Aerial perspective on the “Parkipelago” on Manhattan’s East River waterfront

The $1.45-billion East Side Coast Resiliency Project (ESCR) has hit a key milestone, with the opening of several components of East River Park.

Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, along with Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects (MNLA), ONE Architecture & Urbanism, and AKRF, the project is billed as a "parkipelago" of interconnected green spaces on the waterfront which also double as floor barriers for the Lower East Side.

Located within a 100-year floodplain, the park incorporates infrastructure such as flood walls and bridging berms that will protect 110,000 New Yorkers from future storms. Additionally, the new park space protects critical infrastructure such as a major pump station and an electrical substation for Lower Manhattan.

The newly-opened sections, concentrated around the Williamsburg Bridge, are accompanied by 600 new trees, landscaping, and amenities like basketball courts, picnic spaces, multi-use fields, an amphitheater, an esplanade, and pedestrian bridges at Delancey Street and Corlears Hook Park.

The new Solar One Environmental Education Center anchors the northern gateway at East 3rd Street and Avenue C, and provides environmental education and training to New York students.

The ESCR builds upon the 2014 BIG U vision, which calls for building a 10-mile protective waterfront wrapping Lower Manhattan. That effort will span west with the Battery Park City Resiliency Project.

• City breaks ground on $1.45B East Side Coastal Resiliency project (Urbanize NYC)