This Wednesday marked the long-awaited opening of BIG’s planned Stuyvesant Cove Park in Manhattan, marking an end to what was for some a contentious process that drew ire from various community groups on the two-year path towards its eventual completion.

Commissioned to be a first-line response to the damage caused to the city during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, the park becomes the second completed phase of the $1.45 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project and will be joined later in the summer by an additional segment between East 18th and East 20th Streets.

The city’s Deputy Mayor of Operations, Meera Joshi, said: “Preserving and enhancing public spaces with waterfront views, must be an objective for all coastal resiliency projects. The opening of this phase of ESCR comes at a time when residents will benefit from its design the most, and not just because it’s the start of hurricane season, but also because the warm weather is here.”

A pair of flood gates and a 1,340-foot-long linear floodwall form the infrastructural core of the Park project, surrounded by 7,095 cubic yards of soil, added greenery, and a 1,180-foot precast concrete seating area that doubles as a buffer zone for potential storm surges.  

Overall, the ESCR will protect a total of 110,000 New Yorkers (including some 28,000 NYCHA residents) from the rising threat of catastrophic storm damage. It was originally proposed as the northernmost bookend of the larger BIG U project that was curtailed over its scope, which included greening a large swath of FDR Drive. The ESCR is also considered an important bellwether for other coastal resiliency projects, such as the Jamaica Bay Greenway and Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan scheduled to get underway in the next decade.

Further improvements to existing parks and playgrounds will follow. The city’s Department of Design and Construction (DDC) expects construction to continue through the end of 2026 as a result of concessions made to protesters from the various community groups that were involved in the process. One Architecture & Urbanism (ONE) and MLNA are both involved in various stages on the project.

A companion project called the Brooklyn Bridge – Montgomery Coastal Resiliency (or BMCR) will eventually join the ESCR to create a 3.22-mile area protected by a network of sophisticated floodwater management engineering.

Solar One was also a key sponsor of the project and will host a new LEED-certified environmental education resource center located within the Park. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided $338 million in funding towards its construction. In a press statement, DDC Commissioner Thomas Foley said: “The design truly is the most advanced in the country for flood protection project.”