Start of Pier 26 Work Celebrated with Bedrock Breaking Ceremony

Lower Manhattan Development Corp. Chair Holly Leicht, left, and Hudson River Park Trust President Madelyn Wils share a hug as a pile is driven into bedrock during a ceremony celebrating the start of work on Pier 26. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The ceremonial start of construction on Pier 26 in Tribeca came off with a literal bang Tuesday afternoon as one of 32 new pier pilings was pounded into Hudson River bedrock.

Officials, holding orange flags to symbolically signal the giant pile driver into motion, had come to celebrate the groundbreaking of what in two years will become the Hudson River Park’s first “eco-themed” pier. The plan includes lawns, indigenous plantings, a grove of trees and “get down” for educational walks close to the water and to the pier’s tidal pool feature. Two junior-sized soccer fields are also part of the project.

“This will be unlike anything that has been built in New York,” Madelyn Wils, the Hudson River Park Trust’s president, told  the audience.

The $31million project is made possible by equal contributions from the city, the federal government through the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., and Citi, whose global headquarters is across the street from the pier.

It has been 20 years since the signing of the Hudson River Park Act that commenced the building of the four-mile-long park. Now about three-quarters complete, the park attracts 17 million visitors a year, according to the Trust.

“You can’t take one blade of grass in Hudson River Park for granted,” said LMDC Chair Holly Leicht. “It has been a hard project every step of the way.”