Pier 97, Hudson River Park, NY
Building a public park out over the Hudson River puts every surface material on trial. Pier 97 carries Hudson River Park onto the water at West 57th Street, where the hardscape has to hold its joints through floodplain conditions, salt air, and the traffic of one of Manhattan’s busiest waterfront corridors. Roughly 40,000 square feet of permeable paving went in during 2023 for New York City Parks, to a design by landscape architecture firm !melk, with Prestige Pavers and Stone carrying out the installation. The specified paving unit added a complication of its own: joint width varied from stone to stone, so the jointing material had to fit whatever the pattern gave it.
PRODUCT SELECTION
The project used ROMEX FUGENSAND with ROMEX D7000, a swept jointing sand locked down by a topical stabilizing sealer. Durability, permeability, and coastal resilience decided it.
A poured resin mortar needs a minimum joint width to flow and set correctly. FUGENSAND does not. It sweeps dry into joints from 1/16 inch to 1/4 inch and takes the shape of each one, which made it the practical answer to a paver whose joints changed width across the field. ROMEX D7000 is then misted and squeegeed over the surface, binding the sand in place while leaving the joint open to water. The sealer also shields the surface against dirt, oil, and weather for up to five years, and the finished joint is pressure washer safe with no cement haze.
PROJECT LOCATION
Pier 97 sits on the west side of Manhattan at West 57th Street, the next link in the chain of piers and esplanades that make up Hudson River Park. The setting is fully exposed: wind off the water, salt in the air, tidal influence at the edge, and a floodplain designation that governs what can be built there. New York winters bring sustained freeze and thaw. Summers bring heat and constant use from cyclists, runners, and park visitors moving along the greenway.
PROJECT NEEDS
Three demands shaped the specification. The pier sits in a floodplain, so the surface had to take water rather than resist it, holding infiltration through the joints instead of pushing runoff toward drains on a structure standing over the river. It had to stay durable under salt exposure and freeze-thaw cycling, in a marine environment where ordinary jointing sand washes out and loose material ends up in the water. And it had to accommodate the irregular joint widths of the specified paver without leaving gaps, ridges, or unsupported joint.
PROJECT SOLUTION
FUGENSAND filled the joints edge to edge regardless of width, and ROMEX D7000 stabilized them into a bound, permeable surface. The joint stays open enough to keep taking water on a pier where surface runoff has nowhere useful to go, and it stays put under pedestrian and vehicle loading, wind, and repeated wetting. Because the sealer goes on topically rather than mixed into a slurry, the crew could work across the full 40,000 square feet without matching joint profiles or breaking the field into separate pours.
Three years on, Pier 97 continues the public waterfront that Hudson River Park has been assembling down the west side of Manhattan, with a jointed surface built for the conditions that come with sitting over the river rather than beside it.
Permeable paving for durability and coastal resilience
Pier 97, Hudson River Park, NY
2023
Commercial
