Have your fill: Land could be created for a corporate campus, just as it was for Battery Park City immediately to the south.
Last year I sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos proposing a headquarters location on the Hudson River within walking distance of Wall Street. I never received a response, which is understandable, because behind the scenes, strong politics were at work for the Long Island City location. Now that the Queens plan has collapsed, I have revised my suggestion to make it less complicated and more beneficial for Amazon.
Amazon would buy 60 acres directly from the city and state where it could build a campus with offices, apartments and retail, as well as educational, recreational and other facilities, such as helipad and ferry ports. As with my initial idea, it would be within walking distance of the Financial District.
How could the initial search for an Amazon HQ2 site have missed 60 acres of government-owned property in Manhattan? Well, it’s mostly water: The property line is 1,000 feet from the pier head to the bulkhead line and approximately 3,000 feet from the north side of Battery Park City to the northern property line. But the land can be created with fill, just as it was for Battery Park City, for which I was chairman and founder.
The transaction would be fairly simple, and the only outside approval would have to come from the Army Corps of Engineers, which previously gave its blessing to Battery Park City right next door.
The price would be nominal because the city owns the eastern half of the site and the state owns the western half; neither is getting any income from it.
If Amazon paid $500,000 per acre—a total of just $30 million—the city and the state would still benefit because they would be able to collect property taxes on it in the future.
Amazon could obtain the fill from below the Verrazano Bridge. That sand is being dumped 100 miles out to sea, so the price would be very low. Another cost-saver is that the rock bottom on the headquarters site is close to the water’s surface.
The larger buildings would be built on bearing piles, which would go down to the rock. Buildings of 2 and 3 stories and recreational areas would rest on the sand or be on friction piles.
This plan would give Amazon everything it needs, require few approvals and fill city and state coffers for decades to come.
Charles J. Urstadt, a former state housing commissioner, chaired the Battery Park City Authority from its inception to 1979. He was vice chairman from 1998 to 2010.
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