Southwest Park celebrates its grand opening

On Friday, Sept. 22, Hoboken held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Southwest Park. Located between Jackson Street, Harrison Street, Observer Highway, and Paterson Avenue, the 1.24-acre facility will serve the community as New Jersey’s first resiliency park with integrated green infrastructure to mitigate flooding.

“The park is designed to hold 200,000 gallons of stormwater runoff,” reported News 12 New Jersey, and “incorporates rain gardens, shade tree pits, porous pavers, and a cistern for rainwater harvesting and reuse, as well as an underground detention system to reduce stormwater runoff and flooding.” Aside from the flood prevention features, the park has a dog run, movable cafe tables, a pop-up market zone, multi-level seating for performances, public wi-fi, restrooms, and a lawn area.

There was some controversy surrounding the park’s opening among Hoboken public officials. Hudson County View reports, “Zimmer, County Executive Tom DeGise, as well as other county and state officials, are expected to attend an 11 a.m. ribbon cutting at Southwest Park… However, Councilmen Dave Mello and Ruben Ramos were not satisfied with this arrangement, so they took it upon themselves to host their own ribbon cutting at Southwest Park at 4 p.m. on Saturday. They will also be joined by Southwest Park’s Coalition Co-Founder John Gregorio and referred to the event as the ‘real’ ribbon cutting celebration in a media release.”

Hoboken celebrated the grand opening with festivities on Wednesday, Sept. 27 from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The event included a face painter, balloon animal creator, music, food trucks, and various other activities for families to participate in. “I want to say that I’m really proud to have been a part of the groundswell of advocacy for park space and doing something to alleviate the flooding in our neighborhood and Hoboken,” said Mayor Dawn Zimmer to NJ.com during the groundbreaking ceremony in June 2016. “That happened for me back in 2006. I had a 3-year-old and a 1 1/2-year-old, and I knew as a mom how — and I’m sure parents can relate to this — how difficult it is to take two toddlers and try to walk 20 minutes over to Church Square Park, or over to the waterfront, and it’s just not that easy. And every community deserves a park in their neighborhood.”