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Can New York afford to turn its largest landfill into a park?
By Rosten Woo
The Metropolis Observed
March 2002
Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill opened in 1948 as a three-year
temporary dumping site. Over the next half-century it quietly grew to accept
the majority of New York City's trash, becoming the largest man-made structure
on Earth--visible from space. The dump has long been Staten Island's most
pressing political concern, but as the city's only Republican-majority borough,
the island's agenda always managed to get overlooked by Democratic leaders.
But in 1993 the political stars aligned: with a freshly elected Republican
mayor and governor, the conditions were finally right for putting the
dumping at Fresh Kills to an end.
Even so, island residents were surprised last March when mayor Rudolph Giuliani
actually made good on his electoral promise to close Fresh Kills, even though
it had more than 20 years of potential dumping left in it. New Yorkers were
even more surprised to learn that Giuliani's favor to Staten Island had
been granted without cost-benefit analysis, and that the city's chosen
alternative--exporting 13,000 tons of daily refuse out of state--would cost
$323 million per year, nearly $100 million more than it costs to use Fresh
Kills. Benjamin Miller, a former director of policy planning at the Department
of Sanitation, says, "We seem to be heading into the greatest financial
crisis the city has ever faced. Before September 11, the decision to close
Fresh Kills may have been merely an extravagance. But now, as we face the
likelihood of layoffs for city workers who perform critical functions, it
is an unconscionable waste."
Offsite:
The Fresh Kills finalists' plans will be on display at the Municipal Art
Society Gallery in New York through March 5. For information visit
www.mas.org or call (212) 935-3960.
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As budgets get tighter in coming years, voices calling for Fresh Kills to
reopen are likely to gain in strength and number. The only way Giuliani
could ensure his legacy as the mayor who closed Fresh Kills was by making
certain that something else, like a park, got built in its place. But with
less than a year left in office when he shut down the landfill,
the mayor didn't have enough time to break ground. If the city had used
its usual lengthy planning procedure, the project could have gotten lost
in the mayoral transition. Giuliani must have realized how fragile his declaration
of closure was. As a case in point, just six months after it closed, Fresh
Kills was reopened to accept the remains of the World Trade Center.
But an open international design competition could generate public enthusiasm
for new land uses at Fresh Kills, tying subsequent city administrators to
the idea of reclaiming the site. Following the dump's closure last March,
the Department of City Planning--in conjunction with the Municipal Art Society--asked
teams of designers, engineers, and architects to devise a plan that would
include places of beauty and repose for city residents while generating
enough revenue to contribute to its own maintenance and operating costs.
By June the city's panel had received 48 proposals spanning a broad continuum
of practice, from high-concept designers like MVRDV to major corporate firms
like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In August six of these teams were selected
and each given $50,000 to flesh out their plans. Three winners (teams
led by Field Operations, RIOS Associates, and JMP Landscape and John McAslan
& Partners) were chosen in December and given the opportunity to negotiate
for a contract with the city to prepare an official master plan.
Unfortunately for those who look to the contest for specific designs,
it is much too early to plan the redevelopment of Fresh Kills with any detail.
The site, nearly three times the size of Central Park, is comprised of ecologically
fragile wetlands and capped mounds of garbage taller than the Statue of
Liberty that are expected to sink unpredictably over the next 30 years.
Even general ideas for sight lines, transportation, and the utilization
of existing landscape features are difficult to determine with much
accuracy at this time.
It is not, however, too early for artful designs to ignite public interest
in the site. Ellen Ryan of the Municipal Art Society remarks, "The
power of the designers' visions is everything--it is what's needed to create
the community momentum that will make this happen." The question, of
course, is whether or not it should.
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