Waterside Plaza is a residential and business complex located between the FDR Drive and the East River from 25th to 30th streets in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan, New York City. It was formerly a Mitchell-Lama Housing Program-funded rental project. The apartment buildings, as well as the neighboring United Nations International School, were constructed on top of platforms over the East River.
Waterside Plaza was constructed alongside a segment of the FDR Drive that was built on landfill brought to the United States from England. Developed by Richard Ravitch, the first apartment buildings opened in 1973 and the complex was completed the following year. The housing development received the Construction Achievement Project of the Year Award from the Metropolitan Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1974. There were plans to build additional above-water apartments, offices, and a hotel to the south of the site in the 1980s, but these were canceled, and Stuyvesant Cove Park was developed there instead.
The complex is made up of four residential towers as well as a row of duplex townhouses, clad in brown brickwork, that encompass a large plaza overlooking the East River. Three of the towers are 37 stories high and one tower has 31 stories. There are 1,470 residential units along with a health club and a parking garage. Waterside Plaza has won the Albert S. Bard Award for Distinguished Architecture and Urban Design, as well as an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
History Planning Waterside Plaza was constructed alongside a segment of the FDR Drive that was built on landfill brought to the United States as ships' ballast from the rubble of the city of Bristol in England, which was bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War II during the Bristol Blitz. The area is known as "Bristol Basin" and a memorial to the use of rubble from Bristol was erected in 1942 by the English-Speaking Union of the United States on a footbridge across the highway; the plaque was later relocated to Waterside Plaza in 1974.
The development of Waterside Plaza was first envisioned in 1961 by Richard Ravitch of the HRH Construction Corporation. While having lunch with architect Lewis Davis at the end of the parking garage at the Skyport Marina, a project that Ravitch constructed at the foot of 23rd Street that opened the following year, the two discussed a newspaper article in which United States Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson complained about a lack of housing for staff working at the UN headquarters; Ravitch suggested solving the problem by building housing along the waterfront to the north of the marina.
Ravitch approached James Felt, the head of the New York City Planning Commission, in the spring of 1961 to discuss his idea but he was told, "Don't waste your time." Ravitch dusted off his plans two years later when he learned that William F. R. Ballard, the new chair of the City Planning Commission, was supportive of waterfront development. However, plans for Ravitch's proposed development were kept quiet because the city had plans to condemn buildings for the controversial Bellevue South urban renewal project, located nearby between 23rd and 30th streets, and the Waterside project would involve constructing new housing over the river without the need to displace any existing tenants.
The waterfront site opposite Bellevue Hospital was identified as a potential location for housing and recreational use in a 1965 report issued by the Department of City Planning, which noted that waterfront development should be complementary to other renewal efforts and not meant as a substitute for Bellevue South. The report also recommended that the city retain ownership of the land used for waterfront development and arrange for a long-term lease; this would require legislative changes to allow for leases longer than 25 years, giving developers enough time to pay off the cost of their improvements.
In order to obtaining financing to construct housing over this section of the East River, Title 33 of the United States Code was amended in 1965 to designate the segment of the river from 17th to 30th streets within the pierhead line as non-navigable, so the federal government could not expropriate the property under its powers to regulate navigable waters. The matter to change the designation of the river along the Manhattan shoreline had been brought before Congress at the request of Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. by Emanuel Celler, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 10th congressional district.
Plans for Waterside were first announced by Mayor John Lindsay on December 20, 1966. Initially estimated at a cost of $42 million, the project sponsored by the HRH Construction Company and designed by Davis, Brody & Associates was to contain a total of 1,450 apartments, some of which would be reserved for United Nations staff. Waterside was approved by the City Planning Commission on April 12, 1967. Beverly Moss Spatt was the only member of the commission to vote against the project, which she called, "a reversal of city policy and commitment of not granting tax abatement for housing when rents are equivalent to units now available and renting on the private market."
Although Waterside was intended to provide housing to a mix of lower, middle, and upper-income residents, opponents of the project criticized the city subsidies that were being offered to the developer when less than five percent of the apartments were to be for low-income families (70 units were to be for low-income residents, 280 for middle-income residents, and 1,118 for upper-income residents). The planned subsidies included the developer leasing the land from the city at no cost and only having to pay half of the residential real estate taxes. Meanwhile, supporters of Waterside argued that the subsidies were needed in order for the project to move forward, and that it was located on a site that currently produced no revenue to the city. The project sponsors—the HRH Construction Company and the Longstreet Corporation—subsequently suggested increasing the total of low-income units to 145, swapping 75 of the middle-income units with low-income units to make up for the difference. With these amendments, the project was approved by the New York City Board of Estimate on December 22, 1967.
The next step in the process involved obtaining financing for the project. Waterside's developers made a deal with the United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC) to give relocation priority to residents and businesses that would be displaced by the construction of the U.N. Center, a proposed mixed-use development with office space and hotel rooms that was being planned in the Turtle Bay neighborhood near the headquarters of the United Nations (now part of the complex that includes One, Two and Three United Nations Plaza). The agreement was made in exchange for UNDC backing the Waterside development with tax-exempt bonds. Almost 600 of the apartments at Waterside were to be reserved for residents that would be displaced by the proposed U.N. Center, many of which lived in the Beaux-Arts Apartments on East 44th Street. The UNDC subsequently revised its plans for the U.N. Center to build on a smaller footprint that did not involve razing the Beaux-Arts Apartments.
Plans for the buildings were filed with the city in 1969. The development of Waterside was originally intended to be privately funded, but the project got stalled because its sponsors had difficulties in obtaining financing due to the effects of inflation and a tightened market for loans with high interest rates. On June 24, 1970, the City Planning Commission approved a revision to the project that involved the city taking over Waterside's financing through the Mitchell–Lama Housing Program after construction of the apartment complex had been completed. The city was unable to finance the project's construction because it was reaching its limits on debt for housing and renewal projects. In 1971, a group of nine banks agreed to lend a total of $71.58 million over a three-year period to finance the construction of Waterside. Led by Chase Manhattan Bank, the other banks providing construction loans included Bankers Trust, Chemical Bank, First National City Bank, Franklin National, Irving Trust, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Marine Midland Grace, and Morgan Guaranty Trust. The lease with the city was to run for a period of 99 years, after which the property and its improvements were to be returned to the city.
Construction and opening
The apartment buildings at Waterside were constructed on top of a platform supported by over 2,000 piles that were sunk into the East River beginning in January 1971. Composite piles were used, which consisted of concrete members in the upper sections fastened together with steel H-beams in the lower members that ran from the riverbed down to bedrock. The platform was built next to another deck that had been previously constructed for the planned site of the United Nations International School with a $1.1-million grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. On May 5, 1969, the deck of the future school site had been used as the landing field for a Hawker Siddeley Harrier vertical take-off and landing jet operated by the Royal Air Force in the Daily Mail Trans-Atlantic Air Race from London to New York City.
The first apartment buildings at the site opened in 1973 and the $78-million complex was completed the following year with the opening of the northern tower. Waterside was formally opened on September 12, 1973, when Mayor Lindsay, former Mayor Wagner, and other dignitaries boarded a fireboat at the South Street Seaport and headed up the East River to attend the ceremony. At the event, Mayor Lindsay presented architect Lewis Davis and developer Richard Ravitch with the city's 75th Anniversary Golden Jubilee Medal in recognition of their contributions. The city began celebrating its 75th anniversary earlier in the year, which marked the consolidation of the five boroughs into modern New York City in 1898.
The pedestrian overpass across the FDR Drive at 25th Street was originally built in the 1940s. When the Waterside project was being completed in 1974, there were plans to construct an additional footbridge across the highway at the northern end of the complex. Preliminary designs for a pedestrian overpass connecting to 30th Street were prepared and funding for the $300,000 structure was to be obtained from the federally-assisted mortgage for the 375 units in the northern building; this building was financed through the Section 236 program of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968. However, the location of the proposed footbridge was opposed by officials at Bellevue Hospital, which felt that a pedestrian overpass at 27th Street would be a better option because people walking to and from First Avenue would be passing through an area monitored by the hospital's security personnel and that it would also provide better connections to existing and planned public transportation services. At that time, plans for the construction of a southern extension of the Second Avenue Subway (running between 34th and Whitehall streets) called for a new station to be built on Second Avenue between 23rd and 27th streets.