Battery Park City Authority CEO Gayle Horwitz and a rendering of ball fields on the community spaceAfter 43 years as the lead developer of Battery Park City, the Battery Park City authority is nearing completion of its last projects on the neighborhood built on landfill from the excavation of the original World Trade Center site.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a $50 million community center and sports facility will open in February, and later in 2012, the redevelopment of Pier A will be complete.
“We are closing one chapter as real-estate developer and opening a new chapter as a building manager,” said Gayle Horwitz, chief executive of the authority.
The community space will be run by Asphalt Green and will have sports and fitness facilities, including a 25-yard lap pool, and neighborhood workshops, such as music and cooking classes, and early childhood programs. Construction was partly financed by Milstein Properties, which built the neighborhood’s most recent residential towers — Liberty Luxe and Liberty Green — that flank the community center.
Meanwhile, Pier A will get food courts and a performance space.
It’s all space that will serve a burgeoning residential neighborhood, whose number of residents has doubled to 14,000 since the Sept. 11 attacks. [WSJ]