$30 million seawall repair puts Hoboken’s Castle Point Park off limits for most of 2025

The linear park at Hoboken’s waterfront is a popular route for runners, walkers and cyclists. For many residents, exercising at the river’s edge is part of daily life, but that routine has hit a major roadblock. Extensive repairs are underway for an eroded seawall stretching the length of Castle Point Park at the central waterfront forcing people to take a detour away from the riverfront. Only a single lane of traffic is allowed as barges, cranes, and heavy equipment dominate the area in front of Castle Point, a serpentine rock bluff facing the Hudson River.

A year ago, a major sinkhole opened up on Sinatra Drive near the skate park, prompting an investigation of the structural integrity of Hoboken’s shoreline. The City hired Colliers Engineering & Design whose marine engineers used scuba divers, ground-penetrating radar and geotechnical borings to assess the extent to which the seawall had eroded, allowing subsurface material to be washed away. 

Colliers Engineering determined that $30 million would be needed to repair compromised portions of the seawall. In February, the Hoboken City Council approved a bond ordinance to cover this expense and subsequently hired Simpson & Brown who began work in April. Phase One of this work — the Castle Point portion — is expected to be completed by November of this year. Phase Two involves an area near Fourth Street at the south portion of Sinatra Park and an area near the Monarch Pier located at Shipyard Lane and Fifteenth Street. 

Simpson & Brown has stripped away the skate park, curbing, railings and walkway pavers from Castle Point Park to access the subsurface area. They are currently repairing the seawall with a combination of reinforced steel pipe and sheet pilings. Much of the material used has been brought in on barges over the Hudson River.

The seawall repairs underway at Castle Point will further postpone the long-delayed Sinatra Drive Project from Fourth and Eleventh Streets. They also push back Phase One of Maritime Park at the former Union Dry Dock property. The Sinatra Drive Project began 12 years ago during the administration of Mayor Zimmer when the City hired a transportation engineering firm, Kimley-Horn, to develop a plan but abruptly came to a halt before a design was completed.

The Fund for a Better Waterfront (FBW) has played a critical role in these two projects that will significantly advance FBW’s 1990 Plan for the Hoboken Waterfront. This 35 year-old plan called for a contiguous public park at the water’s edge with rows of canopy trees and a clear delineation between the public park and the upland private development.  

For decades, FBW has advocated for a more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly Sinatra Drive at the long-neglected central waterfront. The mostly treeless Castle Point Park has stood in stark contrast to the lush tree canopy at the award-winning South Waterfront park designed by Arnold Associates.

When Mayor Bhalla restarted the Sinatra Drive Project four years ago, FBW hired landscape architect Stephen Lederach of Arnold Associates to come up with a plan for rows of canopy trees lining Sinatra Drive, specifying soil volumes required for their healthy growth. FBW was successful in getting the City to adopt a similar plan. The final City design included the 12-foot wide protected bicycle pathway and narrower traffic lanes to slow traffic.