A Walk in the Park

Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

A Walk in the Park

Broadsheet Dons a Hardhat for Wagner Construction Update

The facade of the new Wagner Park pavilion is a specially dyed concrete, with a unique curated color meant to recall the history of red brick in Lower Manhattan. The line where gray concrete changes to red marks the future new ground level of the park.

A hulking red structure dominates the sky as one rounds the southern curve of Battery Place and glances toward the river. Rising over the construction wall, this is the new Wagner Park pavilion, nearing completion in the eponymous park, which is also undergoing reconstruction. Known formally as the South Battery Park City Resilience Project (SBPCR), this initiative is creating a flood mitigation system that will stretch from the Museum of Jewish Heritage, through the new Wagner Park, across a rebuilt Pier A plaza, and along the northern border of the historic Battery. A special Archtober tour of the site earlier this month offered a behind-the-scenes look at the project.

The new pavilion will feature amenities such as a community room (on the left), a restaurant (on the right), and public restrooms.

When visitors enter the new park next summer, they will be walking on ground 11 feet higher than the sidewalk on adjacent Battery Place. The approximately 8,000-square foot pavilion will include a restaurant, a community room, outdoor and rooftop seating, public restrooms, and a walkable terrace of roughly 3,800 square feet. Another design feature is a nearby buried cistern able to harvest up to 10,000 gallons of stormwater, which will then be treated, filtered, and reused on-site and within the building.

The Archtober tour of the Wagner Park construction site included a view of the soon-to-be buried flood wall (at left), already rusting.

Today, the grading of the park’s terrain is almost finished, and the new pavilion is about 75 percent complete. Utilities are being put in place across the site, and connected.

Flood walls in various configurations are being installed: Some are buried; others are above ground and will be disguised by landscaping; and a few are deployables that will spring into action when needed. As seen in this photograph, one such mechanism has been built at the side of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, with its deployable flood gates resting in the “up” position. Flip-up flood gates also are being installed north of Pier A.

A squad of workers, some of them electricians working on new esplanade lighting, leave the new terraces of Wagner Park, their afternoon shift over.

The price tag of the overall SBPCR project is $296 million (with the new Wagner Park pavilion alone costing $75 million), which is is funded from proceeds of bonds issued by the Battery Park City Authority. In lieu of remitting some surplus funds to the City, the Authority is paying for resilience work throughout the neighborhood and stretching into parts of the Financial District and Tribeca. The SBPCR project is planned in conjunction with five other Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency initiatives: the North/West Battery Park City Resilience, the Battery Coastal Resilience, the FiDi and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, the Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience, and East Side Coastal Resiliency. The SBPCR project and the rebuilt Wagner Park, slated to open next summer, will be the first of these resilience projects to be completed.

Matthew Fenton and Alison Simko

Progress on the Ingress

City Ramps Up Better Bicycle Approach to Brooklyn Bridge

The City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) is finalizing a proposal to streamline and simplify the lane that cyclists use to approach the Brooklyn Bridge. DOT planner Patrick Kennedy explains, “in the past three years, since we installed the new in-roadway protected lane on the Brooklyn Bridge, there has been significant increase in bike volume.” Since the bike lane was inaugurated, he says, cycling traffic has increased by 149 percent, to an average of more than 5,000 bikes per day. Read more...

City of Maybe

City Council Rep Shares Concerns about Adams Housing Plan

Lower Manhattan’s representative at the City Council, Christopher Marte, is voicing reservations about the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan being pushed by the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, which came before the municipal legislature on Monday and Tuesday for the first time. Read more...

DOWNTOWN CALENDAR

Friday, October 25

5:30pm

The Astraeus Collective

Washington Market Park Gazebo

The Astraeus Collective was formed out of the members’ desire to reinvigorate the world of classical chamber music. Free.

7pm-9pm

Nightmare at the Museum

National Museum of the American Indian

Exploring folklore, the supernatural, and the impact of colonialism, these films in the horror, sci-fi, and thriller genres give new perspectives on Indigenous storytelling. For mature audiences. Free.

Watch for the Broadsheet’s special weekend calendar, with a frighteningly complete array of Halloween events, hitting your inbox today at 3pm!

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www.eBroadsheet.com

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