For once, “Hollywood on the Hudson” is not an exaggeration.
A spectacular new public park out on the Hudson River off West 13th Street will feature entertainment “programmed” by top showbiz talent led by Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin.
More remarkably, most of its estimated $130 million construction cost will be funded by a $100 million-plus gift from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation. The city is putting in only $17 million, and the foundation is responsible for any cost overruns.
Pier 55 will look more like an island than a pier. Mounted 186 feet offshore, its rolling landscape is to include small groves, open grass and spots for lounging. Two pedestrian walkways from a widened West Street esplanade will take visitors to the free-to-all park.
A 700-seat amphitheater will host arts events and performances under the direction of a team headed by Rudin, whose screen credits include “The Social Network” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”
The 2.7-acre park and performance space is designed by British firm Heatherwick Studio and landscape architect Mathews Nielsen.
It will replace rotting Pier 54, where the steamship Carpathia brought survivors of the sunken Titanic 102 years ago. The park will sit atop 341 stilt-like, concrete piles, compared with the old pier’s more than 3,400 piles.
Its surface will rise like a gently undulating carpet from 15 feet above the water at its lowest point to 71 feet at its southwest corner — an “innovation to give the fish more sun,” said Hudson River Park Trust President/CEO Madelyn Wils.
The project is a partnership of the trust — the state body that manages the 4-mile-long park from Battery Park City to 59th Street and the piers astride it — and the foundation headed by IAC media company Chairman Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
Its $100 million-plus donation is a remarkable commitment even by today’s high-profile philanthropic standards.
The state, meanwhile, will kick in $18 million to extend the narrow West Street esplanade 50 feet farther over the water, from Pier 53 to West 14th Street.
The plan drew praise from elected officials, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and, perhaps most interestingly, Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor has previously suggested peeling off donations to glamorous Manhattan parks to help rundown ones in other boroughs.
But he was effusive without qualification about Pier 55, saying, “We are deeply appreciative of the generosity of great New Yorkers like Mr. Diller and Ms. von Furstenberg without whom this visionary project would not have been possible.”
Diller said, “We are so lucky as a family that we get to do this.”
Pier 55 is the latest bauble in the West Side waterfront’s string of jewels — a procession of public and private developments including Chelsea Piers, luxury apartment towers and the High Line.
Hudson River Park boasts 13 newly rebuilt piers. It’s also home to the Intrepid Air & Space Museum and the Circle Line, and to facilities for cycling, tennis, beach volleyball and watersports.
The once-forbidding waterfront environs have drawn thousands of new residents and even new office buildings — including the Frank Gehry-designed headquarters of Diller’s IAC.
Diller is chair and Rudin vice chair of nonprofit Pier55 Inc., which will run the pier’s programming and fund day-to-day operations under a 20-year lease with the park trust. The trust will maintain the park as it does all the public piers in Hudson River Park.
The Hudson River Park Trust is updating a previous environmental assessment but no city approval is needed. The trust will undertake a 60-day public review and comment period.
The trust board is expected to green-light the plan in early 2015. Esplanade construction is to start in 2015 and on the pier in 2015, with completion in late 2018 or early 2019.
One link to the past will remain: Wils said the ghostly, rusted Cunard arch that stands at the foot of Pier 54 will be restored.
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