Peck Slip Revised Plan Gets Rejected by Community Board Committees
From The Downtown Express
Seaport residents say Peck plan won’t sail
By Skye H. McFarlane
Volume 19, Issue 44, March 16 – 22, 2007
The Parks Department’s new plan for a “ghost ship” piazza at Peck Slip was torpedoed Tuesday night by several Community Board 1 members, who criticized the design as unwelcoming and lacking in greenery.
“This is an outrage,” said Seaport Committee chairperson John Fratta, halting the Parks representatives partway through their presentation. “We’re seeing a piazza with a few trees and you’re calling it green space.”
Although many members of the committee and the public praised the design for its good architectural quality and use of historic materials, only two people at the meeting said they would like the design to go forward. The committee voted unanimously to reject the plans and asked Parks to come back with a design that balances historic character with landscaped park space, as the board had asked for in its October 2006 resolution on the matter.
Somewhat baffled by the rebuff, Lawrence Mauro of the Parks Department said that the design team “might have misinterpreted” what the community wanted in the space. For several months last year, the community board wrestled over whether to ask for a park or a piazza at Peck Slip, eventually requesting a combination of the two. Mauro described the benches, trees and sunken center of the design as concessions to the park proponents, since many piazza backers had wanted a flat, unencumbered space.
“We want to work with you. I absolutely heard what you said at previous meetings,” Mauro said, sounding genuinely hurt by the community’s reaction.
The design, intended to evoke a ship with its bow pointed inland toward the narrow end of the triangular-shaped park, includes 12 trees — four in a line to the east of Front St. and eight more in a cluster to the west of Front St., which bisects the park geographically but would not be open to thru traffic under the current plan. The eastern, wider portion of the site would be sunken below street level, giving park users some separation from the traffic around them.
The bottom of the sunken area would be paved with the same granite cobblestone blocks that currently cover the slip, but the blocks would be rearranged in an undulating pattern and mixed with flecks of glass to resemble a “rushing stream.” Underneath the streamlike pattern of stones, a current of actual water would flow, emptying into a small 4-inch-deep wading pool at the western end of the basin. The water would also be seen under metal grates on the sides of the basin and could be heard by plaza visitors.
To the west of the sunken basin, at street level, granite benches would sit under the trees. This shaded westernmost third of the park would taper to a tall stone spire with a light on top, representing the ship’s prow. In the committee’s least-favorite design element, the northern edge of the park would be lined with rib-shaped vertical steel posts that the landscape architects said “represent the ghosts of ships that might have docked there in the past.” In practical terms, the ribs would function as traffic barriers.
The committee argued that the Parks Department designers had ignored the needs of the Seaport’s growing residential community. Instead, committee members said, Parks had geared its Peck Slip plans towards gaining approval from preservationists, some of whom think that trees and greenery are out of context in the famously gritty historic district.
Any design for the former docking slip, which currently serves as a free-for-all parking area, will have to be approved by both the city Landmarks Preservation Commission and State Historic Preservation Office. The city Department of Transportation, which is revamping the curbs and cobblestone streets in the slip, already had one of its plans rejected by L.P.C.