Next week, 14 jurors will begin considering the 229 proposals that students, environmentalists, urban designers and architects have spent the last four months making for Gateway National Recreation Area’s future.
The designers will submit their plans to the organizers of Envisioning Gateway, a competition that allows its winners to work with Gateway’s stewards to steer the 26,607-acre national park. Registrants are charged with developing a new, unified experience for those who visit the park, which spans two states and three boroughs.
With the introduction of the competition in February, Adi Shamir, the executive director of the Van Alen Institute —an architectural institute co-sponsoring the project — stated that bringing in more parties to discuss the park’s future was essential. He anticipated that the submissions would “reflect the transformative power of public participation and celebrate the unique potential of this urban national park.”
Organizers say that the proposals should link the diverse recreational, ecological, historical and educational opportunities located within the three units of the park — Jamaica Bay, Sandy Hook and Staten Island. They will also have to make provisions for transportation to and from the park, consider ways to fund ongoing maintenance, and address its history of ecological degradation.
Within their larger plans, designers must also create a new park at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
Along with Van Alen, the National Parks Conservation Association and Columbia University sponsored the competition.
National Parks Conservation Association Regional Director Alexander Brash said that he hoped that a winning designer would do for Gateway what Frederick Olmsted did for Manhattan’s Central Park in the 1850s.
According to Jamie Hand, a Van Alen spokeswoman, roughly half of the submissions come from individuals and the other half will come from architectural and landscape design firms.
Though organizers will not identify any competition participants or speak to the nature of their plans until after jury deliberations conclude, Hand said that designers hail from 22 different countries.
Winning entries will be presented to the National Park Service for potential inclusion in the next planning phase of Gateway’s General Management Plan, which is scheduled for 2009. In addition, the jury will award $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000 prizes to first-, second- and third-place winners.
The competition is being held in anticipation of the National Park Service’s centennial in 2016.
The jurors include ecologists, academics, representatives from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, urban planners and architects.
Winners will not be identified until early June.
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