Imagine a pristine swath of densely-vegetated nature simply placed in abutment to a dense urban area with no transition. What would be the result? What would be the social fate of the space? What would be its ecological fate? Would it survive? Would you want to go there after dark?
We propose a new urban resource: the urban nature preserve. Not a park, which is a thoroughly human-centric space, nor yet an untouched and un-stewarded protected habitat, which ignores the realities of human behavior in the vicinity of a dense population, the urban nature preserve is a unique landscape type that supports biodiversity and restores habitat for native species while being adapted to exist next to, and serve as a resource for, the city. As a case study for this concept, we present the Arverne East Nature Preserve.
The Preserve occupies a 14 hectare (35 acre) parcel on New York City’s Rockaway Peninsula, situated between the dense community of Edgemere to the north and the boardwalk and Atlantic Ocean to the south. The initial proposal for this site called for restoring it to its pristine natural, or at least pre-European-settlement, condition. However, like all proposals for land owned by the City of New York, it required soliciting public feedback through the local Community Board, a purely advisory body that is nevertheless influential in land-use review. During this public process, the community made the point, obvious in retrospect, that the piece of wilderness being contemplated for the Arverne East Nature Preserve would not be safe or usable at night and would pose a security threat to the neighborhood if it did not offer direct, well-lit paths connecting the urban grid to the beach.
This seemingly simple request obliged us, as the project’s landscape architects, to reengage with virtually every physical and governmental system that acts on urban land: the physical world of flora, fauna, soils, and infrastructure; the regulatory and political realm; the economic systems required for funding public projects; and the communities that use the land for recreation, for education, and as a place to reconnect to their neighbors and environment. Ultimately, we had to reconceive what it means to create and sustain an urban nature preserve. That process, along with its effects on the design of Arverne East, is the subject of this paper.
Project Background
Neighborhood Context and Site History
The Edgemere community, where the project is located, is characterized by its relatively remote location on the Rockaway Peninsula (Figure 1). As part of the barrier island system that stretches along the south shore of Long Island, the Rockaways are located on a sand bar that extends west from Nassau County. This sandy spit forms a southern barrier protecting the expansive and biodiverse Jamaica Bay (Handel et al. 2016), sheltering it from the Atlantic Ocean. Edgemere is located towards the eastern end of the peninsula and is one of the wider swaths of the Rockaways, its variegated bayside shoreline ranging from approximately 0.8 to 1.6 km (0.5–1.0 miles) from the ocean. The neighborhood’s major roads run parallel to the shoreline, down the length of the peninsula. The elevated A Train (still locally known as the “subway”) runs along Rockaway Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of the Rockaways, and separates the Preserve from the neighborhood directly to its north (Figure 2). A grid of smaller streets runs north-south between the Bay and the Atlantic sides of the peninsula.
Location of Arverne East Nature Preserve on the Rockaway Peninsula.
View of Preserve looking west from Rockaway Boardwalk with elevated A Train in background. The Boardwalk and dune-scape behind it were constructed post Hurricane Sandy.
The quilted look of the neighborhood is a result of its history. As recently as the 1890s, Edgemere was a bungalowand hotel-filled summer beach resort community (Kaplan and Kaplan, 2003). After a period of economic decline, some of the bungalows became year-round residences, and many others were cleared to make way for government-funded super-block housing. Most multi-family buildings adjacent to the site were built during urban renewal efforts between 1939 and 1977. Beginning in 2005, the area faced a new wave of development, including a large swath of single-family housing north of Rockaway Boulevard, a few mixed-use developments along Edgemere Avenue, and L+M Development Partners’ post-Sandy rehabilitation of the old Arverne View, a 1978 Mitchell Lama public housing development directly west of the site. The remainder of the neighborhood today is a mix of pre-war single-family housing, urban renewal-era housing, and vacant lots.
While the City established the Arverne Urban Renewal Area in 1968, it is the October 2003 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that details the current guidelines for its development. Along 52 blocks of sand bar between the Boardwalk and A Train on one side and Beach 32nd and Beach 84th Streets on the other, the FEIS envisions a 125 hectare (308 acre) mixed-use development, the environmental impact of which would be partially mitigated by a 35–acre preserve. In 2005, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the site’s 116-acre eastern portion, stretching from Beach 32nd Street to Beach 56th Street. In 2006, a team comprised of L+M Development Partners Inc., the Bluestone Organization, and Triangle Equities was selected as the winning respondent, operating under the name Arverne East Owner LLC. All three team members are well-established real estate firms that have worked together for over 15 years and that have been working for about a decade to provide sustainable affordable housing for the peninsula.
Their winning proposal envisioned an innovative and resilient community with mixed-income housing, diverse neighborhood retail activity, parking, and necessary infrastructure. The community would feature an urban farm; a boutique hotel; open space; both short-term and long-term programming to encourage economic development, cultural programs, and community health and wellness; and the 35-acre publicly accessible nature preserve which is the subject of this article.
Site Conditions
The site, in its current condition, feels to both residents and visitors like an unsafe no-man’s land between the community and the waterfront. A crumbling curb and sidewalk run along Edgemere Avenue. The eastern and western boundaries at Beach 44th and Beach 56th Streets are similarly decrepit and without fencing or any other clear perimeter definition. Cars park at random in the northwest corner of the site along Edgemere, and there is nothing to stop them from driving further into the site on the abandoned roads of the former street grid. Pedestrian circulation is similarly ad-hoc via abandoned through-streets as well as sandy paths and other open areas where one can walk or drive. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that the site has been used for illegal dumping of furniture and other debris.
Yet the Preserve’s site has the foundational elements of a successful maritime landscape. Within the gently varying terrain of the eastern two thirds of the site are naturally occurring dunes, grasslands, and shrublands. The western portion of the site, while covered with impenetrable late-successional and invasive vines, shrubs, and trees, has a dramatic hilly topography: great bones for a varied maritime forest. Phragmites australis grows in pockets throughout the site, indicating periodically wet conditions (some of which are the result of broken water pipes). The southern portion of the site is a designated Coastal Erosion Hazard Area (CEHA), a status that guarantees a natural beachfront by restricting the extent of grading and landscaping there.
Current Native Tree Canopy
The woody tree species currently present on site include a mixture of native maritime trees and shrubs, dominated by Morella pensylvanica, Prunus maritima, Rhus copallinum and Juniperus virginiana, as well as many invasive species, the most prevalent of which are Elaeagnus umbellata, Ailanthus altissima, Morus alba, and Pyrus calleryana. Other woody species include trees: Malus sp., Robinia pseudoacacia, Acer platanoides, Pinus thunbergii, Prunus serotina, Populus deltoides, Pinus rigida, Salix discolor, Celtis occidentalis, Ulmus rubra, Quercus rubra, Tilia cordata, and Acer negundo. This mixture of species may be partly explained by the site’s former life as a summer resort community of bungalows: the residences were cleared in the 1970s, and since then the yards have received minimal management.
Entities Responsible for Administration and Approval
The larger development project is substantially funded through the City’s $508 million Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF). This supports improvements to potential affordable-housing properties that remain underdeveloped because of problems such as environmental contamination, resiliency needs, or lack of connections to utilities, roads, and sewers. The project’s HIF funds are administered not by the city, but by HPD, the current owner of the site. Upon completion of the project ownership of the Preserve will be transferred to NYC Parks.
As stipulated in the FEIS, Arverne East Nature Preserve must be built and receive a “Notice of Substantial Completion” from NYC Parks for the developer(s) to receive the Temporary Certificate of Occupancy enabling them to derive revenue from their investment. Consequently, the design and implementation of this new landscape must satisfy four divisions of NYC Parks: the Natural Resources Group (NRG), which provides the ecological framework and ethos for the project; Capital Projects, which ensures that all aspects of the design and its furnishings meet Parks standards for materials, universal accessibility and generally attractiveness and are approvable by the City’s Public Design Commission (PDC); the Rockaway Administrator’s Office, which manages all operations in the area; and the Planning Office, which is responsible for coordinating the Parks divisions with each other and with various City and state infrastructure and regulatory agencies. The latter include the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) for the Preserve perimeter right-of-way and lighting; the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the storm water system and any water supply; and the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which regulates all New York State wetlands, including the Coastal Erosion Hazard Area (CEHA) that occupies the southern portion of the site and that comes with many restrictions related to impervious surfaces, plantings, etc.
The developer client’s tight schedule and budget depend on this extensive public agency coordination and the related negotiations. This poses a delicate task for the landscape architects and others, who must operate with great efficiency and diplomacy to complete the project. We believe that this demanding administrative, political, and financial environment is typical for the urban nature preserve.
Design Intent
The purpose of the Arverne East Nature Preserve, per the FEIS, was to mitigate the impact of intensive development on the fragile maritime ecology. As mixed-use developments increase the density of this waterfront community, the Preserve was meant to offer residents and visitors a retreat from the urban surroundings while harboring maritime flora and fauna in a naturalistic landscape. Following this intention, we initially worked with NYC Parks to develop the following design goals: 1) promote biodiversity by protecting, preserving, and enhancing habitat; 2) provide refuge for endangered migratory species such as shorebirds and butterflies; 3) link existing islands of vegetation by eliminating unnecessary paved areas to create a high-performing habitat corridor; 4) improve the structure of the vegetative cover; 5) create a nature preserve for the enjoyment of the local community and the broader community of nature lovers; 6) improve community access to the Boardwalk; and 7) extend new open-space benefits to the historically underserved community of Edgemere.
As we will discuss below in the section on Community Board review, the community disagreed with the premise of the project. Its members had been living with this site as an abandoned illegal dumping ground in their “front yard” for decades. It had been an unwelcome barrier between their neighborhood and the waterfront, and now there were plans to turn it into a place for wildlife that, in practice, would be unsafe and uninviting for local residents. Environmental priorities were already preventing community members from enjoying their beach: large areas are off-limits to protect the nesting grounds of the endangered piping plover (Charadrius melodus) (Maslo et al. 2011). Now this project proposed to give 35 more acres (14 ha) over to nature. For the local residents, the idea that to protect wildlife habitat we were not lighting the paths was further evidence that the government and environmental community cared more about endangered birds than they did about a stressed community.
It was evident to us that these concerns were justified. While we could not shift the entire design of this space away from its FEIS-mandated land use as a Preserve, we could at least modify the concept to include wide, relatively direct, well-lit paths offering access to the Boardwalk (Figure 3). On paper, this was a minor change, and the nature preserve design we are about to describe remains true to the FEIS requirements. The addition of even a modest amount of lighting and infrastructure, however, triggered cumbersome multilateral negotiations with the affected entities, complicating our organizational task enormously. This experience ultimately led us to enlarge the concept of the “ecology” of the urban nature preserve to include its social environment—in fact, the full body politic of the place. Before addressing this in detail, we return to the design basics.
Rendered Plan submitted to the Public Design Commission showing revisions required by the public engagement and subsequent agency approval process.
Planting Design
The intent of the planting design is to enhance and protect the fragile maritime ecology, while enabling the public to enjoy the diverse plant communities and wildlife these habitats attract (Figures 4 and 5). Nearly four acres (1.6 ha) of existing impervious surfaces will be removed and replaced with natural beach sand and native plantings. The sand will be sourced from locations with similar parent soil on Long Island. Non-native, disturbed or poor-quality habitats will be restored to naturalistic conditions, attracting wildlife through an improved diversity of plant species in tracts of native grassland, shrubland, maritime woodland, and wet meadows. New plantings will enlarge the coastal plant populations that are already successfully established at the site, including Ammophila breviligulata (American beachgrass), Solidago sempervirens (seaside goldenrod), Morella pensylvanica (northern bayberry), Prunus maritima (beach plum), Rosa carolina (pasture rose), Pinus rigida (pitch pine), Andropogon virginicus (broomsedge), Panicum virgatum (switchgrass), and Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem). Additional species in the plant palette, arranged by habitat type, are in Table 1.
Plan showing proposed habitats.
Sections through the Preserve showing location of the habitat types.
Additional species in the plant palette, arrayed by habitat type.
Plants will be specified in a variety of sizes to provide a multilevel canopy that contributes to a structurally diverse wildlife habitat. Many plants in the palette offer high value to regional wildlife. Approximately 0.24 hectares (0.6 acres) of the site will feature a low-lying landscape planted with an array of wet meadow grasses.
The northern perimeter of the site along Edgemere Avenue addresses the regularly occurring stormwater flooding in this low-lying area. Working with Parks, DOT and DEP, Starr Whitehouse and the civil engineering team at VHB Engineers devised a series of special curb cuts from the street to channel storm water runoff into a system of bioswales running the length of the Preserve. This system enhances the environmental performance of the preserve and adds visual and ecological richness to its urban-facing edge (Figure 6).
Sections through the curb-cut and bioswale system along to the northern edge of the preserve.
Framing the Perimeter
The existing frayed edges of the north, east, and west sides of the site are being redefined. Their new frame consists of a concrete street curb, followed by a 5-ft (1.5-m) wide strip of low-growing native grasses, a 6-ft (1.8-m) wide concrete sidewalk, and finally a low single-timber rail. In the spirit of “Parks without Borders,” the City of New York’s initiative to encourage public use by local communities (NYC Parks, 2015), the sidewalk widens to create a nature viewing area, enabling pedestrians to enjoy the wildest part of the sanctuary from the urban edge. Entry to the Preserve is afforded by a system of 5-ft wide, ADA-accessible footpaths that emerge from gaps in the timber rail. These paths, mostly concrete with decking or recycled plastic lumber used in sensitive areas, will be located to allow visitors to enjoy the diverse plant communities while disturbing the habitat as little as possible.
Circulation through the Preserve
Originally, there were to be no lit paths in the Preserve. The new design features both north-south paths, configured to provide direct connections between the street and the Boardwalk, and meandering east-west paths, conceived to provide an immersive journey through the Preserve. The latter include a curated educational loop at the eastern end of the site, across the street (Beach 44th Street) from the proposed comfort station and multi-purpose building. Periodic interpretive signage will reinforce the Preserve’s ecological and pedagogical mission.
The setting allows us to guide visitors through rapidly changing vegetation types as they move from dune to shrubland—a rare opportunity anywhere, let alone in the public parks of New York City. Yet the ecology is delicate. In our urban nature preserve, paths will circumnavigate the sensitive plant communities established on site, both displaying and protecting them. The furnishings are minimally intrusive, with benches located only at certain entrances and circulation hubs. Furthermore, pursuant to the area’s mission as a preserve, foot traffic will be concentrated in areas where significant ecological disturbance has already occurred, and design work in the CEHA will be very limited.
Public Process and Redesign
Community Board Review
To a landscape architect or naturalist, the initial design strategy appeared ideal for creating a preserve with minimal human disruption; to the community, however, the project as first proposed seemed to create a space that was largely off-limits to them and impeded access to their waterfront. During their initial review in summer of 2020, the Community Board asked what the point of all this work would be if residents jogging along the boardwalk after work would not be able to find a safe way through the 0.5-mile long Preserve to get to their homes across the street. While acknowledging that the Preserve was intended as a natural area, the Community Board insisted there be several lit paths so residents could have access to the beach and boardwalk at night without having to traverse a dark landscape. They argued that lighting and secure access would be standard features of an open space in any affluent neighborhood, and that these features were essential to giving the residents of Arverne East full enjoyment of their public space. Furthermore, the prevailing feeling was that the community never asked for the Preserve—that the Preserve was merely mandated through a land use review process a generation ago. Given all this, there were naturally questions as to why this FEIS-mandated nature area is required and how it will be prevented from devolving into the dumping ground that is currently on site.
The context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests occurring in cities across the nation at that moment made the issues raised by the Community Board all the more compelling, especially given the previous prioritization of nesting plovers over human users of the beach. Even without the BLM context, however, it was clear to our team and Parks NRG that the community board was correct. To achieve the project’s stated goals of restoring a piece of shoreline for the benefit of both the native ecology and local residents, the needs of human actors, both local residents and city agencies having jurisdiction over the Preserve, would have to be incorporated into the design alongside the needs of plant and animal species. It became clear to us that we were not merely facing an issue of lighting some paths: the project’s goals would have to be reframed. The Community Board’s feedback spurred us to reconceive the project—not as a pristine preserve, but as a system that must exist symbiotically with its community and with public and private sector stakeholders. From that point on, the design team assumed the task of orchestrating the evolution both of the plan and of the process of producing it, a task which entailed altering the way regulatory groups and stakeholders regarded the project as well as adjusting the design of the space.
Lighting the Preserve
The lighting was a real conundrum. Because the Preserve is a future NYC Parks property, it appeared that either the lights would have to be selected from the DOT’s standard lighting menu or the maintenance of the lights would fall on the developer. Appropriate lighting options for a nature preserve were very limited for this application. If we selected from the highway light offerings, we could use fewer lights, but they would be bringing the highway scale into the Preserve. On the other hand, most of the pedestrian lights offered were ornamental, made for aestheticized parks and urban plazas. We finally settled on the most minimally-ornamented light pole on the DOT menu topped with the fixture that was the most neutral in appearance, a new one for the department. Parks NRG wanted the light modified with a yellow light cover and shielding to be more friendly to the wildlife, but we were not able to achieve this variation on the DOT fixture.
Additionally, to use these or any lights, our team had to widen, strengthen, and straighten the footpaths to accommodate the heavy trucks needed to service the fixtures. We also had to incorporate turnarounds for the trucks north of the CEHA line or risk losing our permitting momentum with DEC, a setback which would have greatly delayed the project. It was a happy moment when over a COVID-era video call, the head of DOT Maintenance agreed that the big, unwieldy trucks could do a “Y” turn on our widened footpaths north of the CEHA and back in to service the lights in that sensitive area, even though this would require an additional person present to assist with the backing-in process.
These modifications proved acceptable to NYC Parks, as well as to the City’s ultimate design review entity, the New York City Public Design Commission (PDC), a committee, appointed by the mayor and composed of designers from a variety of disciplines, that reviews all new construction on NYC-owned property. The PDC blessed the initial stages of the project with very few comments.
Honoring the Community Stewards
The next step in the urban nature preserve’s evolution was a negotiation we facilitated between Parks NRG and the Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity (RISE), a community organization that has been active on the site for many years and whose mission is to reconnect Rockaways residents with their community and natural environment. In the years leading up to the current project, RISE had been organizing community members to plant trees on the former dumping ground. One of the species introduced was the non-native Pinus thunbergii (Japanese black pine), which thrived in this environment and was beloved by the community. While native plant purists wanted to remove the black pines, RISE advocated for keeping the trees, which the community had worked so hard to plant and which appeared to be doing better on the site than the native pitch pines. Since the black pines are non-invasive, the ecologically minded stakeholders ultimately decided to let them remain. Rather than take a principled stance on non-invasive non-native species, we realized it was more important to secure and build on the goodwill and effort that local stewards had invested in reclaiming this long-untended land. The Japanese pines that the community planted will remain and become part of the story of this urban nature preserve—a visible reminder of the convergence of human and ecological forces on the site. They will be joined by native pitch pines specified by the design team. Incidentally, this will allow us to observe which species thrives better in this particularly challenging environment.
Management
Upon completion, the Arverne East Nature Preserve will be turned over to NYC Parks and incorporated into the City’s 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) of mapped, designated parkland. Parks’ Maintenance and Operations team based at Rockaway Beach will be responsible for the care of the facility: litter removal, graffiti and vandalism repair, perimeter snow removal, scheduling, trimming and pruning, and inspection. That team will be assisted by, among others, Parks’ Natural Resources Group (NRG), who are in-house specialists in ecological restoration, native plants, and habitats; Parks’ technical services and trades’ in-house sign shop; and Partnerships for Parks, a public-private partnership providing volunteers and community engagement for parks across the city.
From the local community partners, RISE will play a significant role in the stewardship and programming of the Preserve. RISE stewards much open space in the Rockaways, as it did in the Preserve prior to this project. In the Preserve, it has not only planted trees, but planted herbaceous material, removed litter, and advocated for improvements.
Directly across Beach 44th Street from the Preserve, the Arverne East development project includes a building that will house public restrooms as well as work space for Parks’ maintenance staff and for the Endangered Species Nesting Area wildlife team. This building will also have a community space managed by RISE. As part of the Arverne East development agreement, the developer is committed to underwrite several year-round and seasonal Parks staff positions for the Preserve as well as equipment and supplies. As the development is built out and becomes occupied, the condo associations and management companies that purchase and administer the buildings will be obligated to fund these staff and supplies in perpetuity.
Conclusion
Initially intended to restore a section of Rockaway Peninsula shoreline to pristine pre-settlement condition, the Arverne East Nature Preserve has been reshaped by its public process to reflect its proximity to a dense urban community. Rather than minimizing human impact to recover a piece of untouched wilderness, the aim of the Arverne East Preserve has become creation of a space where ecological, social, regulatory, cultural, and economic systems work harmoniously and are even mutually reinforcing. Over the coming years, as the project is implemented and begins to support native species and use by residents, we propose observing its performance as the exemplar of a unique landscape type: the urban nature preserve, characterized by the mutually beneficial interaction of natural and human forces. We look forward to seeing the project built and to finding ways to support the recreational and educational programming that will weave these human and natural systems into the urban ecology of the Rockaways.
Juniperus virginiana. USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database. Britton, N.L. and A. Brown. 1913. An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons
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