Battery Park Brouhaha as Security Fence Keeps Public from Waterfront

Call it the Brouhaha of Battery Bark. Some might even call it a battle, or at least a skirmish, but for now, that seems a bit too martial. This isn’t the Battery versus the British, the Confederates or the Germans—to name three prior adversaries New York feared attack from. No, this time the foe is us, the United States, and the usually beloved National Parks Service (NPS), which, thanks to some unsightly fencing, has found itself embroiled in a border dispute that’s inflaming passions across the southern Manhattan waterfront.

What the heck’s going on down there? It depends on who you ask.

At issue is a recently erected portable black chain link security fence running east-west from where the Statue City Cruises ferry boats to Liberty and Ellis Islands dock.

“We believe it’s too tall, too long, it doesn’t need to be all the way through the promenade,” Paula Recart, who became President of the Battery Park Conservancy this past January, told NBC New York. “We were even planning a party that we were going to call ‘the view is back.’ And what we were not expecting was that fence.”

The reason the fence was placed there, says the NPS, is in that prosaic description: security, which concerns are substantial, as they are at other federally run attractions, including the nearby National Museum of the American Indian and, further up Broadway at Reade Street, the African National Burial Ground Monument. Lest anyone accuse of the feds of “oppressive” security measures, try getting into a city or state-run government building and you’ll be placing your possessions into a plastic bin and walking through screening device just the same there too.

The complaints about the fence, led by the Battery Park Conservancy (BPC) and echoed by others, isn’t about security per se—the need for which they fully understand— but rather how the multiplicity of fences keeps sightseers from the water’s edge. Do you want to see the Statue of Liberty while leaning out with your phone or camera, the sweet salt breeze in in your face? Not here, you can’t! Try Governor’s Island, bub, or Valentino Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn—which isn’t exactly the message BPC and other Battery boosters want to convey.

Resilency, With a Twist!

The reason this is an issue now is the partial completion of the South Battery Park Resiliency Project. Like all other “resiliency” projects, the announcements of which are fulsomely praised by politicians and other government officials, the reality of their completion brings with it a poison pill or two. So it’s been in shadeless East River Park in Battery Park City’s Wagner Park and so it is here in Battery Park proper, even as work continues east of the East Coast Memorial, two of whose eight, 19-foot-tall granite walls inscribed with the names of the 4,601 missing American servicemen who lost their lives in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II are boarded up for their protection.

That this kerfuffle exists at all is both ironic and unfortunate, as the involved parties—Statue City Cruises, NPS and BPC and CB1—have generally had congenial relations, as their united efforts to curtail the menace of ferry ticket scammers in around Battery Park showed last year. Imperfect as it might have been, the reason this effort seems to have failed, despite support from Council Member Christopher Marte and the then-Borough President Mark Levine, can be ascribed to the diffident, Adrienne Adams-led City Council and a sympathetic but distracted Mayor Eric Adams. Whether a Julie Menin-led Council or the Mamdani administration will take up the cause is unclear.

Which leaves us with the current brouhaha. Mindful that Battery Park will always be a partnership between the NPS (which also adminsters Castle Clinton) and the city, both sides are keeping a diplomatic tone, mostly.

According to a representive from Statue City Cruises, the officially licensed operator of the Liberty and Ellis Island ferries, “The planning and placement of fencing related to security screening activities in Battery Park is solely under the purview of the National Park Service and the United States Park Police. Statue City Cruises does not determine the security procedures at the Battery. Any comments or questions related to the fencing or security screening should be referred to the National Park Service.”

As for the NPS, and the U.S. Park Police who operate within the agency, the fencing is “a critical security element protecting the monument and the millions who visit it each year” a spokesperson told the New York Post. “It has occupied the same footprint at Battery Park since 2004. We’re happy to report zero security breaches since.”

Tammy Meltzer, the often outspoken chair of Community Board 1, isn’t buying it. “No one’s saying they shouldn’t have security,” she told the New York Times. “If you didn’t pay to go out to the Statue of Liberty, you cannot see it from here [behind the fence]. Tourists pay a lot of money to come to New York. If they want to see the statue, they should be able to see the statue from the island of Manhattan. They shouldn’t be looking through fences.”

For his part, Congressman Dan Goldman, whose bi-borough district includes Battery Park, says he’s suggested an alternative fencing plan to the NPS.