NYC PARKS UNVEILS QUEENSBRIDGE BABY PARK, CONVERTING OPEN PLOT INTO AWARD-WINNING GREEN-SPACE

A $2.6 million capital project transformed the site into an open space featuring a seating area, ping pong tables, game tables, and a refreshed plaza

NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura was joined today by Queens Borough President Dononvan Richards, City Councilmember Julie Won, Community Board One District Chair Florence Koulouris and community members to celebrate the reopening of Queensbridge Baby Park in Long Island City, Queens. The $2.6 million project fully returned the area to active public use for Queensbridge residents, a first step in restoring the historic open space to its former use. The park received the prestigious "Excellence in Design" award from the NYC Public Design Commission.

"Queensbridge Baby Park is more than a renovation, it is a statement about what this city owes its residents and what becomes possible when we use every piece of land available to give New Yorkers the greenspace they deserve," said NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura. "Today we are delivering on a commitment for equitable access to parks, and we are doing it in one of the communities that needs it most. Every New Yorker deserves a safe, beautiful, and welcoming place to gather, play, and relax. Queensbridge Baby Park is exactly that, and we could not be prouder to open these gates."

"Queensbridge Baby Park is an important step forward for bringing quality open space to Long Island City and the residents of Queensbridge Houses, and a catalyst for what comes next: expanded open space underneath the Queensboro Bridge and along the East River waterfront through the OneLIC Plan," said Sideya Sherman, Director of the Department of City Planning. "Thanks to Councilmember Won's leadership and the community's advocacy, we have a clear path to deliver more of the parks and public spaces that Long Island City residents have called for."

"Queensbridge Baby Park might be small in size, but its long-awaited reopening as pristine public greenspace is a massive deal for the families of Queensbridge Houses and Western Queens as a whole," said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. "This is a site that local children and families - not parked cars and trucks - have long deserved to be able to utilize, and I am grateful to all our neighbors who have spent years advocating for its reuse as park space. Thank you to NYC Parks, Councilmember Julie Won and the many other partners who have helped make the rebirth of Queensbridge Baby Park a reality. Here's to creating even more greenspace in the years to come through the OneLIC Neighborhood Plan."

"For years, this space sat locked off from the community it belongs to," said Council Member Julie Won. "Today, the wait is over-Queensbridge residents now have a piece of Queensbridge Baby Park back. Today's park opening is a preview on the promises we made through OneLIC, following through on the commitment we made to the community. I will keep pushing to make sure the rest of those commitments, the parks, the schools, and the open space under the Queensboro Bridge are delivered on the same timeline this community deserves."

Tucked beneath the Queensboro Bridge and steps from NYCHA's Queensbridge Houses, Queensbridge Baby Park had been used for years as a staging and storage area by City agencies, as a tangle of subsurface utilities made meaningful development into a public space a challenge for years. NYC Parks, working closely with members of the surrounding community, transformed the site into a fully activated neighborhood space with something to offer everyone who walks through its gates.

At the heart of the renovated park is a central plaza built for gathering, ringed by seating, painted ground games, and inclusive play elements. Flanking it are two activity zones, one with ping pong tables and another with bistro seating for chess. Open lawn areas offer quieter spots to sit and decompress, while new plantings along the site's southern and western edges provide a natural screen from the surrounding bridges and roadways. The park's northern edge connects directly into the Queensbridge Park Greenway, and visitors get an unexpected sightline straight to the Empire State Building framed through the arches of the bridge overhead.

The renovation project helped set the stage for the broader OneLIC Neighborhood Plan, a sweeping rezoning initiative for Long Island City that calls for the creation of approximately four acres of new open space under the Queensboro Bridge, a publicly accessible waterfront connection between Gantry Park and Queensbridge Park, and affordable housing. The restoration of Queensbridge Baby Park is in line with the plan's central open space commitments to the Queensbridge community and fulfills longstanding requests from community members who have called for the return of the space to public use through community planning hearings, surveys, and public testimony.

The project was funded with $2,658,000 in capital funding from the Office of the Mayor.