By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
TRIBECA — Local residents are turning a strip of Hudson Street into a public seating area lined with lush plants as soon as next month.
The block of Hudson Street just north of Chambers Street, adjacent to Bogardus Garden, has to close anyway for water main work that will take six months to a year.
To make the best of the construction, the Friends of Bogardus Garden are paying $9,000 to fill the block with planters, tables and chairs and maintain it. They will pay ACE, a local nonprofit employing homeless workers, to maintain the temporary plaza.
The city will likely reopen the street once the water main work is done, but the garden group hopes to build a permanent plaza there eventually.
“A lot of nastiness will be going on on either side,” said Victoria Weil, 40, a TriBeCa resident and member of the Bogardus group, referring to the upcoming Chambers and Hudson water main projects. “This could be an oasis in the middle of all that.”
Weil has collected signatures from 18 local business owners who support the project, including Craig Bero, whose Cosmopolitan Cafe is across the street.
But Sergio Acappella, 49, whose eponymous Italian restaurant is at the corner of Chambers and Hudson Streets, emphatically opposes the project.
“It’s a terrible idea, absolutely terrible,” Acappella said Thursday. “It’s going to destroy my restaurant.”
Acappella is worried that taxis and limousines will no longer be able to drop customers in front of his entrance, and even though the project is billed as temporary, he is afraid the plaza will become permanent.
Several members of Community Board 1’s TriBeCa Committee feared the same thing after they heard a presentation on the plaza at a meeting Wednesday night. They were particularly worried about the closure’s impact on traffic.
“It’s an important turning point,” said Allan Tannenbaum, a TriBeCa resident. “To choke off the very beginning of Hudson Street is a mistake.”
However, the Department of Transportation predicts a minimal impact from closing the block, since fewer than 125 cars per hour use it during peak times.
DOT officials also believe closing the street would improve pedestrian safety at the five-way intersection where Chambers, Hudson and West Broadway meet.
CB1’s TriBeCa Committee ultimately voted to support the temporary plaza but did not take a position on a permanent one.
