Battery Park City

Battery Park City is a 92-acre (0.37 km2) planned community at the southwestern tip of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The land upon which it stands was created by land reclamation on the Hudson River using 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m3) of soil and rocks excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center and certain other construction projects, as well as from sand dredged from New York Harbor off Staten Island. The neighborhood, which is the site of the World Financial Center along with numerous housing, commercial and retail buildings, is named for adjacent Battery Park.

Battery Park City is owned and managed by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), a public-benefit corporation created by New York State under the authority of the Urban Development Corporation. Excess revenue from the area was to be contributed to other housing efforts, typically low-income projects in the Bronx and Harlem.

Under the 1989 agreement between the BPCA and the City of New York, $600 million was transferred by the BPCA to the city. Charles J. Urstadt, the first Chairman and CEO of the BPCA, noted in an August 19, 2007 op-ed piece in the New York Post that the aggregate figure of funds transferred to the City of New York is above $1.4 billion, with the BPCA continuing to contribute $200 million a year.

Much of this funding has historically been diverted to general city expenses, under section 3.d of the 1989 agreement. However, in July 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki, and Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. announced the final approval for the New York City Housing Trust Fund derived from $130 million in Battery Park City revenues. The fund aims to preserve or create 4,300 affordable units by 2009. It also provided seed financing for the New York Acquisition Fund, a $230 million initiative that aims to serve as a catalyst for the construction and preservation of more than 30,000 units of affordable housing citywide by 2016. The Acquisition Fund has since established itself as a model for similar funds in cities and states across the country.