SIGNE: So this particular plant is called butterfly weed, and We have a lot of these, different colors, and it is a favorite food source of monarch butterflies.

NARRATION: Each year, millions of monarch butterflies embark on an epic journey, flying up to 3,000 miles to reach central Mexico. And some of them pass right over one of the busiest cities in the world—New York City.

Even in a concrete jungle, nature finds a way. But with monarch populations in decline, they -and many other species- need all the help they can get.

Here, along the shores of the Hudson River, these butterflies have found an unlikely oasis: Little Island, built over the water where piers used to mark the entrance to one of North America’s largest ports. It’s a refuge not only for people but also for wildlife.

MAT: nature has an incredible way of binding us together. A park is an obvious example.

NARRATION: I’m Brian Maughan, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Fidelity National Financial, and this is Built – where you’ll meet creative leaders in the commercial real estate industry and hear how they’re making a difference.

This season, we’re focusing on places where real estate and nature intersect in meaningful ways.

Act 1: The Land, The History

NARRATION: At the corner of 14th Street, right by the West Side Highway and just a block from the High Line in the West Village, you’ll notice this oddly shaped, almost sculptural-like structure covered in greenery, above the Hudson River.

Andrea Retzky: I mean, it really is what it says. It is a little island

Ken C: It's an island on stilts.

NARRATION: Rising from the water, 132 concrete piles topped by tulip-like pots at different elevations support a 2.4 Acres park.

Crystal N: Very beautiful greenery, a lot of trees,

Andrea Retzky: It looks almost like something you'd see in Dr. Seuss. It's clearly manmade,

Ken C: It's got music and people and I'm gonna go sit over in that grass and read for a little while.

NARRATION: Little Island is part of Hudson River Park, a state park that runs along Manhattan's west side from Chambers Street in downtown up to 59th Street. And it has become an engaging spot for New Yorkers and visitors alike, offering 2 performance spaces, astonishing views and lots of plants.

MICHAEL: Tiny little space and a big idea. I'll say it out loud, in a hyper capitalist society, which we're all members of, anything of value, anything that is aesthetically at the highest quality is expensive. And the fact that it's expensive means that certain people are excluded. The big idea about Little Island is that it's the best of everything and everyone's invited.

NARRATION: Michael Wiggins is the Director of Engagement and Strategic Programs.

MICHAEL: I'm the stunt coordinator here at Little Island. The park is open when I wake up. And it's open when I go to bed.

NARRATION: Little Island opens its doors at 6:00 am every day —unless the weather has other plans. And depending on the season, you can wander around until 11 pm or even midnight. But this part of town has seen life and activity for far longer...

MICHAEL: We go back hundreds of years, you know, I mean Manhattan, is a stolen jewel, we acknowledge this is the land of the Lenape, and they use it as a trading post. But there have been huge changes, the coastline of Manhattan has changed.

So what you would expect to see here a couple of hundred years ago was just a verdant landscape, you know, with foxes and little things that you could trap and trade with. And I think boats would come up and move up and down the river, just as they do today.

And then if you go, you know, take a little leap forward, walt Whitman writes about working class people coming down to the river, reaching into the water and getting the poor man's lunch, which is an oyster.

And what you had here was an industrial landscape. A place that represented the trade and the vitality of New York, but wasn't a tourist destination at that point.

NARRATION: When you approach Little Island from the highway, you'll see a big, old arch just before the main entrance to the park.

MICHAEL: It's rusty, but it’s well lit. And the reason we've preserved that arch, and the Hudson River Park Trust, and the state have decided to preserve that arch, is because there's huge history here.

SIGNE: There were actually many of these arches, and there was a solid wall of buildings all along this area.

NARRATION: Signe Nielsen is the founding principal of MNLA, and the landscape architect for Little Island. She's talking about the historic Chelsea Piers. Back then, the piers were connected by a series of buildings that formed the city's premier passenger ship terminal. It opened in 1910 and it took 8 years to build it.

Like you see today in airports where there are terminals for different airlines, back in the day there were dozens of piers operated by many different companies. So this arch that remains was the access point for people arriving or leaving via ships docking at Pier 54. If you look at it closely, you can see faded letters.

SIGNE: The writing says cunard line, and then over that White Star line.

NARRATION: These 2 luxury liner companies merged in 1934, and probably you have heard of the latter one because it operated the RMS Titanic.

SIGNE: The survivors of the Titanic were brought here.

NARRATION: In 1912, before bringing the survivors to Pier 54, the Carpathia, operated by the Cunard Line, made a stop at Pier 59—Titanic’s original destination—to drop off its lifeboats.

And just 3 years later, in 1915, the RMS Lusitania was filmed departing from this very port – You can actually find that silent footage on YouTube. You’ll see it only days before it was torpedoed by a German submarine.

These piers also served as departure points for soldiers heading to the battlefields in both World Wars, and over the years they helped move millions in and out of the city.

Tama Klassen: We would always love coming up the road because we could see all of the ships and we could see people coming and going.

NARRATION: This is Tama Klassen – she was visiting Little Island when we were there. She was born in New York City in 1950.

Tama Klassen: I do remember coming down here with all the hustle and bustle of a departure crowd and waving up to the ship and things like that.

NARRATION: The last passenger ships left Chelsea Piers in 1958 and by then they transitioned into cargo terminals. However, as ships grew longer, the piers were too short to accommodate modern freight vessels, and over time, they gradually fell into disrepair.

But then another transition took place.

MICHAEL: I'm a black gay man in New York. Um, you know, Queer kids occupied a lot of the territory around the piers. Gay men occupied that territory in the 70s when it was abandoned by industry.

NARRATION: The area became a safe space for social gatherings. And the interiors of the dilapidated buildings flourished with art installations, murals and performances.

MICHAEL: The marginal spaces along the water became occupied by marginalized people.

NARRATION: In 1986, Pier 54 became the site of the annual Dance on the Pier event, a key part of Pride festivities held there for 25 years.

MICHAEL: Our programming acknowledges that. The excitement of, of being able to Honor, those who came before this entire neighborhood was gentrified.

NARRATION: By the early 1990s, the buildings were demolished, and in 1998, the Hudson River Park Trust was formed through a partnership between the City and State of New York to create a public park and estuarine sanctuary along the Manhattan waterfront.

Pier 54 remained a lively spot, hosting performances by artists like Prince, The Roots, and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. And even MTV filmed a reality show there in 2007.

MTV Band in a Bubble video: 54, which is now home to the totally tricked out recording studio we affectionately call The Bubble.

NARRATION: And if you were a kid in the neighborhood you probably learned to ride your bike on the asphalt walkway that remained.

The pier had been slowly deteriorating but then, the unthinkable happened:

ABC News Sandy Clip: look at this picture tonight. This is from space from NASA. It's a massive storm 1000 miles across and long before it makes landfall sometime tomorrow night, it is already being felt tonight all along the coastline,

NARRATION: This was the news on October 28, 2012.

CBS News Sandy clip: widespread flooding is the biggest concern in the nation's largest city. As Hurricane Sandy approaches, forecasters say the storm surge could reach 11 feet.

SIGNE: Place we're standing right now, which is the Esplanade, was under six ft of water.

NARRATION: Landscape architect Signe Nielsen.

SIGNE: So it was very clear that we needed to elevate Little Island higher than future storms and future sea level rise.

Act 2: Building the Solution

LAURA: So Little Island was birthed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which really had a detrimental impact on a lot of New York. Pier 54 had literally fallen into the river.

NARRATION: Laura Clement is the Executive Director, and she started as the Chief Operations Officer when she joined the project in 2018.

LAURA: From that was born a partnership between Barry Diller, and The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation and Hudson River Park Trust to restore and rebuild the pier.

NARRATION: Business mogul Barry Diller, who founded Fox Broadcasting, and his wife Diane von Fürstenberg, contributed millions to redevelop the neighboring High Line.

LAURA: And it was really Barry Diller's idea and vision to build an entirely new kind of public space.

NARRATION: In 2014, Heatherwick Studio was chosen to design what was initially called Pier 55, though a legal drama delayed construction. Many argued a project like this could have benefited other parts of the city. We won’t weigh in on that debate; but we do believe that Little Island is a fantastic example of how developers can use available space – even over water – to create places that will draw in visitors and locals.

Ultimately, The Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation donated $260 million dollars to develop and build Little Island, with an additional $120 million committed for its future upkeep. And the City and State also contributed $21 million to the project.

MAT:  As a designer, you're in a way going on a design journey and launching it, but it's how it gets adopted and used and enjoyed. That's the thing that I love most about it.

NARRATION: Mat Cash is an architect, Partner and Group Leader at Heatherwick Studio, a multi-award winning British design and architecture firm.

MAT: you're creating a pier. A pier is exciting and interesting in itself.

NARRATION: Mat works closely with Designer Thomas Heatherwick, who founded the Studio 3 decades ago. Since then, they have completed projects all over the world.

MAT: From watches and bags, furniture to buildings, parts of cities, airports, even doing a project in space.

NARRATION: Mat says the studio is driven by problem solving.

MAT: An opportunity to do something there was exciting, coupled with a lack of green space in that area, got us thinking about creating a new public park.

NARRATION: But they had a very limited space to do so. The park is precisely to the inch the same footprint as the pier that was here before, but instead of the traditional rectangular pier, it was built as a square.

MAT: It's 300 foot by 300 foot, So we knew we had to create almost a kind of a Swiss army knife of a park, something that could do all sorts of different things in and of a very small space.

NARRATION: If you take a look at the water around Little Island during low tide, you can spot the inspiration for its design.

The old piers have faded with time, but the original piles from Pier 54 and 56 are still there, standing like vertical supports from the past.

SIGNE: this really exemplifies the inspiration of the piles because they literally pass under the pier and rise up on the other side.

MAT: The pile fields were quite beautiful. And so our idea really was to take those piles that you need anyway and make them the hero.

MAT: So the piles themselves are almost growing out of the water and creating a kind of a bowl or a petal or a platform that that would hold the vegetation to create the park.

NARRATION: Once the design was approved, they started to build out the team, they needed structural engineers, marine engineers, light and sound designers... And they needed someone who could bring the park to life.

MAT: We've done projects in New York before, but when you're dealing with landscape, the selection of the plant species is always critical. what plants would thrive in this environment? What would create a story of New York rather than a bunch of London designers saying, let's go and this in there, right?

MAT: And as soon as we met Signe, we thought, This is the person.

SIGNE: We are walking on the south bridge, and we are headed toward a large hill,

NARRATION: There are 2 pedestrian bridges that take visitors over the river into the island. This one is big enough to allow a firetruck to enter if needed.

SIGNE: And you see plants kind of cascading down that hill, and you see a terraced lawn.

NARRATION: As we enter the island, we walk under an arch formed by some of the pots. Greenery spills from their edges, swaying gently in the breeze, while the soft tones of dance chimes play in the background mixed with the ever present helicopters that fly over the river.

SIGNE: The railing that's above us right now was very particularly designed to have no horizontal rails, so that the plants could spill right out and cover pots.

NARRATION: And what holds the entire pier together is actually a thick concrete slab.

SIGNE: And that's particularly done for earthquake. So rather than 238 individual piles, they are all tied toget her as a single unit. So all of the soil, all the plants sit on top of a concrete deck. Like it would be on a rooftop.

NARRATION: Building over water is hard, and when you're dealing with a place like the Hudson River, with its freezing winters and hot summers, it gets even trickier.

MAT: It's a very intolerant environment to design or to construction. So when we started the project, we knew that we had to use concrete because it was the only material that could survive in that environment. And also, we weren’t gonna reinvent How you might drive piles in the Hudson River.

NARRATION: Remember, Little Island is basically a pier, just a square one.

MAT: There are just ways in which it is done because it's been done in that way for a long time. And So the idea about you know taking the piles as the things we definitely needed there was no getting away from that and driving them seasonally because you can only drive piles in a piling season, May to October, because of the spawning of the striped bass.

MAT: So you're always working with nature, and so that's always the kind of dialogue is how do we minimize our impact on this environment?

NARRATION: And putting the pieces together in such a small, crowded space was another big challenge.

MAT: It's very expensive to build in New York. It's very difficult from a kind of supply perspective, driving trucks through manhattan is difficult. And so we were very interested in prefabrication because you're building over water, you know, Where can you put all your materials. So it was almost a kit of parts that you could then reassemble, and then taking it on barges, which is much more sustainable than putting it on the back of a flatbed truck, and then craned all these things in so you could limit the amount of impacts environmentally and then get that base platform that you could work off.

SIGNE: Come on...

NARRATION: When you get to Little Island via the pedestrian bridge over the water you’ll notice something: there are no maps.

SIGNE: You don't see everything at once. It encourages you to explore.

SIGNE: Every high point of which there are three, can be accessed via a path that is universally accessible, or stairs. People can go one way and down another way. So there are multiple ways to get to each destination.

NARRATION: The topography of the island was carefully calculated.

MAT: Because of the kind of prevailing wind direction, how the sun moved around there, the park is quite topographic to shield you.

MAT: So actually, by lifting up this part of the park, we could protect from that direction. Moving this open, we can allow sun in from that direction. And changing this one means the pathways can be accessible for a wheelchair up to the overlooks by changing the topography. So that almost allowed us to manipulate to allow sun onto the water.

MAT: Because if you overshadow too much of the water, that's not very good for the nature below it. But some protection is quite good for fish and for other species to clamp onto the piles.

NARRATION: The geometry also allowed for outstanding views

MAT: And create enough soil depth to have real trees there, real worms, real birds, real, wasps and insects.

MAT: and actually It fools your mind into thinking. It's much bigger than it is. And it allows different functions to happen at the same time.

SIGNE: As we walk up these winding paths or stairs, I tried to design places for you to view. We're about 35 feet above the water.

NARRATION: There, over the River, a fantastic view of the New York Bay is framed by 2 big trees.

Action: Wow, let's take a photo, It looks very nice.

María de los Ángeles Cabrera: …Y hermoso por que se ve agua, deporte, bastante vida sana, en el fondo los rascacielos. Y este mágico jardín vegetal.

Filipe H: the structures, the plants, the trees, the water, the city. This contract is very beautiful.

Erika Olea: … del lado derecho se encuentra New Jersey, y al fondo podemos ver la estatua de la libertad.

Sự thâm Ná thì thông: It's wonderful. It's, uh, very beautiful.

SIGNE: You see all downtown from here.

SIGNE: Alright, onward.

LAURA: We have two primary performance spaces.

NARRATION: Little Island's Executive Director Laura Clement

LAURA: My favorite destination, which is really the 700 seat amphitheater, that has a thrust stage and faces the Hudson River. We also have a space called The Glade, which is, a very small stage and sort of a secret garden. Where people can just spread blankets and listen to music in the evenings.

MAT: There is overlooks and platforms at different levels. There is boulder scrambles and other things for children.

NARRATION: There's pieces of art, there are benches, bathrooms, and a plaza called The Play Ground.

SIGNE: And it is a multi-purpose space. And you can sit and get a drink or a sandwich. And you can move your chair or table into the sun or into the shade .

SIGNE: And then there's a wooden platform, um, which is designed as a stage. But right now, we see people doing jump rope. We see people just sitting and resting. We see children playing with hula hoops.

SIGNE: So it gives me great pleasure that they come here as a playground. Even though there's no equipment, there's no traditional swings or slides.

MAT: You can have an impromptu performance in one corner of the pier, and have a picnic and relax in another, and they don't impinge on each other. So they allow lots of different people to inhabit the pier at the same time.

LAURA: There was no road map for operating a park like Little Island, and so we were going to have to build it. The non profit that I work for, we care take, maintain the park, and we program the park with performances. I manage an organization of about 50 to 55 year round staff. We ladder up to about 250 in the summer. As we bring on seasonal staff to help us with the caretaking of the park, but also primarily with all of the performances that we do.

NARRATION: At the park you can see dance, theater, music of all genres... And This season ended with an Opera at The Amph: The Marriage of Figaro.

LAURA: What I love about the Amph. is it's During the day, it's a public space. You walk in. You can have lunch. You can read a book. You can watch the boats floating up and down the river. You can watch a sunset. on certain days as a transitions to evening, it becomes a working space because we may be Rehearsing or teching those performances and what's so fun about it is that it's porous So anybody can come in grab a beer sit down and watch a Twyla Tharp rehearsal which is extraordinary because the backstage operations in a theater are usually off limits to most of us. and so the fact that it is that anyone is invited to observe that process is really an extraordinary gift. And then in the evening, it's just an incredible performance space.

NARRATION: Admission to the park is free, and seated tickets for the shows at The Amph this year were $25. But you could watch the performances for free from the pathways nearby. And they also had community programs and workshops offered free all summer long.

LAURA: And all of those operations are funded by The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation

MICHAEL: Engaging, educating, and employing people. Those are the verbs that activate my department.

NARRATION: Director of Engagement and Strategic Programs Michael Wiggins.

MICHAEL: How do you bring people in? Engage them. How do you give them opportunities to learn and to grow? Everybody needs that, no matter where you are, no matter what age. I hope that you're still growing. and then employ people. We have these activities, public programs, in which a young person can do something that has meaning.

NARRATION: Little Island runs a workforce program offering paid professional development opportunities for college students and recent graduates. Currently, 11 program alumni are employed here.

MICHAEL: Our staff are part of our constituency. So we serve the public, we have mission oriented things for our artists, but we also include our staff in our programmatic and our intentional work. We have workshops for our workforce development participants. You know, we have fellows and whatnot. But everybody's invited to come into those learning spaces.

BRIAN: So tell me some of the things that you have to be aware of as you strategically program engagement in the middle of the river with no roof and mother nature right there.

MICHAEL: I was terrified of bees before I took this job. I was stung by a bee when I was little and it never left me. Now I have a familiarity with bees, that fear is gone from me.

MICHAEL: And that's one of the gifts that this job has given me, is that I understand something that the horticulturists used to try to tell me, which is just be there. They can feel you. You're in the same ecosystem with them. And if you're calm, they'll be calm.

MICHAEL: But I know more about weather and the brutality of mother nature than I ever wanted to know. I've stood out there in the middle of a hurricane trying to move chairs,

LAURA: Mother Nature rules. She's the other stakeholder.

LAURA: um, The Canadian wildfires, last year and all of the smoke that came down into New York city and the air turned sort of yellowy orange. All of these considerations you are confronted with.

MICHAEL: We have to make choices often about performances and whether or not we're going to cancel them or take that risk. And we have protocols. What the weather really tells me is that, it dispels the notion that there's any difference between us when the wind is blowing. We are all subject to it. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, as it says in biblical terms.

MICHAEL: When you're on a little island, Dude, if the sun is shining, it's shining on you, and

Act 3: Expanding Nature

NARRATION: Back at Little Island, we find ourselves on the southwest corner, 62 feet above the water in the highest and most popular spot on the pier. From here you can see and feel the value the park adds to the neighborhood and its real estate.

SIGNE: Here you really have a completely unbroken view of the New York harbor, New Jersey, lower Manhattan, and really magnificence of the Hudson river. And beautiful sunsets.

NARRATION: Just down the hill from the overlook, Signe brings us to a collection of oaks.

SIGNE: Is often said that large trees do not transplant well. So I'm very pleased that it's only been three years and these trees are already established as it's called.

NARRATION: She says most of the trees on Little Island have small leaves.

SIGNE: We did that because if this tree had big leaves, it would present mass to the wind, I was I was very concerned that these trees did not blow over.

NARRATION: The island has a weather station that records among other things wind speed. And it's very windy here. But the trees in this area are beginning to cover the path.

SIGNE: We don't know how tall they will get. People ask me, Will these trees get to be as big as they do in nature? My answer is no, they probably won't because this is artificial nature. And even though we gave them a lot of soil, I don't think that they will get to be as tall as they would if they were in the woods.

NARRATION: Artificial nature or not, the way the Little Island team has thought about every detail is an example to those of us in the commercial real estate industry: Smart and truly creative use of space is possible.

Even if that means that the trees in the park have steel cables that are tied to the concrete deck to ensure that they won't blow over.

SIGNE: And they've now survived two hurricanes. So we're good I think.

MAT: Does anyone not like trees? I've never had someone go, I hate trees. It doesn't matter where you are in the world or your cultural background, your ethnicity, whatever it might be, there are common things that bind us together as people.

MAT: And I think our interaction with nature, the visual complexity that nature embodies in which we need as nourishment, that's hardwired that's not a choice.

MAT: Nature in cities are so restorative to ourselves. Part of the studio's work is really about helping to some extent to re green our cities and to engage Both the built environment and the natural environment more in symbiosis.

MAT: Thomas in the studio produced a book called Humanize, which summarizes that intention. You know, People get stressed in large scale urban spaces without much complexity. Makes them stressed. And in a park or in a green space, you naturally slow your body slows your heart rate slows,

SIGNE: For the most part, between the path edge and the edge of the pier, is mostly grassland all throughout the pier. As you begin to go more toward the center of the pier, it changes gradually from, say, 90% grasses to more like grass. 70% grasses and then finally to maybe only 20 percent.

NARRATION: In our walk through the path, we find people reading, drinking wine, or just talking. And just across and above from The Amph, we find ourselves on the northwest corner of the park, 40 feet above the water.

SIGNE: So this is actually my favorite overlook. , you have a beautiful view over the pile field of Pier 56. And you can see already that there are three or four different kinds of birds sitting on top of the piles.

NARRATION: We get to see a loon, possibly a cormorant, and lots of different gulls.

SIGNE: And they are drying themselves off and they're resting. And then they will go back their business. So the seagulls generally stay in the water. There you see one floating, multiple on the piles. But , don't come up onto the pier. Now I believe This year we had five families of ducks, which is fantastic.

NARRATION: The park is fully irrigated with a drip system, except for one lawn that uses a spray, and the team doesn’t use any chemicals at all to maintain it.

SIGNE: No pesticides, herbicides, because the water drains directly through to the river. And so all of the fertilizer, essentially, is organic compost. No animal manure in there at all. It is all completely plant based.

NARRATION: Little Island is a patch of artificial land with its own ecosystem perched over a very old marine ecosystem.

SIGNE: The river is protected under a state act. The Hudson River Estuarian Act. And that's what sets the criteria for how the water can be treated. In other words, it can't receive chemicals. D icing salts are not permitted. So Little Island has to come up with a very, hand snow removal. They cannot use salt. It's all about protecting the river. But the flip side of that is that by not having de icing salts, we actually are doing a good thing for the plants and the soil that supports the plants.

SIGNE: So there's a difference, but there's a synergy between the two ecosystems.

NARRATION: Lining the pathways are a variety of flowers. Signe points out asters, plumbago, and amid the soft grasses, pops of color from echinacea flowers catch your eye. Signe explains that the design aims to create a contrast not just with color, but also with texture.

SIGNE: I selected plants like this so that they would have these dried seed heads and these stay all winter long so that even though the flowers are not there, you get the texture of the seed heads, in the landscape in the winter.

SIGNE: We made fairly solid wall of evergreen trees here. And that's for two reasons. One to block the north wind and the other to screen the view of the adjacent pier, and these evergreen trees, they also produce berries. You can see the blueberries on that juniper over there.

SIGNE: This is a very important habitat for birds. We have a number of migrating birds. And that's very beautiful to see in the early spring and fall. There's some birds that nest on the ground, and then there are birds that nest in the evergreen trees. They feel protected when they nest in those trees. And they also have a handy food source right next to them. So we have several families of birds that live in those trees.

NARRATION: The location of the park allows for lots of different habitats for birds and insects.

SIGNE: We have seen praying mantis, which is quite wonderful. The head of horticulture told me that we have something like 30 different species of bees.

NARRATION: And it's also the backyard for a red tailed hawk.

LAURA: I think the landscape is one of its most unique features. It's a four seasons landscape. so you can visit Little Island 12 months out of the year and see a changing landscape whenever you come back.

NARRATION: Since its opening on May 21, 2021, Little Island has welcomed over 5 million visitors.

MICHAEL: People want to be at the island. It takes your breath away. It's crowded sometimes.

SIGNE: Yes, there are lots tourists. Yes, there are lots of visitors. But at the end of the day, What Little Island wants as an organization and what want as a designer is to see exactly this neighborhood children, playing jump rope, listening to concert, listening storytelling hour.

LAURA: Little Island is a space that is best enjoyed on foot. We're very small, and the pathways are windy and steep. And we have visitors of all ages, meandering through the park at all times. Luckily we have an incredible bike path up and down, the Esplanade of Hudson river park and bike racks right outside of our park. So it's a great opportunity if you're a biker.

NARRATION: Designing and constructing Little Island was a team effort, and that spirit of collaboration continues now that it's built.

SIGNE: This is a very complicated landscape with Tens of thousands of different species of plants.

NARRATION: There are 37 species of trees, 65 species of shrubs, and 290 varieties of grasses, vines, and perennials. And more than 66,000 bulbs like Crocus and Narcissus. And the island is also home to 114 trees.

SIGNE: This is an unusual park from a landscape design perspective. I've never designed parks like this in my life. I did it only because I was not only asked to, but also because I was guaranteed professional gardeners, people who know the difference between a weed and a perennial. And so, because of that, I just had a great time designing this place. I was free to dream really, was a joyous thing for me.

MAT: We went on a really, really fantastic design journey. Both Signe, David Farnsworth from Arup, and ourselves worked incredibly closely because it was a project where the structure and the planting were symbiotic, like if we needed to change the structure, that would then change the size of root ball you could get for a tree, then the drainage pathways, and then the paths, because the topography had changed. we're all really excited and proud about the final project came out.

NARRATION: Architect Mat Cash says his favorite spot in the park is The Glade.

MAT: when you enter Little Island from the south axis way, and you go underneath pots, and you enter in there's that moment of threshold when suddenly the park reveals itself because you never really fully understand the park from highway one, you have to enter it

NARRATION: And The Glade, actually holds Michael Wiggins favorite spot.

MICHAEL: It's almost a glade within a glade. So you come on the south ridge, right? You enter and then you make a left. Almost the immediate left past the dance chimes. Um, you pass the roses which are on your right. They have thorns and they're located at a level where a child can touch them because everybody's gotta learn sometime, beauty, right? And then you come into the glade

MAT: And suddenly you're in another space which is really small and intimate and welcoming and there's a little stage and there's some little seats and you know you can hear some just someone with a guitar just against the river, just playing. And it, it, it's lovely.

NARRATION: And it contains more beauty a few steps up.

MICHAEL: If you walk up that hill a little bit to the left, there's a little hidden spot. It's got a tree. It's got a lot of shade. And it looks like if you turn that corner, there should be a unicorn in there. Waiting for you.

BRIAN: That's the spot. That's the spot.

NARRATION: Piers have always been places of transition—once, for the people who sailed away on ships, and now, they mark moments of coming together. For our generation in New York, piers became symbols of reconnection—a place to gather, especially after the long isolation of COVID.

LAURA: Were allowed to continue construction through COVID because the project was in service to the public and because the work was happening outdoors. It wasn't there when the pandemic started and when they came out there it was and, it became in my mind a symbol for post pandemic life in New York City, and that first summer was filled with like reunions of families and friends and artists who hadn't literally hadn't seen each other or hadn't performed because so much of the arts in New York City had to pause during that time.

LAURA: It was a really memorable and epic launch.

SIGNE: I didn't know how important this project would be for me in future. I didn't realize the magnitude . And so in the three years since the trees on the southwest have been planted, they are now a completely filled in forest. I don't know what it's going to like in 20 years. I assume it will just continue to thrive, I was aware of climate change when we started this project. I was aware that we needed to think about plants that could tolerate greater heat. But in 50 years, we could be completely different climate with completely different plants. So it's very important to understand what's going on globally around you, so that you can design accordingly.

SIGNE: but there is a reality that concrete has a life in water, and that is not a hundred years. So I don't know what it will be, 75 years, but it will probably not survive for 100 years.

MICHAEL: Embrace change is one of my mottos. And as a person who identifies as a marginalized person in America, it's exciting to be able to stand in a really jewel box of a park, the highest quality of everything, and say that Everyone here who has ever been here before is invited. This still belongs to you.

MICHAEL: Because it's so beautiful, I think some people say, well, it's not for me. And I want to make sure you know that the beauty is the point. That is the invitation. Come and see us. Anytime.

BRIAN NARRATION: If you want to check out videos and photos of Little Island, visit us at builtpodcast.com. Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. This episode was produced by Sandra Lopez-Monsalve and edited by Genevieve Sponsler. Production support by Livia Brock. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

If you want to learn more about Heatherwick Studio’s philosophy, check out Humanize: A Maker's Guide to Designing Our Cities by Founder and Design Director Thomas Heatherwick.

Special thanks to our guests, and to Danielle Ruff, Olga Dziewulska, Erika Aiese, Andrea Retzky, Tama Klassen, Ken C., Crystal N., Filipe Habassa, María Cabrera, Erika Olea and everyone else who spoke to us in New York City.

Thanks for listening and remember, every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world.