Park opens on Staten Island's Freshkills, former site of world's largest landfill

Staten Island’s Freshkills was once the site of the world's largest landfill — but it’s now home to what will become one of the biggest parks in the city.

City officials cut the ribbon on the first 21-acre section of the North Park section of the new Freshkills park, complete with walking and biking lanes, a lookout deck and access to William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge.

The North Park section is designed to cover 233 acres, and officials said the remainder of the area is still under construction.

The Parks Department is still designing other sections of the park, all of which will span 2,200 acres of grasslands, waterways and built out structures. Officials said the entire project is scheduled to be finished in 2036.

The new park is designed to be nearly three times the size of Central Park, and would be the second-largest park in the five boroughs.

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said he was happy to see the park replace the old landfill, which opened in 1948 and stopped taking household trash in 2001.

“This may be a transformation but for me it’s a restoration. It’s a restoration to what should have been many years ago,” Fossella said at a news conference at the park. “To the people of Staten Island, it wasn’t just a nuisance, it was a disgrace.”

Mayor Eric Adams joined Staten Island elected officials to cut the ribbon. His trip to the borough comes as many politicians are renewing a push for Staten Island to secede from New York City.

“For far too long Staten Island has been a forgotten borough. We all remember this Freshkills, it was nothing fresh about the smell that came out here, it killed,” Adams said.