By NICHOLAS GORDON | ng639@georgetown.edu
If the beautiful, new sweeping waterfront space of Malt Drive Park wasn’t enough to entice locals for its grand opening block party on Saturday, November 16, the heaps of free oysters, caprese salad, tiramisu, chocolate fondue, and an endless well of craft beer and Prosecco were thrown in to sweeten the deal. Upwards of 300 attendees mingled over their drinks and snacks, shimmied to the live music, and explored the new park all afternoon.
“Celebrating the ribbon-cutting here at Malt Drive Park shows the power of our community,” said Julie Won, a New York City council member for District 26, which covers the western Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside. “This is also a celebration of the development of the entire Hunter’s Point South Park where we have new public amenities to enjoy,” Won added.
Located on a brand new block in Hunter’s Point South, Malt Drive Park features spacious sidewalks and winding waterfront paths with seating areas, a playground and a dog park, and an open lawn with picnic spaces and views of the water. Malt Drive Park was created by the real estate development company TF Cornerstone (TFC), which has its two newest luxury residential buildings, 2-20 and 2-21 Malt Drive, flanking the space.
“As someone who was born and raised in Queens, I’m really proud to be here with you today for the opening of Malt Drive Park,” said New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, addressing the crowd. “I’ve seen this neighborhood grow and thrive, and I think it represents the best of us in New York City, showing that through public and private partnerships we can have greenspace and public amenities, and a high quality of life.”
John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning, echoed the praise for the public and private partnership, noting that Malt Drive Park is unique for East River waterfront parks in being developed by a private company on private land.
“The park shows what good zoning can inspire a private developer to do,” McMillan said. “We like to think we’ve been part of the growth and evolution of this community and of the astonishing civic and public character that has taken root in this part of Long Island City.”
Also astonishing is the transformation of the real estate along Newtown Creek in Long Island City.
“When we talk about Newtown Creek, on both sides, Brooklyn and Queens, what we’re doing is taking a legacy of barren land and polluted spaces, or inaccessible waterfront, and creating something new and beautiful to give us the better life that we here in Queens deserve,” Senator Gonzalez said.
While there seemed to be little doubt about the beauty and usefulness of the new park, some attendees expressed skepticism about the nature of Long Island City’s rapid growth.
“The so-called affordable apartments being presented here, to me it’s baffling,” said a member of a local community group and a long-time resident of Long Island City who asked to remain anonymous. “If I lost my current living situation, I’d be priced-out of Long Island City, which is unfortunate because we moved here many years ago because it was so affordable.”
On the TFC website, the new Malt Drive studios are listed at $3,760.
Malt Drive’s 1,386 new residences brings TFC’s total in Hunter’s Point South to over 5,000 units across several properties.
Lisa Goren, a member of the Long Island City Coalition and a board member of the Hunter’s Point Community Coalition, questioned whether Long Island City’s unfettered growth has preceded a comprehensive management and services plan.
“All of the things that should come with upzoning where you have a tremendous number of new units built are being dealt with after the fact,” Goren said in a phone interview, acknowledging that she and her coalitions have had some difficult conversations with the developers. “When you build, it needs to be part of a comprehensive resiliency plan in the face of climate risk, so that the neighborhood is sustainable, not just a plan protecting particular buildings.”
Goren said that through community engagement events and ideas-sharing sessions with locals she and her teams have come up with vision plans for equitable development, resiliency, and sustainability. Their vision plan for Hunter’s Point North is available at hunterspoint-north.com.
Named after the site’s history as a sugar cane processing plant turned beer distribution facility, Malt Drive Park expands park space from Hunter’s Point South Park by over three acres, adding roughly 700 feet of public access along the shoreline.
Kate Orff, the founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE which collaborated with TFC for Malt Drive Park, said that the ecology and legacy of the waterfront’s importance as the site where the East River meets the mouth of Newtown Creek was at the forefront of their design.
“With a focus on resilience, we created a sloping grade, sculpting the ground plane in a way that protects the building and brings you down closer to the water,” Orff said. “We wanted the idea of a living shoreline pulling all the way up to the buildings’ edge, and then carving pockets of open space out of that so you could really experience the feeling of being on the edge of the natural creek system.”
In their collaboration with SCAPE, TFC also prioritized the development of a greener waterfront by taking measures to stabilize the shoreline from erosion and protect marine life, as reported by the New York Real Estate Journal.
Young couples, families with strollers, and people walking their dogs passed through the new park as the last musical act finished up and the sun began to set. Earlier in the day, Council Member Won had made an appeal to them.
“All of this development continues to create an infrastructure and an entire knit community, so what we’re saying to you is that we want you to stay and we want to see your family start here and grow here,” Won said. “We want this to be a place that you call home long-term.”