Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 5 Uplands Section to Be Completed By Summer

Brooklyn Bridge Park’s landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, has released final design renderings for the Pier 5 uplands, a hilly, green expanse of the park located between Montague and Joralemon Streets.

Scheduled to be completed just in time for summer, the new section of the park will include a new entrance at Joralemon Street, a stepped lawn, shaded grove, a horticultural lab, a boathouse hosting community programs, and additional restrooms.

Pier 5 currently features the park’s popular picnic peninsula complete with barbecue grills and umbrella-topped tables, a playground, fishing station, and three soccer fields. A small bridge will connect the uplands to the picnic peninsula and a pathway will provide easy access from the new Joralemon Street entrance to the park’s existing greenway.

In a recent interview with BKLYNER, Joanne Witty, author of Brooklyn Bridge Park: A Dying Waterfront Transformed, says work is beginning on the Brooklyn Bridge Plaza, the area of the park located directly beneath the iconic bridge, and that visitors to the park can also look forward to the spring reopening of Squibb Park Bridge—the bouncy walkway connecting Brooklyn Heights to the park.

Updated on January 25, 2016 at 10:30pm: James Yolles, a representative for Brooklyn Bridge Park, informed BKLYNER that the Pier 5 uplands project is expected to open mid-summer—not at the start of summer as previously reported. Secondly, no construction has started yet on Brooklyn Bridge Plaza—it will be part of the next phase for the park.