FLATIRON DISTRICT. Gateway National Recreation Area — 26,000 acres stretching from the outer reaches of Queens and Brooklyn to part of Staten Island and Sandy Hook, N.J. — has been sitting idly by, underfunded and underutilized, ever since it was created in 1972.
The National Parks Conservation Association hopes to change that. Yesterday came the announcement of the winner in a design competition the group sponsored — along with public architecture think tank Van Alen Institute and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation — to create a master plan to unify the park’s regions. The design also sought to create a new park within Gateway at Floyd Bennet Field that, at 1,358 acres, dwarfs Central Park.
“My idea of a national park is the Grand Canyon, something where nature is protected,” said Rikako Wakabayashi, 23, of Yokohama, Japan, who, with her college friend, Brooklynite Ashley Scott Kelly, 22, beat out 230 entrants from 23 countries.
Their design envisioned Floyd Bennett Field transformed with new jetties and piers to bring park visitors in contact with the marshlands, tides and fluctuating sea levels. It would educate visitors about the tension that occurs when human environments and ecosystems collide.
“By 2080, because of global warming and rising sea levels, we heard part of the park could be underwater,” Wakabayashi explained. Using projected two-foot and six-foot sea level increases, the design incorporates a naturally shifting edge that “plans the park in a way so the public can adapt to the future.” They also used natural design elements to help protect Jamaica Bay’s marshlands.
What happens next, however, remains to be seen.
Alexander Brash, northeast regional director of the NPCA, invited the public to comment on the designs at www.npca.org/gateway and said feedback would be presented to the National Park Service as it develops a new “general management plan” for Gateway.
Gateway National Recreation Area General Superintendent Barry Sullivan said the winning designs offered “some interesting concepts” that “will be considered as we plan the future direction of the park.”
People know Gateway “from flying over JFK airport, but people don’t know it as a place to be enjoyed,” said Kate Orff, a landscape architect and Columbia professor who helped prepare the competition. “[It’s] the edge of the New York City metropolis and the ocean, and the edges are always the most complex places and most forgotten.”
Water quality
Poor water quality continues to be a problem for Jamaica Bay, with nitrogen from the city’s wastewater treatment plants the leading pollutant. To address this and the disappearing marshlands — 50 percent of which vanished from 1924 to 1999 — City Councilman James Gennaro spearheaded a 2005 local law requiring the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop a Jamaica Bay Watershed Protection Plan. An advisory committee’s final recommendations, released last Friday, called for an aggressive nitrogen control strategy, a comprehensive storm water “best management practices” program and a habitat protection and restoration program. It also called for a comprehensive science initiative to investigate factors contributing to marsh loss and enhance water quality monitoring.
