Community Board 3 Approves East River Park Resiliency Plan

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A controversial resiliency project that would require closing the East River Park for 3.5 years got approval from Community Board 3 Tuesday.

The board approved the project with a laundry list of conditions, mostly asking for the city to provide details on open space mitigations and specifics on when alternative recreation options would be implemented once construction begins.

Ahead of the vote, supporters and opponents invoked how special the East River Park is to the neighborhood as well as painful memories of Superstorm Sandy flooding in 2012 when lives were at-risk.

"We need something to block the water out," said one public housing resident. Another woman wants the project scrapped entirely, saying: "Demolish the city plan. Not the park."

Campos Plaza tenant invokes Sandy memories: “we had so much water ... all the help was deployed to Ave D and everywhere else. Meanwhile we are in the brick of con-Ed.” .. “several tenants would have died if it wasn’t for @GOLESNYC.” .. “we need something to block the water out.”
— Sydney Pereira (@sydneyp1234) June 25, 2019

The East Side Coastal Resiliency project has been under intense scrutiny since last fall after the city tossed aside the previous plan and left locals feeling blindsided. Some want the plan thrown out again, infuriated the massive east side park would shutter beginning next March.

The bulk of the project would bury the East River Park with 8- to 10-feet of soil and close it for 3.5 years with the goal of protecting the east side from devastating impacts like those of Sandy.

The supportive vote comes two weeks after some 200 people packed a public hearing, many urging the city to commission a third-party, independent review — similar to an expert panel commissioned for Brooklyn's controversial Brooklyn-Queens Expressway plan.

Before the vote Tuesday night, city officials hoped to appease locals demanding further review.

The Department of Design and Construction announced it would hire a consultant this summer and later seek certification under sustainability guidelines for infrastructure projects, called Envision.

"We are going to take the project through the Envision certification," said DDC First-Deputy Commissioner Jamie Torres-Springer. "The formal certification happens at the completion of design, which we expect to be toward the end of this year, but we are bringing on a consultant right now who’s going to independently go through the review and give us the results … prior to that.”

Torres-Springer explained the consultant would assess the design under Envision's standards. Details regarding the outside consultant and additional costs are remain to be seen.

The board's vote, which is advisory, was a part of a lengthy review process known as the uniform land use review procedure, or ULURP.

That process ends with a vote in City Council, where Councilmember Carlina Rivera would have a pivotal vote since councilmembers often defer to the local rep when voting on land use matters such as this one.

Rivera, who was recently appointed to the City Council's Parks Committee, kept focus on urging the city to improve the plan.

"I think that [phased construction] is absolutely our priority. It's something that we need," she said at the meeting.

"I know that the plan isn't perfect" she said, adding city communication started off "horrible." "What we're trying to do now ... is figure out how we can create a plan that truly takes into account all our needs and what we deserve," Rivera said.

Rivera wants:
- phased construction is a “priority”
- longterm study on greening the FDR
- greenway alternative
- passive & active alternative rec spaces throughout community
- city to submit project to Envision, which is an org that rates plans on environmental factors
— Sydney Pereira (@sydneyp1234) June 25, 2019

The board's approval vote also echoed the generally supportive resolution from Community Board 6, which covers the Stuyvesant Town portion of the plan.

CB 3 debated various amendments to make clarifications regarding specific points of the plan in a lengthy back-and-forth. The final resolution begins here on page seven.