The study encapsulates both long- and short-term ideas for Greenwich South

This week the Alliance for Downtown New York, Lower Manhattan’s Business Improvement District, released a new vision for the 23-block neighborhood south of the World Trade Center (WTC) site known as Greenwich South.

The “visioning study” encapsulates multiple long- and short-term ideas for the area, as designed by a team of city architects, planners, and environmental engineers. The study is intended to “encourage mobility, diversity of use, density, and environmental sustainability,” says Alliance President Elizabeth Berger.

Inspired partly by the remapping of Greenwich Street through the WTC site (from Vesey to Liberty Streets), the new vision aims to capitalize on the arterial’s unique linking of “Lower West Side” neighborhoods. They include some of Manhattan’s most creative and historic areas, including Tribeca and Soho, Greenwich Village, and the Meatpacking District -- where Greenwich Street terminates at Ninth Avenue and Gansevoort Street.

The Greenwich South vision takes advantage of that connection, aiming to make the southern end a model for urban sustainability and interconnectivity between neighborhoods. Its goals are outlined through five principles:

• Encourage a mix of uses, including sustainable growth and residential appeal within the commercial district.
• Reconnect Greenwich Street, building on new transportation work in the area with improved streetscapes.
• Better connect the Financial District and Battery Park City with landscape architecture and pedestrian appeal.
• Build for density that promotes sustainability; design for people to be drawn to practical amenities, public art, and inventive architecture.
• Create reasons to visit and to stay, like green spaces and public facilities.

To arrive at some of the study’s specific design guidelines, the Alliance formed a team with Architectural Research Office, along with firms Beyer Blinder Belle and Open, and included contributions from several other urban designers and researchers.

Some of their innovations span concepts like decking over the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance to potentially create space for a public market, and a public green space with wind turbines atop the Battery parking garage. Potential collaborations with city agencies and local organizations like the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council could even lead to public installations and designs that transform Greenwich South into a citywide destination.

“The plan is a ‘now’ and ‘then’ solution," says Timur Galen, co-chair of the Alliance’s Greenwich South Committee. “It puts forth relatively inexpensive transformative ideas that can be completed immediately, yet at the same time, plants the seeds for larger visionary projects that can be implemented in the future.”

More information and renderings are available at www.greenwichsouth.net, and on display in Zuccotti Park at Broadway and Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan through October 24th, 2009.

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