Freshkills Park is poised to be three times the size of Central Park—here’s how to explore it early.
By 2036, Freshkills Park is expected to be three times bigger than Central Park, making it the largest greenspace in New York City. Find out what activities are open to the public now, and what visitors can expect when the ambitious multi-million-dollar development project is completed.
Freshkills Park is a mind-bending expanse of grasslands, creeks, and rolling hills in Staten Island, the southernmost borough in New York City. By the time this multi-million dollar development is completed in 2036, the park will be nearly three times the size of Central Park and the largest greenspace to open in the city in 100 years.
Over the years, Freshkills has taken on many identities. Most recently, it was a dumping ground for garbage and industrial waste from NYC as well as the wreckage of the World Trade Center following 9/11.
Long before the first debris arrived, this 2,200-acre landscape served as a bountiful homeland for the Lenape people. In the 17th century, Dutch settlers exiled the Indigenous tribe and renamed the land kille, which means “riverbed” or “water channel” in Dutch. They heavily cultivated its salt marsh hay to feed the horses that transported New Yorkers until the popularity of automobiles grew in the 20th century.
In 1948, Robert Moses, a NYC Planning Commissioner who shaped much of the city over his 40-plus-year career, deemed the once-pristine landscape “useless;” valuable only as a dumping ground for the trash that was piling up in other boroughs. Moses declared it would become a temporary landfill for three years or more, but eventually it would be developed for housing, according to Freshkills Park Program Coordinator Christopher Ricker. Then, “three years turned into 53 years,” he explains.
The history of a New York City landfill turned urban oasis
From 1948 to 2001, up to 29,000 tons of trash arrived at Fresh Kills Landfill every day; the weight of about 129 Statues of Liberty. At one point, all the garbage across the five boroughs ended up here, making Fresh Kills the largest landfill in the world, says Ricker. The dump cemented Staten Island as a “sacrifice zone”—an area that’s been negatively impacted by pollution and environmental degradation.
Ricker, a Staten Island native, recalls that when he looked out his bedroom window growing up, he couldn’t see the horizon over the mounds of trash and swarms of seagulls. Fourth-generation Staten Islander and Administrator of Freshkills Park, Mark Murphy, remembers covering his face and running into buildings near the dump to avoid smelling the stench that filled the air.
After decades of public pressure, the landfill was ordered to close in the late 1990s, explains Ricker. Once the last garbage barge arrived at the turn of the century, the landfill’s four trash mounds—the tallest of which is about 200 feet high—were covered in an impermeable plastic liner, retrofitted with a maze of underground gas pipes and vents, and completely concealed with a thick layer of planting soil and vegetation. Today, visitors would probably never guess the trash that created these rolling hills.
Rewilding: A new home for a variety of bird species
Instead of gawking gulls, American Kestrels now frequent the site to hunt for prey. Sedge Wrens and Upland Sandpipers are a few other bird species visitors will find at Freshkills––a rare sighting elsewhere in New York City. It’s a testament to the land’s resilience.
Through a tagging project of species like Grasshopper Sparrows, site ecologists have discovered that “birds that hatched at the park are returning year after year and sometimes within several meters of where we saw them the year before,” sats Dr. Shannon Curley, senior researcher for the Freshkills Park Alliance and a postdoctoral fellow in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “This is a good habitat for them. There are enough resources here for them,” Curley explains.
The director of science and research development for Freshkills Park and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, José Ramírez-Garofalo adds, “We see all these really interesting sparrows and massive numbers of Palm Warblers in the late summer and early fall. You don’t see that anywhere else in the region. It’s really spectacular.”
For a chance to encounter such rarities, birdwatchers now flock to the site’s two observation decks. Outdoor recreationists can find similar sightings throughout the site’s North Park—a 21-acre area that opened during the fall of 2023.
Sustainable initiatives at Freshkills Park
While only a small sliver of the site is currently open to the public, by 2036, Freshkills is slated to be nearly three times the size of Central Park—and potentially become just as important to the fabric and future of the city.
“[Freshkills Park] really helps us to take great strides to make Staten Island, and frankly the whole city, more resilient against climate change,” says Sue Donoghue, the commissioner of NYC Parks.
Park visitors will see sustainable initiatives at work, including an active gas flare station that uses the methane gas from the mounds’ rotting fill and converts it into electricity. At their highest, the emissions from these mounds powered 22,000 homes a year.
Starting in 2025, an on-site pollinator garden will grow native plants to be used in other city parks and green infrastructure projects. On the other side of the property, a New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) facility turns organic waste into compost to be redistributed to the community. Through compost giveback events, all NYC residents, nonprofit organizations, and city agencies can pick up 40-pound bags of the nutrient-dense soil additive for free.
This isn’t to say that NYC has figured out its trash issues entirely since the days of Robert Moses. After Fresh Kills Landfill closed, the city started shipping its inorganics to other states in the northeast and south instead. “Our garbage is still impacting people,” Ricker says, pointing to a squad of orange rail cars in the distance that will soon haul trash to South Carolina. “There’s still a lot to do, but we can use this place as a cautionary tale.”
What you should know about visiting the park
Once Freshkills is fully developed, each converted mound will have a theme and purpose. The park around South mound will be a recreation hub for the neighboring community with sports fields, picnic tables, and a public plaza. North Park and East Park will be birding and wildlife hotspots with miles of trails for running and biking. West Park, where the wreckage from the World Trade Center was laid to rest, is slated to serve as a tribute to 9/11 complete with views of the Freedom Tower on clear days. The site’s master plan calls for its middle section, where two creeks intersect, to feature waterfront restaurants, an educational visitor’s center, and a boathouse.
For now, visitors can explore the open areas of North Park (located at 350 Wild Avenue) from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The entrance is a 20-minute drive from the terminal of the Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day from downtown Manhattan for free. Alternatively, you can drive or take the bus across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn.
Upon arrival, you can ride your bike on cycling paths, play on ballfields, or explore the landscape on designated trails that circle the capped mounds. Freshkills Park Alliance hosts free public events throughout the year, including photography and art workshops, sunset and sunrise yoga classes, and hikes up the mounds themselves, which aren’t officially open to the public yet.
From the spring through September, you can join kayaking trips. The site’s creeks are part of a tidal water estuary, meaning they are constantly filtered by incoming water and, amazingly, have stayed clean through the landfill days. “This is the cleanest tidal water estuary in NYC, which is another testament to the reclamation of this space,” says Ricker, an avid kayaker who considers Freshkills the best place in the city to go kayaking. Its waters are calm, quiet, and rife with opportunities to see water birds and Ospreys up close.
The Alliance also hosts private tours for larger groups, like schools, running clubs, and community organizations by request.
Recurring events at Freshkills include the Great Gobbler, an annual gravel bike race in late November that zips through 10 miles of secluded trails, and Raptor Fest, a day to view rare birds of prey like eagles, falcons, and hawks that drew a crowd of over 400 spectators this September. While the fall and spring tend to be the busiest times of year at Freshkills due to their mild weather, Murphy and Ricker find the park profoundly peaceful after a snowfall. The Christmas Bird Count, a recurring community science project to record the park’s winter birds, attracts visitors well into December.
Freshkills is a transitory site for wildlife and a final resting place for debris. It’s a reproach of environmental offenses of the past and a vote for a more sustainable future. “We’ve taken what was an environmental disaster, and we’ve rebuilt, reclaimed, and renewed. It’s a testament to who we are as a community,” says Murphy.
“It’s a great metaphor for the resiliency of Staten Island and New York City as a whole,” adds Ricker.
