$1.5B Battery Park City Rendering to Protect Lower Manhattan Coastline Revealed But Work Won’t Get Underway Until Late 2025

Climate Change has been an ongoing issue in New York City. With an estimated $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity after Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012, the city was left with thousands of residents displaced and inundated subway tunnels. For more than a decade, the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) has been trying to come up with a solution to prevent future calamitous flooding by reshaping the lower Manhattan coastline. The authority recently gave a first look at renderings of a one mile stretch along lower Manhattan that it is proposing which includes a series of floodwalls, gates and seascapes.

To finance the project, Gov. Kathy Hochul quietly bolstered the authority’s bond power in the April state budget by raising its debt capacity—up from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion to help it carry out the flood protections. In its most recent bond sale last year the authority sold roughly $750 million worth of revenue bonds, Crain’s reported. “We’re trying to integrate this as much as possible into the natural landscape so that it doesn’t read obviously as a flood barrier, it just becomes part of the overall urbanscape,” Gwen Dawson, the authority’s senior vice president of design and construction told Crain’s New York Business.

Under the newest renderings, the BPCA proposed a plan to install eight-foot-high flood wall lines to take up the southern portion of Battery Park City’s waterfront esplanade. Within that plan, the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project (NWBPR) will make headway first providing risk reduction to property, residents and assets within the vicinity of Battery Park City through creation of an integrated coastal flood risk that will run from First Place, north along the Battery Park City Esplanade, across to the east side of West Street/ Route 9A, terminating above Chambers Street at a high point on Greenwich Street.

If the project receives public approvals, it is set to begin in the latter half of 2025, with an expected five-year construction duration, a Battery Park City Authority spokesperson confirmed to Straus News on June 21.

“This project is an example of urban coastal resilience at its best - design that is universally accessible, increases biodiversity, engages community, and protects our beloved and culturally significant waterfront,” Elijah Hutchinson, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice said in a statement on June 20, 2024. “I look forward to our continued collaboration on Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience–the City-State partnership that coordinates and delivers resilient waterfront infrastructure projects for Lower Manhattan, home to critical infrastructure, jobs, and transportation networks that serve so many New Yorkers and the region as a whole.”

“Battery Park City’s resiliency efforts figure as part of a larger, farsighted strategy with our partners at the City of New York to protect lower Manhattan for the coming decades,” Raju Mann, BPCA president and CEO, said in a statement on June 20, 2024. “While we work on finalizing the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project designs we’re mindful of the project’s urgency and committed to working in close coordination with community stakeholders to deliver a coastal flood protection system to be proud of.”

The plans have been taking shape since last summer as the authority began formulating design while seeking input from the public.

To limit risks and costs, the authority is using a contracting method known as progressive design-build, which allows the authority to move through the design phase before determining the project’s final costs. The current estimated cost of the resiliency plan is $1.5 billion. Once completed, it will be protecting vulnerable real estate on that side of Manhattan that is valued at $13.8 billion.

The proposed plan reached 60 percent design progress at a public meeting held at Stuyvesant High School in Battery Park City, the authority confirmed on June 20, 2024. And current designs incorporated public feedback over the course of two dozen meetings, work shops, walking tours, and small group discussions conducted over the past three years, according to the authority.

“Stuyvesant High School has a long-standing partnership with the Battery Park City Authority. The North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project will help protect and beautify the vicinity and allow for Stuyvesant to continue to be a key educational fixture in the neighborhood,” Brian Moran, Assistant Principal of Stuyvesant High School, said in a press release, on June 20, 2024. “Stuyvesant has hosted many of the BPCA Resiliency Project community outreach events and the BPCA has communicated and worked in collaboration with the school to support its needs throughout the entire process.”

The project will provide:

1. Protection from 2.5 feet of projected sea level rise to help cool the neighborhood during hot events and prevent ponding of more than 1 inch depth during rain events in Battery Park City.

2. Reduced homeownership costs to purchase flood insurance for federally backed mortgagees.

3. Enhanced public space with universal accessibility, remediated circulation pinch points, and increased and improved seating.

4. More landscape with over 30 percent increase in total planting coverage within the project area, including 2 times along battery park city’s south esplanade.

5. Increased native plantings with 85 percent native species coverage, better supporting birds and pollinators with new planted areas that shorten existing gaps in habitat corridors.

6. Improved in-water habitats with approximately 1,200 linear feet of reconstructed bulkhead designed to provide environments that support marine life.

“Storm surge and sea-level rise have been unwelcome words in New York since Superstorm Sandy, but the lessons learned are important for leading the city into the future,” Carlo A. Scissura, Esq., New York Building Congress President & CEO, said in a press release on June 20, 2024. “That's why the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project is so critical. It will provide resilience, accessibility, and a greener, cleaner space. Just as important, nothing was decided without input from those most affected – the area's residents. We look forward to this project's completion and a better Battery Park City and New York because of it.”