East River Charrette: Creating a Vision for East Midtown’s Waterfront

New York has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to open up access to Manhattan’s Midtown East waterfront. The midtown section of the FDR Drive is being rebuilt, the former Con Ed site is being redeveloped, and the City is planning to facilitate the expansion of the U.N. campus and create an adjacent waterfront esplanade. If planned together, these projects could be designed to create new park space, provide access to the waterfront, and complete a greenway that would go all the way from the Battery to Harlem.

But we need a vision first. In just a few weeks, the Municipal Art Society, Manhattan Community Board 6, Councilman Dan Garodnick and other elected officials will convene six of the world’s leading landscape architects for an extraordinary 12-hour design charrette (an intensive design workshop) to create a vision for the East River waterfront from 34th Street to 63rd Street.

Be a part of it. Join the charrette to give input and ideas to help create the vision.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Brainstorming a New Vision for Midtown’s East River Waterfront

|
The Municipal Art Society of New York, City Council member Dan Garodnick, and Manhattan’s Community Board 6 ran an intensive day-long workshop last Wednesday to develop a new vision for Midtown’s inaccessible East River waterfront. On Sunday, MAS unveiled some of the results. From the MAS press release: "By realigning and lowering the 42nd Street […]

Draft Plan for Waterfront Promises Greenways, Silent on Ferries

|
With New York City in the midst of a wholesale rethinking of its more than 500 miles of waterfront, the Department of City Planning recently released a draft of its new comprehensive waterfront plan, Vision 2020. That plan lays out both broad citywide objectives, such as a commitment to building borough-wide greenways across the city, […]

DOT Defers Action on Clinton Avenue Bikeway

|
DOT has deferred its plan for a two-way protected bike lane on Clinton Avenue, saying it will return to Brooklyn Community Board 2 next month. The department’s decision was announced by CB 2 transportation chair John Dew at the beginning of last night’s committee meeting. The committee had initially intended to finish hearing comments from people who didn’t […]

East River Day Waterfront Tours

|
New York’s waterfront is being transformed. From Brooklyn Bridge Park to Throg’s Neck on the East River alone, over 1000 acres of redevelopment is slated to occur over the upcoming years. This scale of development is an enormous opportunity – and a risk. Too much waterfront development in recent years has created sterile, privatized places […]