Thursday, February 22, 2007

CB1 Boathouse Design Group Update

Life interfered last night (in a pleasant way, for once, not just getting stuck at work!) and I was unable to attend that CB-1 organized boathouse design group meeting, but I was really curious, so this morning I sent out an email over the local NYCKayaker list asking if anyone who'd gone could fill me in. Got a couple of responses from Downtown Boathouse folks, with the comments that that organization has compiled attached. They gave me permission to post those, and you can read them in their entirety here.

The Downtown Boathouse group has been following this with particular interest, as this boathouse is being built on the site of their original boathouse, which they had to leave in 2004. They were the single, uncontested applicant to run the boathouse that opened up in Clinton at that time, and their experiences running their free public paddling programs at that clean & shiny, but somewhat over-architected, boathouse gives them a very good point of view for critique of the new boathouse (unfortunately, it's too late to do the same for the Pier 66 boathouse, that one's already built). I think they'd like to get back to where they started. Based on the community comments I'd seen about what the area residents liked about the original, grassroots version of Piers 25 & 26, it sounds like the locals would like them to come back, too. I'm not saying that the Trust should hand the keys over without any questions, but they do have quite a history in that community. Can't just blow that off.

btw, this was the follow-up meeting from the one I'd attended, written about, and actually found quite cheering back in January.

No comments: