By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
The year is 2021, and former Mayor Bill De Blasio is apologizing as he holds up a $75 million check, flanked by local leaders from Greenpoint and Williamsburg. “A promise was made to this community a long time ago for this park,” he says, pulling down his mask, “and the city of New York did not keep the promise.”
The promise referenced by De Blasio was made back in 2005 by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who included plans for the 27-acre Bushwick Inlet Park as part of a massive rezoning of the two neighborhoods that year that paved the way for the frenetic development currently reshaping the borough’s northern tip. The condos have come up, but the full stretch of green space — the announcement of which was already perceived as ‘a long time ago’ in 2021 — has yet to materialize.
Now, in 2025, real change seems to be afoot. The demolition of the enormous CitiStorage building on Kent Avenue wrapped last week, putting an end to a land struggle that had prevented the Parks Department from moving forward with construction. As with many other local sites, the grounds will still need to undergo a significant remediation process, but officials praised the progress nonetheless.
“This has been a long and drawn-out fight, but the Citi Storage facility is finally down, making way for our long promised Bushwick Inlet Park,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler. “Our community has waited for far too long to see this promised park space, and I’m thrilled that this milestone means we can finally realize the full potential of our waterfront.”
The demolished CitiStorage building was one of two structures owned by the company that had posed problems for the park’s development. The other, a nearby warehouse, was damaged by a fire in 2015. Though it was earmarked for the park, CitiStorage attempted to sell the 7.5-acre property to private developers before the city swooped in to make a $160 million purchase. The promised park’s planners now have access to land spanning from the North 9th Street soccer field all the way across the Bushwick Inlet, leading community organizers to believe that the 2005 designs may be feasible at last.
“The CitiStorage building sat on some of the most beautiful land in our district, and that land was held hostage for a decade since the fire, while the community fought for this outcome. The fact that the building has finally been torn down, and the park design process can move forward, represents a tremendous victory for the community,” said Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, celebrating the demolition. “This didn’t just happen — it is the result of decades of tenacious organizing from the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, past and present local representatives, and so many community members who came together to demand that the land be used for public good, not luxury condos that would drive up prices in our district.”
Greenpoint and Williamsburg continue to have among the lowest number of parks per capita in the city, leaders say, and that gap is becoming more urgent as thousands of new residents pour into freshly-unveiled apartment complexes. There’s a climate angle, too: “As New York City increasingly becomes hotter and more expensive,” Gallagher noted, “it is essential that we fight for parks as free spaces where our neighbors can gather, find shade, and build community.”
One of the main forces pushing for the 27-acre green space to be realized has been the organization Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which launched a campaign nearly two years ago called “Where’s Our Park?” to pressure the city into action. Its president, Katherine Conkling Thompson, said the sudden view of uninterrupted coastline afforded by the demolition was “astonishing,” and thanked her fellow organizers for their efforts.
“Over 150 years ago, the birth of the fossil fuel industry began here,” Thompson said in a statement. “As we begin to remediate this land, restore the riparian shoreline, plant native species to create precious public open space for all people to share, we can acknowledge that this is not only an investment in the future of our beloved Brooklyn but a symbol of the victory of the people coming together to demand environmental justice and [for] the city to fulfill its rezoning promises.”
You can watch a time-lapse of the demolition here, courtesy of Stephen McFadden.