The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has decided against a proposal that would use Pier 42 as a staging area for World Trade Center construction. Under the plan, the Port Authority would have used the Lower East Side pier to store steel construction beams for the PATH transportation hub by the WTC site. According to the Downtown Express, the storage space would have blocked off waterfront space and required approximately 60 truck trips per day between the pier and the WTC construction area. Area residents balked at this prospect, Susan Stetzer, the Community Board 3 district manager, said. “We were extremely concerned,” Stetzer said. “It was more loss of access to the waterfront. It was more trucks going all the way through from one side of Manhattan to the other. It was beyond a tipping point.” As a result of community pressure, the Port Authority has decided to use a New Jersey contractor, which will deliver the beams on an as-needed basis.

A planned reconfiguration and renovation of Chinatown’s Chatham Square has been put on hold once again, this time for two years, according to a city Department of Transportation official. The widely unpopular $50 million project, which would connect East Broadway to Worth Street and Bowery Street to St. James Place in the current seven-way intersection, has reportedly been halted due to imminent Brooklyn Bridge construction. Luis Sanchez, DOT’s Lower Manhattan borough commissioner, said that the confluence of those two projects would create an untenable traffic morass. While Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, maintains that the DOT won’t back off its plan for Chatham Square, community activists said they hope this delay will give more time for community input on the plan.