Volume 21, Number 6 | THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | June 20 - 26, 2008
It’s official: Many oppose garage tower for garbage trucks
By Albert Amateau
The Department of Sanitation garage tower proposed for the UPS lot on Spring between Washington and West Sts. drew a chorus of criticism last Thursday from neighborhood residents and property owners at a joint hearing by Community Boards 1 and 2.
The Department of Sanitation has slightly modified the proposal it first presented to the public more than a year ago for a garage that would accommodate trucks for Districts 1, 2 and 5. The garbage districts correspond with the community board numbers and include almost all of Lower Manhattan, the Village and the middle of Manhattan from 14th St. to 59th St.
Instead of a building between 140 and 150 feet tall, the garage would be no taller that 120 feet, Daniel Klein, Sanitation’s director of real estate, said at the June 12 hearing which marked the beginning of a nine-month Uniform Land Use Review Procedure for the project.
But it was still too much for neighbors in the increasingly residential area and the joint resolution drafted by David Reck, C.B. 2 zoning committee chairperson, reflects a similar response.
“Our main question is why is Sanitation District 5 being included in this project,” Reck later said of the Midtown district.
Another sore point was the provision in the project for parking for 75 cars of Sanitation employees. “Is this a gift that the city is giving to employees?” asked one audience member.
Pressed by questions about the necessity for employee parking, Klein acknowledged that it was not a necessary requirement. But he defended the parking by saying that Sanitation employees are not required to live within the city and may need their cars to come to work during snow storms, when they are responsible for clearing the streets. This argument was met with derisive laughs, and committee members suggested that Sanitation employees could park at Pier 40, which is likely to continue its public parking service after it is redeveloped.
Michael Kramer, representing major property owners including the commercial St. Johns Center and the Urban Glass House residential building on Spring St., said the proposed employee parking would add $55 million to the cost of the project. The city has budgeted $429 million for the project.
The proposal calls for Sanitation vehicles from each of the three districts to leave and return to the garage by separate routes, some of them involving turns on Spring, Washington and Canal Sts. The joint resolution calls for all Sanitation vehicle entries and departures to be from West St.
UPS would use the first floor of the garage to unload tractor-trailers and load delivery vans and would use Washington St. to access the project.
The project also provides for a shed to store winter road salt for the three districts and the joint resolution suggests that road salt storage should be kept elsewhere. Kramer said the existing salt shed under the Manhattan Bridge is currently under-used and could be expanded.
The proposal, which provides for a green-planted roof on the garage, is also seeking to build without any setbacks. However, the joint resolution calls for three setbacks with plantings on Spring St.
The resolution also calls for the project to include a new crossing to the Hudson River Park over West St. at Spring St.
“We’re suggesting these mitigations to make the best of a bad idea,” said Brad Hoylman, chairperson of Community Board 2.
And the consensus of community leaders was that the project has too many flaws. Community Board 1 member Marc Ameruso said that Hudson Sq., which straddles the two community boards and encompasses the entrance and exits of the Holland Tunnel, has the second worst air quality in Manhattan – worse even than the South Bronx. Ann Arlen, a former Community Board 2 environmental committee member, referred to the low air quality and said that Sanitation District 5 trucks would add 5,600 more annual miles of traffic to the already beleaguered area.
The underground storage of 34,000 gallons of fuel to supply the trucks of the three sanitation districts is especially dangerous for a district that included the tunnel access and large residential buildings like the Urban Glass House on Spring St. and the residential buildings at 505 and 497 Greenwich St., many speakers said at the hearing.
Since Districts 1 and 2 bring trash to Essex Co. N.J. Resource Recovery Center, it was suggested that they refuel there rather than at the proposed garage.
The project was driven by a court ordered settlement last year of a lawsuit calling for Sanitation trucks get off the Gansevoort Peninsula by 2012 in order to include it in Hudson River Park.
“The good thing is that Sanitation is getting off Gansevoort,” said Tobi Bergman, of Community Board 2. “The bad thing is that a garage with UPS and three sanitation district trucks is really more than our fair share.”
Barbara Siegel, a member of Canal West, a neighborhood group, said the project which would also encompass the present District 1 garage between Spring and Canal Sts. on West St., would devastate the Canal St. Park that was completed two years ago.
Denise Levine, a resident who lives a block from the proposed garage and refueling station, noted that the fuel storage at the site would be in addition to the 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored at the St. Johns Building just north of the site. “Besides jeopardizing our health with 500 or so daily trips to the garage, Sanitation would jeopardize our safety,” she said.
