Saving Garrison's Landing

Open Space Institute begins resiliency planning David Lilburne still remembers when Superstorm Sandy brought the river to his bookstore on Garrison's Landing in October 2012, on the heels of another storm. "The old tide didn't go out, the new tide came in on the old tide, and then we had a bloody big storm off Manhattan," he recalled, sitting in Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints, which he owns with his wife, Cathy. "They predicted it. They said, 'Mega storm coming, be careful.' " During past flooding, as much as 3 feet of water had entered the basement, where books are stored, so the couple cleared the bottom shelves and went home, satisfied. Later, tenants in a house on the Landing called to say it was filling up, even with high tide four hours away. When Lilburne returned, he found the water wasn't coming from the river, but through the concrete floor. The next several hours were a blur, he said. A dozen community members helped him clear the basement — "We had a conga line" — while the oil tanks broke free from their pipes and dumped their contents into the floodwaters. "Now we had a toxic waste site," he said. Sandy was an extreme storm, but it isn't the only one to cause serious flooding at Garrison's Landing and its riverfront park. Peter Karis of the Open Space Institute says flooding in the privately owned neighborhood, located on the west side of the Metro-North tracks, will increase in size and frequency. A report issued in 2024 predicted that climate change will bring longer droughts throughout the state, punctuated by more intense storms and more severe flooding. Karis and OSI President Erik Kulleseid, who grew up in Philipstown, held an informal discussion at Antipodean last month during the bookstore's regular Friday night community gathering about how to protect the Landing from flooding. "We got some great questions," Karis said about the event, which was co-hosted by the Garrison's Landing Association and Garrison Station Plaza Inc. "People are engaged." The Open Space Institute is raising $100,000 to hire an engineering firm, Greenman-Pedersen, to create plans for the Landing. If they are completed within the next year, Karis said OSI will apply for funding from the state's latest Environmental Bond Act, passed in 2022, to pay for the upgrades. It's a first for OSI. After decades of preserving lands and parks, conservation groups across the country find themselves having to protect those same places from the effects of climate change. OSI has a long history with Garrison's Landing, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "We have a public-access easement that covers the park and a route to get to the train platform, so that the public has the right to explore the park and get to the waterfront," Karis said. "It's in our interest to make sure that this park is around for a long time." There are local examples to draw from: Native plantings and boulders were placed on the shore of Dockside Park in Cold Spring by the state to harden the coast without looking artificial. In the wake of Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012, Scenic Hudson buffered Long Dock Park in Beacon with spongy marshes which soak up and redirect floodwaters. "We need to make Garrison's Landing sustainable," said Lilburne. "Will it still flood? Yes. Will it wash away? No."