Six Architects To Compete For East River Esplanade Design Rights

As the city mulls an expansion of the United Nations campus onto city park space and the state moves forward with plans to rebuild the Midtown segment of the FDR Drive next door, elected officials and community members are seizing the opportunity to open up access to the East River with a new waterfront esplanade.

Six prominent landscape architects, including the architect of the High Line, the architect of the Museum of Modern Art roof garden, and the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, will participate in a design competition on Friday to create a sweeping vision for a waterfront park that would stretch to 63rd Street from 34th Street along the East River.

The proposed 35-story U.N. office tower would be built on the current site of the 1.3-acre Robert Moses Playground. The loss of parkland would require the creation of more open space nearby, and officials have said a new waterfront esplanade would be an appropriate trade. A new tower would require approval by the state Legislature, and the esplanade would require approval from the developer of the former Consolidated Edison power plant site just south of the United Nations, Sheldon Solow, who owns the land. Officials from the state's Department of Transportation and from the city's parks department, as well as representatives from Mr. Solow's office, are expected to meet on Friday for a briefing on the proposed waterfront esplanade.

The 12-hour design competition is being sponsored by elected officials who represent the Upper East Side, including Assemblymen Jonathan Bing and Brian Kavanagh, state Senators Liz Krueger and Thomas Duane, and numerous civic groups. The winning design is expected to be unveiled to the public on Sunday and would serve as a makeshift blueprint for future construction.

State support for the city's plan to expand the U.N. campus has been hard to come by. "I don't believe the Senate's there," a state senator of Brooklyn, Martin Golden, said in an interview. "One would have thought the city would have moved on at this point. The U.N. doesn't curry favor with us. They are a useless group that is at best anti-American."