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"We Need Something Better": Lower East Siders Urge City To Halt East River Park Resiliency Project
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Apr 19, 2021
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Jake Offenhartz/Gothamist
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Apr 19, 2021
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Nearly every weekend for four decades, Raphael Munoz has been lugging heavy speakers across FDR Drive and into East River Park. When it’s warm, the 57-year-old, who grew up in the nearby Baruch Houses, can be found near the amphitheater, laying down the soundtrack for picnics, birthday parties, and barbecues that stretch late into the night.
But with the city set to move forward on its East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) plan, Munoz’s longtime open-air venue will soon be buried under 8 to 10 feet of landfill. On Sunday, he joined hundreds of other Lower East Side and East Village residents in demanding the city halt the $1.45 billion project.
“There is climate change. That’s a fact. So we have to do something about it,” Munoz told Gothamist. “But I don’t know why they have to take away the park.”
The march, led by the poet Eileen Myles and a host of other community activists, comes days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the beginning of major construction on the ESCR plan, calling it “one of the most ambitious infrastructure and climate justice projects in New York City history.”
He emphasized that the project was crucial to protecting locals — including tens of thousands of NYCHA residents — from future coastal storms and sea-level rise. And he noted that the city had adopted a phased construction schedule, which would allow at least 42% of the park to remain open at all times.
Still, many at the rally felt steamrolled and abandoned by local officials, whom they said had failed to properly convey the necessity of the years-long closure.
While an initial proposal, developed with help from the community, had called for flood barriers and berms along FDR Drive, the de Blasio administration later concluded the plan was insufficient to protect the coastline from Sandy-level storms. Instead, they opted to raise the park entirely. City officials closely guarded an engineering study that formed the basis of the overhaul — then released the report with heavy redactions, prompting a lawsuit earlier this month from the activist group East River Park Action.
At Sunday’s protest, participants held signs calling for the study’s full release, as longtime activist Reverend Billy Talen led marchers in song about the neighborhood’s lack of green space (“Don’t tear it down/It’s the only park around”). At one point, the group held a “die-in” outside the office of City Councilmember Carlina Rivera, who supports the project.
In a statement to Gothamist, Councilmember Rivera said they she had negotiated hard to ensure the project allowed for half the park to remain up during construction, and would not "let the protection that our public and subsidized housing residents deserve and that has been denied to them for nearly a decade be allowed to be delayed any longer."
Other participants argued that the project has environmental shortcomings. As she walked behind a large banner showing the roughly 1,000 trees that will soon be displaced, Dr. Amy Berkov, a CUNY biologist, said environmental conservation experts should have reviewed the project.
“What we’re talking about is the destruction of not just the trees but every living thing along 2.2 miles of New York City shoreline,” Berkov told Gothamist. “We need something better than this.”
The Parks Department says that many of those trees are in poor health due to limited species diversity. According to a spokesperson, the agency has committed to planting 1,000 new trees in the surrounding neighborhoods during construction and an additional 2,000 trees in the resulting park. The city aims to complete the project by 2025.
Once done, it will include new entry points and connecting bridges, a redesigned draining system along the coast, flood gates at either end of the park and a new amphitheater. Work is already underway on the Stuyvesant Cove and Asser Levy Playground to the north of the park, between 18th and 25th Streets.
Even as the mayor and local officials touted the project as ongoing, local residents insisted there was still time to reverse course. At a community board meeting last week, representatives of the Department of Design and Construction confirmed that they were still evaluating bids for the construction inside the East River Park. A spokesperson for DDC acknowledged that the project inside the park would no longer move forward this spring, as initially pledged.
“This is a large contract and because of the need to be cautious in the procurement process we now expect work to begin in East River Park this summer,” the spokesperson said.
The delay has contributed to the sense among some activists that the project might be defeated if only it can be pushed until after a new mayor is elected in November.
“This project is not going forward in East River Park. They’ve not accepted any bids, and there’s no contractor on board yet,” said Tommy Loeb, an organizer with East River Park Action. “This isn’t over yet.”
Tagged
climate change
Lower East Side
east village
east river park
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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