The Greenpoint Waterfront is moving into a new era of massive development, but the community still has some say in the direction of those changes.
The 2005 Rezoning promised open waterfront space to the community and tomorrow, the NYC Parks, NYC Economic Development Corporation and Community Board 1 are inviting community members (along with elected officials and stakeholders) to a group “listening session” to review the upcoming Newtown Barge Park and Box Street Park Projects.
The proposed Box Street Park will be located at 65 Commercial Street and will include a playground, a multipurpose field, and a shade picnic terrace overlooking the East River, encompassing 2.27 acres total. Kayaks will also be able to launch from the park area.
The plan will also merge Newtown Barge Terminal Playground and Greenpoint Playground, the former as a paved play area upland and the later as a green lawn closer to the water. The Greenpoint Playground will include a basketball court, handball and climbing area, and Little League field. Â The rezoning plan will expand these facilities and add structures for picnicking, viewing games, and strolling, according to GWAPP.
Contruction is slated to begin in Spring 2014 and complete sometime in 2016.
“For years they’ve been talking about creating Box St. park and I was always excited about the idea about having some green space to hang out on close to home,” said local resident and tipster, Rachel Farmer, “But I just found out that some local sports league folks pushed the parks department hard in 2005 with the rezoning and convinced them that we all want Box St. Park to be primarily an athletic field. That would leave Transmitter Park the only quiet green park space in all of north Greenpoint.”
We don’t have confirmation that sports leagues are pushing for more field area in the park, although the plan does zone a large portion of the park space to the Little League field in Newtown Barge Terminal Playground and the Multi-Purpose Field at Box Street.
You can see for yourself here.
If you go to the meeting, please send us your thoughts on Twitter @ Greenpointers.
Here are the details:
Wednesday, October 30
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Bushwick Inlet Park
86 Kent Ave. at N. 9th St.
RSVP appreciated: newtownbox [at] parks.nyc.gov
If you can’t attend the meeting, you can send any questions, comments, concerns regarding the proposed park expansion and new park project to the above email.
The entire esplanade is passive space, so the athletic fields are there for a reason. Given the towers scheduled to go up, there will be a huge demand for field space. Currently there is not enough permit time for teams to play, and children are being turned away from soccer leagues for this reason. Add another 4,000 to 8,000 residents along the waterfront and this field space will be all we have to serve hundreds of kids and families moving to the area.