City: New Tribeca Architecture is Worthy of Garbage

[Renderings by Dattner Architects and Weisz + Yoes Architecture.]

Yesterday the city's somewhat obscure Public Design Commission reviewed the latest plans (seen above) for the Tower O' Garbage, the Sanitation Department's proposed home for three districts' worth of garbage trucks along the West Side Highway between Canal and Spring Streets. Neighbors in Hudson Square and Tribeca have been fighting the trashy terror with an anger normally seen only when Whole Foods runs out of stroller parking, but that didn't stop the commission from unanimously approving the updated design. The commission also addressed allegations that the garbage garage would drag down property values and make the nearby Urban Glass House unlivable. An (admittedly biased) tipster summarizes the discussion:

According to one commissioner, DSNY 'is to be commended' for a final improved design which will 'add value' to living in Hudson Square. Another opined that the new developments in the historic Northern Tribeca neighborhood were all 'glass boxes' and this will 'fit in well' with the neighbors. On the matter of 24/7 colored lighting shining into the windows of the residents of the Philip Johnson designed Urban Glass House, another remarked that the luminosity of the rendering as depicted, 'is just one of those silly Photoshop things that doesn't reflect reality.'"

Questions about process (why consider a municipal design for a site that is not yet City-owned) and safety (banks of electrical transformers newly relocated to face the Holland Tunnel Vent Shaft and the Urban Glass House at a height of 21 feet to avoid a Category 2 Hurricane in the flood plain) were ignored.

But hold on a minute: Is the commission right? The new renderings really aren't so different or worse than other new North Tribeca buildings, which either says something about the quality of the architects enlisted to gussy up the garbage garage, or the state of luxury development Downtown. You decide!
· Tower O' Garbage coverage [Curbed]