Connie Fishman, president of the Hudson River Park Trust, showed the local media around the brand-new Pier 25 this afternoon. (The ribbon-cutting is Thursday at 3 p.m.; people who don’t want to listen to speeches should arrive around 4 p.m., when the park will be opened.) We’ve waited a long time for this, and sure, it’s a shame it’s opening right as the weather is turning cold, but still. I love this park! We are so lucky!

As I wrote in May 2009, when I toured the existing Tribeca part of the park, Pier 25 was designed for active recreation. That means the pier will have an “18-hole miniature golf course, snack bar, beach volleyball courts, playground, town dock and small boat moorings, berthing areas for historic ships, a flexible artificial turf lawn for junior level sports and lounge-chair seating on the far western end of the pier with stunning views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty.” (The quotes are because I’m copying-and-pasting from the press release. Why rewrite it?) “The adjoining upland section includes a basketball court, a street-course style skatepark, lawns, tree bosques seating areas and public restrooms.” Designed by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects and Sasaki Associates, this section was funded by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation with 9/11 Community Development Grant funds.

A few things I learned today:
• You’ll be able to enter from BPC (by Stuyvesant High School), at Harrison, and at N. Moore.
• The insides of the buildings aren’t ready yet, but everything outdoors is. There will be Porta-Sans for the interim. There are also some odds and ends left to do.
• The skate park (that concrete area that I mistook for a dog run) will be for skateboarders and rollerskaters.
• There will be a dog run just to the north, in the unfinished section between N. Moore and Laight, when the funds loosen up for that part. The Hudson River Park folks are applying for some of the LMDC money that’s been in the news.
• The playground area is huge! The water area will be open from May to around Columbus Day.
• “The basketball court is actually flat,” said Fishman. “The old one that was here was pitched, higher on the south side. So you had to switch a lot.”
• The south side of Pier 25 is for sailboats to come and park; the north side is for historic ships.
• There’s space for a water-taxi landing, but it’s unclear if the water-taxi companies have the money to serve it.
• South of Pier 25 will be moorings for 40 boats.
• When it was demolished, the old Pier 25 was only 40% as long as the new one. (The rest of it had been demolished previously.) Pier 25 is just under a thousand feet long.
• The operator for the mini golf, etc., has been selected but not announced.
• That Bedrock-style building is part of the mini golf course. A hole runs through it, and a waterfall runs off one side. The course is generaly frill-free for now, but the operator may choose to embellish it. There are some tough holes (like the one I named Crybaby Bridge—you can see it in the pix—because kids are going to be driven to tears if someone doesn’t block off the water area.)
• The golf course, three volleyball courts, and athletic field are lit for night play. The park will close at 1 a.m. in summer months.
• The athletic field, which has plastic grass, isn’t regulation size and will therefore be more likely to appeal to young kids.
• At the end are lilac-colored chaises (that are extremely heavy), a sort of Ian Schrager moment overlooking the Hudson.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.