With Wagner Park Set to Close for Two Years, New Space May Take Its Place

Lookng north from near Battery Place, the 65-foot-wide promenade that the Battery Park City Authority is offering to temporarily turn into park-like space. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

How do you make up for the two-year loss of an entire park?

With popular Wagner Park set to close [1] for resiliency reconstruction, the Battery Park City Authority hopes to soften the blow to park users with a reimagined temporary space nearby. And they are looking to the public for ideas.

The space is a three-block-long stretch of promenade along West Street between Battery Place and 3rd Place. The Authority is seeking suggestions by way of an online survey [2] as well as input from meetings with Community Board 1.

The initiative comes on the heels of protests over the loss of green space in the original plan that led to a revised design [3] that added 12,800 more square feet of green. In addition, the B [4]attery Park City Neighborhood [5] Association [4] is currently calling for a halt to the demolition, and consideration of a different resiliency plan that they say would cause less impact to the park and allow it to remain open. (On Thursday, Oct. 27, the group will give an online presentation by their own experts on an alternative plan for the park.) They are seeking support from Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has yet to respond.

In the meantime, the Authority, which has been holding public planning meetings on flood protections for Battery Park City [6], including Wagner Park, since 2016 [4], is moving ahead. Its plan is to elevate the park up to 12 feet, with a raised central lawn and terraced gardens, and an extension of the esplanade that will connect to Pier A. Officials say they hope to have the new, temporary park space completed by the spring. 

“We think there may be an opportunity to activate it in a way that can be very fun and very interesting for folks in the neighborhood to use and enjoy over the course of the coming years,” Nicholas Sbordone, the BPCA’s vice president for community affairs, told CB1’s Battery Park City Committee last week. The park will close in “the coming weeks,” he said, but no date has been set.

The 65-foot-wide promenade runs between Little West Street, on the west, and the bikeway to the east. Once transformed, it will still be wide enough, officials say, to continue to accommodate foot traffic through the space. The Authority says it plans to conduct a study of pedestrian traffic patterns.

Mimi Taft, the Authority’s senior manager for special projects, said the 24,000-square-foot promenade “evolves naturally” from the touristy section in the south, near Battery Place and across the street from Pier A, to a more residential stretch closer to 3rd Place. That means the northern part may be more suited to a garden or play area, while a “gateway” of some sort could be created near the southern entrance, followed by programming that could relate to nearby PS/IS 276, or become a place for some of the fitness programs held in Wagner Park.

Sbordone said the Authority would like a “broad consensus” of what the community wants by the end of the year, with construction taking place during the winter. Continued discussion on plans for the space will be held at the next remote public meeting of CB1’s Battery Park City Committee, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, at 6 p.m. You can join it here [7]. Responses to the survey are requested by the middle of November.

Comments? Send them to carlg@tribecatrib.com [8]