From Parking to Park: East Side Lot To Become Public Space

They unpaved paradise.

A decades-old parking lot along the East River waterfront in Manhattan will become a park next year, thanks to locals who pushed the city to return the prime waterfront space to people.

The city-owned plot at the eastern terminus of 34th Street, just south of an NYC Ferry stop, had been the site of stacked car storage for the nearby NYU Langone hospital, but it will become a public amenity next spring, according to city officials.

“For over 30 years, this 11,000-square-foot lot was a park for cars. It’s now on its way to becoming a park for people,” Sandy McKee, the chair of Community Board 6 told reporters at the currently vacant site on Friday. “[We’re] turning a publicly owned resource that benefited the few into something that will soon benefit everyone.”

The Economic Development Corporation, which manages the lot, has not released a design for the overhaul, but said it will include “fitness equipment, furniture for community gathering, and a waterfront-friendly design.”

EDC President and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Kimball admitted that the reconfiguration of the space is technically “temporary” because “there is going to be a lot of work happening around here, really, for the next couple of decades.”

“Candidly, this waterfront work never stops, but we are very confident that the park we build out here in partnership with the Parks [Department], the open space we build out here, the access to amenities, access to the water recreation exercise equipment, will be here for a very, very long time,” he added.

The redesign could extend the waterfront plaza next to the ferry pier.

The lease for hospital parking ended in 2023, and members of CB6 pushed city agencies and lawmakers to get the space with prime views of the East River turned over, according to members of the civic panel.

“We were not making any money on it. It was taking over space,” said Kyle Athayde, a former CB6 chair who is now running for the City Council as an Independent.

Unlike Manhattan’s extensive greenway along the Hudson River, the East Side only has a patchwork of paths and parks interrupted by the FDR Drive.

“When we think about the East Midtown Greenway and all the lack of green space that we have, and really connecting that to the rest of the district is really, really important to us,” Athayde added.

Council Member Keith Powers boosted the project by kicking in $600,000 during negotiations over a new nearby life sciences campus earlier this year.

The board has also repeatedly called on EDC to repurpose another paid parking lot under the FDR just 11 blocks downtown next to Stuyvesant Cove Park at E. 23rd Street. The panel even commissioned a study [PDF] to open up more space beneath the elevated highway, similarly to the Bentway, a sprawling repurposed public space underneath the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, Canada.

McKee hoped the city could take another look at that section, as the nearby East Side Coastal Resiliency project work is coming to a close, and that Friday’s announcement could set a precedent for more parking to become parks.

“Further down, it seems like a perfect opportunity,” McKee told Streetsblog. “Now that maybe that the ESCR is more complete, there’s an opportunity to look at it again. It’s still this kind of in-between space, so we will keep asking.”

EDC previously told Streetsblog it needed the lot for construction work, but Kimball said on Friday he would be “happy to take a look at it.”