A ritzy section of the Manhattan waterfront in Battery Park City was closed to the public on Tuesday, as crews moved forward with a $2 billion project to add flood protections to the 1.4-mile section along the Hudson River.
Kowsky Park Playground, the Sirius Dog Run and nearby volleyball courts will close for 21 months. The nearby marina has been cleared of boats since last summer to accommodate the work.
The construction will include flood walls with strong foundations to block surges of water like those seen during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which sent water rushing into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
The work is slated to be finished in 2030 and is proceeding despite objections from some neighbors who have sued over the construction’s impact on the area.
A similar flood resiliency project in East River Park in 2021 faced legal opposition and protests from residents who rallied to prevent its closure. That project ultimately went ahead and is scheduled to finish next year.
Raju Mann runs the Battery Park City Authority.
Raju Mann, the head of the Battery Park City Authority, said the closures to the neighborhood’s waterfront are necessary to protect the World Trade Center site, the PATH and other critical infrastructure.
The product aims to shore up a neighborhood that wasn’t originally part of Manhattan. Battery Park City is built on landfill that was excavated to build the Twin Towers starting in the late 1960s.
Mann pointed to the high-tide line around the edges of the marina as evidence of the danger of not rebuilding the area.
"If we want these places to be around for the next several decades, we have to do something. We can’t simply not act and hope that’s going to work,” he said. “ I think there's a broad understanding that, especially in the most vulnerable parts of New York, we have to do things differently if we're going to be here for decades to come.”
Battery Park City's North Cove Marina, popularized in the hit film "The Wolf of Wall Street," has been closed since last summer due to the construction project.
The North Cove Marina will be rebuilt, and the concrete plaza facing the Hudson River outside Brookfield Place will include more plants and green space, Mann said.
Kelly McGowan, a long-time Battery Park City resident and member of the group that’s fighting against the project, said locals were heartbroken at the chopping down of mature trees to make way for the project. Opponents of the East River Park project also bemoaned the uprooting of trees.
"They've decided that it all has to go and it all has to be destroyed,” said McGowan. “And flood walls have to be put up, completely destroying the character of the neighborhood.”
