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Best of 2006 Awards
Coney Island Parachute JumpTower
AWARD OF MERIT: Rehabilitation, Renovation, and Restoration
PHOTO BY ARCH PHOTO |
When the Coney Island Parachute Jump Tower ride opened in Brooklyn 65 years ago, it quickly became a classic symbol of the world-famous amusement park along the storied boardwalk and beach.
By the 1960s, however, the tower was no longer operational. It rapidly began to deteriorate alongside the fading amusement park and boardwalk.
In 1999, New York City’s Department of Design and Construction turned its attention to Coney Island with hopes of furthering the rehabilitation of the neighborhood, which was adding a new minor league baseball park that opened in 2001 next to the 277-ft.-tall parachute tower structure. In 2000, the department handed over plans to renovate the jump tower to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which signed on STV Inc. of New York as a technical consultant.
In 2001, the agency embarked on what would become a $5 million restoration and transformation of the tower into a distinctive public monument.
A major early hurdle was removing the deteriorating lead paint covering the tower without contaminating the beach with toxic dust. Unable to use a conventional tarp due to windloads that could potentially topple the 170-ton tower, the project team developed a plan to disassemble the structure and repair it in ground-level enclosures.
Using the original 1940 drawings, the team prepared a computer analysis of the disassembly and reassembly process. Crews dismantled the 12 canopy arms and upper portions of the vertical tower shaft using a heavy-duty crane. They then sandblasted the pieces at ground level to remove the lead paint, while also repairing or replacing several of the members.
The city’s Department of Parks & Recreation, the tower’s owner, expanded the project scope in 2004 with a final touch to install a carnival-style lighting display, paying tribute to the neighborhood’s festive past. The project finished in May.
“It’s extraordinary,” one judge said.
The display imitates the rise and fall of parachutes using LED sparkle lights that move across the canopy. It uses six light designs programmed to illuminate the structure year round, varying with patterns that reflect the particular season, lunar cycle, and tide variation.
Key Players
Owner-Developer: New York City Department of Parks & Recreation; Economic Development Corporation; Department of Design and Construction
Prime Technical Consultant: STV Inc.
Project Sponsor: Brooklyn Borough President’s Office
Construction Manager: Turner Construction
Lighting Designer: Leni Schwendinger Light Projects
Lead Consultant: Leadcare Inc.
Computer Analysis-Modeling: Urban Tech |
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