President Jan opened the day’s ZOOM only meeting by introducing the day’s featured speaker, Philip Pitruzzello, a nationally respected real estate and development leader who helped reimagine successful urban transformations in several U.S cities, as well as being a student of urban renewal worldwide. He has been a leader in the ongoing evolution of urban neighborhoods and recently recognized as Executive of the Year.
He began with an overview of the “urban development and reenvisioning” that took place to develop Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. “Battery Park City was successful once people understood the vision,” he said. “The challenge was balancing open space with commercial influences.”
“When I think about Seattle and the new waterfront, the push to engage community members should continue on design, rethinking over built retail, the vibrancy at the street level and its importance,” he said.
He explained that the development of the Battery Park City master plan in 1966 was a complex and thorough process, with one-third of the area set aside for parks and public spaces. Revisions to the plan in 1979 and again in 1993 were made to better promote diversity and foster economic growth. Ultimately, one-third of the lower Manhattan area was allocated for parks and public spaces. A place where a neighborhood would grow vs. a mega-project.
“Culture was first and foremost creating open spaces, devoting space to public art and the Battery City esplanade to give people a sense of access and vision of what parks could be in the future,” he continued.
He described how large retail spaces are being repurposed to residential apartments with amenities that foster trust, privacy, and dignity to activate a space to generate interest.
“Creative housing ideas from other parts of the world including the Battery Park City experience, are important as Seattle thinks about how to manage the affordable housing crisis,” he said. “Converting abandoned buildings into housing requires cooperation for private and public sources as we did in Battery Park City that now has 1,500 affordable apartments with a community center, pool and other amenities.”
He went on to describe a project in Minneapolis that built tiny village homes, where 140 people were accommodated in prefabricated, modest but functional apartments designed for single resident occupants (SROs).
“No single tool brings back downtown it is a lot of different tools and experimentation,” he concluded. “People have to think creatively with building owners about incentives to build out those facilities as the building won’t be viable if it is an eyesore but incentivize as owner from the public sector for a period of time.”
