Water Decaying Lawn On East River Esplanade, UES Board Tells City

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The city's plan to reimagine a stretch of the East River waterfront needs to account for a patchy lawn that has deteriorated in recent years due to a lack of hydration, a community board said last week.

The demand concerns the lawn under the East River 60th Street Pavilion, a red-painted steel structure that opened in 1995 and is also known as the Alice Aycock Pavilion, for the sculptor who designed it.

The pavilion, part of Andrew Haswell Green Park, is slated to be renovated and expanded as part of the city's $100 million project to extend the East River Greenway down to East 53rd Street, past its current terminus at East 61st.

During an April 8 meeting, however, members of Community Board 8 told representatives from the city's Economic Development Corporation that the lawn has withered in recent years, and worried that the revamp plan included no new irrigation.

"Having watched Alice Aycock Pavilion go from a very luxuriant green lawn to being a bare-bones, hard-packed dirt playing field, basically, I am concerned about what those hills are going to look like in a couple of years," said Susan Price Blackwell, who gardens in the area.

Days later, last Wednesday, the full board unanimously passed a resolution calling for the city to provide the pavilion "with water needed to keep it green and to be able to use the drinking fountain."

Related coverage: East River Esplanade Extension Moving Ahead, City Says

Tricia Shimamura, who co-chairs CB8's parks committee, told the board Wednesday that the green space "is not really a lawn, so much as it is a dirt patch."

"We desperately need water access there," she said.

In fact, the Esplanade already has a non-functioning water fountain fixture near the pavilion that could be made operational through the renovations, EDC representatives said.

The resolution is meant to encourage the city to follow through on those "final steps," Shimamura said.

The so-called East Midtown Greenway extension broke ground in 2019, and resumed in October after being put on hold during the pandemic. It is scheduled to be completed by fall 2023, according to the city.

Its components include a new pedestrian walkway over the East River between East 61st and 53rd streets and a new pedestrian bridge over the F.D.R. Drive near East 54th Street.

Related Esplanade coverage:

• Put A Gym On The East River Esplanade, Upper East Side Group Says
• Work Set To Resume On East River Esplanade Extension
• Sutton Place Preservationists Sue To Block Esplanade Expansion