-term leasing allow overall control to be vested in the public sector while still permitting and encouraging private development of the waterfront. In addition, the level of public expenditure needed for the development of coastal property is reduced through reliance on the private sector. Leasing also provides a sensitivity to market preferences and this maintains a balance between the dead hand of bureaucracy and the innovative self-generating activity of the market. Furthermore, it keeps the option to recycle coastal land open; one doesn't relinquish control forever, but merely for the term of the lease. A policy of long-term leasing for residential, recreational, and commercial facilities could generate more annual revenues than the present non-policy of individual short-term leases for low-intensive land uses.

Second, the city needs to develop a strategic program for increasing public access to the waterfront. Much of the city is still separated from the coastline by the network of highways built by Robert Moses. New projects located on the waterfront should be designed to include public plazas and promenades. Plans to include a restaurant and park atop the new Hudson River passenger ship terminal were never implemented and the terminal is now one of the most underused public facilities on the city coast. New projects such as Battery Park City and the proposed Convention Center must be developed so that access to the coast is not blocked off from the public. The city clearly needs to have a policy to assure that new structures built on or near the waterfront contain provisions for public access to the coast. Municipal regulations that overly restrict waterfront development need to be eliminated and new incentives must be created for projects that enhance public and private uses of the shoreline.

Third, more attention and assistance must be given to local groups that want to become actively involved in waterfront renewal. Citizens and community groups in many parts of the city have independently taken the initiative to recycle neglected and run-down sections of the shoreline. On the East River, an old municipal asphalt plant has been converted into a recreational facility and plans are underway to convert an old pier boat station and pier into an environmental center. Portions of the Bronx River shoreline have been cleaned up by local residents who want to gain access to the waterfront. The most innovative waterfront projects such as the South Street Seaport and Operation Sail, were initially launched by individual citizens who had the skills and time to overcome bureaucratic resistance and inertia.

Finally, the City of New York needs to be more active in pressing for an urban perspective in coastal management with external agencies. It must do so with the state's coastal programs, Conrail, and federal funding agencies. In the last case, for example, the Office of Coastal Zone Management of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recently awarded 25 demonstration grants for waterfront renewal but none have gone to New York.(17) However, before the city can play the "federal game" or effectively lobby elsewhere, it needs to get its own priorities in order.

Given the city's current fiscal crisis, it would be foolish to expect the waterfront to be weighted equally with the provision of such basic municipal services as police, fire, or education. At the same time, a continuation of the present policy is costly. Opportunities for economic development and improving the livability of the city are lost. Furthermore, the absence of any program perpetuates the process of indifference, neglect, and inaction, compounding and increasing the costs of any future attempt to reclaim the shoreline for the benefit of the city.

Although the Koch administration has stated that waterfront development is a municipal policy (18) little serious thought has yet been given to revamping any aspect of the existing management pattern.(19) Several other major cities have gained benefits as well as publicity from highly visible but limited-scale coastal projects, such as Detroit's Renaissance Center, Boston's Quincy Market, and Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It is open to question, however, whether a "showcase" development of this type, by itself, would prove to be a catalyst for other initiatives unless it was part of a process in which local officials substantially broadened their perception of the waterfront as a source of development opportunities for the city as a whole.

 

References

1. Peter Blake, "Toward A New Venice," New York, July 19, 1971.

2. For an analysis of the heterogeneous pattern of coastal land use in metropolitan regions, see Robert Warren, Louis F. Weschler, and Mark S. Rosentraub, "Local-Regional Interaction in the Development of Coastal Land-Use Policies: A Case Study of Metropolitan Los Angeles," Coastal Zone Management Journal. Vol. 3, No. 4, 1977.

3. For a discussion of municipal ownership and leasing, see Marion Clawson, "Historical Overview of Land-Use Planning in the United States," in Environment: A New Focus for Land Use Planning, ed. Donald M. McAllister (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1973); John W. Reps, "Public Land, Urban Development Policy and the American Planning Tradition," in Modernizing Urban Land Policy, ed. Marion Clawson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1973); Ann Louise Strong, Planned Urban Environment, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1971).

4. City Charter City of New York, Chanter 29 Revised 1977.

5. 1970 Session Laws of New York, 1970, c. 944.

6. For example, see The Port of New York Proposals for Development, (City of New York: City Planning Commission, 1964), The Water-front. Supplement to Plan for New York City (City of New York: City Planning Commission, 1971); The New York City Waterfront. Comprehensive Planning Workshop, Department of City Planning, June 1974.

7. Coastal Zone Management, Draft New York City Element of the New York State Coastal Management Program (City of New York: Department of City Planning, June 1978).

8. New York State Urban Development Corporation, Wateredge Development Study, Hudson River Edge Development Proposal, New York: New York State, UDC, May 1971, p. 1.

9. "After Ten Years, Battery Park City Authority Faces Empty Site and Shaky Future," The Fiscal Observer, December 14, 1978, p. 9.

10. City of New York, Office of the Comptroller, Operations Audit on Marina Concessions Awarded by the Department of Parks and Recreation, March 13, 1978, p. 1.

11. Mitchell L. Moss, "The Urban Port: A Hidden Resource for the City and the Coastal Zone," Coastal Zone Management Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1976.

12. Department of Ports and Terminals, City of New York, Resurgence on the Waterfront, Development at the Bush Terminal Waterfront Area, Brooklyn, New York, June 1973.

13. "The Port of New York and New Jersey: Lifeline to the Region," Federal Reserve Bank of New York Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1978: Ralph Blumenthal, "Port of New York Called Bias Victim," The New York Times, August 7, 1977, p. 43.

14. For a detailed analysis of the city's leasing practices, see Mitchell L. Moss and Matthew Drennan, The New York City Waterfront: An Analysis of Municipal Ownership and Leasing of Public Land, Final Report to the New York Sea Grant Institute, December 1977.

15. See Moss and Drennan, op. cit.

16. Mitchell L. Moss, "Marina del Rey: A Prototype for Urban Development," in Financing Local Government: New Approaches to Old Problems, edited by Mark S. Rosentraub, (Fort Collins, CO.: The Western Social Science Association, 1977). Also, see Martin Gallent, "Public Land Ownership Backed," The New York Times, February 5, 1978, Section 8, p. 1.

17. Coastal Zone Management Newsletter, Nautilus Press, Inc., Vol. 9, No. 43, November 1, 1978.

18. Maurice Caroll, "Koch Promises Redevelopment for Waterfront," The New York Times. January 19, 1979, p. B. 1.

19. This article considers events prior to June 1, 1978. Since then, the Koch administration has initiated several waterfront revitalization projects. According to Anthony Gleidman, Commissioner of the Department of Ports and Terminals, City of New York, a new emphasis is being placed on renewing the waterfront. Personal communication, June 2,1979.

 

Taken from the Coastal Zone Management Journal
Vol. 6, Nos. 2/3, 1979. Mark J. Hershman, ed.
Crane, Russak & Company. New York. 1979