Park Incorporated
A Day in Hudson River Park
By: Avery Hendrick
Hudson River Park, the 4.5-mile-long section of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway stretching from Battery Park City to W 59th St, is many things. It is the second largest park in New York City behind only Central Park. It is NYC’s newest park. It is also a corporation.
As a New York State public-benefit corporation, Hudson River Park operates under different restraints and regulations than NYC’s other iconic parks like Madison Square Park, Washington Square Park, and Central Park. It was created in 1998 under New York Governor George E. Pataki through the Hudson River Park Act which states the park is both a state entity and can be used to create economic benefits, though commercial use should be limited.
These distinctions have allowed Hudson River Park to take risks, accrue debt, grow, and experiment in ways that other city-owned entities cannot. The result is a park unlike any other in New York City, a place that lives each day from morning to night.
HRP begins in Tribeca where the jut of Battery Park City into the Hudson River ends, giving way to a man-made cove bordered on three sides by Pier 25 and the slow sprawl of Manhattan into the sea. Here, on March 6 at 9:00 a.m., many New Yorkers begin their day with the park.
“We come to Pier 25 on any day when the temperature is 45 degrees or above,” says Eric Sobotka about himself and his athletic trainer Fodel Oukil. Staked out on the perpetually green turf sports field on Pier 25, the pair are playing a complex drill involving several rows of cones and a tennis ball this morning. Sobotka is a tennis player and Oukil, a former Fifa trainer, helps keep him moving. The drill is a game of their invention.
“We’re the only ones to ever play it so we’re the best to ever play,” Sobotka says.
“The game we played today was actually the best game we’ve ever played,” Oukil agrees with a laugh as he packs up the cones.
“I love the turf, it’s really good on the joints and if it’s ever full there is another place just one pier up,” Sobotka adds. A father of three children, his family moved to Tribeca in 2014 for its proximity to Hudson River Park and PS 234 Independence School, an elementary school nearby.
“They love the fish park,” Sobotka says, referring to the two blue and orange giant sturgeons that form the new science playground on Pier 26. “My son, my seven-year-old son, he plays on his iPad and Roblox all day but he’ll put it down to come out to the park and play football or play soccer or to play at the fish park.”
As Sobotka and Oukil depart from the park, a new form of exercise begins to take hold of the space: runners. Until around 10:30 a.m., the park’s paths are dominated by runners. While most seem to be finishing their jogs or well into runs between 9 and 10 a.m., a few are just starting.
“I work West Coast hours so I can come now when it’s not too busy,” says Emma, who is starting her run near Piet 40 at around 9:45 when the throngs are starting to thin. Today, the weather is hovering in the high 40s, but the low hang of oppressive gray clouds above chills the day further. Emma, like most runners, is wearing pants and a jacket, but the occasional brave athlete passes in shorts.
As Emma takes off, heading north in the direction of Chelsea Piers and the farther Riverside Park, two runners finish their morning exercise a hundred yards in front of her near 10th St. Unlike Emma, these two women are visiting NYC from Atlanta, Georgia for a few days.
“I used to live in SoHo on Christopher and Bleeker,” one of the women says. “When ever I come back I go for a run out here, it’s the best place to run in the city. I love being close to the water. It’s one of my favorite parts of New York.”
By 11:00 a.m., the morning runners have nearly been replaced by walkers, but they never disappear entirely. This is the quietest hour of the daytime for Hudson River Park, but the area around 14th St., the Little Island, and Chelsea Piers does little to reflect that.
Even during the mid-morning lull, the area is teeming with tourists and walkers dumped from the terminus of The High Line and into Hudson River Park where the Gansevoort Peninsula, one of the public-benefit corporation’s newest spaces, is now open to the public.
This space, a 5.5-acre solid-ground park nearly the size of Madison Square Park, opened to the public in 2023 with a full-size athletic field, dog park, salt marsh, and, yes, beach. It is Manhattan’s first and only beach.
“I walk my dog here every single day. We come to this new park because it’s a four-mile walk from where I live in SoHo. Two here and two back. It’s a destination,” says writer Jennifer Anikst, sitting on a bench in the park with her dog Buster, an energetic boxer sniffing everything in his path. Buster demands to be walked around 10 am each day, so ten is when Anikst walks. “I think this park is the prettiest on the West Side. I love the beach and the estuary and this whole new park. It’s so organic and special and unique; it fits in within the landscape.”
The estuary Anikst talks about is the new salt marsh on the north side of the Gansevoort Peninsula, an element of HRP’s Estuarine Sanctuary Management Plan to help protect the environment and species of the Hudson River. Like the beach on the opposite side of the peninsula, the salt marsh is different from any other feature in New York City’s parks
Past Chelsea Piers, the crowds of tourists wax and wane from section to section, but a constant vein of New York traffic lines the park with vertical motion: bikers, walkers, and runners. In Hell’s Kitchen, the park’s commercial side picks up: the Intrepid, sight-seeing cruises, and La Barca Cantina all generate revenue through Hudson River Park as specified under “Park/commercial use” within the Hudson River Park Act.
Importantly, this act did not include film and production studios until a 2013 amendment in which these businesses were permitted. Today, a film studio is under construction on Pier 94, just before the park’s northernmost point at 59th St, and set to open in 2025.
On March 6, 2024, just past noon, the construction on Pier 94’s new Sunset Studios is a thin hum beneath the gentle sound of rainfall. The clouds have opened and the park is mostly empty under their storm, the runners, walkers, and lunch-breakers having turned back for home. But, the life of Hudson River Park, daily and ongoing, is as prominent as ever.
“All these other parks in New York City are so big and so vast,” Eric Sobotka said earlier that morning. “But this one is interesting and it has activities, you know. It’s not just open space with fields and paths. There is so much to do and it makes this park special.”
