While New Yorkers weren't looking last week, workers completed the four-year, $70 million renovation of part of the West Side Highway and gave motorists a newly smooth ride between 57th and 72d Streets. Now the city can get ready for the next phase of renovation: tearing down the renovated road and building a new one.
Talk about planned obsolescence! But the refurbished road will indeed come down if Donald Trump and partners go ahead as planned with the Riverside South housing development on the Hudson River.
Right now, the site between 59th and 72d Streets is 74.6 acres of weeds, rubbish, a temporary garden and plenty of promise. Between the property and the river stands an elevated piece of the West Side Highway -- the piece just renovated.
In the late 1980's, some civic groups came up with the ambitious idea of dropping that highway segment down to ground level, curving it toward the east and building a waterfront park above so that people could stroll to the river without crossing a highway. Highways separate New Yorkers from their waterfront throughout the city; here was a chance to break that pattern.
At the time, nobody in the city and state governments paid much attention, and soon the highway fell into such dangerous disrepair that it had to be strengthened before it collapsed. There was no time to redesign it. If there had been a realistic opportunity to move the highway down and away from the river, it was lost.
Meanwhile, a coalition of the civic groups resisting Mr. Trump's plans to build what he originally called Television City in 1985 negotiated a peace treaty appealing to both sides. Mr. Trump reduced the size of his project significantly, and included a generous waterfront park.
But there remained the problem of the elevated highway. The park could easily go under the present highway, but that is not what anyone involved wants. Mr. Trump and associates seek unobstructed views from their apartment towers. And civic groups resent obstruction of the waterfront.
"I think we would get a terrible park and a terrible bunch of apartments if the highway isn't moved," said Richard A. Kahan, board chairman of the Riverside South Planning Corporation. "The project would be in serious jeopardy. You're talking about marketing apartments overlooking a park and a river, versus marketing apartments overlooking an elevated highway."
What to do? The eclectic supporters of Riverside South came up with a novel approach: in effect, they turned back the clock and proceeded as if the renovation hadn't happened.
At their urging, the State Urban Development Corporation has hired consultants to work on an environmental impact statement on the new development -- a prerequisite to building the project and a new road. A few years ago, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had money designated in the Federal highway bill to pay for that study and design -- about $22 million for a demonstration project, of which approximately $7 million has been allocated for the environmental study.
The idea is to persuade Federal, state and city officials to replace the elevated road with a new road costing at least $100 million, 80 percent in Federal funds, 20 percent from the state.
But it isn't quite that simple. Officials in Washington -- a new, Republican Washington -- will have to be convinced that the project rates Federal dollars.
Will Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, supportive so far, want to send highway money -- often considered political pork -- to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's New York City? After all, it was Mr. D'Amato who regaled the Senate with his anti-pork rendition of "Old MacDonald." And other parts of New York will be competing for any Federal highway money allocated to the state. Will Buffalo or Peekskill support giving West Siders a nice park and apartment dwellers a great view? Will George E. Pataki?
The just-concluded renovation should keep the highway strong and safe for at least 25 years. It is hard to imagine elected officials agreeing to tear it down so soon after its completion. Then again, nobody can say when construction of Riverside South, on the drawing boards in one or another configuration since the 70's, will be built.
"The real question is how many years it is when the project really gets going and whether the highway has really amortized its cost by then," said the Manhattan Borough President, Ruth W. Messinger, a supporter of the Riverside South compact. "Whether it will make sense, given the funds available and the priorities, to build a park that is out from under the highway is something another generation of people will decide."
Another generation? Ms. Messinger, who recognizes looming political trouble when she sees it, is either yielding to realism or hedging. Or maybe she is hoping.
