Wagner Park Upgrade Takes First Steps Toward 2025 Completion
The first phase of construction is continuing at Wagner Park, where the Battery Park City Authority (BCPA) is rebuilding the public space ten feet higher than the current ground level, with the aim of creating resiliency measures to protect against sea-level rise and extreme weather events. The park was closed last November, but the initial stage of work, consisting primarily of site demolition and pile installation, did not begin until this March. By June, the pavilion had been demolished, and the landscape cleared of trees.
Since then, 122 steel “H” piles have been installed, to support the weight of the planned new pavilion building. Also complete is the placement of roughly 250 linear feet of steel sheet piles for the planned Wagner Park flood wall.
The second phase of work, slated to begin this fall, will focus on installing deployable floodgates, as well as the placement of a flood wall buried beneath a new, landscaped berm along the northern edge of the Battery. This stage will reconfigure and rebuild Pier A Plaza, while also setting up formwork (molds for poured concrete) that will be used to raise the seawall.
The current budget for this project is $221 million, and the most recent timeline calls for the entire plan to be complete in the spring of 2025. (The original anticipated date of completion was July 2024, based on a prior start date of summer 2022, which was delayed by about nine months.) Both the budget and the schedule are projections, however, and are subject to change.
Plans for the new pavilion have been a particular focus of interest for the community. Preliminary designs call for a building of approximately 8,000 square feet (slightly smaller than the recently demolished structure). Within this footprint, architects anticipate including public restrooms, a community room (1,250 square feet), and a walkable terrace of roughly 3,800 square feet. The new restaurant space will take up 1,280 square feet of indoor space and 1,000 square feet of outdoor dining, compared to the former space occupied by Gigino’s restaurant, which occupied approximately 1,400 square feet of indoor space and 800 square feet of outdoor patio space. The BPCA plans to solicit community feedback in the coming months about possible uses for the community room and preferences for the restaurant space.
BPCA spokesman Nick Sbordone said, “we’re well underway on the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, which will provide Battery Park City with urgently-needed protection from the threats of storm surge and sea level rise while also creating a world-class, vibrant public space that fosters social cohesion, advances wellness for all ages, and promotes a connection to nature.”