Spring Creek Park

Spring Creek Park
Map
TypePublic park
LocationSpring Creek, Brooklyn and Howard Beach, Queens, New York
Coordinates40°39′03″N 73°50′56″W / 40.650890°N 73.848957°W / 40.650890; -73.848957
Operated byNew York City Department of Parks and Recreation, National Park Service

Spring Creek Park is a public park along the Jamaica Bay shoreline between the neighborhoods of Howard Beach, Queens, and Spring Creek, Brooklyn, in New York City. Created on landfilled former marshland,[1]: 5  the park is mostly an undeveloped nature preserve, with only small portions accessible to the public for recreation.[2][3]

Spring Creek Park consists of three major parts, which surround the park's eponymous creek and several smaller waterways. Spring Creek South comprises the section on the Queens side south of the Belt Parkway, which consists mostly of a marsh and forest on the shore of the Howard Beach peninsula, surrounding the neighborhood on its western and southern sides. Spring Creek North consists of a largely fenced-off section of land north of Belt Parkway; it straddles the Brooklyn–Queens border, which runs along Spring Creek. A third section of parkland was built around the Gateway Center shopping mall, which is located north of Belt Parkway on the Brooklyn side. The southern section is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, while the northern and Gateway Center portions are managed by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

A park along Spring Creek was first proposed in 1930 by the New York Park Association's Metropolitan Conference on Parks. It was ultimately decided that the park be built upon fill, since the site mostly consisted of marshland. Spring Creek Park was approved in 1942, and land-filling operations began in 1949. Temporary landfills for waste disposal were operated at the future park site until the South Shore Incinerator along Spring Creek was completed in 1954. The southern section of Spring Creek Park was integrated into the Gateway National Recreation Area in 1974. In the 1990s, the northern section of the park was expanded via land acquisition, and in 2003, The Related Companies built extra parkland as part of Gateway Center's construction. The New York state government opened the Shirley Chisholm State Park along the Brooklyn coastline, south of the Gateway Center section of the park, in 2019.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference ArmyCorps-SpringCrk-ArchReport was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ AKRF, Inc.; Eng-Wong Taub & Associates; Langan Engineering; Environmental Services, Inc. (February 4, 2009). "Final Environmental Impact Statement for Gateway Estates II". nyc.gov. New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Archived from the original (ZIP file) on November 20, 2015. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYCPk-SpringCrk-Gateway-2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).