Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul officially christened the city’s largest rooftop park open Monday afternoon.
The top city official and head of New York State joined Hudson River Park Trust President & CEO Noreen Doyle and Google CFO Ruth Porat atop the windy rooftop park at Pier 57, which overlooks the West Side’s Little Island. After a decade-long renovation process, the 80,000-square-foot rooftop park was finally declared open during a ceremony on April 18.
The historic pier was revitalized by a development team led by RXR and in addition to the park is promised to include 350,000 square feet of commercial office space which will be used by Google, City Winery, and others around the pier’s perimeter.
“Renewal seems to be on everyone’s minds these days and Hudson River Park’s whole history is about just that. Pier by pier section by section. The Hudson River Park Trust has been working to transform the piers and outlines along the parks for miles, and to a stunning park changing not only the waterfront, but how people see and experience New York City as a whole. Today, Pier 57 becomes part of that success story,” Doyle said.
Plans to renovate the pier began in 2008, converting the empty pier into a contributing part of the community including open public space, food, and cultural options. Doyle shared that these hopes are coming into fruition with more spaces opening in the fall.
“This is extraordinary to witness the results of true visionaries. People had a belief that this could no longer be an abandoned peer mocking future generations of a better past. Now we can say that our future is much brighter because of people who never gave up on this city,” Governor Hochul said, thanking Doyle and the many partners involved in revitalizing the pier at a time when New Yorkers crave public open spaces to once again socialize after two years of distancing from each other.
“I’m here to announce that we’ve now entered the innovation age. We innovate not just jobs and businesses, we innovate spaces. So, no longer anyone in New York walk by a place like this, an abandoned pier that was just so decrepit, and say something magnificent can’t happen there because we proved it can. So, every place has the opportunity to be reborn to something magnificent and part of our future,” Hochul added.
Mayor Adams also admired the public greenery that so many New Yorkers and tourists can enjoy and believes that it’s a much-needed respite after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As a child, I never knew this. I never knew that there were great parks, great places, great theaters. We’re going to change that. As we cycled out of COVID, we’re going to cycle out of the place where we’re going to end the inequalities that left too many people behind and I’m excited about this adventure and I’m excited about the many more that we’re going to do. There’s something special about New York and once again we turn around this city,” Mayor Adams said.
The ceremony concluded via a ribbon cutting, with the Governor doing the honors of making the snip.
