Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park

Hunter's Point South is envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a world laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. The design for the Hunter’s Point South park incorporates a broad array of sustainable initiatives, transforming 30 acres of post-industrial waterfront into a program-rich public space that simultaneously acts as a protective perimeter for the neighboring residential community. The project is a collaboration between SWA/Balsley and Weiss/Manfredi for the open space and park design with ARUP as the prime consultant and infrastructure designer. 

The site is waterfront and city, gateway and sanctuary, blank slate and pentimento. These readings suggest an approach to the landscape that enhances what is unique about the site, while framing a new multi-layered identity as a recreational and cultural destination. New open spaces with connections to the surrounding communities provide access to the water's edge and spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline. 

For this rapidly growing residential neighborhood, the largest affordable housing building project in New York since the 1970s, the Waterfront Park provides a new cultural fabric that offers places of retreat and invites intimate connections with nature.

Completed in two phases, the park incorporates active and passive recreation. The northern precinct is designed as a heavily programmed space that accommodates a greater amount of daily use than the passive landscape of the southern precinct.   

The park’s central green, designed to accommodate floodwaters, is framed by a pavilion and café with views across the river. An urban beach, rail garden, dog runs, and play areas offer places of active recreation at the water’s edge. The waterfront promenade connects a diverse set of landscapes, from a shaded grassy promontory, a new island reached by a pedestrian bridge, and a meandering causeway that offers a continuous walk along the river's edge and protects nearly 1.5 acres of newly established wetlands. The design also leverages the site's dramatic topography with a cantilevered overlook that hovers above the wetland and offers panoramic views. 

The park connects to the residential community at each cross street with entry foyers marked with distinct plantings and wood benches, and in strategic locations, extends down to the water with a wood boardwalk seating area. 

New ecological corridors run parallel to the water’s edge, linking the northern and southern ends of the site with multiple systems of paths. Existing industrial concrete bulkheads were strategically replaced with wetlands and paths to create an infrastructurally “soft” edge. The park’s highly irregular perimeter varies from slender to broad widths of land between the city and water, influencing the scale of program elements throughout the park.

The design fuses programmatic infrastructures with resilient materials and systems designed for durability and self-sufficiency, transforming the waterfront park into a new cultural and ecological paradigm.