$10M LES Park Upgrade To Start After Decade-Long Fight

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — A park space near the Williamsburg Bridge is about to get millions of dollars in upgrades, a decade after community activists began pressuring the city to revitalize the space.

Construction on Luther Gulick Park will begin in March, a Parks Department spokesman confirmed. Work is slated to be complete by September 2020.

Parks' plan for the playground space includes new bathrooms, a basketball court, table tennis, exercise equipment, play space, a picnic area and open lawn. The park, located at Delancey and Willet Sts., currently has handball courts and a Citibike station.

The LoDown first reported the update.

Community activists first started the campaign to redo the park and playground a decade ago, The LoDown reported in 2009. Some 75 residents gathered with a Parks official to push for bathrooms, an iron fence to replace a chain-link fence, greenery and trees — many of which were cut down in the early 2000s due to disease, according to the LoDown's report at the time.

At the time, the project was estimated to be $2 million. Today, with cash from the mayor, borough president, City Council, state and federal, the project totals $9.9 million.

The goal, according to Parks, is to reduce pavement, increase accessibility and protect existing trees.

A separate Parks project is expected to demolish a Lower East Side bathhouse and replace it, possibly temporarily, with synthetic turf field.

These two projects come in the midst of community outrage that the East River Park will be bulldozed and closed for construction for at least three-and-a-half years to protect the east side from coastal flooding under the East Side Coastal Resiliency project.

Community members have previously slammed the city for that closure, saying it should detail mitigation plans and alternate play space for the east side neighborhoods.

The demolition of the bathhouse, said Parks spokesperson Crystal Howard, is an "opportunity for us to provide alternate locations to the community for recreational use during the reconstruction of East River Park."

Image credit: Parks Department Image caption: A rendering of the future Luther Gulick Park to be completed in September 2020.

Second and third images credit: Sydney Pereira Images caption: Luther Gulick Park on Feb. 13, 2019.