“From its earliest beginnings, Battery Park City has been a leader in the green frontier. Today, with the outstanding leadership of Governor Cuomo and partners in cities and states around the country, we embrace with renewed vigor the opportunity – and responsibility – to continue to combat the devastating, scientifically-proven effects of climate change.
“Nearly 50 years ago the Battery Park City Authority was established to build a new neighborhood in the sea, aimed at attracting new downtown residents with the development of additional parks and open spaces in an area sorely lacking them.
“Almost 40 years ago our Master Plan was adopted, delivering on that ideal by balancing commercial, residential, and retail space in a new waterfront community, fully one-third of it designated parkland.
“Seventeen years ago we published Residential Environmental Guidelines, establishing a process for environmentally-responsible residential building development. These standards, well ahead of prevailing practices at the time, led to the first LEED Gold and Platinum high-rise residences in the United States, right here in Battery Park City.
“The Battery Park City Authority did not stop there – 15 years ago we issued environmental guidelines that provided direction and metrics for commercial design strategies. The buildings that resulted, Brookfield Place and Goldman Sachs Headquarters among them, are outstanding examples of environmental responsibility, further solidifying Battery Park City not only as a sustainability leader, but as a place consistently among the best to live, work, and play.
“And today we’re working with State, City, and neighborhood partners to comprehensively protect our neighborhood against not only the ravages of sea level rise, but of storm surge impacts like those we experienced firsthand from Superstorm Sandy. In places like Wagner Park, for example, we’ll do so through environmentally-sustainable construction and by increasing green space and gardens for the public.
“Along each step of this journey, from the 1960s to today, we have looked forward – guided by facts, by research, by envisioning the very best ideal of what a planned community could be. And at every turn we have partnered with like-minded individuals and organizations that helped make the impossible, possible.
“Then, as now, the solution to our challenges is not to withdraw, but to engage. And even here in our small corner of New York City, as we proceed undeterred in our commitment to the principles of the Paris Accord, we do so with the promise to bequeath a world better than the one we’ve inherited. Future generations deserve no less.”
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