UPDATED Thanks to everyone who shared their suggestions and comments. We got great ideas like adding Kreyol (Newark’s fourth most-spoken language) to the welcomes and showing Speedway School in the West Ward. Sorry we can’t show every park or every Essex County park in the city!

Help us finish the welcome sign for the second segment of riverfront park. What buildings do you recognize or not? What looks good? What looks funny? Post comments here or write newarkriverfront [at] gmail.com.

Click on image for larger version.

For the first time in 100 years, Newark has a public boat dock. Connected to the orange boardwalk, the dock is made from plastic panels measuring 60 feet across and 10 feet wide. The dock floats, held in place by “strong-arm connectors” attached to the boardwalk. Purchase and installation was funded by a grant to Newark Riverfront Revival from the New Jersey Department of Transportation Office of Maritime Service’s I BOAT NJ Program, which uses a fraction of registration fees paid by boaters to improve public maritime infrastructure. Thanks to the I BOAT NJ team for their patience and continuous helpfulness!

The dock was designed with events like the Passaic River Paddle Relay and Project USE’s boatbuilding program in mind. Newark Riverfront Revival is working to recommend procedures and rules for the dock’s operations. If you are involved with boating, or want to become involved with this effort, email Newark Riverfront Revival.

Following last summer’s opening of Essex County Riverfront Park, Newark’s next segment of riverfront park is nearing completion between Oxford and Van Buren Streets. One of the park’s special elements is a 1000-foot-long orange boardwalk built from recycled plastic planks.

The Orange Boardwalk intersects with the path down from Raymond Boulevard near the Dancing Pavilion.

At Somme Street, the structures for the Overlook and the Osprey Rook have appeared.

The Seidler Chemical building overlooking Essex County Riverfront Park is transforming into a gigantic panting.

A partnership between the wall’s owner, Seidler Chemical, and the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) nominated the wall to the Newark Public Art Program‘s annual Call for Walls, explaining that the story of community organizing behind the new park deserved to be told through public art in the park itself. As one of six selected sites for 2012, the Newark Public Art Program convened and led a team of artists headed by Kevin Sampson to work with ICC and Ironbound residents to develop the design and produce the mural.

The painting shows a fantasy steampunk version of the area’s relationship to the river, visualizing how the river, the city, and residents have mechanically grown into one another in both amazing productive and frighteningly poisonous ways. Most of all it shows how people have come together to improve this system, including creating the park that the mural overlooks. The painting team has been hard at work up and down scaffolding on dry days and expects to finish in 2013.

From Van Buren to Brill Street, Newark’s riverfront is changing quickly. See the design for the parks under construction here.

Down by the river, work continues…

The Polk Street Sewer Outfall Netting Chamber is nearly complete.

Environmental remediation of the site’s hot spots is underway.

Near the Jackson Street bridge, the remediation crew unexpectedly uncovered the masonry foundations for the Balbach Smelting & Refining Company that occupied the site until the 1920s, somehow spared by the massive roadway construction nearby.

On Halloween, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a press conference to mark the start of remediation of the bed of the Passaic River adjacent to the former site of the Diamond Shamrock factory.

Read more about the EPA’s Lower Passaic Restoration Project here, and the recent New Jersey Superior Court ruling on the Passaic River clean up here.

Senator Robert Menendez and EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck

US Army Corps of Engineers Colonel John Boule

Only eight months after the start of construction on the first segment of Riverfront Park, Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr., along with Governor Chris Christie and many longtime Newark riverfront advocates, broke ground on Essex County Riverfront Park.

Installation continues on the subsurface “netting chamber” to prevent waste from combined sewer overflows from entering the Passaic River.

Construction has begun on upgrading the sewer infrastructure under the future site of Newark Riverfront Park. This contract will install a “netting chamber” to mitigate the impact of combined sewer overflow.

Through their Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA), the National Parks Service has awarded Newark Riverfront Regeneration technical assistance in support of initiatives to increase public access to and along Newark’s riverfront.

RTCA is the community assistance arm of the National Park Service, and supports community-led natural resource conservation and outdoor recreation projects.

Over the course of 2011, RTCA staff will work with Newark Riverfront Regeneration and other partners to test the feasibility of, build support for, and maybe even build modest projects that bring Newarkers and others to and along the water’s edge. Stay tuned!

The October 2010 issue of Parks and Recreation magazine runs an article on Mayor Booker’s emphasis on creating and improving parks in Newark, making special mention of Newark Riverfront Park.

Read the article (PDF)

The US Army Corps of Engineers has completed construction of new steel and concrete bulkhead between Prospect Street and the  Jackson Street Bridge in the Ironbound. 

Even better, at the conclusion of bulkhead construction, the Army Corps granted the request of Newark Riverfront Regeneration to cover the site with topsoil and meadowgrass seed instead of gravel.

While it will take some time for the meadow to establish, and further environmental remediation will be required to open this area to the public, it’s nice to see a patch of green at the river’s edge. A vision of bigger things to come!

Today, Mayor Cory Booker and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo Jr. announced the County’s acquisition of 12.3 acres of riverfront property in the Ironbound between Oxford and Chapel Streets. Through the combined advocacy of the County, the City of Newark, Newark Riverfront Regeneration, Ironbound Community Corporation, and others, $7.7 million was made available for the acquisition by the Port Authority in support of the Habitat Estuary Program.