I don’t know how important the South Street Seaport is to the average New Yorker, but I know I have a lot of memories of the place. I remember as a kid spending many summer days there with my mom. Naturally this was before I grew into an annoying teenager who was embarrassed to be seen with her.

Most years we didn’t have air conditioning at home, so we would spend a hot day in that Pier 17 mall browsing the stores and mooching the a/c. We would always stop at The Sharper Image first. I know that sounds strange but remember back in the 1980s that store was cool. There was always a long line of people to get in. That only built frustration and anticipation in a child. Once inside I would run around and look with wonder at all the useless gadgets. The food court at Pier 17 was also the first place I ate Hawaiian pizza. To a nine year old, pineapple on a pizza is the most exotic thing imaginable. As the afternoon grew long, we would sit out on the third floor deck in those heavy wooden lounge chairs and enjoy the strong breeze off the East River.

Oh but I skipped over the start of the day. We would always take the E train to the World Trade Center and walk across town. The A or C would have been closer to the Seaport but for whatever reason we never transferred to them. Walking by Trinity Church always made my imagination race. The building was so out of place in lower Manhattan. I wanted to get near the ancient gravestones. The stones were so thin and worn. They were so different from any cemetery I had been to.

I think it was Fulton Street that we took to walk to the Seaport. We would browse the little junk stores as we walked. I remember there was a Burger King built next to a basketball court. It always stuck out to me because the Burger King was built in a single story building that was set below street level. The apartments and offices that surrounded it really towered above it. Because the building was such an oddity I always wanted to eat there, but my mom only allowed it, maybe, twice in all those visits. Closer to the Seaport there were these two alleys off of Fulton. That really got my mind racing. There aren’t that many alleys in the street grid anymore. Every time we walked by, the history nerd in me would blossom and I would imagine New York City back in the 19th century when shit would actually go down in alleys.

And when I got older, I didn’t visit the Seaport much, but I did have some interesting memories of the area. There was one winter Saturday I spent the whole day shopping in lower Manhattan with my brother. We literally walked for hours, it was nighttime and quite cold, and we ended up near the Seaport. That’s when my brother got the idea in his head that it would be fun to walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge. So we walked from the Seaport to the bridge and then across. I remember the streets being oddly empty that night. Manhattan without people is quite eerie. That only heightened the tension for me when we crossed the bridge. On the Brooklyn side the area was totally dead. To get to the street we had to walk down this narrow concrete staircase whose overhead lights had burnt out.

It shouldn’t be surprising to learn the Seaport has the plumpest roaches. I think it was during my senior year of high school when I planned to meet friends there one night. I got there early and had a seat on one of those concrete benches near the elevated FDR at the edge of the pier. I sat and people-watched for a bit when I happened to catch some motion in the corner of my eye. I looked down, and it took a few seconds for my eyes to focus, but there I spotted a fat roach crawling around at the edge where the concrete bench met the cobblestone street. Horrifying! Later that same night when I was with friends hanging around the wooden pier in the back of the Pier 17 mall, I kept my eyes open for more roaches. Wow, did I find them! Of course they were there the whole time, but since I wasn’t looking I never noticed. Once I knew what to look for, I saw them everywhere!

Why am I babbling like a man on his deathbed? Well it turns out the South Street Seaport isn’t the draw that it used to be so a real estate developer is going to step in and redevelop the whole site. The Pier 17 mall will be razed. It’s going to be replaced with more retail space, a boutique hotel and a big condo tower. None of this bothers me. The South Street Seaport isn’t a museum. Buildings come and go but I’ll always have my memories. What bothers me is the hideousness of the new architecture. The new buildings are eyesores.

Let’s start with the obvious change – the new condo tower. The first thing that pops into my mind when I look at that permanent scaffold-like structure is the 1970s. That scaffold is a throwback to an era of rounded corners and cheap, plasticy surfaces. It’s hard to be certain from this rendering, but I strongly suspect that is exactly what it will look like close up in real life. I’m also a little skeptical of its placement. I would rather see it on the other side of the FDR.

Now let’s take a look at the boutique hotel. If I didn’t know what this was supposed to be, I would guess ‘College Campus Library circa 1975′. That irregular orange monstrosity may actually be worse than the tower. By the way notice the choice of pavers in this rendering. I hope that’s just lazy artwork and not accurate to the plan. The Seaport should have cobblestones, not whatever those hexagons are called.

I have no objections to redeveloping the entire seaport. I just don’t want it to look ugly. This design is adding some big eyesores to the skyline. That scaffold building is going to be right next to the Brooklyn Bridge too. You can’t ignore that. Community Board 1 seems to go apeshit at the idea of anything with the slightest bit of height to it, so I think this plan is going to end up being killed. I don’t agree with that attitude, but hey at least these horrid buildings won’t go up.