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Robert Ripps book
History of Tribeca Buildings
The plans for the reconstruction of Rockefeller Park
Rockefeller Park and parts of the streets of Tribeca are about to be under construction for years — five overall, though the work will be done in shifts — as part of Battery Park City’s North/West Resilience Project. (The agency already rebuilt Wagner Park; the segments that most involves Tribeca are called Reach 1, 2 and 3. This link will take you to a page where you can click on each section.)
Basically the authority is creating a massive system of walls and gates to isolate its properties — from the ballfields to the apartment buildings just north of The Battery — from rising river waters. That means they have to construct a walls as far as N. Moore.
It’s a massive project so I focused on the issues that affect day-to-day use and broke it down in bullet points. There are more details below and renderings for each segment below.
- The Rockefeller Park playground and ball courts will be closed during construction. STARTS WINTER 2028 FOR 2 YEARS
- The North Esplanade (behind Stuy) will be entirely rebuilt. STARTS JANUARY 2026 FOR 3 YEARS
- The corner where the walkway north of Stuy meets the Hudson River Park walkway will be redesigned. STARTS WINTER 2026
- The south side of N. Moore will be redesigned to add a flood wall along the building and extend the sidewalk. STARTS SUMMER 2026 FOR 4 YEARS, BUT IN 8 STAGES
- A flood gate will be installed at the end of Harrison STARTS SUMMER 2026
- Flood gates will be installed on West Street and a flood wall will be built along BMCC’s retaining wall. STARTS WINTER 2026 FOR 4 YEARS, BUT IN STAGES
- Overall for the North/West Resiliency Project, 435 mature trees will be removed, including on city streets. They will be replaced with 450 new trees.
N. MOORE CONSTRUCTION
The work going on now in front of IPN on N. Moore are test pits to examine the substructure. There is a lot of ConEd infrastructure under those sidewalks, so the BPCA has had to work with them, city Department of Transportation and city Department of Environmental Protection. They will know more in January.
The sidewalk there will be narrowed but not closed entirely during construction. Egress from the IPN entrance will be coordinated.
HARRISON STREET CONSTRUCTION
On Harrison, the BPCA is building a flip-up gate at the end of the street that will be embedded in the roadway. The gate will seal to columns on the north and south sides of the sidewalk that they are installing as part of the project.
HUDSON RIVER PARK CORNER
On the corner with Hudson River Park, the design is not yet finalized — it is in discussions with HPRT) but the plans have been approved with the regulatory agencies — the state and the feds. They are still working on materials, layout and design.
ROCKEFELLER LAWN & PLAYGROUND
The big lawn between Chambers and Murray will be open throughout construction, but the playground will have to close so they can install the foundations for the floodwall on its east side.
WEST STREET
The renderings above are kind of primitive, but it gives you a sense of how they plan to keep Hudson River water from the north from coming into Battery Park City. The pink are areas that will get flood treatments.
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In the last photo/rendering:
Where does the water go? into Tribeca? Did I read this right?
Water is overflowing the river and is coming down from the north. The barriers keep the water from going south into BPC. I’m assuming the river is overflowing and the water can’t go west, back into the river. Again, where does all that water go?
Based on current flood maps and historic topographical ones, most of the flooding is going to move east along Canal Street and then south down West Broadway (there will also be flooding along West St and Washington St for perhaps obvious reasons).
Those are (and have always been) low ground; Canal Street was formerly a canal and before that an inlet that, during high tide, connected to the Collect Pond’s predecessor spring north of City Hall, and much of TriBeCa and SoHo was swampland.
So yeah, TriBeCa is already in the cross hairs of any errant water but the BPC flood gates will almost certainly make it worse for us!
Until we have an infrastructure commitment from city, state or feds (Army Corps of Engineers), Tribeca will need to actively work on projects that increase absorption of storm water – park expansions (like Friends of Duane Park, Barnett Newman Triangle, Finn Sq), rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, containerized trees.
Absolutely; the big fixes will take decades to plan and build in any event, and in the meantime all of the mitigation measure you’ve highlighted will be essential (and have the added benefit of bringing additional green space to TriBeCa!).
I am not totally seeing where Gateway/Brookfield and restaurants on the water fall into this timeline. Can someone kindly advise?
This will wreck our neighborhood -people moving out of apartments en masse
Sadly time for us to go after many happy years
That the planners of this huge enterprise could not find a better solution than simply demolishing Ned Smyth’s beautiful sculpture / installation on the esplanade is an outrage. Evidently no community input was felt necessary. Just wreck it.
I always found it somewhat of an eyesore, to be honest, but, even so, I have to agree with you that its destruction was completely unnecesary and sad, and that they should have reached to the community before taking such a final decision.
435 mature trees getting taken out is brutal