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Local Voices

Green(less) Grow The (Nonexistent) Rushes

A Cautionary Tale of Two New Waterfront Parks

Greenpoint’s newest park just opened to the public in the far North end of the neighborhood. The first parcel of publicly-maintained, privately-owned parkland to be delivered by the Greenpoint Landing mega-development, this small parcel hugs the shore near the terminus of Newtown Creek where it feeds into the East River, adjacent to the recently-completed One Blue Slip tower. In a process that has become the standard for waterfront development in North Brooklyn and beyond, the park was built by the developers, but will be accessible to the public, and maintained by the city’s Parks Department (in a scheme that has already contributed some controversy).

The park is, to be blunt, underwhelming. A glorified esplanade cantilevered over the shoreline, the space abounds in dull, rectilinear, concrete-heavy forms, interrupted by a few grassy afterthoughts. The whole parcel is hemmed in by a fence that formally blocks access and connection to the water, in a correctional-facility-like flourish.

As with Domino Park to the South — a similar result of a public-private developmental partnership — Blue Slip Park (if, indeed, that is what it will be called…) appears designed with maintenance concerns foremost in mind. Unlike Domino Park, however, the design does not transcend that limit with any evident imagination — surprising, given the design chops of James Corner Field Operations, who were likewise the landscape architects of Domino Park.

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The result is a park the feels less like bona-fide city park, and more like an expansion of and amenity for the condominiums that it surrounds. While the requisite elements are there — lawn, benches, picnic tables — they carry the whiff of items on a checklist, as opposed to opportunities for creative design solutions. The interplay between the plaza-like walkways and the upscale buildings that are their masters feels especially corporate and cold.

This being but one parcel of a larger proposed park (there will eventually be 4 acres of park adjoining Greenpoint Landing developments), perhaps these harsh judgments are premature. However, a sea-level examination of the greater site suggests that the unfortunate sequester of the waterfront, represented here by the aforementioned fence perched a good 10 feet above the waterline, will obtain throughout the park. Doubtless, this barrier is informed in part by the necessity, post-Hurricane Sandy, for waterfront parks to account for both storm surge and sea-level rise, but the solution, at once alienating and aloof, can hardly be credited as anything but dull. Certainly, it seems far from Field Operations’ stated goal of, “providing innovative responses to flood preparedness … while also creating a dynamic urban public realm and public access to the waterfront.”

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In stark contrast to Blue Slip Park’s dullness is the fecund brilliance of its waterborne Northern neighbor, the also-just-opened Hunters Point South Park. While overshadowed by the contemporaneous opening of Domino Park last June, Hunters Point South Park is similarly a public-private affair, created as part of the massive Hunters Point South development, and designed by the award-winning Manhattan firm of Weiss/Manfriedi (designers of Roosevelt Island’s Cornell Campus, among others), in collaboration with landscape architects Swa/Balsey. Hunters Point South Park, even more so than Domino Park, has been lauded by everyone from the New York Times to Architectural Digest to throngs of breathless users as a “Model for Urban Flood Resiliency,” and “a fresh breath of air.”

The park is most notable for its approach to the same post-Sandy pressures that affect is Southern brethren: Whereas both Domino Park and Blue Slip/Greenpoint Landing park have chosen to “stay above the fray,” as it were, of rising waters and storm surges, Hunters’ Point South Park actively and beautifully wrestles with these issues in its core design. Wetlands hug the recreated shoreline, access to the water’s edge is facilitated throughout, and the designers even pioneered a periodic island that comes into being during high tides, via a culvert that saturates the surrounding marshland.

Moreover, the curvilinear layout, abundant native plants (Rosehips! Shore Pines! Rushes!), and deft use of topography make Hunters Point South Park not just a model for resilient design, but a model for urban waterfront park space in general. Lush, mysterious, and deeply imaginative, Hunters Point South Park offers walking paths, sunbathing lawns, and ample amenities (seating, picnic tables, exercise machinery) without sacrificing surprise.

Greenpoint Landing’s developers would do well to take a walk across the waters of Newtown Creek and assess what is possible.

While the design and buildout of Greenpoint Landing's parks is well underway, there is still a chance to affect future design. Individual members of numerous North Brooklyn park and open space advocacy groups, including Friends of Transmitter Park, Barge Park Pals, Newtown Creek Alliance, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, and OSA are in the process of seeking discussions with the developers to try to influence the design process. Stay in touch with them if you wish to have your voice heard.

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