An alternative design replacing the electronic façade with a glass waterfront design (but keeping the rest of the design intact, as 95% of the design scored high points among Community Boards and Ferry Riders for its functionality and commodity), reflecting explicitly the Staten Island Borough President's desires, was finally accepted by the City of New York in 1996, prompting the resignation from the project of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. (The glass façade was delineated at the direction of the City and was deemed by Whitehall Architectural Design/Venturi, Scott Brown to be "an inappropriate architectural expression for a civic building in a prominent location at the turn of the century."*)

* p. 58, "REVISED DESIGN, WHITEHALL FERRY TERMINAL," 1996, Whitehall Architectural Design, P.C. (affiliate of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc.) and Anderson/Schwartz Architects