Bushwick Inlet Park (via NYC Parks)
Jan. 8, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan
The development of the long-promised Bushwick Inlet Park is steadily moving forward, with a public visioning session for one of the park’s undeveloped parcels planned later this month.
The meeting, led by NYC Parks, will be held on Jan. 24 at the Bushwick Inlet Park Headquarters, and focuses on the “Motiva” parcel, the name for the strip of land that surrounds the Bushwick Inlet at Quay and N 14th Streets.
The city designated $9.8 million for the remediation and development of the Motiva site in 2017, which makes up one of six parcels in the 25.4-acre park still largely under development.
But the funding to develop the parcel came about more than a decade after the city first launched plans to build out Bushwick Inlet Park, which spans about five blocks from the Bushwick Inlet to N 9th Street.
The large park was first proposed in 2005 after a swath of the waterfront was rezoned to allow for residential development. A requirement of the rezoning was the development of the waterfront parkland.
The Motiva site (surrounding Bushwick Inlet) and 50 Kent (between N11 and N12 Streets). (Queens Post)
The park has since seen slow progress, with delays in acquiring the properties that make up the parkland and other setbacks threatening the status of the project. Advocacy in recent years, however, has changed the speed of the project’s development.
The city purchased the Motiva parcel in 2014 for $4.65 million from Motiva Enterprises LLC, a former joint venture between the Shell Oil Company and Saudi Refining Inc.
While the visioning session will be a chance for the public to weigh in on the design on the inlet, the 2005 master plan for the site saw ideas like a “beach”, boat launch, wildlife habitat and more at the site.
The Motiva site marks the next parcel to enter its design phase after 50 Kent Ave., another parcel of the park located between North 11th and North 12th Streets, had its design plan approved by Community Board 1 in November.
The multi-sport fields, along with the community center on Kent Avenue between North 9th and North 10th Streets, represents the only fully developed areas of Bushwick Inlet Park. The 50 Kent Avenue site, however, had acted as a pop-up park since last summer.
The “Bushwick Inlet Park: Motiva Visioning Session” will take place at 6 p.m. on Jan. 24 inside the park’s headquarters at 86 Kent Ave.
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