Seaport City isn’t a new neighborhood, city says

A rendering of Seaport City and Michael Bloomberg (inset)
A rendering of Seaport City and Michael Bloomberg (inset)

Rather than being a new elevated neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, the Bloomberg administration’s planned Seaport City project is simply a levee system, representatives for the New York City Economic Development Corporation said at a Community Board 1 meeting yesterday.

“That’s how it was labeled, but really if you want to be accurate, we’re studying a multipurpose levee system,” said EDC representative Alejandro Baquero, referring to the “Seaport City” moniker. “One of the big questions we want to answer is ‘does this even work from an engineering perspective?”” he said, according to a report from Curbed.

CB1 board members expressed other concerns about the project as well. “With a levee system in place, where exactly is the water going?” a board member asked. “It’s gotta go somewhere.”

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“I’d hate to save one side [of the city] and drown another,” another board member remarked. For instance, the West side of Manhattan or Brooklyn.

A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told Curbed that a rapidly-changing climate will increase the risk of coastal floods and lead to a rise in sea level by up to 24 inches in coming years. In October, the city tapped Dutch engineering firm Arcadis to conduct a feasiblity study of the project. [Curbed]Hiten Samtani