BY KEVIN DUGGAN
City greenspace gurus recently
started building the
long-awaited park at 50 Kent
Ave., with plans to open the almost
2-acre lawn in Williamsburg
next spring, to the delight
of local garden stewards.
“We’re very happy because
the parks have never
been more heavily used,” said
Steve Chesler, a co-founder
of Friends of Bushwick Inlet
Park which helps maintain
the adjacent meadows near
the Greenpoint border.
For the $7-million project,
Parks Department plans to
transform the 1.89-acre parcel
between N. 11th and N. 12th
streets — once home to a manufactured
gas plant — into a
verdant park of sloping lawns,
forest groves, and water play
areas for kids, with a stellar
view of the East River and the
distant isle of Manhattan by
April 2022.
“We are so excited to begin
work on 50 Kent! It refl ects
and advances the City’s mission
COURIER L 10 IFE, APR. 30-MAY 6, 2021
to build a more equitable
21st Century parks system,”
said Parks spokesperson Anessa
Hodgson in an email.
“Upon its completion it will
be one of more than 800 capital
projects completed under
Commissioner Mitchell Silver’s
tenure as he has prioritized
working to ensure that
all New Yorkers have access to
quality parks.”
The proposal is divided into
three parts: an entrance plaza
with cafe tables and chairs,
an elevated sloping lawn, and
a family gathering space with
a water play fountain. City
green thumbs will also plant
several trees and bushes and
install seating throughout the
park.
Parks started working on
50 Kent back in 2018, but progress
was stalled last year as
the city slashed municipal
budgets due to COVID-19.
National Grid previously
cleaned up decades of contamination
beneath the site
and from 2018 onward, Parks
offi cials opened it during the
summer months as a so-called
pop-up park, including during
the pandemic following calls
from pent-up locals for more
open space.
50 Kent marks the next
puzzle piece of a larger park
the city promised around the
Bushwick Inlet for more than
a decade as part of then-Mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s 2009
Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront
Open Space Master
Plan to transform the former
industrial north Brooklyn waterfront
A rendering of the city’s planned park at 50 Kent. NYC Parks Department
into sprawling parkland
as a sweetener for the 2005
north Brooklyn rezoning.
The plan calls for a continuous
open waterfront stretching
from N. Third Street to
the northern tip of Manhattan
Avenue at the Newtown Creek
and includes new parks and
waterfront esplanades built
by high-rise developers along
the shore.
Parks is currently also
working on the nearby section
dubbed the Motiva Parcel
which will yield a boomerangshaped
park wrapping around
the inlet, and which offi cials
presented to local Community
Board 1 last summer, but
have yet to publish a defi nitive
timeline for.
ZERO TO 50!
City starts construction on long-awaited
50 Kent park in Williamsburg
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