LOOKING WEST: A VISION FOR STREETS

In the Meatpacking District, streets were designed for trucks, but today they’re filled with people. So they need an upgrade. And that upgrade should make the streets safe and navigable, good for business, and well balanced, too.

We recently unveiled the Western Gateway Vision Plan, which provides a roadmap for bringing the western portion of the district into the 21st Century. Much has changed since the late 1980s. The reconstructed core of the District, with its sprawling plazas and landscaping along Ninth Avenue, shows how much opportunity we have for better using public space throughout to support commerce and create space people enjoy.

Extraordinary attractions have opened on our western edge in Hudson River Park. Little Island is a blockbuster and Pier 57 is only just beginning. Genesis House and the Whitney Museum are at home on Tenth Avenue. And Google has an east-west campus that spans from Eighth Avenue into the Hudson River. Yet the streets are as they were when the city created Route 9A after the elevated highway collapsed at Gansevoort Street.

Thinking Big

Imagine crossing the highway when you leave the Whitney at Gansevoort Street to get to David Hammons’ Day’s End on the soon-to-open Gansevoort Peninsula? This plan does. What about having lunch on Washington Street in a plaza alongside an art installation? That can happen. Confused every time you try to come into Meatpacking at 14th Street from the Greenway or the West Side Highway? Us too. The Western Gateway Vision plan would rationalize the intersection, add plaza space, and provide a protected bike connection from the Greenway to the bike lanes of Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue.

Sure all this will take a lot of work, but you don’t make change without getting the ball rolling.

On September 29, 2022, the Meatpacking BID unveiled the Western Gateway Area Needs Report + Vision plan at its Annual Meeting. You can read more about it here, and stay tuned for the full report.