By: Hellen Zaboulani

New York sunbathers can look forward to an exciting new warm-weather attraction coming to Manhattan in the Summer of 2023.

As reported by the NY Post, a brand new riverside oasis will open on the shores of Manhattan — making it the first and only public beach in the borough.  The city will be opening Gansevoort Peninsula, on the Manhattan side of the Hudson River, just north of West 12th Street in the Meatpacking District.  It is being designed by James Corner Field Operations, and developed by the same company that brought the High Line to NY.  “People want a place to lay down and to take their shirt off, and that’s what they’re gonna have here,” Noreen Doyle, CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust, told the Daily Beast.

The new hot spot was originally announced in 2019 and was first slated for an opening in 2022.  Now the opening date has been pushed to this summer.  The retreat will boast a salt marsh, an athletic field, a launch site for kayaks and small boats, a tree-lined promenade, and waterfront access.  There is also a public art installation there, already completed named “Day’s End,” by artist David Hammons, which is donated to Hudson River Park by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

There will be no swimming permitted at the site.  “The Hudson River has made a huge amount of progress in terms of its health since the Clean Water Act was passed in the 1970s, but this is not designed as a swimming beach,” Doyle said, noting that the prohibition on swimming has been “clear from the get-go.”

The beach will stretch across 14,000-square-feet of sand in the Hudson River Park.  The park, currently runs four miles along Manhattan’s west side and attracts more than 17 million visits annually.  “Built on solid ground, (as opposed to a pier),  Gansevoort will be developed into a large green oasis, complete with a resilient “beach” on the southern side that will provide River access to kayakers and other small boaters, as well as a place for lounging and River views”, reads the Hudson River Park’s website.

There is also a second “beach” in the works for NYC.  Across the water in Williamsburg, Brooklyn another waterside project is underway.  That project, on the East River, has an estimated opening date set for 2028.  It will allow visitors to sunbath and enjoy the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan, while there will be no swimming, wading will be allowed.  There are plans to progress that beach to eventually allow full-fledged swimming. “The goal is to attract folks to the water’s edge, to let them interact with the East River in a way that they never have,” Dave Lombino, management director of development company Two Trees, told NY1 of the Williamsburg beach. “A couple days ago, there were dolphins swimming behind me in the East River. The trajectory of water quality over time is a very sharp improvement.”