Posted Jul 5, 2017, 8:57 PM
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Brooklyn Gowanus Canal Could Be New Model for Waterfront Planning
Gowanus Canal Could Be New Model for Waterfront Planning
JUNE 29, 2017
BY JEN KINNEY
Read More: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/fra...ars-of-visions
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GCC has partnered with landscape architecture firm Scape to develop a holistic vision for the Gowanus that can accommodate that diversity of uses and improve environmental quality, without sacrificing the waterway’s idiosyncratic character.
- “It’s a turning point for us, and that’s because it’s a turning point for the neighborhood right now,” says GCC Executive Director Andrea Parker. The EPA is expected to start dredging parts of the canal in the next few years, while the city is considering a neighborhood rezone that could result in denser and taller housing. As that happens, developers will be required to contribute to public spaces, like the esplanade already built by the Lightstone Group on Bond Street. --- But that space, says Parker, feels fairly privatized. And the city’s existing waterfront zoning codes could produce a landscape that’s just as sterile, “maybe better suited to an open waterway, like an ocean, as opposed to a narrow canal,” she says. A rezone could result in better tools for waterfront access and more effective city investment, “so it’s really critical that we right now have a vision for how all of those investments fit together,” says Parker.
- The proposal released last week, Gowanus Lowlands, is only a framework that lists four broad goals: creating or maintaining a cleaner urban ecosystem, a better-connected community, a network of parks, and a wild urban waterway. An in-depth master plan, to be developed over the next six to nine months, will look more closely at improving transportation options, creating green spaces and increasing waterfront access. Gena Wirth, a project lead at Scape, says the plan will focus not only on the banks of the Gowanus, but on the entire affected neighborhood and watershed. --- It will take into account existing and developing commercial corridors and industrial needs, and consider how to increase urban canopy on the canal’s northern stretch near a cluster of public housing properties — a major concern identified by neighbors during GCC’s recent two years of outreach.
- Navigating the myriad players, landscapes and regulatory frameworks will be a process as complicated as the Gowanus itself. Some existing interventions will get to stay — like the Sponge Park designed by Dlandstudios, and the 6th Street green corridor where GCC is testing bioswales — while others will be sacrificed to the Superfund cleanup process. A 4-million-gallon sewage tank will replace the salt lot where GCC has been planting for years and where they recently built a compost site in collaboration with the New York City Department of Sanitation. --- “It’s very strategic of the GCC to be pursuing this project at this time,” says Lee Altman, another Scape project lead. The master plan aims to be not a static document but a process that will guide how the nonprofit, city, developers and other entities can work together. Over the coming months, says Parker, she’ll be talking to city officials about what is possible with the proposed rezone and new waterfront access plan.
- The plan will also consider how to create park-like spaces that aren’t your typical riverwalk. Talking to residents, “really they want texture,” says Parker. “Gowanus right now has so much character, and there’s a lot of concern that we’re going to lose that with new development.” She’d like to see different heights maintained, so that at some places people can access the waterfront, and in other they’ll have panoramic views from on high. The plan will also look at designs for street ends. Some might end up absorbing stormwater; others could provide access down to the canal. “In a lot of areas around the canal you can be very, very close to it and not even know that it’s there,” says Wirth. --- Parker estimates it will be at least 15 years before the Superfund work is complete. In that time, the public’s perception of the Gowanus is likely to change, as it has during the last decade of GCC stewardship. “I think people understand the issue a lot more than they maybe did at one point,” says Parker.
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