Two children sat at a picnic table in George Washington Bridge Park in Manhattan, listening intently as a librarian from the nearby New York Public Library branch read aloud from a picture book.
A hopscotch court drawn in white chalk lay in wait, and a colorful play set beckoned. But the blue dolphin that gives the park its more familiar name — Dolphin Park — was dry, its spouting water feature not quite ready to cool anyone off on a warm spring Thursday.
There is still work to be done.
But the park, which had been stuck in a limbo for almost a decade after the death of its creator and volunteer caretaker, is no longer keeping children locked out.
“We thank all the little ones for their patience,” Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the park, said on Thursday at a ribbon-cutting to mark the reopening.
In August, The New York Times reported on the confluence of factors — the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic; the death of the caretaker, Jeanlee Poggi, in 2021; nearby construction — that had kept the park closed since 2018. The park, with Ms. Poggi’s effort, first opened in 1994, near the George Washington Bridge at West 180th Street and Cabrini Boulevard in Washington Heights.
For years, parents and community members had been contacting the Port Authority and trying to find nonprofits and volunteers to take on the work of tending the park, which is geared toward young children. But many agreed that within the last year, there had been a shift, and the possibility of reopening had gradually morphed from distant dream to reality.
On Thursday, Ms. Garcia and local elected officials paid tribute to Ms. Poggi and her “dedication to creating and maintaining an asset for this community.” They acknowledged residents’ efforts to reopen the space while the Port Authority searched for a nonprofit to replace the West 181st Beautification Project, which had once managed the day-to-day operations of the park, including programming.
“I had actually already heard from this community before I had even taken my seat, and understood that it was something that we had to get to yes — figure out a way to get to yes for those children,” said Ms. Garcia, who became head of the Port Authority in February.
The agency decided to take over the park itself after it was unable to find another organization to run it, Ms. Garcia said in an interview.
“It worked well, and we were trying to recreate that model, but it was impossible to,” Ms. Garcia said. She added that the Port Authority had retained a monitor to open and close the park seven days a week until September and that she hoped to add programming, such as gardening workshops and story times, during operating hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
On Thursday morning, Minhduyen Nguyen, 39, came to the park with her 7-month-old son, Teddy.
“It’s so close,” she said, watching Teddy waddle and crawl beside the dolphin. The family lives a few steps away, in the same building that Ms. Poggi once lived in. And Ms. Nguyen had witnessed the park’s stagnation for years.
When she had her first child a few years back, “we were so hopeful,” she said. But the gates never opened. Then, last month, another mother told her Dolphin Park would open this year. “I was like, ‘No, you’re lying,’” she recalled.
Locals had rallied in recent months to get the park back.
“It would be impossible to say what exactly happened,” said Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, 63, a former chair of the local community board’s parks committee. “I think everybody’s got a little piece of it.”
David Pratt, 43, and Myles Miller, 41, both parents in the neighborhood, created a WhatsApp group that would become the primary conduit for information relating to the park.
Mr. Pratt hunted down local nonprofits, and Mr. Miller called anyone he could at the Port Authority, as well as another resident who worked in the governor’s office. In January, the community board passed a resolution urging the Port Authority to reopen the park.
“There was an impossible-to-ignore chorus,” Ms. Ritter said.
On May 18, Port Authority officials emailed some parents and neighborhood residents announcing that the park was reopening and that there would be an official ribbon-cutting.
Mr. Pratt was elated. He and his wife immediately began planning potential picnics and afternoons at the space. “It’s just fun, being in Manhattan, feeling like it’s such a small, tight-knit community,” he said.
The Dominican Women’s Development Center provided arts and crafts materials for the ceremony, splayed out on the picnic table as the librarian read to the children.
Mr. Pratt and Mr. Miller said an army of parents was ready to volunteer their time, though many would prefer that the park’s hours be extended into the evenings.
In the meantime, families like Ms. Nguyen’s are making the most of it. She and Teddy had been to the park several times in the past week, she said: “We’ve been waiting for a long time.”
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