Dear Editor:
In his December 22 letter to the Hoboken Reporter, Mr. Hine, speaking for the Fund for a Better Waterfront, once again responds to specific issues with inflammatory generalities: “infamous garage” when referring to the garage that I designed for Stevens and “misleading, inaccurate, and highly unprofessional” when referring my letter of December 7.
One might think that to back these remarks, and prove me “misleading, inaccurate, and highly unprofessional,” there would follow points in fact addressing the issues that I accused him of evading. Not a chance, once again, he relies solely on vague and inciting characterizations.
Not only does he not address the issues, but he flaunts his evasiveness by again (and again, and again) attacking the Stevens on excavation and zoning issues while carefully avoiding discussion of his “alternative plan” that would have more excavation and the same zoning issues to deal with as the Stevens plan has.
In referring to Stevens updating its institutional master plan, Mr. Hine makes a characteristically unexplained provocative accusation that “Stevens goes out of its way to prove it is a bad neighbor” because it will be “by-passing Hoboken’s own important master plan process.” The notion that, in updating its master plan, the University runs counter to the city’s master planning process betrays a lack of both understanding and common sense. The Hoboken planning board requested the document of Stevens so that it would become a part of this ongoing process; a December 2002 draft of this document has been submitted.
Clearly insinuating that I have compromised my ideals, Mr. Hine maligns me for accepting a commission to design the Center for Maritime Systems having “formerly supported FBW and worked on the FBW waterfront plan.” As one of the several licensed professionals who contributed to the “CBW” waterfront plan (Mr. Hine should not forget the Coalition for a Better Waterfront; it was “the CBW plan”), I will repeat that my proposals for the waterfront are true to that CBW plan. But, it seems that if I disagree with him, I must be selling out.
My proposals include, first and foremost, the most important ingredient: a continuous uninterrupted public waterfront park (emphatically included at the Center for Maritime Systems). They also include another open space component of the CBW waterfront plan: the increasing of Elysian Park to two and a half times its current size by diverting Sinatra Drive and extending the park north into the Maxwell House site to Eleventh Street. Mr. Hine cynically characterizes this open space proposal (and my proposal to save some of the Bauhaus structures) as my “failed plan for Maxwell House” despite it being a near replica of a purposely forgotten part of the CBW plan.
Once again, I am completely dedicated to seeing to it that the Center for Maritime Systems becomes the premier public attraction in Hoboken’s soon to be continuous waterfront park. Contrary to the again (and again, and again) repeated inflammatory lie that Stevens will be “privatizing” the waterfront, about two thirds of this Stevens owned waterfront property will be turned into public open space and waterfront walkway. I am enthusiastically looking forward to discussing this and the many other merits of this project in detail.
Demetri Sarantitis