Broadsheet Dons a Hardhat for Wagner Construction Update
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.
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.
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.
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.