Construction is finished on the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, a $221 million coastal flood protection system in Battery Park City, Manhattan. Designed by AECOM with a pavilion by Thomas Phifer and Partners and developed by the Battery Park City Authority in partnership with The Battery Conservancy, the project spans from the Museum of Jewish Heritage through Wagner Park, across Pier A Plaza, and along the northern border of the historic Battery. The system integrates open and buried floodwalls, deployable flip-up gates, upgraded storm drainage, and a storm-water retention cistern beneath an elevated landscape.
The Battery Park City Authority marked the milestone on September 24 with the reopening of the Battery Bikeway, a dedicated cycling path along Manhattan’s southern tip.
Photograph of Battery Park City Resiliency Project. Credit: BPCA.
Since our last update in May, when the project’s storm surge walls were taking shape, the remaining program has been delivered in sequence. Wagner Park reopened to the public on July 29, 2025, elevated roughly 10 feet above its former grade, followed by the unveiling of the Wagner Park Pavilion rooftop last fall and the completion of the Wagner Pavilion Classroom earlier this year. The rebuilt 3.5-acre park includes a 1,200-square-foot venue for community use and a rooftop garden with views of the Statue of Liberty.
Photograph of Battery Park City Resiliency Project. Credit: BPCA.
The pavilion, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, is a red-hued cast-in-place concrete structure defined by arched vaults and two circular volumes rising from its roof. The two-wing building houses a community room and park storage in its north wing and a 5,000-square-foot restaurant with park- and street-level dining in its south wing, and is certified as a zero-carbon facility by the International Living Future Institute.
Photograph of Battery Park City Resiliency Project. Credit: BPCA.
The Battery Bikeway connects the Hudson River Greenway to the East River Esplanade and runs the length of Battery Park City, forming part of an uninterrupted 31-mile waterfront bicycle path around the perimeter of Manhattan.
Work is already underway on the follow-up North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project, which will extend the flood protection system from the Museum of Jewish Heritage to Greenwich Street in Tribeca. That effort, led by the Turner Construction Company–SPC Construction Co. joint venture and designed by Arcadis, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, and SCAPE Landscape Architecture, carries a $631 million budget and is anticipated to be completed at the end of 2030, per the authority’s construction schedule.
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This is a timely topic. I wonder how well things are holding up down there in this storm.
China said they could have done project for $35 million . Someone made serious money
In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg established the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) to assess potential risks of climate change on New York City.
So much concrete and so little trees / green space. No one knows how to design a nice park anymore…
The water around NYC is saltwater. If that comes up, it will kill any trees planted unless you can get Mangroves to live here. I read an olive tree was recently planted at Gracie Mansion as a diplomatic gift. That will not survive the winter.
Ahh good points.
So the 2 projects mentioned will be nearly a Billion dollars and only 14 years after Sandy, still not completed. Corruption is King in NY.
What a lot of people call corruption is really just a combination of deeply seated inefficiency and incompetence. Sometimes criminal malice isn’t the answer. (Just in the White House)
“The Battery Bikeway connects the Hudson River Greenway to the East River Esplanade and runs the length of Battery Park City, forming part of an uninterrupted 31-mile waterfront bicycle path around the perimeter of Manhattan.”
As a cyclist who uses these paths it sounds like a wonderful thing. However one still cannot ride around Manhattan fully as the East side is full of uncompleted links with construction projects underway also raising the shoreline against the threats of climate change.
Reading some of the comments people have written… China could have done it for blah blah.. ummm China manipulates it’s currency along with working standards no one here would stand for… as for no one knows how to design a park anymore.. where was this person during the planning stages..
what is fact is NY is doing much more than any city in the us to combat sea level rise.. yes I would like to have had it completed faster. Better than nothing getting done..
and the wise crack about the olive tree not surviving the winter.. the sapling was planted in a large container as image to project .. thank you Mayor Mamdani
As for the mamdani comment. This has and had 0% to do with him. Before his time. Don’t manipulate.
Well, how did we do here?, coming out from this weekend’s storm..
Dedicaated bikweay? try it sometme.
Yes, NYC is doing many things to combat flooding. In the Fresh Meadows Queens area, several very large underground water retention tanks have been installed to slow down the release of stormwater to stop the flooding of sewers in the local neighborhood. I for one am grateful that these types of things are happening. We are lucky to live in a place where there are resources and the will to make that happen.
I live in Battery Park and the project has progressed about as well as one could expect in such a difficult terrain as it is surrounded by water in two sides. Wagner Park was a post 911 after thought and the superstructure in Battery was well over 100 years old. But… I was a witness to the Sandy Tsuami .. the chances of a reoccurrence in my view are zero. Battery is luxurious living though.
I hope they bolt some benches closer to the railings.
The very high cost of NYC government projects means fewer projects. Does anybody in state or city government really care about controlling costs. The answer is obvious. I hear the ghost of the much maligned Robert Moses laughing at our present day “ leaders.”
All the shade trees replaced with polluting concrete. Resilient maybe, but certainly not done well.