Sprawled over 223ha and meandering almost 8km along Manhattan’s west side, Hudson River Park represents the city’s largest open space development since Central Park took shape 150 years ago. Halcrow undertook the bulkhead restoration and new overlooks for a 2ha section of the park.
Supporting a host of leisure activities, the project features 13 public recreation piers, a waterside esplanade and a continuous, tree-lined bicycle path. As well as accommodating existing maritime uses such as the passenger ship terminal, the park paves the way for new nautical activities, including water taxis and trans-Hudson ferries.
Retained by the Hudson River Park Trust as sub consultant to a local landscape architect, Halcrow prepared the detailed design for the first phase of the park development – the Greenwich Village segment, also known as segment four.
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Scope of work
- inspection, evaluation, detailed design and construction support for the rehabilitation of 914m of existing shoreline bulkhead and the demolition and reconstruction of piers 45, 46 and 51
- preparation of performance specifications for a custom float and associated gangway access system at the outboard end of pier 51
- pre-design services, including review of previous reports and recommendations concerning the shoreline structures and piers, subsurface investigation, field inspection of shoreline and bulkheads, above and underwater inspections of waterfront structures, and bathymetric surveys
Concrete piles were selected for their durability and low maintenance requirements. Halcrow designed a hybrid pile to minimise costs, using precast concrete for the section above the mudline and steel with a hardened point below.
Costs were further reduced by manufacturing each pile to a constant length of 20m, with variances in rock elevation accounted for by altering the size of the steel section. Halcrow’s value engineering efforts reduced the estimated construction cost of an earlier design. Such innovative revisions slashed both the materials and time required for construction.