Freshkills Park Blog

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on Sunday June 4. This free event is a chance to explore normally closed areas of the park and enjoy the unique landscape and spectacular views the landfill-to-park project has to offer! Over 700 acres and eight miles of trails will be open for a day of photography, bicycling, activities, and tours.

On Sunday April 9, volunteers had the chance to go behind the scenes and visit Freshkills Park for a hike and information session. It was a beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies and perfect temperatures for walking.  The green grasses were just starting to emerge, the blossoms were opening on the Callery Pear Trees, and the ospreys had returned to their nests after wintering in warmer places.

Researchers from the College of Staten Island have carried out another successful season of turtle research at Freshkills Park. Since 2012, they have been studying the biodiversity of the park’s ponds with a focus on painted turtles. This comparative study is looking at painted turtle populations in the park’s rainwater basins compared to three other populations around Staten Island.

The Freshkills Park Team is looking for a Development Intern, Public Art Program Intern, Environmental Monitoring Intern, and Communications Intern to join the staff at the project’s lower Manhattan headquarters this summer. These four part-time positions will involve site visits and provide opportunities to collaboratively contribute to ongoing park planning and project implementation.

We’re excited to announce this year’s spring and early summer calendar of public programs at Freshkills Park! These tours and events offer unique opportunities to visit normally closed sections of the landfill-to-park project. Whether kayaking through the creeks, photographing the landscape, or hiking and bicycling along miles of meadows, these free programs invite the public to learn about the project and enjoy large sections of the park before they open.

Written by Ingrid Florentino, Volunteer Outreach Intern.

It has been more than 15 years since the Fresh Kills Landfill received the last barge of garbage, and its closure was a victory for the borough of Staten Island. Today, the landfill is in the process of becoming a park and several sections of Freshkills Park are already open to the public.

We are now scheduling field trips to Freshkills Park for April and May! These trips are designed to help middle and high school students connect to Freshkills Park through guided walks and interactive activities.

Educators can choose from one of two themed field trips:

Wetland Ecology

• This trip provides an introduction to how creek-side ecosystems have transformed alongside the landfill to park project.

On February 1, NYC Parks held a Community “Report Back” Meeting for the Anchor Park Project. Local residents met at the Staten Island Jewish Community Center to review the top priorities for the new park expressed at the November public scoping meeting and to see the proposed conceptual design for the project.

In June 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation requiring the City to produce its first-ever comprehensive cultural plan for all New Yorkers. Now the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and Hester Street Collaborative are working together to collect information to inform the cultural plan, called CreateNYC.

In November 2016, Mayor de Blasio reached an agreement to acquire the 11-acre CitiStorage site on the Williamsburg waterfront for $160 million. This parcel was the final piece needed to complete the 27-acre Bushwick-Inlet Park promised to North Brooklyn residents as part of the 2005 Rezoning Action.  

You don’t need to head out of NYC to the nearest ski resort. We have the rolling hills right here at Freshkills Park. Led by artist Tattfoo Tan, discover the trails of Freshkills Park on snowshoes as part of his program New Earth Resiliency Training Module.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles first toured Fresh Kills Landfill in 1977. She had just been appointed the New York Department of Sanitation’s first (and only) Artist-in-Residence. At that time, there were landfills in every borough except Manhattan, and Fresh Kills was known as the largest municipal landfill in the world.

This December, participants learned how to make their own pack baskets during a free two-day workshop with Linda Scherz Allen of Adirondack Basketry. The workshop was presented by Freshkills Park and New Earth Resiliency Training Module (NERTM).

This past year marked the fifteen-year anniversary of the Fresh Kills Landfill closure. In March of 2001, the final barge of household garbage arrived at the landfill. Later that year, the City of New York announced an international design competition for the development of a plan for Freshkills Park.

Freshkills Park teamed up with the design studio Partner & Partners to create What is Freshkills?, a fold-out poster pamphlet that illustrates the history, engineering, and ecology of the unique 2,200-acre park in an accessible and easily distributed format.

The Fresh Kills Landfill was the largest landfill in the world before it closed in 2001.

The 2016 Staten Island Christmas Bird Count took place on Sunday, December 17th. During this yearly event, Staten Island birders spread out in teams to take count of all the birds present at the time. This year, there was a nice showing of different species both on the Island and in Freshkills Park.

Freshkills Park: Landscape in Motion was on view at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge Gallery in the St. George Ferry Terminal from September 22-December 7. This exhibit of winning photographs of Freshkills Park was the capstone to “A Fresh Look,” the landscape photography contest organized with the Staten Island Advance.

Exciting progress is being made on the first interior park project at Freshkills Park, known as North Park Phase 1. This landmark 20-acre project will connect visitors to views of the park’s hills and waterways.

Freshkills Park has been opening gradually since 2012.

Dear Friends:

This year’s $30 million funding for the Mayor’s Anchor Parks initiative is a wonderful recognition of the progress we’re making as Freshkills Park continues to take shape. The Anchor Parks project, now entering design, will focus on South Park.

Community visioning for South Park at Freshkills Park has begun. This section of the park will receive $30 million through New York City’s Anchor Parks program to provide new access and amenities, and visioning is the first step in developing a plan for what will be constructed.