Design

A Storm-Resilient Park in Queens

By replacing Long Island City’s industrial waterfront with native grasses, Hunters Point South Park stands ready to withstand any storm surge.

Instead of concrete walls and buttresses guarding the plot from the river, this park is the river’s friend. Twice a day, as the high tide rolls in, Hunters Point South Park becomes a marsh.Vecerka / Esto, courtesy of SWA/BALSLEY and WEISS/MANFREDI

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By Karim Doumar

October 24, 2018 at 7:47 AM EDT

Tom Balsley was showing off the effects of the slowly zig-zagging lower path of Hunters Point South Park on a Wednesday afternoon in September. It slows you down, and as you descend, a hill isolates its visitors from the rest of the booming waterfront of Long Island City, Queens. The East River, meanwhile, flows between the park’s edge and midtown Manhattan, its bustle just out of earshot.

This, said Balsley—his voice rising to compete with the chopping of a fast-approaching helicopter—is where it gets quiet and serene.

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