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The New York Times

Battery Park City: Quasi-Suburban

By: John Freeman Gill
Published: 5/4/2014Source: The New York Times

Battery Park City, the 92-acre planned community developed since 1980 on landfill along the west side of Lower Manhattan, is for many New Yorkers akin to a new guest bedroom added to the side of a beloved old house. It’s sleeker and more functional than the main residence, but it lacks the character and inspired disorder of the creaky old place, and you never set foot in there without a very specific reason.

For those who have chosen to live in Battery Park City, that reason is quality of life.

“We moved across the West Side Highway to the suburbs,” said Steve Yacker, a fashion retail executive, who in 2011 made the leap one block west with his family from a Chambers Street high-rise in TriBeCa. “It really is Smalltown, U.S.A., over here; all the parents know all the kids.”

Mr. Yacker’s new home is a three-bedroom three-bath apartment on the 17th floor of Liberty Green, a brick-and-glass tower at 300 North End Avenue. Though the $9,200 monthly rent is hardly cheap, his family’s southeast-facing corner unit affords a quasi-suburban way of life along with close-up city views no suburb can offer: the gleaming, faceted new skyscraper at 1 World Trade Center; the residential tower at 101 Warren, centerpiece of the development that houses the Whole Foods Market the family frequents; and the two Battery Park City baseball fields, where Mr. Yacker’s sons play in a league.

“I’m literally on the third base line,” he said. “Because we’ve got a bird’s-eye view, we know when a field is available and we can go down and toss a ball.”

But if Battery Park City is suburbia, it is largely a corporate-driven one. After ballgames, the “main street” where families often congregate to eat is known to residents as Goldman Alley, after Goldman Sachs, the financial services firm that in 2009 opened a new 43-story, $2.1 billion glass-and-steel headquarters on a former parking lot at 200 West Street.

Topped by an angled glass canopy, Goldman Alley runs between 200 West and the 15-story Conrad New York hotel building. The alley is lined with shops and restaurants catering to families as well as financiers, including the Danny Meyer trio of Shake Shack, Blue Smoke and the North End Grill.

Although Battery Park City was knocked on its heels by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which forced the neighborhood’s evacuation, the area has since recovered and thrived.

“The landlords gave really great incentives, so a whole new generation of people moved in,” said Anne Rossi, an agent with the Corcoran Group who has lived in the area since 1991. “And with the development of 1 World Trade Center and the opening of the 9/11 Memorial, it’s brought so many people down here.”

While some residents grumble about the increased crowds, many still prize the neighborhood’s out-of-the-way feel.

“It makes the rest of New York so exciting,” said Michael Inglesh, a cameraman who has lived on Rector Place since 1999. “You can still go over to Williamsburg or wherever is cool and say, ‘Yeah, I was cool for a day,’ and then you come back to this waterfront community where you know everybody.”

 

What You’ll Find

Battery Park City is a neighborhood created from scratch. Lying west of West Street, adjacent to the financial district and lower TriBeCa, it is surrounded on three sides by the Hudson River, along which runs a windblown 1.2-mile esplanade with a marina for oceangoing yachts.

Envisioned by its planners as a commercial-residential district where financial-sector workers could live and walk to work, the area still has its share of unmarried young residents who toil on Wall Street or in the former World Financial Center, the Battery Park City office complex that has been renamed Brookfield Place. But the proportion of families has grown, from just a third of households in 1990 to about half in the years 2008 to 2012, according to an analysis of census data provided by Susan Weber-Stoger, a demographer at Queens College. This trend has been helped along by the inclusion of three-bedroom apartments in newer buildings.

 

Battery Park City’s 1979 master plan allocated a generous 30 percent of the area for open space, including the landscaped, sculpture-festooned Nelson A. Rockefeller Park. But the Battery Park City Authority, a public benefit corporation, has in fact built more parks than planned, resulting in nearly 36 acres of public open space.

“With the water, the parks, the rolling hills and the duck ponds, it was a no-brainer to raise a child in that environment,” Mr. Inglesh said.

Still, Battery Park City has added buildings and people over the years, resulting in more residents to share reduced public space. A census survey from 2008 to 2012 estimated the population at 13,648, up 72 percent from the 7,951 counted in the 2000 census.

 “I love it here, but I don’t love the density,” said Anne Carullo, a cosmetics executive who has lived in the area with her son since 1999. “We lost a ball field to buildings that went up.”

The center of the neighborhood, if not its heart, is Brookfield Place, which is undergoing a massive $250 million overhaul. This spring Brookfield is scheduled to open Hudson Eats, a high-end dining terrace overlooking the Hudson River. By spring 2015, Brookfield says, it will open six upscale restaurants and a 25,000-square-foot French marketplace purveying fresh cheese, meat and pastries. Ultimately, the complex is to include 40 new retail shops.

What You’ll Pay

The north end, built out later than the south, tends to be more expensive. “There is a ring to the air there,” said Mrs. Rossi of Corcoran, “because it’s newer and closer to TriBeCa and Whole Foods.”

At Liberty Luxe, completed in 2011 on North End, two-bedrooms rent for $6,500 to $10,500 per month. Over all in Battery Park City, one-bedroom rents average around $3,580.

At newer condos like the Visionaire on Little West Street, units average around $1,550 per square foot, Mrs. Rossi said. At 200 Rector Place, built in 1987, the average is $1,065. A search on Streeteasy.com found 67 units for sale.

What to Do

The “floating classroom” of the Manhattan Sailing School is berthed in North Cove Marina, along with its sailboats. From May 13th to mid-October, the “Honorable William Wall,” the floating clubhouse of the Manhattan Yacht Club, will be anchored near Ellis Island. A terrific vantage point for watching sailboat races, the clubhouse is open to the public via a launch that departs from North Cove Dock F.

The nonprofit Battery Park City Parks Conservancy operates a busy schedule of public events and programs, including music, fishing and garden tours.

The Schools

Many public elementary and middle school students attend Public School 89/Intermediate School 89 on Warren Street, which earned a B and an A on their respective city progress reports, or the Battery Park City School on Battery Place, which teaches prekindergarten through eighth grade and earned an A.

High Schools include the selective Stuyvesant High School on Chambers, where SAT averages last year were 685 in reading, 736 in math and 681 in writing, versus 437, 463 and 433 citywide.

The Commute

The No. 1 train stops at South Ferry, Rector Street and Chambers, the Nos. 2 and 3 at Wall Street, Fulton Street, Park Place and Chambers. The R serves Rector and Cortlandt Streets. Stations for the 4 include Fulton and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall; the No. 5 serves these part time. The No. 6 also stops at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. The Downtown Alliance runs a free shuttle from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Buses make 37 stops around the perimeter of Lower Manhattan, including a Warren/Murray Street retail loop.

The History

From 1978 to 1985, crowds gathered on the empty landfill at the northern end of Battery Park City to attend art shows, called Art on the Beach, organized by Creative Time, a public-arts group.

 

 

2 RIVER TERRACE, #16A

A three-bedroom, three-bath corner condo with a wraparound terrace, listed at $3,000,000.

(212) 350-2828

70 LITTLE WEST STREET, #21B

A two-bedroom, two-bath condo in a doorman building, listed at $2,790,000.

(212) 786-1789

 


200 RECTOR PLACE, #15F [Anne Rossi, Corcoran Group]

A renovated one-bedroom, one-bath condo with a terrace and a doorman, listed at $795,000.

(212) 937-1986

 

Copyright © 2014 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Sara Krulwich /The New York Times. 

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