Realizing the Benefits of Hudson River Park

By the 1980s, Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront was largely a troubled landscape of barbed wire and decaying warehouses. Faced with sharp declines in maritime commerce, New Yorkers were given an opportunity to reimagine the city’s post-industrial waterfront. Through the efforts of the West Side Task Force (1986), the West Side Waterfront Panel (1990), the Hudson River Park Conservancy (1992), and a historic agreement between New York City and New York State (1998), New Yorkers committed to establishing a new waterfront park on the Hudson River.

Today, at around seventy percent complete, Hudson River Park offers visitors iconic parkland, boat launches, sports facilities, and greenways. The park provides our region with a major public amenity and anchors the growing neighborhoods of Manhattan’s Far West Side. Though the park sustains its operations and maintenance costs through rents, concessions, grants, and donations, the park’s capital funding comes almost entirely from government appropriations – a source of funding that declined considerably following the Great Recession.

Building off a previous 2008 study, The Impact of Hudson River Park on Property Values, this report shows that the critical investments made to build and sustain Hudson River Park have already generated significant dividends for New York City and New York State – beyond simply increasing property values – and helped to transform the entire Far West Side of Manhattan.

This report illustrates the park’s influence on local and regional economies, employment, tourism, development, property taxes, property value, and demographics – and makes the case for continued investment in completing the construction of Hudson River Park. It is critically important for the city, the state, and private citizens to recommit to the full realization of Hudson River Park – as envisioned by the Hudson River Park Act of 1998 – and to finally complete the park over the next decade.

Through steady and substantial investments to complete Hudson River Park, our region can continue to reimagine its urban waterfronts for the next generation.