James Gandolfini tried to whack it. Lou Reed couldn’t stand it. The “Mad Men” co-star John Slattery told The Daily News: “It’s not a bunch of wealthy people who are just complaining that their views are going to be blocked. It’s about the actual livability of the neighborhood.”

But, of course, it was a bunch of wealthy neighbors complaining.

Traffic whizzing by the new garage.
Traffic whizzing by the new garage. © Todd Heisler/The New York Times

After years of noisy protests, the New York City Department of Sanitation’s new garage-and-salt-shed complex has opened in Hudson Square, on the northern edge of TriBeCa. The project took nearly a decade and cost a king’s ransom. Luxury apartment developers in the neighborhood predicted Armageddon. Instead, apartment prices went through the roof. The garage and shed have ended up being not just two of the best examples of new public architecture in the city but a boon to the neighborhood, whether the wealthy neighbors have come around to it or not. I can’t think of a better public sculpture to land in New York than the shed.

There are a couple of larger lessons here. They are not so much about Nimbyism, but about how residents of a neighborhood react when faced with development absent real planning, and about why it makes sense, economically and in terms of public health and social justice, for disparate communities to share burdens like parking for sanitation trucks.

Inside the parking garage.
Inside the parking garage. - But the real scene-stealer is the salt shed, a 69-foot-tall enclosed cubist pavilion made of glacial-blue faceted concrete in the shape of a salt crystal. The city operates 40 salt sheds, many of them hardly more than shacks. This one is the Sydney Opera House by comparison. It cost a whopping $21 million, but considering what billionaires now pay to squirrel away middling Modiglianis, it seems a bargain. Its 34-foot-high door opens to a soaring interior where I could picture summertime performances with crowds massed outdoors. Michael Friedlander, director of special projects for the Sanitation Department, recently told my colleague David W. Dunlap that, because of its six-foot-thick walls, the shed could survive whatever cataclysm befalls New York, leaving future civilizations to ponder why we worshiped salt. The complex was conceived by Dattner Architects in association with WXY. I toured the project the other day with Gia Mainiero from Dattner and Claire Weisz from WXY. The designers clearly recognized an opportunity to elevate utilitarian buildings in a way that would honor the area’s historic industrial character. © Todd Heisler/The New York Times