Flood-Resistant Neighborhood Would Be 80 Years in the Making

Thursday, May 22, 2014

[Rockefeller Foundation] Study Predicts Building in East River Could Pay for Itself and Then Some

A team of architects and consultants is proposing to build a new neighborhood of residential towers and office buildings on landfill in the East River as part of a counter-intuitive plan to make the city more flood resistant.

The idea, called Seaport City, was hatched last year by the Bloomberg administration. It would be constructed high enough to block major storm surges from flooding the Financial District and also generate enough money to pay for itself and potentially another $900 million worth of resiliency projects around the city by selling the development rights, according to the study expected to be released today by the city’s Economic Development Corporation...