Hunts Point Riverside Park will open this spring, using a flagman to safeguard users from a passing train, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe announced at the Bronx Park Speakup at Lehman College.
When ground was broken for the park at the intersection of Lafayette Avenue and Edgewater Road in the summer of 2004, speakers applauded it as the first waterfront park to be built in Hunts Point.
Majora Carter, Kellie Terry-Sepulveda and Linda Cox, the executive directors, respectively, of Sustainable South Bronx, The Point CDC and the Bronx River Alliance, hailed it as the first step in creating a ring of green around the industrial area.
However, railroad tracks that cross the park’s entrance have kept it from opening. Now, the parks commissioner said, the one train a day that runs past the park will be accompanied by a flagman on foot to warn park users. By next year, he said, gates will shield the tracks each time the train goes through.
The park is the first site on the Bronx River Greenway for which ground was broken and the first waterfront park to be built in Hunts Point in more than half a century.
Next door is the Bronx River site of Rocking the Boat, the boat-building and environmental education organization.