Under New York Bridge : Patience Pays Off for Food Market Plan

When it opens here early in 1987, Bridgemarket will be the fulfillment of a big idea, beleaguered as it may have been, whose time finally came.

The project will utilize the space beneath and beside the Manhattan end of the Queensborough Bridge where it spans the East River at 59th Street and First Avenue.

It may carry overtones from other restoration projects, such as Quincy Market in Boston and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, but Bridgemarket will be devoted solely to food and to the cookware and other housewares required to prepare it. It will feature more than 50 fine food shops, four restaurants, a year-round covered farmers’ market, and a plaza park.

Patient Process

For nine years, Harley Baldwin, a young entrepreneur-developer, has patiently threaded this $25 million project through New York’s bureaucratic maze. His proposal had to win approval from two community planning boards, the Art Commission, the Landmark Preservation and Planning commissions, the Board of Estimate, the Borough Board, state Legislature and 19 city agencies.

It was a challenging time, but Baldwin didn’t lose patience. He hired lawyers and lobbyists, and he himself stumped the city tirelessly, making hundreds of slide presentations to community groups in an effort to explain his project and convince others of its attractiveness and viability.

Jane Kalmus, president of a neighborhood action group called Sutton Area Community Inc., says her group feared such negative environmental influences as pedestrian congestion, vehicular noise and crowding of sidewalks and streets.

“Several alternative courses of action which we suggested have been accepted,” she says, “about entrance and egress, beautification and landscaping of the outdoor areas and inclusion of a meeting room for community groups within the complex.

“We are in a position to work with the Bridgemarket partnership and with city agencies to ensure that the best interests of our community will be served. We are involved in several programs that will involve adequate police and fire protection, additional sanitation collections and sidewalk sweepers to monitor sidewalk conditions seven days a week. We have also launched our own SAC Fund to help us maintain the quality of our community life.”

Upgrade Neighborhood

Baldwin’s triumph over endless delays and obstructions (from neighborhood opponents to state legislators) is secure. It is generally conceded that Bridgemarket will upgrade existing city space, restore a portion of a historic structure, provide jobs and add both luster and funds to the city of New York.

Viewing the dingy but dramatic 120-by-270-foot cavernous area beneath the bridge, Baldwin told a visitor, “I had fallen in love with the sweeping grandeur of the space the moment I saw it. It was vast and tile-vaulted, with majestic columns and soaring arches just as designed by Rafael Gustavino as part of the monumental 1909 construction of the Queensborough bridge.”

During the past nine years, Baldwin has spent much time visiting fine markets in many countries and talking to chefs, food purveyors and farmers. “I have always returned to New York persuaded that Bridgemarket was going to be the greatest food market of them all, the finest in the world,” he says. His firm, Baldwin Associates, hired the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to work out the plans.

Baldwin has signed a 50-year lease with the city of New York for the space. The projected completion date is Feb. 1, 1987. The specialty food shops, including those selling fresh meats, fish, produce, bakery goods, and beverages, will be on four levels, built around a central atrium and connected by escalators.