“It’s so much more interesting to have the discovery and reacquaintance with the statue,” Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island, the nonprofit corporation overseeing development of the island, said on Thursday. “However cynical we are as New Yorkers about visiting the statue, it’s still the most powerful emotional symbol of our nation and city.”
Ms. Koch was giving a tour of the parkland that will officially open next May. But this weekend, visitors will be able to get a preview of the land under construction, which includes a grove of hammocks, two ball fields, a formal garden and play areas featuring climbable structures and spray showers.
Parkland is just one element of New York City’s long-term development project for Governors Island, a former Army and Coast Guard base in New York Harbor that the city took control of in 2010. When the island was first opened to the public in summer 2005, it had 8,000 visitors that season.
This summer, the 172-acre island, which offers bike rentals, art installations, concerts and food festivals, has drawn more than that number in a single day. Last Sunday, for instance, 10,000 people rode free ferries there from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. But while there are plenty of lawns, until now the island has been short on official parkland.
That is now changing, as teams of workers and gardeners lay the stone plazas that next summer will be sprinkled with bistro chairs, and plant 60 species of trees — 1,500 in all. They are also installing 50 red hammocks and creating a maze of hedges and formal gardens planted with perennials like aster daisies. The 30 acres, called Governors Island Park, will offer far more space for recreation and relaxation.
Work has also begun on 10 acres of parkland called the Hills, which will feature constructed mounds ranging in height from 25 to 80 feet. When finished in 2015, the Hills are to include four separate knolls, including Slide Hill (with four slides built into the hillside) and the 80-foot Outlook Hill (with a terrace on top facing the Statue of Liberty).
The landscape architecture firm in charge of the parkland project, West 8, decided to break up the monotony of the flat island and maximize views of the harbor by changing its elevation. Even the hammock grove north of the Hills was raised to a maximum height of 16 feet.
An added benefit of the new elevation, which was completed right before Hurricane Sandy, is the new resilience. “We lost only 8 trees out of 1,700 existing trees on the island during Sandy,” Ms. Koch said. “The storm was a big stress test for our landscape.”
More views of the harbor were opened up when an abandoned 11-story brick building was torn down this summer; three other Coast Guard apartment buildings were demolished last year. The remains of those buildings were repurposed for the new parkland. “All debris from the demolition is under our feet,” Ms. Koch said.
The city plans to eventually transform the island into a year-round community that is financially self-sustaining. (The island is now open only on weekends from late May through September.) While there is no plan for housing, the city envisions office space for nonprofit organizations and businesses, as well as hotels and possibly a satellite college campus.
In December, the Trust for Governors Island issued a request for proposals from prospective tenants and will announce the results later this year. That was probably the first of many requests, given that there are 1.4 million square feet of empty historic buildings available for conversion to office space, and 33 acres of land that can be developed for commercial use.
The largest of the historic buildings is Liggett Hall, a handsome low-rise, red-brick building with a cupola as its centerpiece. The new 30 acres of parkland are adjacent to Liggett Hall, with the first section, Liggett Terrace, to feature a hedge labyrinth, flower gardens and a plaza.
South of Liggett Terrace rises Hammock Grove, where a single red hammock is now strung between two thick posts. Soon, dozens of others will join the lone hammock between rows of saplings. “This will be a forest,” said Ms. Koch, who estimated that it would be 15 years before the new trees provide shade.
The new parkland is part of an even larger, $ 260 million construction project for the island. It includes improvements that the public will not immediately notice, like repairing the 2.2-mile sea wall around the island, laying a pipe under Buttermilk Channel to bring potable water from Brooklyn and upgrading the island’s electrical and telecommunications systems.
Two future amenities include the South Prow, a wetland garden at the southern tip, and a Great Promenade that will enhance the existing path around the island and replace the chain-link fence with a decorative balustrade.
For now, however, the focus is on the current parkland project. “This is really new green space for New York,” Ms. Koch said. “All this land was off-limits.”
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