Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2026 State of the State handle pointed to investing in Harlem infrastructure, together with revitalization plans for the Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park, New York Metropolis’s most visited state park. The rooftop inexperienced house is known as after the late, long-time Meeting Member Herman “Denny” Farrell, who represented the close by uptown neighborhood.
“For greater than 40 years, Denny Farrell fiercely represented the Harlem neighborhood within the New York State Meeting,” mentioned Hochul. “I can consider no higher approach to honor his legacy of neighborhood activism than making the wanted upgrades to the park that bears his identify. By means of this multi-year plan, we are going to revitalize Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park so our neighbors in Harlem can have entry to the world-class neighborhood hub they deserve.”
The renewal efforts will concentrate on emergency infrastructure repairs and handle free terracotta panels on the park’s facade, which eroded from water injury and pose potential security threats to the greater than 4 million annual guests. The multi-year revitalization may even improve park services, together with the amphitheater, playgrounds, and restrooms, in addition to implementing retrofits to adjust to trendy requirements of the American Disabilities Act.
In 2017, the state renamed the park in honor of Farrell. A 12 months later, the state lawmaker and former mayoral candidate died at age 86. Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park at the moment boasts a skating rink, an Olympic pool, and a Puerto Rican restaurant known as Sofrito.
Hochul’s State of the State additionally talked about ambitions to increase the Q prepare, which runs on the Second Avenue Subway line, west throughout one hundred and twenty fifth Avenue with stops on Lenox Avenue, St. Nicholas Avenue, and Broadway. Her workplace funded a feasibility examine, which discovered the tunneling course of not solely doable however probably cost-effective when constructed off the present East Harlem work.
Such a undertaking would create a uncommon east-west subway line in Manhattan, the place most trains transfer north-south. In the end, a crosstown subway would join West and Central Harlem to East Harlem higher and permit strap-hangers to switch trains amongst seven prepare traces with out leaving uptown.
