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Or a walking bridge. It's such a pain if you want to ride a bike into manhattan, particularly during rush hour... it's the ferry (EXPENSIVE!!) or ride all the way to the GWB (OUCH!)

Fortunately, this is =pie-in-the-sky thinking nowadays given environmental concerns but a nice cable car connecting jersey city and manhattan would be nice.

Man?s Vision to Carve Prime Real Estate From Hudson River Proves a Tough Sell

Charles J. Urstadt has long aspired to add 40 to 50 acres of landfill in the Hudson River and develop a second Battery Park City.

New York Times
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
Published: October 16, 2007

Developers have long argued that you cannot go wrong buying waterfront land because no more is being created. But Charles J. Urstadt?s dream is to extend Lower Manhattan a little bit farther into the Hudson River.

Having overseen the creation of the landfill in the 1960s that became Battery Park City, Mr. Urstadt believes it can be done again. And he refuses to drop the idea, no matter how far-fetched others may find it.

Mr. Urstadt, who was the first chairman of the Battery Park City Authority after it was created in 1968 and is now its vice chairman, has for years been advocating the potential benefits of adding 40 or 50 acres to Lower Manhattan. As a champion of filling in more of the river, he has stood nearly alone and attracted scant notice.

But lately, some New Yorkers wary of even the slimmest possibility that this notion could take hold have started paying more attention.

?I hadn?t really taken it seriously,? said Julie Nadel, chairwoman of the waterfront committee of Community Board 1. ?People say to me, ?That?s a silly idea.? But I?ve seen sillier ideas than that happen. This could be one of those ideas.?

So, Ms. Nadel, who also has a seat on the board of the Hudson River Park Trust, a state authority that is redeveloping the West Side waterfront, has scheduled a public discussion of Mr. Urstadt?s proposal when her committee meets on Monday. Environmental advocates including Marcy Benstock, the executive director of the Clean Air Campaign, are expected to rebut the idea as a threat to local marine life.

?Building in the river is ruinous public policy,? Ms. Benstock said in an interview on Friday. ?The stretch of the river just north of Battery Park City is a crucial habitat for sustaining fisheries up and down the whole East Coast.?

Richard N. Gottfried, an assemblyman from Manhattan who sponsored the Hudson River Park Act, called Mr. Urstadt?s idea ?outrageous.? He said that law prohibited using landfill in the river between Battery Park City and 59th Street.

?This idea keeps rising from its coffin,? Mr. Gottfried said.

Such strident criticism does not seem to faze Mr. Urstadt. He says he has heard it all before, in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was the point man for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller?s audacious plan to create Battery Park City by filling in almost 100 acres of the Hudson.

Mr. Urstadt, who is now 78, is chairman of Urstadt Biddle Properties, a company based in Greenwich, Conn., that owns shopping centers throughout the Northeast.

He served as chairman of the state authority that was created to develop and run Battery Park City from late 1968 until 1978. Gov. George E. Pataki then reappointed him to the authority?s board in 1998, a perch he has used as a platform for his campaign for more landfill.

He recently pitched his idea in a meeting at City Hall with James Whelan, the chief of staff to the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel L. Doctoroff. Mr. Whelan suggested that Mr. Urstadt first seek the backing of the governor, Mr. Urstadt said.

Mr. Urstadt admits that even Mr. Pataki dismissed the quest as futile because of the inevitable opposition from environmental groups. But Mr. Urstadt maintains that those arguments could be countered again, as they were during the planning of Battery Park City.

?What?s their rational reason to oppose this?? Mr. Urstadt said, referring to environmental advocates. ?To my knowledge, we didn?t kill one fish in creating Battery Park City.?

The original development is the cornerstone of the argument for expansion, Mr. Urstadt said. Battery Park City, he argued, has been a roaring success. Its high-rise apartment buildings house more than 9,000 residents, and it has more than nine million square feet of commercial space, including the headquarters of Merrill Lynch and American Express.

Critics of the authority point to its abandonment of a plan to set aside equal shares of its units for wealthy, middle-income and low-income tenants. Most of its residents now pay market rates.

Each year, the authority, which collects payments from building owners in lieu of property taxes, turns over more than $100 million to the city government. That amount could increase significantly if the space for more development were created, Mr. Urstadt said.

?It?s economically desirable,? he said. ?We can create that land for $75 a square foot. Depending on what you put on the land, it?s worth $2,000 to $3,000 a square foot.?

What Mr. Urstadt says should go on the 40 or 50 acres of landfill is a mix of residential buildings, commercial space and parks, similar to the makeup of Battery Park City. His idea involves filling in a swath of the river, about 1,000 feet wide and 2,000 feet long, with sand dredged from the bottom of Lower New York Bay. Until recently, he said the landfill should stretch north from the upper edge of Battery Park City.

A few weeks ago, however, when he was on his way to meet with Mr. Whelan at City Hall, Mr. Urstadt spotted a formidable obstacle. The Hudson River Park Trust had begun rebuilding Piers 25 and 26, which extend into the Hudson just north of Battery Park City.

Mr. Urstadt said he immediately recognized that this development posed a problem for his plan, but not an insurmountable one. The simple solution, he said, would be to shift the site of the landfill several blocks to the north.

So, on the fly, he decided the landfill would have to be between the rebuilt piers and Pier 40, near Houston Street. It would cross over the Holland Tunnel tubes, but Mr. Urstadt did not flinch because Battery Park City sits atop the tubes of the PATH train.

This proposed landfill would not be contiguous with Battery Park City, making it a separate property rather than an extension. Mr. Urstadt, however, believes it still should fall under the jurisdiction of the Battery Park City Authority.

Some supporters of Mr. Urstadt?s proposal to expand Battery Park City were surprised to learn of this revised plan last week. James Gill, the chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, said he ?would be in favor of extending our boundary to the north? by as much as 2,000 feet, but he said he did not know that Mr. Urstadt had laid out an alternate vision to Mr. Whelan.

?What Charlie is talking about is a totally different thing,? Mr. Gill said. ?He?s talking about another Battery Park City.?

Indeed. Mr. Urstadt dubbed it Battery Park City North.

Some people who know Mr. Urstadt described him as stubborn, but a longtime friend and colleague, Robert R. Douglass, said Mr. Urstadt was simply a determined optimist.

Mr. Douglass, the chairman of the Downtown Alliance, a group supporting the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan, helped Mr. Urstadt hatch the expansion idea and has endorsed it for several years. He said opposition was so automatic that he had never bothered to seek support from other directors of the Downtown Alliance.

?When it comes to any fill at all in the water, it?s almost like a red light that stops any real discussion of it,? Mr. Douglass said.

Except for Mr. Urstadt, who barrels on.

?It?s just an idea he wants to keep alive,? Mr. Douglass said. ?Hopefully, someday somebody will buy into it.?

If so, Mr. Urstadt could start talking up another idea he has cooking: ?How about filling in the Harlem River?? he mused. ?It doesn?t do any good. The only thing it?s used for is the Circle Line.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/nyregion/16battery.html

http://curbed.com/archives/2005/10/27 ... _an_immodest_proposal.php

http://curbed.com/archives/2007/10/16 ... o_crazy_it_might_work.php