The Battery Park City Authority will start construction on their plan to protect the ballfields from storm surges next month. The work will be completed by summer and will not impact the play there this spring. But it will create a wall along the bike path, so watching from those covid perches on the walkway there will no longer be an option (I’ll check to see when the mezzanine will be done…).

There’s more to this story — the BPCA has resiliency plans that will affect areas north of Chambers along West Street — but I will get to that in another post. But in the meantime, the action you will soon see will be a temporary fix that will protect the fields until 2025, when the rest of the authority’s resiliency measures are in place and this can be deconstructed. These barriers will replace the grey walls that are there as an even more temporary fix.

“Overall it’s less expensive and less impactful and will not shut down play this spring,” said Nick Sbordone, BPCA’s communications head. “That was important to us, especially after the kids lost the 2020 season.”