The most important aspect of this park is the piers.
Having those fully funded and come to fruition will be the key to making this park truly outstanding/unique.
There's a danger that those will be seen as an extra amenity and not necessary. They're also very expensive to do. Seeing the piers redeveloped will likely be an advocacy priority.
An earlier design proposed redeveloping the piers (they would have had to be demolished and rebuilt) and turning them into park & amenity space. Estimates came in at $30 million for the piers alone, to be considered as a second phase of the project.
New design looks like it abandons that idea, at least in the short term, while maybe leaving open the possibility down the line for the two Western piers?
Looks like pretty sensible value engineering. Getting rid of the substantial amount of bulkhead reconstruction as well as the pier reconstruction, making the boardwalk a more regular shape that would be easier to build, simplifying some of the designs, separating the scope of the food hall/restaurant area into the CRA. Hopefully these changes result in a project that can be built sometime soon.
Interesting design. Curious about positioning the exhibition space and pavilion on top of parking though. Also question the need for more on-site parking when JSO is moving to the Florida Blue building which should free up spaces across the street. Definitely agree on incorporating Berkman 2 into this somehow.
I wonder if this is a storm resilience measure. Plus, I'm sure that it couldn't hurt to have onsite parking for marketing the pavilion to the suburban crowd even it isn't actually necessary.
I love that they incorporated a fishing pier, and I wonder if the pier adjacent to the Orleck is set aside for an additional historic ship. It'd be nice to have a couple ships like at Patriots Point in Charleston.
Storm resilience is well and good if that's the reason. Downtown has plenty of parking, including right across the street, and every $25k per space that goes into adding more is money that can't be spent on actual improvements to the park itself for people who live in or visit Downtown. Granted, it's not the DIA's fault that there is not an effective transportation alternative.
