Nassau Plans Main Corridor

After half a century of tangled growth that still defines New York suburban sprawl, a cohesive development plan called Nassau Center aims to reconnect three square miles of central Nassau County on Long Island.

The recently unveiled framework calls for new transportation, commercial, and cultural projects in the municipalities of Mineola, Garden City, Uniondale, and Hempstead. According to County Executive Thomas Suozzi, the strategy will bolster the local economy, curb traffic congestion, and broaden the tax base.

At the heart of the concept by Fox & Fowle Architects and STV Group, both based in New York, is the development of a new "transportation boulevard" linking Roosevelt Field Mall, EAB Plaza, Garden City Center, and other isolated commercial districts to one another and to existing railroad stations in Mineola, Hempstead, and Garden City. Transit options under consideration include light rail, automated guideway, and bus rapid transit.

On the southern end of the proposed corridor, the design would add the Oval, a grand public space near EAB Plaza and Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. A transit hub would anchor new office buildings and commercial development nearby. To accommodate pedestrians, the plan would reroute Hempstead Turnpike below grade.

Other key components include a zoo in Eisenhower Park, sports and entertainment venues, new college housing, and a ribbon of bikeways and walking paths winding through parks and college campuses.

Film Museum Plans Expansion

The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, N.Y., has unveiled plans for a $25 million renovation and expansion that will nearly double the institution's size. Designed by Leeser Architecture of Brooklyn, the project calls for a five-story, 30,000-sq.-ft. addition, the renovation of 18,000 sq. ft., and a 15,000-sq.-ft. outdoor garden and theater for summer screenings, performances, and special events.

The design would add new exhibition spaces, digital media galleries, an education center, storage space for the museum's 150,000-item collection, a new 74-seat screening room, a lobby, a shop, and a café. It would also renovate the 200-seat Riklis Theater.

Construction is scheduled to start this summer on the renovation, though by early spring, the museum had not yet selected a contractor. Construction of the addition will begin in the summer of 2006. The renovated interior is scheduled to open in spring 2007 and the addition and outdoor theater would open a year later.

New Museum Architect

The Queens Museum of Art and New York City officials are tapping a new architect for a $27 million expansion after parting ways with the original designer, Eric Owen Moss of Culver City, Calif. The move marks the departure of the first architect that the city had ever chosen through a national design competition.

"A general sense that [the design] wasn't working" prompted the decision to replace Moss, said Tom Finkelpearl, the museum's executive director. Of particular concern was gallery circulation and the location of certain facilities, he said. Finkelpearl called Moss "a wonderful architect," and said he was deserving of the initial selection by an awards jury.

For his part, Moss said he was disappointed in the decision, citing the city's efforts to assemble the high-profile jury of respected architects and design professionals from the museum and city agencies.

"I thought that because the city was making an effort to present itself as open and transparent, it would insist on finding a way to work through this," Moss said. "I frankly don't think the differences in vision were as substantial as the museum is making them out to be."

The project goal is to double the museum's size to about 100,000 sq. ft. by taking over the southern portion of its present building, the only surviving structure from the 1939 World's Fair. The expansion calls for demolishing a city-owned ice rink, which would relocate to a new facility. The Moss design would have transformed the central section of the steel-frame building, with terra cotta and limestone-cladding, into an exhibition space enclosed by a roof and wall of bent glass.

Among the firms the city will review to replace Moss are Fox & Fowle Architects, Polshek Partnership Architects, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Arquitectonica, 1100 Architect, Gluckman Mayner Architects, a team of Ammann & Whitney and Grimshaw Architects, and Rafael Viñoly Architects. All of those firms prequalified for work with the city in a process begun last year.

The city will name a construction manager after completion of the design, which is about halfway done. A design department spokeswoman said the architect switch would delay the project by a few months. Construction on the expansion is scheduled to begin in 2007, once the replacement ice rink facility is ready.