A weed-strewn parking lot on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg will bloom into a lush waterfront area that features a cutting-edge building topped with a slanted lawn under the latest city plan to create a world-class waterfront park.
The city moved quickly to release renderings of the first phase of the long-planned 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park this month — just weeks after the state unplugged a plan to put a powerplant in the same spot between North Ninth and North 10th streets.
“We want to make every square inch as usable as possible,” architect Gregory Kiss told Community Board 1 on April 8.
“Instead of wasting a third of the space for a parking lot and a maintenance building, we designed a grass slope that will go up and over the building, which creates a 100 percent usable space as well as an overlook for the entire park.”
Neighborhood groups are behind Kiss’s daring plan.
“Covering the roof with a lawn is an amazing solution,” said Dewey Thompson, co-chair of Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning. “It looked like we were going to have a big shed or a maintenance building in our park, but the lawn roofing is a great way to get around that.”
And it’s not just the grassy roof that’s going to be green. Solar panels will provide the building’s energy and excess water will go through filters before draining to the river.
The city plans to break ground on the athletic field this fall and complete it by next summer, when construction will begin on the sloped building. The waterfront wetlands will come later.
