Huge Resiliency Reconstruction Project Moves Forward
The North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project—which aims to create a coastal flood risk management system consisting largely of flood walls and deployable gates that stretch from South Cove along the Esplanade to a high point in Tribeca near North Moore and Greenwich Streets—has reached the milestone of 60 percent of design completion.
“Climate change is here and it’s very real and it’s impacting Lower Manhattan as we speak,” Battery Park City Authority president Raju Mann said at a public meeting on June 20 that drew more than 100 participants. “And so, we have to struggle to adapt not only to climate change, but try to build a better neighborhood in the process.” The project is now expected to cost approximately $1.5 billion and take five years to complete.
Among the plan’s priorities are protecting the area it encloses from 2.5 feet of projected sea-level rise (and much higher water during storms); improved circulation, accessibility, and seating; increasing landscaped area by 30 percent; and reducing the cost of home ownership in Battery Park City. The last point will be achieved by making the community eligible for removal from the flood maps compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is expected to eliminate the need for homeowners to purchase flood insurance that would otherwise be required for federally-backed mortgages.
The design has evolved in significant ways since the prior round of public meetings. At its northern end, the flood barrier—once envisioned as a nine-foot wall in Hudson River Park—now hugs the wall of Borough of Manhattan Community College. “That would have been a pretty imposing presence next to the bike way and walkway,” observed Gwen Dawson, the BPCA’s vice president of real property. “We looked at a number of different approaches, but there really weren’t any that would reduce that impact and still make that alignment work. So our design team went back and looked at this new alignment, and put it on the east side of Route 9A.” This update to the design requires deployable barriers at Harrison Street and across Route 9A, just north of Chambers Street.
Where the flood barrier passes from Tribeca into Battery Park City (behind Stuyvesant High School), plans now call for the North Esplanade both to be raised vertically and extended horizontally. This will allow for shorter flood barriers (relative to the height of the deck) and a wider, curved connection between Battery Park City and the Hudson River Park, rather than the narrow, right-angled chokepoint the currently joins the two spaces.
For the project section adjacent to Rockefeller Park, the flood barrier will follow River Terrace, tracing a line similar to the existing stone wall at the park’s eastern edge. This will translate into few, if any, construction impacts on Rockefeller Park during the project’s buildout, Ms. Dawson said, although the basketball courts and the playground will have to be temporarily closed and reconfigured. The existing Lily Pond will be preserved, with a new deployable gate (50 feet wide) behind it.
The most extensive changes will take place around Brookfield Place and North Cove Marina, where tiered barriers with built-in seating will separate the upper and lower plazas, forming the new flood wall. This structure will also contain multiple switchback ramps for accessibility. In what may be the most controversial single aspect of the plan, multiple trees will have to be removed from Pump House Park in order to accommodate the new wall.
Along the South Esplanade, the existing privacy walls that separate each building from the walkway will be replaced by new barriers 14 to 18 inches higher. There will be deployable gates at Albany Street, Rector Place, and West Thames Street. The river edge of the South Esplanade will be mostly preserved, while a new path will be built at a higher elevation along the inner edge. New public spaces at the ends of three streets become gathering places: Albany Street will end at “The Outlook,” Rector will terminate at “The Conversation Room,” and West Thames will lead to “The Art Garden.” The Upper Room, a sculpture that has dominated the junction of Albany Street and the Esplanade for decades, will likely have to be relocated.
The area surrounding South Cove will also see the privacy walls behind apartments buildings replaced with taller flood barriers, while three intersections (South End Avenue, as wells Third, Second, and First Places) will host deployable gates. This area will also undergo some tree loss. But, as Ms. Dawson noted, “we are planting more trees than we are removing.”
During the half-decade of construction, many of Battery Park City’s signature public spaces will remain open. By the time the North/West Resiliency Project begins construction, Wagner Park and the adjacent section of the Battery (both now closed for buildout of resiliency measures) will have reopened. Only the section between North Cove Marina and Brookfield Place appears likely to close for the entire five years.
The BPCA presentation was followed by a question-and-answer session, in which a resident of southern Battery Park City (who did not give her name) raised grave reservations about the project, based on her experience living near Wagner Park, which, along with an adjacent section of the Battery, has been closed since 2022 for construction of resiliency measures.
“I live above P.S. 276,” she began, “and I’ve witnessed the construction, so I’m here specifically this evening to help my friends in the northern Battery Park City. Every single tree in Wagner Park was taken down, so we have no tree canopy. That means my electric bill has increased this summer by $150 a month, for air conditioning. I have to keep my blinds closed because it is so hot by us.”
“I had flood lights in my bedroom for months when you were working over in the Battery, and noise streaming all the time,” she continued. “We have dust in our apartments. My window is not open anymore because of it. It’s really bad for us down there. I just can’t emphasize enough how stressful it’s been to live amongst this.”
“And we’re not going to see any of this greenery,” the woman continued. “I love looking at these beautiful pictures, but I may not be alive for that. It’s going to be in 15 years, and I’m 54 years old. The reason we live here is for all the green space.”
Mr. Mann replied, “on the timeline question, I want to provide some reassurance that this is not 15 years away. Yes, the trees will take some time to grow – there’s no doubt about that. But some of these [existing] trees are actually reaching their lifespan right now, and will actually start over the next several years to die off. So, we are replenishing the tree canopy.”
“But, understood: the trees will take time to grow,” he continued. “We have very real realities around climate change that we are trying to grapple with as responsibly as we can. But we aren’t here to say this is going to be an easy project to execute. It’s not. It’s going to be a lot of hard work. There’s going to be shared sacrifice as we move through construction. But we are optimistic that this is going to be a better neighborhood, because it’ll be a resilient neighborhood and be protected from some of the severe climate risks we face as a City.”
The woman pressed, “our immediate concern right now is the heat. So while the water will rise, will we all be around to even see it rise with this heat? We need these mature trees. I can’t even believe the design in Pump House Park. That’s a haven, and you need to let people know that they’re not going to have shade, and be honest about that.”
Mr. Mann answered, “on Pump House Park, we’re still thinking through what the design is, and again, we encourage you to continue to give us feedback. And we’ll have more trees at the end of the project than we do today. On the heat question, we don’t have every answer to the risks that climate change presents here. We think this will be a significantly more resilient neighborhood moving forward and that’s what we’re trying to work toward. But these challenges are very real and they’re significant and no one project can address all of them.”