If you glance north from the end of Pier 25, you’ll see the piles are in for the “get-down” (which is exactly what it sounds like – a way to get down to the river) at the end of Pier 26. Pier construction is underway and should be completed by the summer of 2020. The plan for the pier: flexible sports fields, wetland tidal pool, seating, extensive planted areas on an eco theme.

On the upland area along West Street (just south and east of City Vineyard), Clarkson University is trying to raise money for an “estuarium,” or really, a science center with classrooms for the park’s education events and for Clarkson’s environmental master’s programs. Clarkson has until this spring to raise funds, and if they don’t come through, the park will take on a more modest project to serve its own programs (27,000 school kids come every year). There’s also a science-themed play area planned for that area.

UP RIVER AT GANSEVOORT
And in other Hudson River Park news, landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, who designed parts of the Highline, have been chosen for the Gansevoort Peninsula – a 5.5-acre piece of real land (not a pier!) at the end of (you guessed it) Gansevoort Street. The peninsula is currently home to FDNY’s Marine 1, with its architecture award-winning fireboat house, as well as two mapped city streets: Bloomfield Street running east/west, and a chunk of 13th Avenue, the rest of which is under water. (The peninsula used to be the home of the Department of Sanitation’s garage and salt shed now at Spring and West streets.) The design process will start now and take 18 months or so; construction will take another two years after that. Read more here, here or here.