4. Secluded amidst the industrial landscape is a hidden park
One of the Industry City area’s best-kept secrets is Bush Terminal Piers Park, a secluded 24-acre green space located between 43rd and 51st Streets. Though most of the park is obscured from view along First Avenue, and the entrance is through a building complex, it serves as an oasis amidst the industrial landscape of Sunset Park. Prior to the park’s creation, the land had been designated as a brownfield, a distinction it earned due to the illegal dumping of pollutants and construction debris during the 1970s which contaminated the water surrounding the piers of Bush Terminal. For almost two decades the area’s land laid abandoned until the 1990s when residents of Sunset Park began requesting for the city to construct a waterfront park in their neighborhood.
In 1997, New York State funded a $700,000 study conducted by the city’s Economic Development Corporation to determine if the land could be cleaned—wrapping up in 2002. Four years later city, state, and federal agencies issued $36 million in grants to clean up and transform the space into parkland with the park officially opening in November 2014. Today, visitors can utilize the park’s soccer and baseball fields, bicycle path, esplanade, and two saltwater tide pools. In addition, the park offers stunning views of the Upper Bay with the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan, Staten Island, and the New Jersey shoreline in plain sight. Bush Terminal Piers Park is also part of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, a 21-mile off-street landscaped route for pedestrians, runners, and cyclists connecting neighborhoods, parks, and open spaces along Brooklyn’s waterfront from Greenpoint down to Owls Head Park in Bay Ridge.
