Blog

We wel­comed hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors in the 2013 sea­son that just con­clud­ed on Sun­day, and also made tremen­dous progress on con­struct­ing 30 acres of new park. Three hun­dred and nine­ty eight thou­sand vis­i­tors, an increase of 15% over last year, enjoyed the Island dur­ing the 40 day week­end and hol­i­day Mon­day sea­son from the end of May through the end of Sep­tem­ber. Gov­er­nors Island closed to the pub­lic on Sep­tem­ber 29.

Fête Par­adiso, a fes­ti­val of vin­tage carousels and car­ni­val rides from Europe was the high­light of the Gov­er­nors Island 2013 sea­son, joined by more than 60 new and return­ing pro­grams includ­ing FIGMENT’s artist designed minia­ture golf course, the Jazz Age Lawn Par­ty, Vin­tage Base­ball and exhibits by the New York His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Pho­tog­ra­phy and the Muse­um of the City of New York, and others.

In order to keep pace with an aggres­sive sched­ule to update Island infra­struc­ture and cre­ate the extra­or­di­nary park, the south­ern half of the Island was closed to vis­i­tors dur­ing the 2013 sea­son. Vis­i­tors to the Island were able to watch progress on con­struc­tion from the View­ing Plat­form @ Liggett Arch. Free hard hat tours were offered for the gen­er­al pub­lic and a broad range of organizations.

On the last week­end of the pub­lic sea­son, we opened the park con­struc­tion site to the pub­lic. More than 5,000 vis­i­tors walked through, enjoy­ing the views of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty just behind the sports fields under con­struc­tion and see­ing the more than one thou­sand trees that have already been plant­ed. Signs through­out the site, staff mem­bers and addi­tion­al free tours pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about the new park spaces, which will open next year.

Next month, we will con­clude con­struc­tion on 30 new acres of park. The Gov­er­nors Island park and pub­lic spaces are designed by West 8, an acclaimed land­scape archi­tec­ture firm. The new park spaces includes Liggett Ter­race, a sun­ny, six acre plaza with sea­son­al plant­i­ngs, seat­ing, water fea­tures and pub­lic art; Ham­mock Grove, a shady ten acre space that is home to 1,500 new trees, play areas and ham­mocks; and the Play Lawn, 14 acres for play and relax­ation that includes two turf ball fields sized for adult soft­ball and Lit­tle League base­ball. These spaces will open for pub­lic use in May 2014. The Hills, an addi­tion­al 10 acres of park, are cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion and will open to the pub­lic in May 2015.

Gov­er­nors Island will re-open to the pub­lic in May 2014.