Environment
New York Releases Master Plan for Fresh Kills Park
(archrecord.construction.com - 04/20/2006)
By Alex
Ulam
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| Image courtesy Field
Operations |
Earlier this month the New York City
Planning Department released a draft master plan for the conversion
Fresh Kills Landfill—one of the world’s largest
dumps—into the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Park. The plan,
prepared by landscape architecture firm Field Operations,
calls for the remediation of the landfill and the building
of the park in three phases over a 30-year period. Construction
of the first phase could begin as early as 2008, and a park
drive and some recreational facilities could be complete by
2009. Field Operations won a competition to plan the park
back in 2002.
Fresh Kills Park will be the
city’s second largest park after Pelham Bay Park in the
Bronx. Its plan draws upon the area’s dramatic landscape
features, which include open vistas, woodlands, creeks and
wetlands, and will utilize its immense landfill mounds. The
plan will also offer a broad range of activities not typically
available in New York City parks. The park will contain waterways
for kayaking, an Olympic-level mountain biking course, and
over 40 miles of trails, and paths. Over 1,700 acres of the
park will be devoted to undisturbed natural habitats. Programmed
areas and commercial facilities such as a boat marina, banquet
facilities and an open-air market will be concentrated at
the Confluence, an area at park’s center where its three
main creeks meet.
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