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At the Hudson's Edge: Beacon's Long Dock a Resilient Riverfront Park

AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

GENERAL DESIGN

Beacon, NY | | Client: Scenic Hudson Land Trust

PROJECT STATEMENT

Sixty miles north of New York City, we鈥檝e transformed a postindustrial site into a popular riverfront park, where art, recreation, and environmental education enable visitors to forge deeper connections with the Hudson River and its history. Originally a wooden pier and basaltic railroad fill on tide flats, but vastly degraded throughout much of the twentieth century, the recuperated property has returned a vital part of Beacon鈥檚 waterfront to an active, diverse, and resilient landscape. Three phases of remediation and ecological restoration have been completed, earning a three-star ranking from the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

PROJECT NARRATIVE

Site History

Throughout most of the twentieth century, this property鈥檚 land use veered from bad to worse鈥攆rom an abandoned railroad siding and ferry depot, to a fuel storage site and salt stockpiling operation, to an automobile junkyard. Dedicated conservationists assembled the land and began remediating almost twenty years ago. More than a decade ago, the design team reimagined it as a working landscape that restores ecological function, incorporates a major art installation demonstrating the river鈥檚 tidal action, and foregrounds best practices for riverfront development on degraded sites in the face of higher sea levels and more frequent storms.

Harnessing Nature鈥檚 Force in Rehabilitation

Jutting 1,000 feet out into the broad Hudson estuary, the site is at once a serene point of reflective beauty鈥攊ndisputably one of the valley鈥檚 most beguiling places on a summer evening鈥攁nd a dramatically exposed peninsula that must survive the forces of one hundred miles of upstream river. Storm surges inundate the peninsula regularly; brackish upwelling occurs diurnally; and winter ice floes can be remarkably destructive. The mandate became clear: Build resilience, but realize it incrementally鈥攚hen funds could be raised and remediation could progress.

The southern edge of the project鈥檚 quiet harbor was structurally reinforced with an interactive sculptural installation known as Beacon Point. Existing degraded wetlands鈥攐ne intertidal, the others tidally influenced through the soil鈥攚ere reorganized to optimize ecological function in the capture, retention, treatment, and release of storm runoff and surge inundation. Extensive earthworks made this possible. They defined strong physical separation between the level meadows and intertidal zone, emphasized the arcing gesture of the shoreline, and formed more intimate and varied spaces amid the wetlands and tide pools. Dozens of discarded concrete slabs found on site were redeployed as paving for parking and a plaza near the new kayak pavilion.

Incremental Recovery, Emergent Beauty

Long Dock Park took a decade to plan and almost that long to build. The project鈥檚 first phase, opened in 2009, included a boardwalk and a site-specific artwork. The next phase saw completion of an arts and environmental education center in Long Dock鈥檚 historic red barn and a pavilion for kayak storage and rentals. In 2011, during another phase of construction, storm surge from Hurricane Irene flooded the entire site for several days; with the working wetlands and protective landform buttresses already in place, but not yet completed, the park landscape survived its most difficult test and proved its mettle. A third phase was completed in 2014. By last summer, the project鈥檚 multiple characters had gone from piecemeal to fully emergent: the calm horizon of the reconstructed shore, the excited energy of the kayak pavilion and the arts center, the connective network of boardwalks and trails, the working infrastructure of swales and seeps, and, finally, the rough beauty of the dynamic intertidal zone and earthen buttresses.

Cultivating Resilience

The landscape architect led the design effort and helped guide all phases of implementation. The Sustainable Sites Initiative selected Long Dock Park as one of its original pilot projects, and it eventually certified the park with a three-star rating. The design team worked closely with SITES staff to refine evaluative criteria for ecological, economic, and social sustainability. As the SITES documentation process proved, the Long Dock narrative is a story about how such an enigmatic site could overcome massive physical, temporal, and economic forces: through design, determination, and resilience.

"The project integrates seamlessly with the river; it鈥檚 economical, yet detailed very well; and the landscape works on a large scale, yet the landscape architect creates intimate nodes."

- 2015 Awards Jury

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