BIG U: Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency

On behalf of the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR), JLP+D was involved in the first five years of planning and development of the BIG U, an ambitious, award-winning flood protective system encompassing ten miles of Lower Manhattan waterfront that was selected as the winner of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild By Design competition. The plan seeks to overlay a new connective network of “social infrastructure” on top of new waterfront resiliency infrastructure, with a focus on equity and inclusion. The project responds to the area’s severe flood vulnerability made evident during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when unprecedented damage occurred in neighborhoods with some of the highest concentrations of workers, residents, visitors, and transit infrastructure anywhere in the United States. The proposed system not only shields the city against floods and stormwater, but provides social and environmental benefits to the community, and fosters an improved public realm. When fully built, the system will extend from West 57th Street on the Hudson River, south to the historic Battery and up to the United Nations headquarters at East 42nd Street along the East River.

Given the scale of this ambitious endeavor, the plan has been broken into multiple implementation phases that have been subject to competitive procurement processes. JLP+D was selected to continue work on early implementation phases, including the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) projects. JLP+D has informed the team’s design by exploring revenue generation and real estate utilization uses including public programming, car sharing facilities, and other conventional and creative uses that can generate revenue to support operations, maintenance, and programmatic costs. Additionally, the firm has helped to assess both quantitative and qualitative aspects of cost-benefit analyses, capital funding strategies, intergovernmental outreach and coordination efforts, public policy alignments, and stakeholder engagement. Proposed solutions for each project phase are being designed in close consultation with numerous city, state, and federal agencies as well as and private business and residential community stakeholders. The project teams continue to build strong local community and political support.