The Port Authority has agreed to drop plans to use Pier 42 (at the end of Montgomery Street) as a staging area for the construction of the World Trade Center site. According to a news release from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office, the neighborhood would have “faced vastly increased levels of congestion and pollution” and up to 60 truck trips a day, if the plan had been implemented.
Silver, State Senator Dan Squadron, City Councilmember Rosie Mendez and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer took the community’s concerns to the Port Authority. Their discussions resulted in the new plan announced yesterday. Contractors will now rely on a “day of delivery” procedure to get supplies to the work site, relying on what the release called “real-time ordering and delivery of construction materials.”
“I, along with other leaders on the Lower East Side, fought and won a commitment by the city to transform the East River waterfront into the community treasure that it was always meant to be,” said Silver. “Given the pace of the World Trade Center project, I could not stand by and watch the East River waterfront be used as a construction site in perpetuity. The community deserves what was promised to them and that is public recreational space on the waterfront–not hard hats and cement trucks.”
According to the Economic Development Corporation, Pier 42 will one day be revitalized and put to “public use as an urban beach and boat launch.” It’s included in the second phase of East River Waterfront Esplanade and Piers Project.
