RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: What's so new about the New York City waterfront? RAYMOND GASTIL: What's new on the New York waterfront is that there is a great deal of change happening right now. The pace of change has increased since the past few decades. We have got new ferry terminals and we have new parks. We have new projects at all sorts of scales and they are not just in Manhattan, but in the other boroughs, from Staten Island to here in Brooklyn. And the quality-there is a quality of the park and a quality to the types of buildings and projects I am doing now which is actually higher in terms of creativity and usefulness to the people in New York. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Ray, you talk about the fast pace of construction, but we are standing on the Brooklyn Promenade, overlooking the future site of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. That took 15 years in the making, and as we can see, no ground has been broken. What's so fast about that? RAYMOND GASTIL: Well, there is always regular speed and then there is New York speed. But no, seriously, this has been a fast pace in the sense that there were decades at a stretch when nothing happened. In the 1970s there was like one lonely artist on the waterfront up in Queens. One lonely ecologist down in what's north of Battery Park City today. So when you talk about a pace of change, there is the speed of something like the New York Water Taxis, which are beginning to actually operate. That it (NY Water Taxis) just went ahead and happened took a while, but it is operating now...Yes, things are happening at a pace. There is approval and recognition that there should be service at the waterfront, and access to the waterfront. Esplanades are getting built on the Westside-so things are happening actually at a decent pace. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Some people argue that the reason things go so slow here in New York City is because decisions about what goes up in the Waterfront are made by community organizations, by politicians and by bureaucrats rather than by entrepreneurs. I guess another way of saying that is because the waterfront is mostly publicly owned rather than privately owned. What do you think about that? RAYMOND GASTIL: Well, there are a couple of problems. On a small scale there are entrepreneurs who can actually take on the hard costs of restoring piers and so forth. But not at the scale that we are talking about here. I mean, something like this, there just aren't private entrepreneurs who can really take it on. The public sector is going to be involved no matter what, even if it is a development project, which in this case it is not because it is a park. So the public have a role. You may be dissatisfied with the way or the pace public decision makers are making, but you have to accept what it is going to be, that they are going to be involved no matter how privatized you might want to make the development of the waterfront. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Tell us a little bit about what the Brooklyn Bridge Park is going to look like. RAYMOND GASTIL: Well, Brooklyn Bridge Park is an amazing story. I mean there were proposals in the '80s that were resisted by the folks who lived here because they were high rises and so forth. And they have stepped back from that, and then the economy slowed, so there was nothing happening for a while. But in the '90s, the discussion opened up again. And so there was a community group, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, which was really focused on making a change here that the community would be happy with. And what ultimately happened was that the state, and the city, they created a development corporation which did a lot of work-literally scores of meetings. It was a very intensive planning process. They actually came up with the plan and with the money for it from the state and the city -- over $150 million which is now ready to go. I mean, there is still work to be done. They still have to do the final design and they still have to go through an environmental impact statement -- a lot of it is legislative. Again, no entrepreneur can get around the legislation of what it takes to do a waterfront project. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: When will there be a park here? When do you think? RAYMOND GASTIL: Between 2005-2007. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: When will it be finished? It is not going to take one year. RAYMOND GASTIL: I didn't look at their latest release or their latest report. They have to do estimates themselves. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say there will be a park in 2006 or '07. Let's say that that's actually possible. Because when you actually start building, if you look at the examples in New York Esplanade and the other kind of waterfront projects, once the permit is really underway, it doesn't take that long. I mean they moved at an incredible pace on the Hudson River Park once it was finally all ready to go. Starting like here, it took a long time. But once everybody said yes, people make it happen. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: There is another big plan that has just been proposed to change the waterfront of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Tell me a little bit about that. RAYMOND GASTIL: Well that's a different kind of thing. This of course is a plan, this is about actually building something, making a park and all the other stuff that's going on. Up there, that's a plan which is like to change the zoning and the usage. That is setting a different city framework for what you can do there. It depends on private entrepreneurs and so forth to actually do it all. What happened was that Greenpoint and Williamsburg were traditional industrial areas, walled off from the waterfront. In recent years these kinds of industries that wall them off are more service-oriented... Basically the city and the community have taken the position that they don't want to be an industrial waterfront anymore. They don't want waste transfer, they don't want power plants. So what they are trying to do now is say, "You know we are going to let the actual waterfront part of this fall into waterfront zoning and allow a kind of housing development connected with the waterfront esplanade of about 1.6 miles or so." RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: This is the model? RAYMOND GASTIL: This is certainly the historic model. I mean this is when they were sort of cooking up Battery Park City, one of the things where they actually figured out the design of it. They came over here and looked at this. They said they looked at this, and they did. What you can do here, and what they proved with this promenade and other esplanades around the city is that you can actually have a very public space, accessible to people who are not just from the immediate community. And this place doesn't actually have to be next to a big roadway or have big services, it can actually be a pedestrian access. And that's what is so successful about it. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: You said the city has decided that they don't want an industrialized waterfront. Is that a good idea? Don't we need at least in part an industrialized waterfront? RAYMOND GASTIL: Well they have been very careful in that plan. You look at their zoning map, the proposed zoning map for Greenpoint-Williamsburg, it is a map with lots of wiggles. There are lots of places where they are actually trying to recognize existing manufacturing uses and even existing maritime industry. So the city has planned for a lot of that. They have still been able to scrap the boats and repaint the boats for the Circle Line and the Brooklyn Navy Yard; and they also, to the south, you know north of the Williamsburg Bridge, there is a section with industry now. And they are saying we are not changing that right now. So they are aware of that. I think the larger question is do you want the edge of the waterfront to just be park, or can you let other stuff happen? And the answer is you have to let other stuff happen. You know what we learned from 9/11, you have to have places for recreation or emergency. I mean there are all sorts of stuff. So that kind of district is not going to be industry the way industry was historically on the waterfront. It is not going to be ... because the idea of a huge barge coming and offloading and so forth, for the most part isn't going to happen, at least in the district they have marked for waterfront plant and zoning. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Let's talk about that. Because we started this interview, we just saw a piece about the last vestige of the traditional maritime industry over on Pier 6-12. Was it inevitable that vast industry, stevedores, the long shoremen, loading and unloading of ships was going to disappear from New York? RAYMOND GASTIL: Whether it was inevitable to make a decision that the major containerized port should be in New Jersey and now in South Brooklyn, down in the Sunset Park area, that is something historians can tell you. It was a decision that was made, and then a port... you were going to have to have a containerized port. It couldn't be on the West Side of Manhattan. It probably couldn't be in other places. And so what we have here in Brooklyn is a decision that was made. You know, we are going to say that some of that type of activity does have to stay in New York City -- not just in a larger port of New York and New Jersey. And we are going to put it right here in this Redhook, in Brooklyn. And that was a decision made in part for all sorts of economic, political, etc. reasons. The question today is whether it is inevitable that that should go away. It depends on what you are reading. If you read a study by an economist that says the ports, it is subsidizing this, it is never going to work, it is too small. It doesn't meet contemporary standards of port activity. You are going to sit back and say, well, it is the job of Economic Development Corporation. You have to find out if there is a better way. That is to say, there are a lot of people that would argue that these are growing concerns. They are making money within a framework... so why take this business away, if you think it is a legitimate economic activity? Secondly, the biggest question is do you want to have just an almost kind of redundancy theory? Do you need to have a place for the containerized stuff? And also is there stuff down here that isn't just containirized? RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: What's your guess? Would you venture a guess? RAYMOND GASTIL: It is a tough guess to make because there are people's lives at stake. I hate to say, I have to study it more. But in a sense, we are both really making a guess. A guess is, I think there will continue to be some port activity happening here in Red Hook. But how that happens, what its nature is, whether it is really successfully mixed with open regeneration, it is very hard to say. In other cities of the world, it is a tough thing. It has been done, but it is a tough thing to actually have industrial port activity next to a changing district. It is a hard thing to do. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: You talk about other cities around the world. You have written extensively about how other cities around the world have successfully reinvented their waterfront. RAYMOND GASTIL: Sure. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Any particular lesson from any particular city for New York City? RAYMOND GASTIL: Well I think are some lessons from other cities. I think the way Dublin (Ireland) is doing right now is very interesting. I mean their sort of a major industrial port has gone further away from the center of the city. But they have to deal with the question, "Okay, we have this leftover district. What are we going to do here?" And they actually made it into a kind of office district. But they didn't sort of kill it the way that office districts sometimes can do. They actually approached it in a different way. They scaled the buildings in a kind of Dublin scale. And kind of quality of what they are trying to create down at the ground level with types of activities. I think that this is something that if we are moving in that direction, we should look at it closely. I think there are other cities, like the Dutch cities, which do amazing things. They have shown, which I admire, is they have shown that when they take these sort of formal industrial districts, they have been able to actually build housing and other stuff right up against the water. And it actually works. It works as they develop their scale decisions and the way the public spaces are shaped. It is not like everyone is walled off from the water. It is still an interesting waterfront. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: So what do you think, 25 years from now, what does the New York City waterfront going to look like? RAYMOND GASTIL: Well the New York City waterfronts, no matter what, are going to have some more esplanades. Love them or not, there are going to be more esplanades, and it is a good thing. They have worked, they give access, and people love them. All we can hope is that they get better, they are more interesting, and that we find a way to make an esplanade kind of an exciting place to be. Don't take it for granted that you just borrow a formula. Actually try to be creative about it. Be creative about getting down to the water back. Other things there will be. There is going to be more housing next in line. The waterfront views are good and the best crop you plant in New York soil is residential growth. Housing, for better or worse, brings new revenues to the city and new taxes. It brings in all sorts of things into the city that if you are about economic regeneration, it is a good thing. But zoning can't do it alone; a plan can't do it alone. It has to be an activity which entrepreneurs get excited about and which the community gets excited about. But that there is some sort of return that justifies being a little bit more creative. But it is really also a decision that has to be made through a return on the value. People are going to want to live in a more interesting area than that type of arrangement at present. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: Are you excited about the future of the waterfront in New York City? RAYMOND GASTIL: Yes, of course I am. I live near a waterfront now. It is part of my recreation as well as my professional activity. I think the only thing that is tricky is all these changes, which I think we have to support. The city needs them. It is an attractive way that is good for the city. It generates a new type of economy and so forth. But there has to be a realization that the waterfront is not just a front yard. It kind of has to do the backyard work too. Ultimately all these amazing people that are sort of, the amphibian people, are back and forth in that water every day. If there is no place for them in this picture, we haven't done our job right. RAPHAEL PI ROMAN: All right, thanks a lot. RAYMOND GASTIL: You're welcome Raphael. It has been a pleasure.