Leslie Koch

Leslie Koch, president of The Trust for Governors Island, is responsible for the planning, redevelopment, and operation of 150 acres of Governors Island. Located 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan, the island is the newest addition to New York City’s real estate portfolio.

Koch, a native New Yorker, draws from her experience in both the private and public sectors in managing the island. After receiving a master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University, she initially worked as a marketing executive for Microsoft. She then worked as CEO of the Fund for Public Schools where her leadership helped secure nearly $160 million of public and private funding for City education-related initiatives.

In 2003, the federal government sold the entire 172-acre island, except for the 22-acre national monument on the island’s northern side, to the people of New York State for one dollar. The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) was formed as a City/State partnership to take over the day-to-day operations on the island. GIPEC was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation. In April 2006, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg formally named Koch as president of GIPEC, citing her strong track record in successful public/private partnerships. (more…)

City can now negotiate to acquire northern section of High Line in order to complete 1.45-mile elevated park. On July 29, 2010, the City Council approved a proposal by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the Department of Parks and Recreation to acquire the remaining portion of the High Line elevated rail line and associated easements. This section, currently owned by CSX Corporation, begins at West 30th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues and runs west before turning north and terminating at West 34th Street. It also includes the “spur,” which extends east off the main structure at West 30th Street and terminates above the intersection of Tenth Avenue and West 30th Street. The easements associated with the structure generally extend below and above the High Line and include property owned by the MTA and the Convention Center Development Corporation. (more…)

Amanda M. Burden, Director of the Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission, has the lead role in building a blueprint, known as Vision 2020, for managing the City’s more than 500 miles of waterfront. The new comprehensive plan will recommend long-term management strategies for the City’s waterfront and waterways, and identify high-priority initiatives that can be quickly implemented. Burden sat down with CityLand to discuss how City Planning has approached this challenge and why the waterfront is essential to the City.

Improving the waterfront has been one of Burden’s passions since her days as Battery Park City Authority’s vice president of design in the 1980s. Having “respite from the density at the water’s edge,” Burden says, “will inure to every New Yorker’s benefit, and it’s one reason why [the Vision 2020] plan is so important.” (more…)

Image: Joel Sternfeld ©2000, courtesy of Friends of the High Line.

Acquisition of the High Line’s third section would allow the City to complete contiguous 1.45-mile elevated public park. On May 12, 2010, the City Planning Commission heard testimony on the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the Department of Parks & Recreation’s proposal to acquire the northern portion of the High Line elevated rail line from CSX Corporation. This section branches out from Tenth Avenue and 30th Street — a portion referred to as the “spur” — and runs east along the perimeter of the Hudson Yards on West 30th Street before turning north up Twelfth Avenue and terminating below grade at West 34th Street. The acquisition would facilitate the transfer of ownership to the City and permit the development of the High Line’s third and final section.

The High Line is a 1.45-mile elevated steel and concrete rail line built in the 1930s to deliver meat and other goods throughout Manhattan’s lower west side. Trains stopped running along the High Line in 1980, and nearly twenty years later community activists formed Friends of the High Line in order to preserve the High Line and advocate for the construction of a publicly accessible park on the structure. (more…)

The Vision 2020 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan

Proposal is part of inter-agency effort to develop blueprint for managing the City’s shoreline. On April 8, 2010, the Department of City Planning held a public hearing on the Vision 2020 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. Vision 2020 builds on the City’s original 1992 waterfront plan, and Planning is required by local law to submit a new waterfront report by December 31, 2010 and revise it every ten years thereafter.

2020 plan is part of a broader City-wide initiative to establish a long-term blueprint for sustainable management of the City’s 578 miles of shoreline. Known as the Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy, the plan also includes the City Waterfront Action Agenda, created by the Economic Development Corporation, to identify high-priority initiatives that could be implemented within the next three years.

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