https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/headway/nyc-manhattan-park-redesigns-wagner-east-river.html
Critic’s Notebook
Two new parks fortifying the city’s coastline survived a bureaucratic gantlet that reveals why progress so often feels stuck.
Photographs by Daniel Arnold
Michael Kimmelman is the chief architecture critic of the Times. He previously reported on the redesign of East River Park in December 2021.
- Published Aug. 23, 2025Updated Aug. 29, 2025
At the southern tip of Battery Park City, Wagner Park opened in late July. It belongs to an incredibly complex, multibillion-dollar assortment of resilience efforts to safeguard Lower Manhattan from rising seas and storms during the coming decades.
An earlier Wagner Park opened in 1996. It became an oasis for many residents of this well-to-do neighborhood. When Superstorm Sandy swamped much of the rest of Lower Manhattan in 2012, precipitating the herculean dreams to fortify the coastline, the former Wagner Park didn’t flood.
So opponents of the new park questioned the need to replace the original park. They staged protests. There were lawsuits and delays.
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