By Dustin Brown
WANTED: Urban design consultant to reinvent Queens Plaza, or at least redesign it. Bring spunky ideas and a public artist to boot. Think Spin, not Better Homes and Gardens. No petunias allowed.
The face of Queens Plaza is changing. MetLife has moved in, prostitutes are being shooed out and the crowded conflux of traffic and shops at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge stands poised to turn into the hub of a 21st century business district.
But it still looks kind of dingy.
Sprucing up Queens Plaza has been a longstanding goal for the Department of City Planning and the city Economic Development Corporation, which last week issued a request for proposals to develop new streetscape and landscape designs for the public spaces along the so-called gateway to Queens.
“We want it to be this really energetic, edgy, interesting space,” said Penny Lee, a planner with the Department of City Planning. “We want it to be really unique and to reflect the kind of gritty, edgy, unique character of Long Island City. We’re not hoping for a kind of real smooth petunias and flower baskets design, because it’s just not that kind of a space — and the petunias wouldn’t survive.”
The RFP brings the Queen Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Project into its second phase, which will focus on designing aesthetic improvements — like sidewalk paving and planting, lighting and street furniture — as well as a bike path along the area that stretches from the intersection of Van Dam Street and Thomson Avenue all the way to the East River.
The project is unique for the city in that the RFP calls for a design that is both artistic and “environmentally responsive,” meaning the products would be made from recycled materials and reflect ecological principles, such as solar-powered street lights.
Lee said the city Planning Department also hopes a public artist will be heavily involved in developing the design.
“We want something really innovative,” Lee said. “This is the first time the city has called for the kind of design that we’re calling for.”
The consultants who win the RFP will have to submit three different designs, at least one of which will use standard materials already approved by the city and state for streetscape design. But the other two can be far more creative.
In June the city Department of Transportation assented to the project’s first phase designs, which detailed ways of disentangling the plaza’s complex network of roadways to create a smoother flow of traffic and safer path for pedestrians.
The project is being funded by a federal grant of about $2 million.
The final phase — implementing the design recommendations from the first two phases — will require additional funding expected to come from the federal level.
Among the consultant’s duties would be redesigning JFK Commuter Triangle, a parking lot on the eastern side of Queens Plaza North that will be turned into a public space.
“We’re not expecting it to be a bucolic, restful place,” Lee said. “But we’re expecting it to be more of a signature point for the borough and a signature point for Long Island City.”
The RFP also calls for the consultant to come up with a new design to revive Queensbridge Baby Park, a paved-over park space beneath the bridge between Vernon Boulevard and 21st Street that once featured handball courts but has fallen into disuse.
The current push to improve the plaza coincides with the city’s efforts to promote Long Island City as a new central business district, an easily marketable location due to its proximity to Midtown Manhattan. Last year the City Council voted to rezone 37 blocks in the neighborhood, allowing for higher-density mixed-use development that would encourage the development of office space and residential buildings in an area that is already heavily industrial.
Queens Plaza once lived up to its name with grassy malls in the early 1900s, but the Queensboro Bridge and the elevated subway tracks brought with them an onslaught of development that radically changed the character of the neighborhood.
The city now aims to transform the image of Queens Plaza as the 100th birthday of the Queensboro Bridge approaches in 2009, the RFP says.
Lee said a number of improvements have already been made over the past decade, including the renovation of the Queensboro Plaza subway station and the planting of three medians near the MetLife building as part of the Greenstreets program.
“It’s just hard to see it because it’s just such a big place,” she said. “The smaller things kind of get lost.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
