Barry Diller, the billionaire chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp and former head of Paramount Pictures and Fox, Inc., plans to give $130 million for a proposed futuristic park on the West Side of Manhattan, the New York Times reports.

Through his family foundation, Diller has agreed to fund construction of a 2.4-acre park that will feature three performance venues and a series of wooded nooks atop an undulating platform off the Hudson River shoreline. The city, the state, and the Hudson River Park Trust will provide an additional $39.5 million toward construction of the park. Diller also has agreed to cover the park's operating expenses for twenty years. The proposal, which was announced on Monday, has the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio; because there's no need to raise additional public funds for the park, officials appear to be proceeding as though the concept — which Diller developed with members of the trust — will become reality. The proposal, however, must be approved by the trust's full board, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation before work can begin.

To be called Pier 55, the park's parallelogram-shaped platform would sit atop concrete columns ranging in height from seventy feet to fifteen feet above sea level, to meet minimum requirements implemented after Superstorm Sandy. The height of the platform also would allow sunlight to reach the water below, addressing environmental concerns in an area designated as a marine sanctuary and spawning ground for striped bass.

Critics of the project already are raising questions about increasing private involvement in the city's public spaces, the lack of transparency in the planning process, and potential competition between the park and other new cultural institutions, including the yet-to-be-built Culture Shed, to which Diller's wife, the fashion designer and philanthropist Diane von Furstenberg, has contributed $10 million. Hudson River Park Trust chair Diana L. Taylor told the Times that the project is a public-private partnership, that it would be open to the public, and that many of the events held there would be free.

State assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, a Democrat whose district includes Hudson River Park and the pier in question, told the Times it was "deeply disturbing that the trust failed until now to disclose what it is doing." While Glick said she understood the appeal to the city of a generous private donor agreeing to fund a new public park, she expressed disappointment that the trust did not mention the project last year when legislation governing Hudson River Park was changed, with her support, to allow for the construction of a rectangular platform. "They never disclosed that this was to facilitate a major private investment," Glick told the Times. In response, Madelyn Wils, the trust's executive director, said the arrangement with Diller was a recent development. According to the Times, Taylor first approached Diller in 2012 for help in rebuilding the pier; his initial pledge of $35 million grew to $130 million over time.

"I have always loved public spaces," said Diller. "It's entirely my fault that this has become so ambitious. We will fail in our ambition, outsized or whatever it may be, if this doesn't feel completely like a park and completely like a performance space."