St. George's Waterfront Was Promised a Wheel. This Year It Got a Seawall Instead.

For a while, the story of St. George's waterfront was always the same story: a rendering, a groundbreaking date, a name that never quite arrived. The observation wheel once planned for the shoreline near the ferry terminal was supposed to be the thing that finally put the North Shore on the map. It never got built. The site sat behind a fence for years, a stand-in for every promise the neighborhood had heard before.

This year the fence came down for a different reason. Crews are repairing the bulkhead and restoring the shoreline at that same former Wheel site, the first physical phase of the long-discussed North Shore Esplanade. It is not glamorous work. There is no rendering of a family walking a dog past it. But it is the first time in a long time that "waterfront transformation" in St. George means steel and concrete instead of a press release.

What's Actually Under the Fencing Right Now

The New York City Economic Development Corporation began structural work this spring on what officials describe as roughly eight acres of the former Wheel site, focused on bulkhead repair and shoreline restoration made necessary in part by damage from Hurricane Sandy and years of erosion. It is groundwork in the literal sense, the unglamorous prerequisite before any public esplanade design can be built on top of it.

Judah Asimov, the EDC's vice president of neighborhood strategies, put the scale of it plainly when the work began: the site represents about eight acres under construction, and it functions as the centerpiece of the larger esplanade plan. That plan, once complete, is meant to link a two-mile stretch of shoreline running from Stapleton through Tompkinsville to St. George, adding twenty acres of continuous public waterfront access as part of a $400 million investment.

For a neighborhood that has watched waterfront announcements come and go, the difference this year is that the work is visible from the street, not just from a planning document.

The Bigger Vision Is Still Being Drawn

The esplanade construction is only one piece of what the city calls its North Shore Action Plan, and the rest of it is still on paper. Empire Outlets opened in 2019 as the city's first outlet mall, built with roughly 100 storefronts a short walk from the ferry terminal. Since June 2025, the EDC has been running a new planning process, alongside Council Member Kamillah Hanks and Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, to reimagine both Empire Outlets and the former Wheel site together, with public workshops continuing through 2026. Nothing about that rezoning is finalized yet.

What is finalized is the reason the city is bothering. Officials estimate the full Action Plan could eventually deliver around 2,400 new housing units and more than 7,500 jobs, with an estimated $3.8 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years. Hanks framed the stakes of the esplanade work in terms residents will recognize immediately.

"This used to be active space. You were able to bike; you were able to walk. Seeing this progression here means we are that much closer to restoring accessibility to the public."

That's the part of the story that doesn't show up in a construction update. The waterfront behind that fence has been functionally off limits to the public for more than a decade.

The Ground Floor Never Waited for the City

While the city works through bulkhead repairs and rezoning workshops, the food and drink scene a few blocks up Bay Street has been reinventing itself on its own schedule, and mostly through one name: Julian Gaxholli, the restaurateur behind Blue, Beso, and Bayou.

His newest concept, The Basement, opened at 11 Schuyler Street as an American tavern built around a whiskey list and a menu of comfort food. What makes the address worth noting is what used to be there. The building is a revamp of a space that was a predecessor to Gaxholli's own Beso, which has since relocated a few blocks away to 70 Bay Street. In other words, the same operator didn't leave the neighborhood when he moved his restaurant. He just moved down the block and opened a second one in the space he left behind.

That kind of churn, one operator running two active concepts within a few blocks of the ferry terminal, is a better read on ground-floor demand than any single opening. It suggests the retail base near the terminal is healthy enough to support expansion, not just replacement.

A Housing Fight Over Four Parking Spots

Not every North Shore project has moved this smoothly. A 14-story residential building proposed for 198-208 Richmond Terrace, near the corner of Nicholas Street, got held up this year over a detail that had nothing to do with height or density. Staten Island's Community Board 1 gave the project initial praise, then unanimously denied it over concerns about just four on-site parking spaces.

CB1 countered with an alternative: redevelop an abandoned parking garage directly across Richmond Terrace instead, in partnership with the city's Economic Development Corporation. That would have required scaling back the project to stay within the boundaries of the Special St. George District, the pedestrian-oriented commercial zone around the ferry terminal.

In the end, the original scope survived. Council Member Hanks announced the project's approval in late July 2026, as part of a citywide package of more than 3,200 new homes approved simultaneously across the five boroughs. As approved, the building will bring 117 rental units averaging 744 square feet, with 30 permanently affordable, plus roughly 10,100 square feet of ground-floor community facility space. A four-space parking disagreement doesn't sound like the kind of thing that holds up a housing approval, but on the North Shore this year, it did.

New Manager, Same Harbor View

Down at SIUH Community Park, the Staten Island FerryHawks are playing out the final week of a rough 2026 season under new manager Carlos Mirabal, who took over the club this year. The record on paper hasn't been the draw. What keeps people showing up is what it has always been: a ballpark built with harbor views of the Statue of Liberty, promotional nights, and a location close enough to the ferry that a game can be a spontaneous plan rather than a whole outing. That part of the North Shore's summer didn't need an esplanade or a rezoning to keep working. It just needed someone to open the gates.

What This Actually Adds Up To

None of these threads are the same story, but they point in the same direction. A public agency is finally moving dirt on a promise that outlasted an entire canceled amusement ride. A private restaurateur is quietly expanding his footprint within a few blocks of where he started, betting on foot traffic the city hasn't finished building yet. A housing project got held up over four parking spaces before landing in a citywide approval package. And a ballpark with a losing record still filled seats because the harbor view never needed a construction schedule.

The waterfront's actual progress this year isn't the rendering. It's the bulkhead, the relocated bar, the parking fight, and the scoreboard. Taken together, they say the North Shore's transformation stopped being a plan sometime in the last few months and started being a sequence of specific, unglamorous, verifiable things happening on specific blocks.

If you're watching this stretch of Staten Island and wondering what any of it means for property values or timing, that's exactly the kind of question worth a local conversation rather than a guess. Revived Residential tracks these North Shore updates as they happen. Get Your Instant Home Valuation to see where your property stands today, or reach out directly if you want to talk through what a two-mile esplanade and a wave of approvals might mean for your corner of St. George.