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.