Park to open on Brooklyn waterfront

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - Feast your eyes on the sweetest park in New York. The site, after all, was once home to the largest sugar refinery in North America. 

The Domino Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is set to open in about two months, and we got a taste of what’s in store. “We’re excited to take the fence down and let the neighborhood in,” says Dave Lombino, Managing Director of Two Trees Management.

Two Trees bought the historic property in 2012, 8 years after the Domino Sugar factory shut down. Lombino says the private business decided to surround the landmark with a public park. “This is a place where raw sugar arrived from the Caribbean and was unloaded off of boats in the east river,” says Lombino. 

The park is about 6 acres and a quarter of a mile long. It’s going to be filled with brand new amenities like a tennis court and a dog run, but it’s also going to be filled with historic artifacts. “We’ve taken dozens and dozens of artifacts that we found in the refinery building on site and we incorporated them into the design of the park,” Lombino explains. 

Old sugar tanks stand in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, even the children’s playground was designed to look like the sugar making process. Two Trees also reconnected the street grid through the park to show the community everyone is welcome. “A community board district that has one of the worst ratios in the city of open space to population, so people are really excited for additional park space,” says Lombino. 

Opening night is June 10th, just in time for Summer.