Water Street should be reduced to two lanes and filled with trees, grass, and flowers. This area has no future as an office district, but it could become a very desirable residential area.
This is a start, but it needs to cover the whole stretch.
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Vegetation can make a residential neighborhood feel nicer and more appealing to potential residents and residents alike but itâs not the only factor. The sidewalks lining State/Water/Pearl St are already very wide when compared with other Manhattan streets of similar traffic width and some areas already have vegetation/trees, one wouldnât need to reduce the lanes to achieve the affect.
Residential areas with street conditions as you describe canât be compared to the current conditions that exist on Water st because they wouldnât have the same affect as say streets on the UES and UWS. I wouldnât move to an area that just had nicely designed streetscapes just because when I could also just walk to a park that is nearby, which that also wouldnât really matter if you live in a highrise in FiDi because you just see another building across, not the street.
Which Iâm really just saying that plants dont necessarily attract people, it âmayâ make them feel better in some instances, but it isnât necessarily a high factor in people traffic.
If conditions improved to the extent that people wanted to live there, the area would change a lot. The waterfront is this areaâs greatest asset.
Paris is dramatically reducing car lanes on the Champs Elysee and replacing them with trees, and that boulevard already has perhaps the widest, greenest sidewalks in any city.
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Thatâs a valid point, but Iâm still saying that vegetation on the street isnât the important factor that would bring people here. The architecture is, which in the case of the Champs Elysees, is like the UWS/UES comparison I made, it cant be used on this setting. The CE has quaint architecture much like the UWS/UES for the most part. The buildings are small/several stories high and were already mostly residential. The case of FiDi turning more into a residential neighborhood now is that the architecture is not quaint, itâs monolithic, like I said, you just see another building outside your view, not the street conditions. Street conditions are also important but not on the side of how much vegetation there is, the street conditions of the buildings are more important because whatever businesses are there will attract people to come live there, amenities as well. Most of the tenants will not see the stuff at street level like trees and plants because the buildings are tall, not intimate if that makes sense. Itâs a concept of scale in this case, not the street design needing to be more landscaped, which although it could be better, itâs just not really that important.
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I actually visited this site a couple months ago. The developers (Vanbarton) were very creative in generating buildable SF (air rights) to build the extra floors on top. They essentially sealed off a large footprint in the middle of each floor to make it a dead area that doesnât count towards the building floor area, and were thus able to add it on top where the floor space is far more valuable.
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I actually donât like the inner courtyards that they have to build in these types of conversion, the rooms that face these shaftways are very poorly naturally lit not to mention that they normally donât have very much window area. Unfortunately its really the only way that the floor plate can be used to itâs fullest otherwise the units would be extremely long and narrow and then the inner most portion wouldnât receive any day light. The same can be said for itâs sister building.
Itâs important to point out that the inner space is not accessible or even has windows so canât be called a courtyard or atrium. It is entirely sealed off.
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Oh, this one doesnât have an inner open air shaftway/courtyard like its sister building? I guess itâs still using the same principle to reduce the depth of units. Thatâs what I thought you were talking about initially before posting the photos, thatâs definitely an unconventional method. Are you sure that they arenât using the shaft for anything, not even mechanical? 
They made it clear that it will not be used for anything at all. Literally just being sealed and forgotten.
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Will this building get a new facade?
Interesting! Thanks for providing that insight!
@robertwalpole I think it was just painted and the windows were replaced, though Antonio may be able to provide more info or correct mine.
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Thanks, TKDV.
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