The old bugbear even turned up by name in several articles. Exmayor Ed Koch was hauled in to reminisce: "Westway would have been wonderful." Jacob Weisberg, in a New York Times Magazine piece about how the city should rebuild after the World Trade Center attack, wrote: "High on many people's list of things that should have happened in those years [the 1980s and 1990s] but did not is Westway, the plan to submerge two miles of the West Side Highway and build a glorious downtown park and beach. After a fifteenyear struggle, environmentalists killed the plan in 1985, on the basis that the Army Corps of Engineers had not sufficiently proved the project harmless to striped bass-a farfromendangered species that spawns in the Hudson." I was surprised and encouraged to see my private opinion corroborated in cold print, but dismayed to find it less excitingly heterodox than I had imagined. The pendulum was swinging back, apparently Taking the longrange perspective, in thirty or forty years the present highway along the West Side, Route 9A, will need to be done over, and at that time no one will have remembered Westway and it will be possible then to reintroduce the outboard solution. CHELSEA PIERS, CHELSEA, AND TROCCH lLAN D C HELSEA PIERS IS A FASCINATING EXAMPLE OF WATERFRONT ADAPTIVE REUSE. OCCUPYING A THIRTYACRE AREA BETWEEN L8TH AND 23RD STREETS, ON FOUR historic but neglected piers (59, 60, 61, and 62) and the headhouse that connected them, it has been turned into an elaborate sports complex, with ice skating, a golf driving range, roller rinks, gyms, a boxing ring, a volleyball court, a batting cage, bowling alleys, an indoor track, a rockclimbing wall, you name it. I know nineyearold boys for whom Chelsea Piers is heaven on earth; I also know urbanists who grit their teeth at the mere mention of it. с с A PIERS AND TROCCHILAND 115 С Н Е L Ь ambivalent camp about Chelsea Piers, so much so that, I am m j to enumerate all my ontheonehandontheotherhands, I uld need as many hands as a Hindu goddess. As I've said, I have no "st objection to commercial development on the riverside; quite the глг it seems to me cities are inherent marketplaces, and commercial contrary, terprises can help draw people to an underused waterfront. Chelsea piers does attract considerable numbers (it is among New York's ten most frequently visited "destinations," according to one survey), and it fulfills a function as the largest sports complex in the metropolitan area. What pains me is that Chelsea Piers is so grudging, unneighborly, and suburban in its relation to the streetscape, thereby giving commercial development on the waterfront a bad name. The term "suburban" as a derogatory shorthand in writing about cities can be overdone. However, when it comes to Chelsea Piers, I think it is apt. As if the chasm of Route 9A were not enough to distance the complex from its adjacent neighborhood, Chelsea, the center's signage and visual cues conspire to discourage pedestrians, while offering every incentive to motorists to drive in and park at the rather expensive lot.