City Unveils New Strategies to Repair Piers

Last week that the city unveiled three potential methods that could be employed to repair several of the city's piers that are badly in need of infrastructure repair.

The city's Economic Development Corporation held a six-month competition, Change the Course ? The NYC Waterfront Construction Competition, to find solutions for the major undertaking of fixing city's piers, including Pier 40 on the Hudson River and those along the East River Esplanade between Pier 35 and the South Street Seaport.

The three winners, D-Shape, Andrew Rella and John Sheridan of The Sheridan Corporation, will be awarded a total of $90,000 for their selected ideas, which include 3-D "printing" of concrete structures that would theoretically allow for cheaper and more efficient manufature of the concrete casings needed for the piers' underwater pilings. The concepts will be presented to New York City agency representatives and maritime construction professionals and potentially be incorporated into future NYCEDC waterfront projects.

According to the EDC, "nearly half of NYC's 565 miles of shoreline is owned by the City of New York and includes a wide range of structures, many of which are deteriorating and will require rehabilitation or replacement in the coming years and decades. This work has increasingly become prohibitively expensive, driven by the cost of construction materials, labor, outdated construction methods and technologies, regulations, and other factors."