East River Park Track Closes, Corlears Hook Bridge Reopens

If you want to talk about the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project—involving flood control and other things—you’d best be pretty resilient yourself.

That’s just one lesson to be learned from the latest changes to the much-beloved and much-beleaguered East River waterfront. As has happened before, the changes are a mixed bag, and cause for both extreme frustration and modest elation.

The bad news first: As of Monday, Sept. 8, the East River Track is closed, as this section of what’s called John V. Lindsay Park gets its resiliency makeover. The closure extends to the entire waterfront from Houston Street to East 6th Street, with an optimistic reopening date of late 2026.

Locals who are upset about all this do not have a district representative to turn to ever since City Council Member Carlina Rivera, who voted for the controversial resiliency project, resigned in August, four months early, to go work for a nonprofit. They might direct calls to Harvey Epstein, who is the Democratic nominee to replace Rivera and is currently the State Assembly member for the district.

Now, consistent with past East River Park projects, even more trees will be destroyed, as will the track—which had a much-needed and much-welcomed $2.8-million renovation in 2017-2018.

For those who don’t regularly run or walk on the track, which also encompassed what was called the East 6th Street field for the soccer and football field inside it, the closure is devastating.

As a sort of last hurrah, the Dashing Whippets running club held a farewell track meet here on Saturday, Aug. 16. The event was well attended and impressively organized, with races ranging from 5,000 meters to kids’ dashes.

The meet was also the occasion for non-racers who hadn’t been to the track recently to learn that the end was near. Their disappointment was palpable, including that of a young male finance worker in a Wake Forest T-shirt.

Inside the oval, an imposing but friendly football coach for the New York Lions youth football team was guiding his athletes—most of them Black and Hispanic—through their drills.

Asked where he was going when the field closed, the coach said they’d move down to the fields at Pier 42, which is a hassle but the program will persevere.

Also lost during this closing is the calisthenics area just south of the track. Although the equipment was old and imperfect, it was there—well liked and well used. Though one presumes new exercise equipment will be included in the resilient redesign, its quality and selection can’t be taken for granted.

While it’s obvious that some people in the Parks Department and the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) are attuned to the needs of calisthenics enthusiasts, it’s equally clear others are oblivious.

That any park could have some exercise equipment but no pull-up bars—which take up minimal space, cost little to install and almost nothing to maintain—is inexplicable.

Likewise, the lack of any exercise equipment at many parks, including the ballfields section of East River Park, accessible via the Delancey Street bridge, which reopened this past June. The new basketball court is next to a highway with no berm or wall between it and the traffic.

Faced with the loss of their beloved oval, East Side runners now face a conundrum.

Until July 2021, the best alternative was the Red Hook Track in Brooklyn, a pleasant F train ride away. Since then, however, the track has been closed for a combined federal-city soil-remediation project that started years late (including a false start during the Obama administration) and is finishing, slowly, the same way. With multiple deadlines blown and multiple extended work stoppages, the Red Hook Track will reopen, it is hoped, by spring 2026. But city runners have been disappointed before.

McCarren Park in Williamsburg is another alternative but can get quite crowded. The track at Riverbank State Park on the Hudson is nice, but riding the subway to 145th Street and then hoofing it to the river is a trek. Likewise Macombs Dam Park, next to Yankee Stadium, and Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx. The Astoria Track in Queens exists, but its reputation for multiuse (non-running or walking) recklessness, even including illegal mopeds, precedes it.

A Bridge to the Ferry

In more positive East River Park news, the new Corlears Hook Park bridge reopened on Sept. 5. As a span, it gets the job done, and happily replaces the zig-zag temporary structure that made getting to and from the ferry an unexpected adventure.

A formal reopening ceremony, which will likely include politicos and commissioners hailing some other park improvements such as the new landscaping around the bridge and flagpole, is scheduled for Sept. 28.