The Concrete Plant Park adds seven acres to the Bronx Park System and the Bronx River Greenway. The $10 million capital project was funded by Congressman José E. Serrano, mayoral funds, the Bronx Borough President, Croton Mitigation Funds, and a Recreation Trails Grant from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
In 1999, the Concrete Plant Park was saved from the auction block by community residents, led by Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ), and the NYC Parks Department designated the site as parkland. These efforts were supported by The Point Community Development Corporation, Community Boards, elected officials and others who saw the site’s potential as a crucial link in the development of the Bronx River and the Bronx River Greenway.
Since 2001, the Parks Department and the Bronx River Alliance, in close partnership with community and public agency partners, have re-established salt marshes on armored riverbanks that were once strewn with trash and tires, and now host community festivals, and receives thousands of people out on the river in canoes. Organizations including Rocking the Boat, YMPJ, Sustainable South Bronx, and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School have sponsored boat building and on-water programming, film screenings, and water quality monitoring activities that have kept the park in active use.
Now residents of the Bronx have access to a beautiful park featuring remnants of the concrete plant towers preserved as sculptural elements, a boat launch, bench area, restored salt marsh, entrance plazas at Bruckner Boulevard and Westchester Avenue, and the first new segment of the Bronx River Greenway.
Location
Concrete Plant Park, a segment of the Bronx River Greenway, is seven (7) acres in size. The park is situated along the western shore of the Bronx River in the Crotona Park East section of the Bronx, between Westchester Avenue to the north and Bruckner Boulevard to the south. To the west lies the Amtrak Railroad and the Sheridan Expressway (I–895).
Site History
Concrete Plant Park was home to a working concrete batch mix plant sitting on the western bank of the Bronx River. According to a report prepared by Public Archaeology Facility at SUNY Binghamton, cement manufacturing began at this site after 1945 and ran until 1987. The Transit Mix Concrete Corporation built the silos, hoppers, and conveyor structures that still stand at Concrete Park today as a reminder of the park’s industrial history.
