Selected Option Saves the Carousel and Urban Farm, But Halves Oval Lawn
Last night (Monday, October 20), city planners announced at a meeting of the Environmental Protection Committee of Community Board 1 that they have reached a tentative decision about the Southern Tie-In, the planned nexus between the FiDi-Seaport Resilience project and two adjacent resilience plans: those for the Battery and for Battery Park City. All three will converge at Bowling Green.
The trio of alignments under consideration for the Battery included two along State Street (one adjacent to buildings; the other hugging the perimeter of the park) and one within the park, cutting through the Battery’s upland green spaces.
After multiple public sessions throughout 2025, at which feedback was solicited from Lower Manhattan residents and park visitors, planners from the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice and the City’s Economic Development Corporation have settled on the “Park/Battery Upland” option, which will bury or conceal 85 percent of flood barriers beneath newly created landscape features, such as hills and berms.
This plan will incorporate five flood gates (two across roadways, and the rest within the park), while protecting 60 percent of the Battery – along with all nearby subway stations – from inundation. The selected option will weave between popular features of the Battery, including its Urban Farm and the SeaGlass Carousel, while avoiding subsurface infrastructure such as subway tunnels, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and the Battery viaduct. This plan will require the loss of 60 to 90 trees, and feature the creation of “a gently sloping landform,” which will cover the flood protection structures. This berm will rise approximately 15 feet above the existing elevation, culminating in a hilltop ridge. The northern end of this hill will cut in half the Battery’s Oval Lawn, with its far end (near the Bowling Green subway entrance) replaced by a new entry plaza. Incorporating 10,000 square feet of bridging framework (to support flood mitigation structures where they cross over underground spaces), the plan is slated to cost $700 million, and take up to three years to construct.
One of the rejected options, the “State Street/Building Adjacent” alignment, would have cost $2.5 billion, required 100,000 square feet of bridging structures, and needed ten flood gates, while 60 percent of its flood walls would have remained visible.
The second vetoed proposal, the “State Street/Park Adjacent” alignment, budgeted at $2.7 billion, would have entailed 200,000 square feet of bridging structures, six flood gates, and left 70 percent of its flood walls exposed.
Two additional design possibilities (one that would have left exposed the Battery Playscape and the other circling around State and Whitehall Streets) were considered, but rejected. The first was discarded because of conflicts with the Playscape, existing subway stations, and a proposed new ferry terminal. The second was dropped because it would have left several blocks of buildings vulnerable to flooding.
Community Board 1 members urged city officials to schedule a public workshop about the Southern Tie-In strategy, so that local residents would have an opportunity to learn about the design and engineering of the plan.