By Daniel Katzive
Designers are going back to the drawing board as they work towards a new dock house for a future rebuild of the 79th Street Boat Basin marina.
After community objections helped derail plans presented last spring, city agencies are working on a new concept anchored by a one-story dock house rather than the two-story building that drew the ire of local residents and raised concerns with the federal agency providing a portion of the project’s funding.
Officials from the Parks Department and Economic Development Corporation and their design team briefed Community Board 7’s Parks & Environment Committee on Monday on the latest developments in the multi-year marina saga. The team plans to present a new design in June that will feature a lower, one-story building to house the marina’s programming and management spaces. The hope is that the new design will be less objectionable to local residents while still meeting a multitude of federal, state, and city requirements, and functional needs.
The new plan is a return to the original concept presented back in June 2021, though the design will be different from what was proposed then. The original plan also featured a one-story dock house structure, but ran afoul when state environmental regulators determined that the footprint of the proposed building over the water would be too large, and required that the requisite square footage be built in a narrower but taller two-story structure.
But the state’s Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) then took issue with the two-story plan, determining that a higher building would impact historically significant views from Riverside Park and Riverside Drive. That finding forced the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which is providing about one-third of the $90-million funding for the entire marina rebuild project, to seek additional input from others impacted by the building, in order to comply with federal preservation law. With community feedback on the design of the structure almost universally negative, the project was effectively dead in the water.
With federal and local feedback in hand, project manager Stephen Frech, of M&N Engineering, and the project team went back to state officials and requested that they reconsider a slightly wider one-story building, Frech explained at Monday’s meeting.
The agreed-upon proposed structure will cover 3,800 square feet, down from 4,765 square feet in the previous two-story design. Even at one story, the building will be higher than the current dock house and the promenade alongside the marina, because it will be built on pilings to elevate the occupied space above the floodplain. Frech emphasized that passersby will be able to view the river and the marina beyond the building through the pilings, and that the concerns of HPO and FEMA about the impact on historically significant views would be mitigated by the lower overall height. CB7 board members on Monday urged the design team to incorporate features which would soften the building’s appearance from the shore as well as the water.
The designers plan to do what they can to limit the loss of programming resulting from the reduced square footage, for example by having various areas of the building serve multiple functions. But some loss of functionality relative to their original ambition is inevitable.
“We’re going to do a lot better with this design,” said Nate Grove, head of marinas for the Parks Department at the meeting,“ but it’s still not going to meet the true demand for what this site would merit. It’s not going to be a world-class marina. It’s going to be fantastic, but I don’t want to represent it as anything different.” He estimated that realizing the full potential of the site would require 6,200 square feet of dock house space, but “what we have learned in the last nearly five years is that that’s not achievable here on the Upper West Side.” He noted the designers must navigate an approval process involving an alphabet soup of over a dozen federal, state, and local agencies and boards.
The designers plan to return to the CB7 committee in June with a new design that will also go to the city’s Public Design Commission. Frech estimated that construction could begin in 2026, but, with the design still not finalized, he was unable to provide an estimate of how long the construction process might take.
Boaters were forced to vacate the decaying facility in late 2021 and are now going on their third summer without access, with seemingly several more years to go before they can return. Several boat owners who attended the meeting seemed frustrated but resigned to a long absence, though one noted “I hear this clock ticking.”
For a more detailed discussion on the issues surrounding the Boat Basin redesign and the impact on displaced boaters, see WSR’s June 8, 2023 article What’s in a View: The Battle of the Boat Basin.
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Let me be the first to say that this not being a “world class marina” suits me just fine. I still don’t understand why we have to support private boat owner/residents living in a city-owned marina and using city-owned facilities.
See that photo of the empty marina? Tear out the pilings, the old boathouse and the docks. Done.
Put the money into upgrading FULLY PUBLIC facilities elsewhere in the park.
A lot of people are scandalized by the idea of spending $90 million on an amenity for boat owners, but can we stop and ask why this is going to cost *$90 million*??
This is a 3,800 square foot building (the average size of a newly built single family house in America is ~2,500 sq feet so this is the equivalent of 1.5 suburbans homes.) It’s built on the water so there should be some extra costs, but an extra $85 million or so?
If it’s the fact that it’s floating that makes it so expensive, maybe we could just buy a $90 million yacht and permanently moor it like the Intrepid? This one https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/inside-paul-allens-former-yacht-on-sale-for-dollar features “11 staterooms that can accommodate up to 19 guests with access to a heated swimming pool with a hydraulic-powered mosaic floor that can raise and lower, a parquet floor salon complete with a limestone fireplace and a bar, a movie theater adorned in red velvet, a beauty salon, a gym, two helicopter pads, a sunbathing and diving area decked out with a blue-tiled spa, bulletproof windows, and a fleet of jet skis.” Now that sounds world class!
How is this not a public scandal? New York’s inability to build anything at all for a reasonable price (a new subway, a new bus depot, public housing) is the real reason we don’t have a nicer city. We’re arguing over minutia while our pubic works crumble around us.
$90M is not just for the cost of the boat house. It is to cover the cost of the entire project which includes dredging and dock/slip replacements.
Unfortunately, getting to the root causes of this mediocrity that you’ve highlighted would involve an honest discussion of how the interests of certain privileged and well-connected trade unions are often antithetical to the interests of worker-taxpayers in general. It might also require that we acknowledge the ways in which public bidding processes are rigged to ensure the continued flow of outsize benefits to these labor monopolies, which in turn vote as a bloc and kick back a portion of their revenue as patronage to the same public officials who supervise their work and make the procurement rules.
That’s an urgent conversation that’s worth having as a matter of broader policy, but the boat basin project is hardly an outlier when it comes to these issues. I question how many of these bornagain fiscal conservatives we see chiming in to express their opposition are sincerely concerned about the cost dimension of this particular project and not just merely opposed to boating facilities in general.
The sad reality is that some people in this world actively dislike being out on the water, and if you’re one of them, NYC has long been a great place to call home. There’s no need to worry about your middle class friends inviting you out for a day sail here, because in contrast to most other other coastal cities, there are few places in NYC for them to berth their boat.
I say, let’s take the FEMA funds that we’ve already been alocated for this project, move forward with the rehabilitation and expansion of the boat basin, and simultaneously talk about how we can build additonal marinas at a more reasonable cost. The goal should be to expand access to our waterfront to such a degree that such projects can no longer be attacked with straw man arguments about wealthy yacht owners.
Some of the boats are residences.
So we have to spend $90Million for the 3 or 4 boat residents. Excuse me?? What is wrong with this picture? I think $90Million should be used for something that will affect a larger number of taxpayers than the few that want to live on a boat.
Spending $90 million dollars on a marina so then some people can live on their boats is not a cost effective way to spend public housing money.
Great cities have iconic structures. Definitely a world class marina should be built to encourage boaters from afar to visit and enjoy our great city.
Manhattan is surrounded by unused piers that can be used for that purpose, farther downtown, for instance.
I don’t play tennis and there are plenty of PUBLIC tennis courts used with TAXPAYER money from those private racquet and ball owners. But this is a diverse community and we share resources. I have had many friends use the marina when they visited our city – paying into our PUBLIC fund and spending around the UWS, but no more. That is revenue we are losing because of all the bickering from the Upper Whiner Side. So what do you deem acceptable for YOUR use?
$90M means a lot of opportunity cost. That is about $500k for each of the 200 or so slots. A significant portion of these slots will go to house boats that will be there permanently and pay a ridiculously small fee for the privilege.
Thanks J.L.
NYC, with its abysmal waterfront facilities, almost seems to self-select for boat-hating landlubber residents who then in turn oppose efforts to improve access to the water, even when it’s being paid for with federal funds.
I’m not a boater. Will never own a boat. But the Hudson is so beautiful, and this estuarial island so tied to the surrounding water – why shouldn’t the city boast a publicly usable marina? Yes there will be private users, but it’s not really the same as a parking lot for yachts. Time on the water, even for never-own-a-boaters – in a rented kayak, sailing class, special event, marine ecology field trip – is a special opportunity for any and all who live here.
$90 million of public money for boat owners! $450 for every person on the Upper West Side (my family’s contribution will be $1,350)!
Why are we building this at all? We’ve already turned a chunk of the Hudson waterfront over to private helicopter flights at 34th Street and now we’re giving 79th St to the yachts. (I’m sure someone will pop up to say that “actually *my* boat is very modest and nothing like the ones ‘real’ rich people have”. It’s still a boat!!) It’s hard to think of something less deserving of public money short of turning Cherry Walk into private jet parking.
You are not supporting any of this. This project is being funded primarily with Federal funds and the boaters will be paying commercial rates to rent slips. Agree we don’t need “world class marina.” Just a functional one.
Federal funds are our tax money too, so a “world-class, competitive” marina in this one spot sounds like another for-profit scheme, for which many of us are unwilling to pay.
Agree: If you must have a docking facility there, design something modest, economical, and functional.
And, what “programming”? Isn’t this a DOCKhouse?
Federal funds are still our tax money., so no, absolutely not. And, what “programming”? Isn’t this a DOCKhouse? If you must, design something modest and practical.
We pay federal taxes too. How long is the payback period of this $90 million as “commercial rates”?
This is good news that there will be a redesign! Hopefully there will be an architect as part of this? Also why not have a more modest size building at the water’s edge for the things that have to be there and then another building discretely further back and more hidden for the rest? A very good example of this is the wonderful Volunteer structure at 108 Street.
I know part of the answer to the above is the various different Parks and waterfront jurisdictions….but p, great point! here’s another small voice for re-examining shared use of the sizable underground spaces around the Boat Basin cafe and the now-being-rebuilt traffic circle, for some of those “non-critical” boat basin needs. Even toilets, showers, laundry would be easier on land…
Both Stephanie and Maggie have the most sensible solution to this problem. A small non-obstructive structure over the water that house what is the mostly basic function of the marina. The rest is incorporated into what is now being renovated under the traffic circle. Why do lecture rooms, showers, etc. be housed in structure over the river and obstruct our precious view?
The 79th street boat basin used to be a beautiful historic area. Now look at the outrageous mess the city has made.
I’m a designer, and this “design” is one of most lazy, ugly looking structures I’ve ever seen. Basically a metal shed with a window. This iis an eyesore and insult to the UWS.
Incompetent and pathetic.
Absolutely. ! Quite embarrassing that a pathetic/ugly ‘structure’ should even be being seriously discussed by those that are somehow attempting to put this awful thing together! Fergedaboudit!
I can’t wait to see the new design for the structure. The one offered before was a real pip and looked like a farm implement store, pole barn plopped down at water’s edge. I hope the new architectural conceit will actually look attractive to the average person’s eye.
It is easy…give up the extra square footage and go back to the one floor design that is appropriate to the setting.
A design appropriate to its setting would be much larger. Surely it shouldn’t be ugly, but surely it be rightly restablished a one of the grand Crown Jewels of the New York City parks system.
A tent would do fine, and could be replaced easily after storms.
this project has been screwing up my riverside park walks for a while now. sadly im losing faith this will come back in its fully glory or anywhere close to it.
i loved walking under the boat basin cutting up/down to and from the park. the restaurant in the warm months was a sweet bonus but it was always there to navigate through and gaze from. not sure that will ever come back…. 🙁
The biggest travesty remains the death of the boat basin cafe.
The two story building was an awful concept and I was in favor of a redesign. Now, having seen the newer proposals, I don’t think it should be rebuilt at all – or nothing more than a small pier for very small watercraft and perhaps rentable kayaks and such. Why do we need a live-in marina in Riverside Park at all? Better to scrap it entirely, do something nice with the rotunda and leave the park space and views open for all.
there’s a small pier in inwood that is well used for kayaking, along with a quiet park, quonset hut with facilities, and a restaurant. Albeit a far less used area of the city, but WAY better than this boondoggle
It should be smaller and oriented toward the community, not the river. Otherwise all we get is the back end.
You do realize this is on the river, no? Otherwise it would not be the Boat Basin nor a dock….
Yes and lots more people see it from the land than from the water. The original design had a big blank wall facing the park.
Keep it small, funky and quaint––with just enough slips to hold a reasonable number of small boats. Isn’t the river view worth something? Will boaters next want a garage so they can park near their world class marina?
World-class yachts have never been able to dock at that marina…Do a bit of research.
No. This is a massive waste of money. Completely unnecessary. $90 million best spent elsewheres.
I think they would do better not elevating the building, and simply planning to allow water to flow through it.
What about the docks on W 125th Street West Harlem Piers Park that were destroyed in storms and still have not been rebuilt? There was supposed to be a boat harbor there too.
“An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will. (Thomas Jefferson).” It is remarkable how many people comment on this project without having facts, data, expertise and appropriate experience. Further, these same people lack empathy, neighborliness, and a righteous sense of community. Some of these comments prompt sympathy for Robert Moses.
We all know that access to recreation is a requirement for city living, especially in New York City. We are fortunate that Riverside Park offers so many opportunities and outlets for education, physical exercise, leisure, pursuit of passions, and mental wellness, including but not limited to tennis, Parkour, hiking, gardening, walking, running, basketball, cycling, and picnicking. Visionaries for Riverside Park also included the advantages of access to the water for kayaking, boating, and sailing. Why waterway access via the Boat Basin Marina was fine for 85 years but is now being shunned is a puzzlement.
Before its closure many of the boats were under 40 feet. A yacht is a boat that can range from 40 to 200 feet. Let’s not equate “yacht” with Messrs. Gates and Bezos. Most of the boats and yachts at the Boat Basin were owned by our Upper West Side neighbors to provide access to the river. Other users were domestic and international mariner couples and families visiting our wonderful New York and providing City economic benefit from their visitation. Other users were students from all over New York City. Please engage in some fact finding and user inquiries before you belittle and dismiss those who actually made use of the Boat Basin and for what purposes they did so.
I wish to applaud the New York City Parks Department for doing their best to accommodate the multitude of regulatory requirements they must meet, as well as the community, as well as their future marine customers. It will be a shame that just a few in our community are selecting form over function, precluding us from offering New Yorkers and those who would visit us from enjoying and showcasing a world class marina. I also feel for the loss of the educational benefits that the new design will sacrifice, thus adversely impacting the sailing students, the biology students, and the visitors to Pete Seeger’s “Clearwater” and the “Mystic Whaler.”
Is all of this sacrificing of function over form really worthwhile? Is the satiating of the few so paramount over the needs and desires of the many? After all, Riverside Park is four miles in length. If a few feet of the dock house rise to block your view of New Jersey, take a few steps to your left or your right and then have an unfettered view the condos on the New Jersey side.
I would beseech my community neighbors to act a little less petty and pay heed to Tom Petty as his lyrics suggest. “You belong among the wildflowers. You belong in a boat out at sea. Sail away, kill off the hours. You belong somewhere you feel free.”
Thank you for this David. I was a Dockmaster at the 79th St Boat Basin for 10 years. Your comment is the most on point and informed I’ve seen. The amount of totally uninformed comments on here is ridiculous. I further want to point out that a majority of our customer base was always the average boating public, not the super rich. It was cruising sailors utilizing moorings as a an affordable way to experience NYC or boaters from NJ and other nearby areas docking small boats for the day to enjoy the cafe or the city in general. We did cultivate a clientele of larger yachts docked on the outer wall, however the fees those customers paid subsidized a lot of the marina operations for your average boater. People should remember that the boat basin was one of the only facilities in the parks system that paid its own way so to speak. Parks cost money but the objective isn’t profit, it’s public enjoyment. However the Boat Basin brought money into the NYC Parks system.
Additionally, I think people should realize that the current dockhouse is wholly inadequate for running a marina. It is a 90 year old shack that floods during high storm tides and lacks the room for the offices, locker rooms, tool, equipment and material storage necessary to maintain and run a marina as well as an amenities area for marina customers. These are extravagant wishes, they are the facilities in any decently run marina. All of us who staffed the boat basin often worked extended shifts for the 24/7 coverage required of a facility in which customers reside there. Regardless of the opinion of the large dockhouse design, I noticed a lot of the negative comments included sentiments as if we were unreasonably requesting extravagant amenities like locker rooms, a break room and showers. When you often spend more than 12 hours at work at the height of summer working outdoors on docks and facility infrastructure and managing over 100 boats at the dock you need these types of facilities.
Wonderfully on-point, Dave.
This in particular:
“If a few feet of the dock house rise to block your view of New Jersey, take a few steps to your left or your right and then have an unfettered view the condos on the New Jersey side.”
By many of the comments here, people seem to think they have a view of the Grand Canyon from their Riverside Blvd. apartment.
Thank you, David, for your rational and informed comments. So rare here.
$90 million would explain why maybe things have changed. It’s not there for the general public, and the evidence is that it’s locked all the time. The access is for the very few people who use it and not anyone else really.
Per ChatGPT, “The cost of the 79th Street Boat Basin Marina when it was built by Robert Moses in 1937 was approximately $6.5 million.” Also per ChatGPT, “The equivalent cost in 2024 can be estimated to be around $125 million to $150 million, depending on the exact inflation rate used for the calculation.” So it appears $90 million would be less than the original cost in today’s dollars.
Securing access to marinas is a standard operating procedure, for reasons that I hope would be obvious.
In Riverside Park, we build Parkour courts and tennis courts and dog runs “for the few people who use it, and not anyone else really.” And, the marina is a profit center all users are charged usage fees. So unlike the cost of the Parkour court, for example, the marina will “pay for itself.”
I would guess that the $6.5 million cost encompassed much more work than just what’s being proposed for the marina now. At the time, the project included work on the park, rotunda, highway, and other elements of the area between Riverside Drive and the Hudson River.
You raise a fair point, Boris. I would welcome corroboration as to whether the GP Chat query response was exclusively related to the cost of the marina (which was my original query) or if it included any portion of the budget related to the 79th Street Grade Crossing Elimination Structure.
This is the statement of the week: “Why waterway access via the Boat Basin Marina was fine for 85 years but is now being shunned is a puzzlement.” Thank you for your comments!
This is the most thoughtful, informed, rational, and inspirational comment regarding the topic at hand. Thank you, Dave!
This is still absurd. It’s going to be 10’ above the bike path. It’s still functionally 2 stories. Why are we building a $90M building in an area that’s going to be severely flooded in the coming years? What was wrong with what was there before?
At the meeting, did they not discuss the educational possibilities for the new structure?
It seems to me that we’ve missing a golden opportunity for our students in the city, not to be able to access the water and the marine life present along the Manhattan shore. All of this, in my opinion seems to be clouded by the word “yachts“ where is in reality, this project should be, and was from my understanding, a lot more than just in the service of boat owners.
Wasn’t it supposed to be equipped with many classrooms and spaces for students to do aquatic studies?
Finally, I defy anybody to stand up on Riverside Drive and even identify where the marina is because it’s blocked by massive trees and the Henry Hudson Parkway, so that any ”restricted view” argument is a faulty construct.
Maybe it restricts a tiny sliver of the view if you happen to own a penthouse along Riverside Drive in the 80s. Is this who has created this “height outrage” all along? Follow the money.
(FEMA requires this height anyway now)
UWSiders, stop being so stupid.
This marina should have public access and either kayak , sailing orrowing opportunities for the Westside. Inwood has a lovely modest marina but it’s up in Inwood and not convenient to the Westside. It’s so exclusive having just having rental slips. For years my family has peered through locked gates at the boat basin but never ever put a toe on it’s docks.
Unfortunately alll new coastal construction has to be raised up above the rising sea level. Building projects up and down the east coast cost more due to these regulations . Some of the 90 million has to be for flood proofing. But not all of it. Here’s a chance for all New Yorkers to experience our waterfront.. FYI I’m a sailor and am involved in coastal resiliency programs. So I feel very strongly that everyone should have an opportunity to experience the Hudson not just boat/houseboat owners.
Missed opportunity – instead of including this function into the expansion of the boat basin for this use, it is being expanded for use by Dept of Parks offices. While the expanded space for the offices is smaller than the footprint of the proposed structure, the function of the proposed facility would lend itself to elevate the experience of the boat basin as a marina hub.