Gantry Plaza State Park is a state park on the East River in the Hunter's Point section of Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens.
The 10-acre (4.0 ha) park first opened in May 1998 and was expanded in July 2009. The southern portion of the park is a former dock facility and includes restored "contained apron" transfer bridges of the James B. French patent, and built in 1925, to load and unload rail car floats that served industries on Long Island via the Long Island Rail Road tracks that used to run along 48th Avenue (now part of Hunter's Point Park). The northern portion of Gantry Plaza State Park was a former Pepsi bottling plant.
The park offers picnic tables, a playground, fishing pier, playing fields and a waterfront promenade with a view of United Nations Headquarters and the midtown Manhattan skyline.
Constructed in 1936 by Artkraft Strauss, the 120-foot (37 m) long and 60-foot (18 m) high neon Pepsi-Cola sign was located on top of the bottling plant before it was preserved and moved into a permanent location within the park.
The park is being developed in stages by the Queens West Development Corporation. The original section of Gantry Plaza State Park was designed by Thomas Balsley with Lee Weintraub, both New York City landscape architects, and Richard Sullivan, an architect. Stage 2, the new six-acre section of the park, was designed by New York City landscape architecture firm Abel Bainnson Butz and the first phase of Stage 2 opened to the public in July 2009. When complete, the Gantry Plaza State Park is expected to total 40 acres (16 ha) in size.
Read more about Gantry Plaza State Park: Film Appearances
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