J. wrote to say: “Was walking by the BPC fields and noticed grey barriers on inside and outside of fence – what’s up with that?”

Turns out they are intended as temporary flood protection of the ballfields until the end of hurricane season (till Nov. 30) as the Battery Park City Authority begins work on its long-term resiliency project for the fields, according to Nick Sbordone at the BPCA. The product they are using is called a “Muscle Wall” and if you are really into it, you can watch the video of how it works below.

A longer-term solution is being planned now and construction will start early next year. For a while the authority toggled between two solutions that had pluses and minuses in the categories of cost, aesthetics, construction time and field protection: an interim 4-foot steel plate wall that is more likely to get washed over but costs less and takes less time to build, or a permanent 8-foot reinforced concrete wall that has a better chance of protecting the fields and can be made to look a little nicer but costs more and would have taken longer to build. (See some illustrations below, but if this issue is important to you, I suggest flipping through the entire PowerPoint from the July meeting here.) The final decision was for the interim solution, and that should be completed by late 2020. The next community meeting is planned for late September/early October.