The city planning department this week unveiled a final concept plan for the East River waterfront, showing in detail how the city will reconnect Lower Manhattan to the riverfront and recapture some of the street vitality that once occupied the slips and docks downtown.

“We hope to bring the uses of the city to the water’s edge and start thinking about how they work together,” the director for city planning in Lower Manhattan, Michael Samuelian, said.

Community Board 1 was “rather pleased” with the plans, voting unanimously to back the city’s proposal. “Now the big question is, are we going to get the money from the LMDC,” Community Board 1’s district manager, Paul Goldstein, said.

The city expects to ask the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for $150 million to finance the proposals, $60 million of which will go to building the esplanade and $40 million to rebuild and renovate the piers. Mr. Samuelian said the city will not seek the $65 million from the LMDC to move an underpass, but will ask for $10 million for the engineering studies.

A spokesperson for the LMDC, Joanna Rose, declined to comment on whether the development corporation will grant funding to the plan. She would only say that the LMDC is considering a number of proposals for Lower Manhattan to distribute the nearly $800 million allocated for redevelopment.

Residents at the meeting also questioned the city’s plans to pay for upkeep of the esplanade and its surrounding environs, asking that the city find a revenue stream for maintenance before moving forward.

“We have been through this process for 10 years with the walkway and they always present the materials in the best light,” the director of the Seaport Community Coalition, Gary Fagin, said. “But if you look at the reality, it can sometimes turn out completely different, especially if it includes plantings and foliage and pools. It can be a logistical nightmare and impossible to maintain. And these issues they have not addressed yet.”

The master plan, which includes various elements for the waterfront site extending from Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan to the East River Park, comes after a yearlong study by the city’s planning department and a team of design consultants.

In addition to a 2-mile esplanade and bicycle path running along the waterfront, the plan calls for more than a dozen shopping and recreation pavilions, the rebuilding of Pier 15 south of Fulton, and a series of public spaces along the boat slips on South Street.

The planked walkway, furnished by benches, trellises, planters, and shrubbery, will run under the FDR Drive, which will be re-clad to lessen noise.The city also plans to add lighting to illuminate the esplanade at night.

“We see this as our version of the High Line,” Mr. Samuelian said, referring to the redevelopment project under way in Chelsea. “Instead of placing a park on top of a piece of infrastructure, we are placing one beneath.”

Other highlights of the plan include moving the Battery Park underpass ramp about 350 feet north to create a one-acre plaza in front of the Battery Maritime Building and refurbishing Peck Slip with a 4000-square-foot pool that can be used as a skating rink in the winter.

The East River plan comes as part of the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to revitalize Lower Manhattan neighborhoods.

“This plan is crucial to the waterfront and a key component of the mayor’s vision for all of Lower Manhattan, not just ground zero,” the director of city planning, Amanda Burden, said to members of Community Board 1 earlier this week.

Even before September 11, though, residents in and around the seaport have pushed to revitalize the area. In 2000, Community Board 1 teamed up with the Alliance for Downtown New York and architecture and planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to conduct a preliminary study of the waterfront and sketch a master plan for the tract of land just north of Battery Park City.

Last year, the city contracted Richard Rogers Partnership in London and local architects Ken Smith of Ken Smith Landscape Architect and Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli to build on those plans. Their plan extends the original plan, which stopped at the Brooklyn Bridge, up along the East side to connect with the East River Park under the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges and completes the missing link to the waterfront bike path that winds from the Upper East Side.

If completed, Mr. Samuelian said, the 2-mile tract of new East River waterfront, along with the proposed design of Brooklyn Bridge Park and the proposed waterfront on Governor’s Island, will create more than 400 acres of new public space, a total area about half the size of Central Park.