Consider it a beautiful gift squandered.
Billionaire Barry Diller and his fashion- mogul wife, Diane von Furstenberg, just gave up on the Pier 55 project: They won’t be spending and raising millions to build a 2.4-acre greenspace and performa🍌nce center along the Hudson.
New Yorkers who would’ve enjoyed the park can blame the tiny band of cranks over at The City Club of New York, who brought endless rounds of ꦍlitigation, and the real-estate giant who funded them, Douglas Durst.
The group’s chief claim was that the pier would harm the river’s ecology and wildlife, despite vast evidenceౠ to the contrary: Pier 55 was OK’d by multiple agencies, including the Department of Environmental Conservation and the▨ Army Corps of Engineers.
And several similar pier-parﷺks already sit along the ri𓆏ver, with no harm to the fishies.
But the end🔯l🏅ess delays — and soaring costs — inflicted by the legal war prompted Diller to call it quits and find some other good work to sponsor.
All in all, it’s a reminder of how anti-development New York law has become: A half-dozen well-funded malcontents can kill a popular public park project — enthusiastica🌳lly backed by the local community board, Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo.
If you wonder why new construction’s so expensive in this town𓄧, it’s because the system badly favors the naysayers and the blackmailers.