Frustration Mounts Over Lack Of Input On New Inwood Boathouse

INWOOD, NY — A new boathouse is coming to Inwood's Sherman Creek Park. While the project overall has received near-unanimous support from the Upper Manhattan community, backlash is brewing against certain design omissions, and the city's decision to hold a final approval vote on Monday that is closed to public testimony.

Central to community members' concerns is that the current design for the new Row New York boathouse does not include a single public restroom. It also does not provide a public walking path along the shoreline in the area or restoration of the park following construction.

“We support this, but why is Inwood any different than any other major parks' concession?" Lynn Kelly, the executive director of the New York Restoration Project, told Patch, using the term for private businesses that operate within a park.

"If you go to Central Park, if you go to Prospect Park, Hudson River Park, all-new concessions have very basic features like public restrooms. Why should Inwood have any less?"

Kelly and other Upper Manhattanites have suggested that the city is fast-tracking the process to get the boathouse built.

Here's a breakdown of how the city's approval process for the new Row New York boathouse within Sherman Creek Park near 3725 10th Ave. has gone recently.

• Substantial funding was secured by Upper Manhattan elected officials for the new boathouse in the most recent New York City budget passed by the City Council in July.
• A Public Design Commission meeting was held in September about the construction of the boathouse in Sherman Creek Park that did feature public testimony. During that meeting, community members voiced their overall support for the project, but raised concerns about the lack of public bathrooms and waterfront pathways — among other things.
• On Sept. 20, the executive director of the Design Commission, Keri Butler, posted a resolution that said the Commission would table the approval of the boathouse's design until the Department of Parks & Recreation returned with a plan "to include public restrooms incorporated into the boathouse building or, if this is proven to be unviable, public restrooms of equal quality on the site."

• A month later on Oct. 20, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer penned a letter to Butler and NYC Parks Commissioner Gabrielle Fialkoff, outlining her support of the new Row New York boathouse, but also detailing four outcomes that she'd like to see achieved in the construction and design: better waterfront access and signage for Sherman Creek Park, an area for public boat storage, available public bathrooms within the new boathouse, and access to the waterfront during construction and the full restoration of the area after construction is done.

The process also included multiple presentations from the Parks Department to Manhattan Community Board 12 about the new boathouse, along with Row New York creating a Boathouse Advisory Committee to inform the design.

Community Board 12 has stated its unanimous support of the Row New York new boathouse project on more than one occasion.

"I would like to express on behalf of the Board our unanimous support of RowNY's proposed boathouse project, as we stated in our September 2019 resolution," said Liz Ritter, the chair of Community Board 12's Parks & Cultural Affairs Committee, at the Sept. 20th Public Design Commission meeting.

"While RowNY's boathouse clearly will change the footprint of the wood-chipped area behind PS5, the boathouse's design and scale are appropriate to the site," Ritter continued during her Sept. 20 testimony. "The new boathouse is planned and designed as a facility available to the community, with significantly greater public access than NYRP's Peter J. Sharp Boathouse ever offered."

The Upper Manhattan community board first passed a resolution unanimously supporting the concept of the new Row New York boathouse in 2017.

The new boathouse will have restrooms for the program's participants, and for the guests that attend any sort of educational event, learn how to row class, race, or meeting within the space — but not for the general public.

There are two public restrooms already in Sherman Creek Park, one on 10th Avenue and one in the Swindler Cove section of the green space. The nearest one to the proposed boathouse location would be around two-tenths of a mile away.

The most recent update about the project was an unexpected one for some of the Upper Manhattan community.

Nestled into an agenda for a Design Commission meeting on Monday under "Consent Items" is the "construction of a boathouse and adjacent site work, Sherman Creek Park, 3725 Tenth Avenue, Harlem River Drive, Academy Street, and Sherman Creek, Manhattan."

The designation of the vote being under "Consent Items" means there is no offer of public testimony.

“We find this egregious, that a project, that the city themselves, has gone on record to say Parks Department you must address these items, and then return, is ignoring its own direction and locking out the public from voicing what they feel what they want in their park," Kelly said. "It would be a shame if this project was constructed without the same level of attention and features that other park concessions get.”

Kelly's organization New York Restoration Project has overseen Sherman Creek Park for the past 20 years.

The Public Design Commission did not return Patch's request for comment.

The Parks Department did, though.

"We are supportive of Row New York’s proposal to protect the legacy of rowing along the Harlem River with this new community boathouse, learning center and public dock," a spokesperson from the Parks Department told Patch. "This project has been informed by years of community input and public demand for expanded waterway access. Public testimony was taken, heard and responded to when the project was presented at the Public Design Commission's September 20th public hearing."

Despite the Parks Department's stamp of approval on the boathouse project's process so far, Sally Fisher, an Upper Manhattan resident and a member of Friends of Inwood Hill Park, said that the project has mostly been done "undercover."

"This project has been done mostly undercover, without the benefit of real community input," Fisher told Patch. "And unfortunately, without providing public access or facilities, this appears to be the privatization of public land, which seems to continue a trend that we’re seeing in Inwood in the last few years."

Brad Balliett, a local birder who frequents Sherman Creek Park, shared the frustration in the lack of public input.

“Without the ability of the public to comment on the Boathouse design, it is just taking away part of a public park from the citizens of New York and making it inaccessible," Balliett said. "There are a number of pieces in the current design that will disrupt important things that people use the park for, like access to the waterfront, ability to travel freely through the park, and having restrooms available.”

Juan Carlos Medrano a member of the Washington Heights & Inwood Food Council, who also is part of the seasonal staff for New York Restoration Project, told Patch that the "proposed project intentionally excludes input from our community, which includes a population of people often overlooked already."

Patch will update this story with any response from the Public Design Commission.