HUNTS POINT LIFELINES

PennDesign/OLIN
Bronx, New York

Winning Project
$20M

PennDesign / OLIN with HR&A Advisors, eDesign Dynamics, Level Infrastructure, Barretto Bay Strategies, McLaren Engineering Group, Philip Habib & Associates, Buro Happold

The 1-square mile of Hunts Point peninsula is the intersection of the local and the regional in rebuilding by design. What’s at risk in Hunts Point is the hub of the food supply for 22 million people, a $5 billion annual economy, over 20,000 direct jobs, and livelihoods of people in the poorest U.S. Congressional District. HUNTS POINT LIFELINES builds on assets and opportunities of regional importance, and a coalition of national leaders in community environmental action, business and labor, to create a working model of social, economic and physical resilience. The project demonstrates a model of WORKING WATERFRONT + WORKING COMMUNITY + WORKING ECOLOGY that applies in maritime industrial areas across the region. Four Lifelines organize the proposal:

Flood Protection Levee Lab   Flood protection that keeps a modernizing food hub dry is integrated with a waterfront greenway that opens up access to the rivers and dynamic windows on the operations and spectacle of the real working waterfront. Flood protection incorporates a string of new platforms for recreation and use on the water, and a Levee Lab of designed ecologies and applied material research. Levee Lab pilots contribute to the development of a new regulatory framework for industrial waterfronts.

Livelihoods The Levee Lab incorporates new techniques for construction, maintenance, and research to find ways for communities to participate in building their own flood- and storm-protection infrastructure  without compromising engineering or procurement integrity. If local communities benefit from the climate adaptation investments government needs to make, the value will be felt every day in new jobs, community economic assets, and awareness of the waterfront.

Maritime Emergency Supply Lines  Once the peninsula is dry and powered up, new pier infrastructure on the site of a Marine Transfer Station builds on emerging federal programs to create marine highways and improve preparedness by creating a logistics base for a Maritime Emergency Supply Chain that serves the entire East Coast when roads are impassable. The emergency infrastructure expands intermodal transport by serving commercial fishing delivery to the fish market every day.

Cleanways A new tri-generation plant is tailored to a district with huge refrigeration demand, creating low cost and low carbon cooling and a micro-grid island when the big grid goes down. A series of strategies re-center the neighborhood around transit and connect it to the waterfront greenway. New infrastructure improves air and water quality, provides safe passage for pedestrians through truck routes, and increases local access to food.

Download a PDF of the team’s final competition boards here.

View a PDF of the team’s full proposal here.

Watch a video describing the Hunts Point Lifelines project here.

Stakeholders

The City of New York, Assemblyman Marcos A. Crespo, Anheuser Busch Distributors, Bronx River Alliance, The BLK ProjeK, Community Board 2, Hunts Point Alliance for Children, Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation, Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative Association, Hunts Point Cooperative Market, Il Forno Bakery, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 202, JVL Wildcat Academy Charter School, Mothers on the Move, New Fulton Fish Fishmarket at Hunts Point, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, THE POINT Community Development Corporation, The Point ACTION program, Rocking the Boat, Sustainable South Bronx, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Charles E. Schumer, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Vista Food Exchange

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