At Last, Riverside Park South Turf Fields Almost Ready to Open on the Upper West Side

By Daniel Katzive

Finding room for team sports is a constant challenge for youth athletes and adult weekend warriors in New York City.

For Upper West Siders, the playing field is about to expand significantly.

Workers are putting the finishing touches on a new multi-sport turf field at the southern end of Riverside Park around West 62nd Street. Perhaps more significantly, the completion of this final stage marks the culmination of a 30-year effort to build a waterfront park where abandoned railyards and a parking lot once dominated the landscape.

The final phase of Riverside Park South is expected to open within weeks. The developers of the buildings along Riverside Boulevard committed to build the new park on the site of the old New York Central Railroad yards and to turn it over to the city when complete in exchange for approvals. The first phase of the park, where Pier I is located, opened 25 years ago.

A visual inspection from outside the fenced perimeter reveals turf fields apparently ready for action, with markings for two softball/baseball fields and soccer pitches for 7-on-7 and 9-on-9 games, a similar design to what has existed for many years further north in Riverside Park in the low 100s.Unlike the fields up there, however, this new section will have lighting for night play, a first for Riverside Park. This section will also include a basketball court and three pickleball courts.

Construction of the full 32-acre Riverside Park South was always expected to be a long process, but the completion of this final parcel has been delayed several times. Back in 2016, Parks Department officials told Community Board 7 that the last section of the park would be completed in 2018. More recently, in August 2021 as construction began on the new phase, the Riverside Park Conservancy estimated work would take about two years. The Parks Department attributed delays to the need for additional environmental remediation on the once industrial site.

Thomas Balsley, co-founder and design principal of swa/Balsley, the designer of the park going back to before its first approvals in 1991, explained to West Side Rag that the environmental remediation for this particular phase of the park buildout was particularly complicated due to the nature of the fill used by previous industrial or commercial users of the land. Another driver of delays has been increased costs relative to what was budgeted and agreed to by the developers building the park back in 1991. These overruns have forced some elements of the plan to be scaled back or changed, requiring additional design time and delays.

“Every phase was always a struggle to get it built with the amount of money that had been allocated,” said Balsley.

Better late than never would certainly characterize the view of those who organize youth sports in the neighborhood. Debbie Kling, long-time president of West Side Little League, told West Side Rag the extra field capacity will be particularly welcome on Friday afternoons and evenings and Saturday afternoons when demand is high. The fact that the fields will be lighted will also allow for later games, particularly as days grow shorter in the fall.

“The new field is tremendously significant to us,” said Pedro Rafael, regional commissioner for West Side Soccer League. “Fields are absolutely critical. And the most challenging element to get hold of,” he told West Side Rag. “Any field [is welcome], but in particular right in our own backyard.” Grass fields frequently get closed by the Parks Department during even moderate rain storms to prevent damage. The artificial turf fields will allow much more reliable scheduling. Kling and Rafael said their non-profit organizations, both of which are celebrating 40 year anniversaries this year or next year, consulted with the Parks Department and Riverside Parks Conservancy on the dimensions and markings on the new fields.

The fields are expected to be in high demand, with multiple non-profit and for-profit youth organizations, schools, and adult sports programs likely to apply for permits. The Parks Department did not provide details to West Side Rag about how new permits would be allocated.

Local officials and people in the community are likely to celebrate the milestone of the completion of the project.

But for the designer Balsley, feelings seem more mixed. “I still refer to this park as the interim park,” he says. This is in part because some features in the original design have gone by the wayside as costs have risen, most notably a pavilion with amenities and concessions that was supposed to be located on the Riverside Boulevard level near West 66th Street.

More significantly, he laments that the West Side Highway was never buried as was originally envisioned. Aside from the visual and noise impact of the roadway running above the park, Balsley notes that the state department of transportation’s insistence that footings of the viaduct be on level ground forced the slopes running down from Riverside Boulevard above to be much steeper than the original design envisioned, reducing available space for recreation considerably. The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had lined up federal money to bury the highway before construction began, but other local officials and representatives including Congressman Jerry Nadler objected to spending public money that would benefit the developers of the luxury buildings on Riverside Boulevard. “I have to remind people,” Balsley says, “this park is nowhere near what it could be or should be.”

Still, Balsley, now in his 80s and, as he puts it, one the last of the original designers still standing, says, “I have to be an optimist about things like this, because this is urbanism in New York, the toughest place in the world to get anything going, finished and all that.”

West Side Rag is monitoring the site and we will alert readers when the fences finally come down and it’s time to “play ball!”

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