On a 90-degree day in May, the people of Greenpoint went to the beach on their lunch breaks, though perhaps “beach” here is a stretch. After many years of delay, the part of Bushwick Inlet Park featuring a patch of sand opened earlier this month on Kent and North 14th Streets. Still, everyone is happy to be there. “It’s the closest waterfront park we have that’s actually water,” says Lane DeVries, who is spending her day off sunbathing on a beach chair plopped down next to the sliver of sand. The only problem, we both agree, is that swimming is not allowed. A Big Gulp cup floats close to shore as DeVries considers the bright side. Given its proximity to former industrial sites, “I thought it might smell bad,” she says. “But it doesn’t.”
This specific 1.8-acre parcel of the park is called Motiva, which sounds like a prescription ADHD medication but is in fact the name of a fossil-fuel company. The city purchased the land, once the site of a shipbuilding operation, from Motiva Enterprises in 2014 for $5 million, and somehow 12 years passed before this teeny park actually got built. The entire 27 acres of Bushwick Inlet Park was supposed to be developed as part of the 2005 neighborhood rezoning, but over two decades later, less than a third of that plan has been completed. Part of the delay: The city spent more than $350 million acquiring the land, and the owner of the last tract played hardball but finally sold it in 2016. Still, that was a decade ago. The park plan was a sweetener for the rezoning deal, and while many of its high-rises have gone up, to get to Motiva you have to walk past two blocks of fenced-off waterfront littered with overturned park benches, bicycle tires, and safety cones.
