Seaport City “feasible” — but “complicated”: study

Former Mayor Bloomberg’s Seaport City, a plan for a multi-purpose levee that would sprout atop a landfill and protect the city from future hurricane damage, is “feasible,” a study determined.

The findings, arrived at by a group of design, engineering and environmental consultants, said that a levee with buildings and parks constructed atop it would be legally and financially “feasible” for New York City. But actually implementing the process, especially with regard to gathering the necessary permits, “will be complicated and will take a long time,” the study said.

While storm surges topped Manhattan bulkheads south of 42nd Street during Hurricane Sandy, flooding nearly 1,000 residential and 700 commercial buildings, Battery Park City was relatively unscathed.

“We can achieve the same thing on the East Side of Lower Manhattan,” Bloomberg said last June. “We can build it out, raise it above the flood level and develop it. Yes, it would be expensive to build. But over time it could prove to be a great investment.”

The study proposes a number of options, from building a flood wall along the existing shore to stretching the existing coastline 250 to 500 feet into the East River using landfill. Also proposed is the creation of a barrier island off the existing shore, with a channel in between.

Around 1,600 buildings and 61,000 residents are located in the 100-year floodplain. [Capital New York] — Julie Strickland