Why Hoboken's Waterfront Walkway Still Detours Around the Old Dry Dock

If you run or walk Sinatra Drive on any given morning, you already know the spot. The fence line just south of Maxwell Place, the gap where the paved walkway gives way to a temporary reroute, the half-visible cranes and equipment behind the chain link at 901 Sinatra Drive. It has been there for the better part of a year now, and the renderings the city put out make it look like a single project on a single countdown clock. It is not. What is happening behind that fence is actually two different timelines running on top of each other, and knowing which one you are looking at changes what you should expect to see reopen, and when.

What You're Actually Walking Past at 901 Sinatra Drive

The site is the former Union Dry Dock, a working ship repair yard that dates back to 1888 under Tietjen and Lang, later run by Todd Shipyards until it closed in 1965. For decades after that it sat as one of the last pieces of industrial waterfront in a city that had converted nearly everything else along the river into parks, piers, and promenade. When the site's future came up for grabs, it very nearly became something else entirely: NJ Transit and NY Waterway pushed to convert it into a permanent ferry refueling and maintenance depot, a plan residents fought through years of rallies, litigation, and public pressure. The city won that fight and acquired the property in 2023.

What's rising there now is Maritime Park, an 8.7-acre waterfront project that the city broke ground on December 10, 2025, with Mayor Ravi Bhalla, Mayor-elect Emily Jabbour, Assemblyman John Allen, and Hudson County Executive Craig Guy on hand. Bhalla framed the moment as proof of a design process that actually listened, describing it as "what happens when a city truly listens to its community." That process included online surveys, in-person meetings, and a dedicated skatepark engagement session, and it shows up in the details of what's actually being built.

The Fence Is Hiding Two Different Timelines

Here's the part the renderings don't make obvious. The Dry Dock parcel is roughly 3.15 acres of land plus adjoining water. Under the settlement that let the city acquire the site, NY Waterway kept a leaseback over most of it to continue storing and maintaining its ferry fleet while it rebuilds its own facility elsewhere. When that arrangement was first reported, the lease was expected to keep about two-thirds of the land area, and most of the water, off limits for three to five years after the city took title in 2023, which puts the earliest likely release date for that portion somewhere in the 2026 to 2028 window, independent of anything the city is building right now.

Phase 1, the work you're actually seeing behind the fence today, is confined to the unleased southern section. It's funded through a $15 million city bond, supplemented by $1 million from the State of New Jersey and $500,000 from the Hudson County Open Space Trust Fund. It broke ground in earnest in the first quarter of 2026 and is expected to wrap by fall 2027.

That second column matters more than it looks. The Fund for a Better Waterfront, the advocacy group that has tracked this project since before the city acquired the site, has flagged that funding for the full $74.5 million build-out remains uncertain given the city's current budget picture. So when Phase 1 finishes, you won't be looking at a finished park. You'll be looking at the visible third of one, with a much larger, unfunded second act still fenced off behind it.

What Comes Back First

The good news is that the piece coming back first is the piece most residents actually asked for. The city's public design team, Colliers Engineering & Design, SCAPE Studio, and Action Sports Design, built the skatepark plans around a survey of more than 250 respondents, 63 percent of whom identified as skateboarders. What's replacing the current, decades-old skate spot is a half-acre facility with:

• A 6-foot half pipe pocket and a 3- to 4-foot flow bowl
• A mini ramp and a separate 3-foot mini ramp
• Beginner-friendly ledges built around the transition features, so newer riders aren't competing for the same terrain as advanced skaters

Alongside the skatepark, Phase 1 includes a public plaza designed around the sightlines of the nearby Castle Point bluffs, a living shoreline segment accessed through a designed step-down area the design team has been calling the Hudson Step Down, and a temporary tree nursery and staging area for the native plantings that will eventually populate the rest of the park. The living shoreline piece is aimed at attracting species the city has specifically named in its planning materials, including snowy egret, piping plover, and Atlantic silverside, alongside ribbed mussels meant to help filter the water along that stretch of the cove. It's a small ecological footnote, but it's the kind of detail that tells you this was designed by people thinking past the ribbon cutting.

The Other Half of the Puzzle: Harborside Park

None of this closes the actual gap in Hoboken's waterfront walkway on its own. That job falls to a second, separately funded project a few blocks north: Harborside Park, a 2.5-acre park at Weehawken Cove, right where Hoboken's shoreline meets the Township of Weehawken. It's fully funded through a $1.2 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Transportation and an additional $1.8 million in federal funds, and it's expected to open by late 2027. It will be the first new addition to Hoboken's shoreline parks since Maxwell Place Park opened back in 2007.

Harborside Park is also where a 25-foot strip of the old Dry Dock property gets folded in, making room for both a protected bikeway and wider sidewalks along a section of the corridor that has been narrow and awkward for pedestrians and cyclists for years. Put the two projects together and you get the actual promise behind all the fencing: a continuous public walkway running from Castle Point Park through the new Maritime Park and up through Harborside Park into Weehawken, something Hoboken has been trying to build for decades.

Reading the Detour While You Wait

If you've noticed Sinatra Drive itself feels different this year, that's not unrelated. The city wrapped its Waterfront Reconstruction Project on the seawall this past spring, replacing 777 linear feet of aging bulkhead after a sinkhole opened near the skate park in 2024. That work had barricaded Castle Point Park since April 2025. With the seawall done, Sinatra Drive traffic is running as a single restricted northbound lane, which has turned the rest of the roadway into a wide temporary promenade for walkers, runners, and cyclists in the meantime. As of the city's most recent construction updates, crews are also actively working on Harborside Park itself, with trellis foundation work for a shade structure among the tasks logged for late August 2026.

None of this means the waterfront is finished, or that it will be finished on the timeline the renderings suggest. It means the fence you're walking past today is doing two jobs at once, holding back a funded project that's actually on a real schedule, and a much bigger, still-unfunded one that isn't. Knowing the difference is the difference between wondering why nothing seems to be happening and knowing exactly what to expect to see reopen by the time your calendar says fall 2027.

If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing along Hoboken's waterfront corridor, that's a conversation worth having directly. Jessica Williams works this stretch of the Hudson River waterfront daily and can walk you through how projects like Maritime Park and Harborside Park tend to shape buyer interest as they move from groundbreaking to grand opening. Contact Jessica for a private consultation.