By Steve Dougherty
As seen in DOWNTOWN’s Holiday 2025 issue.
It was one of those magical moonlit nights on the Battery Park City Esplanade. The Hudson was running in smooth swells on an incoming tide that carried the salty scent of ocean air from the Atlantic. The steeple atop the old Central railroad terminal on the opposite shore made the onetime hub of commerce look like a house of worship. The onion domes of Ellis Island loomed ghostly in the shadows, and close by, the torch in the raised hand of Lady Liberty shone its golden beacon over the waters of New York Harbor. As I savored the scene, I was startled by the words of a passing neighbor. “Enjoy it while you can,” she said, her voice tight with emotion, “we’re going to lose all this.”
Distraught after a Zoom meeting that detailed Battery Park City Resiliency Project plans to grid the neighborhood from threats caused by climate change, she seemed to fear the safeguard more than the danger. “There’s going to be a concrete wall eight feet high all across here, almost to the top of the lamp posts,” she said, waving her arm in a gesture that took in the Esplanade with its Victorian London charm, the residential buildings that hug its raised inner walkway, and The Upper Room, the beguiling public art installation standing like an ancient temple of the sun at the Albany Street entrance to the riverfront promenade. “The Esplanade will be closed all the way from the yacht basin to South Cove. It will be at least five years before we can walk out here again. Trees that have been here for 40 years are going to be cut down to make way for construction equipment. The Upper Room is going to be demolished.”
Every community is a family of neighbors, and ours is a family that has suffered — and survived — trauma before. And now, 24 years after the community that thrived in the shadows of the Twin Towers fear they are soon to be tested again. The nearly $2 billion undertaking to prepare the neighborhood against sea level rise and catastrophic, worst-case storms for the next 150 years, the Battery Park City Resiliency Project, completed its first phase in July with the opening of the new Wagner Park at the far south end of the neighborhood. It was built on the site of the cherished original, the 2022 demolition of which left bitter feelings that are welling once again. The project’s next, more ambitious and complex phase, involving major work throughout the heart of the neighborhood, is set to begin in early 2026. The massive five-year construction project promises to disrupt the lives of Battery Park City’s 16,000 residents into the next decade. It entails the installation of bulky, formed-concrete flood walls in front of the brick and stone residential buildings that line the south end of the Esplanade and similar barriers, some with deployable gates of solid steel throughout the neighborhood. It will require the closure, tearing up, and rebuilding of sections of one of the community’s most treasured features—the Esplanade itself—and permanently obstruct sight lines to the river and harbor that are the source of much of the neighborhood’s beauty.
“I moved here primarily for what we’re about to lose—access to the waterfront,” said retiree Patrick Gill, who has rented in the neighborhood since the 1990s and now wonders if he and his family should pack up and leave.
“Who doesn’t want to save their home?” said Kelly McGowan, who moved to the neighborhood in the early ‘90s and has been a sharp critic of the project since helping wage the losing battle to preserve Wagner Park. “But residents want a reasonable project with a better design that enhances but doesn’t destroy the beauty and character of the community. Battery Park City was designed to connect the community to the water. Now they’re putting up these Fort Knox walls that block the view. They’re destroying the neighborhood in order to save it.”
Aerial view of East Manhattan captured from high above the Hudson River in 2012—photography by Geoffrey Green.
Despite widespread misgivings among residents, public opposition, save lone voices like McGowan’s, has been muted. Neighborhood leaders and opinion makers have been generally supportive but hardly boosters of the project. Community Board 1 recently presented its legally mandated response to the project’s Environmental Impact Statement, final approval of which green lights the project and allows construction—and upheaval—to begin. Members pressed project representatives hard, eliciting promises to safeguard the health of residents who continue to suffer ailments related to the 9-11 disaster. They also requested modifications to the plan, including a reasonable suggestion that barrier walls twined with deployable gates be scaled back so that river views can be better enjoyed as long as the gates are not deployed, which all imagine will be most of the time. Still, little debate is heard at this stage about the cost and extreme scope of the project. “Scientists tell us that Hurricane Sandy will be remembered as a relatively minor storm,” said Jeff Galloway, the ever-gracious Gateway Plaza Tenants Association board member who led the May 29 Zoom meeting that my distraught neighbor on the Esplanade viewed. “We need to plan for Sandy on steroids.”
Yet, there is a discernible sense of dread among residents as the start date for the project looms. In speaking with residents in recent days, I was hard-pressed to find anyone who had anything emphatically positive to say about the project. I did speak with one woman who is not a resident but who works in an office in Brookfield Place, who said, “It’s a shame because it’s such a beautiful neighborhood, but it has to be done. The waters will rise, and even if we’re not here to see it, we have to think of our children.”
But for the most part, emotions expressed ranged from disbelief (“It’s absolutely flabbergasting”) and resignation (“What can you do, it’s a done deal, right?) to expressions of outright animosity and suspicion.“It’s disgusting,” a retired Wall Street broker said as he had a coffee in Pumphouse Park, the beautiful gardens outside Brookfield Place.“This park will be razed. It’s too extreme and too expensive.” Why did he think a project so unpopular with so many people was going ahead? He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger in a gesture that needed no translation: unseen money. The prospect of living in the midst of an enormous construction site for five years ahead, and fear that the neighborhood they’ll find once the jackhammers and pile drivers, and beeping cement trucks go silent, will be irrevocably changed, and not for the better, were the predominant opinions shared
The sheer size and bulk—and bland, all but colorless beige —of the flood walls, portions or “mock ups” of which can be viewed at sites on Albany and First Place, that will encase the stone and brick of buildings constructed to adhere to the neighborhood’s original design codes, leave some residents wincing. “Who wants to live behind the Berlin wall?” one condo owner said.
Many seem as upset about what is all but certain to come as my neighbor was when I met her on the Esplanade. But none expressed their feelings in an outburst as passionate as hers. Most of the residents I talked to asked, like her, that their names not be published.
Wagner Park, the lovely enclave of flowering gardens, tree-shaded lawns, and breathtaking views at the far south end of Battery Park City, was often hailed as one of the most beautiful public spaces in all of New York City. It was also praised for its design, a model of resilience built to withstand storms for 100 years. For many in our community of neighbors, it was also sacred ground, an oasis that provided solace and even sanctuary for residents in the aftermath of 9-11. When the park was demolished, our community was bereft over the loss, but also incredulous that it had been destroyed in the name of the resiliency effort to save it.
The new park that’s taken its place has drawn its share of accolades, but few from those who cherish memories of the original. “I did not attend,” my neighbor from the Esplanade said of the new park’s July 29 opening ceremonies. “Honestly, it upset me so much. I still haven’t visited it.” DTM