A mini beach opens at Bushwick Inlet Park
Photos courtesy of NYC Parks / Hannah Mrakovčić
A new park with a small beach officially opened in Greenpoint this week, one tiny step toward completing the very delayed Bushwick Inlet Park. The city’s Parks Department on Wednesday celebrated the opening of the new “Motiva” parcel, a roughly 1.7-acre waterfront greenspace with restored wetlands, native plantings, and a sliver of beach with a kayak launch. The new park represents the latest section of Bushwick Inlet Park, a 27-acre greenspace first promised more than 20 years ago as part of a rezoning of the neighborhood, and is still only about a third completed.
The new park cost $9.8 million in remediation and construction. The former industrial site now includes a restored tidal wetlands ecosystem, native plantings, a waterfront esplanade, and access to a sandy beach. There’s also a kayak launch and an osprey stand.
“Our parks are where New Yorkers reconnect with their city, and this newest portion of Bushwick Inlet Park gives visitors a place to take in the majesty of the Manhattan skyline while enjoying the serenity of a thriving green waterfront,” NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura said.
“Our work at this long-fought-for greenspace demonstrates what is possible when the City invests in our public spaces and collaborates across agencies and with the community. We’re proud to celebrate this latest step in the transformation of the Brooklyn waterfront, restoring critical ecosystems and creating beautiful new green spaces that all New Yorkers can enjoy.”
The proposed 27-acre park was designated in 2005 as part of a rezoning of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure. The city bought the Motiva parcel at Kent Avenue and North 14th Street in 2014 for $4.65 millionfrom the oil and gas company. Designs were approved in 2020, and six years later, the park is now open.
The city acquired the last of six parcels, the CitiStorage site, in 2016 for $160 million. Most recent progress at this site includes the demolition of the huge CitiStorage building in January 2025. The site now enters the remediation phase.
Bushwick Inlet Park’s first section at 86 Kent Avenue, with a field, playground, and esplanade, opened in 2009, and the grassy 1.89-acre site at 50 Kent Avenue opened in 2022.
Delays for the final three parcels, Bayside, home to giant storage tanks until they were demolished in 2019, and the north and south sites of CitiStorage, are due to legal battles over who is responsible for remediating the sites. As Hell Gate reported, National Grid and Exxon are currently in litigation over one site, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation is investigating who should be liable for the clean-up for the other.
Council Member Lincoln Restler told Hell Gate the park needs an estimated $75 to $100 million to be completed, but said he has more confidence it can get done with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration.
“We made essentially zero progress over the last four years, despite me banging my head against the wall with every single member of the Adams administration as many times as I possibly could,” Restler told the website. “They just didn’t care. And I think we have a different orientation in the Mamdani administration.”
He added: “I’ve been meeting with a variety of senior leaders on their team on this topic already, and I’m hopeful they’ll be good partners.”
On a site next to Motiva, a three-tower project with more than 1,100 apartments, 460 units which would be affordable, retail, and a community facility, including space for the Greenpoint Monitor Museum. Developed by Gotham Organization, the project at 40 Quay and 56 Street, dubbed Monitor Point, was approved by the City Planning Commission last month and now heads to the City Council.
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