Kennedy Plaza Is on Long Beach's Bayfront Study Map. Here's What's Actually on the Table.

This Saturday at noon, the City's Kids Halloween Costume Parade leaves the Recreation Center and heads to Kennedy Plaza. That same weekend, October 10 and 11, the 28th Annual Fall Festival fills the plaza from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with pumpkin activities, craft and food vendors, and live music. On October 24, Halloween in the Plaza closes out the Arts in the Plaza season with a costume parade, trick-or-treating and local artist vendors.

The city's bayfront planning map also includes that plaza, labeled Site 6.

The City of Long Beach Bayfront Resiliency Planning Study looks at six city-owned properties, about ten acres along roughly a mile of Reynolds Channel. Five of them are working municipal yards or a sewage plant on the north edge of the island. Most people have never set foot on them. The sixth is City Hall and the plaza in front of it. These sites don't all run on the same clock, and that is the best way to understand what this study can and can't change in the next few years.

Five Yards, a Sewage Plant and a Plaza

The city's StoryMap, updated October 2, 2026, gives each site's current use, zoning and acreage.

The city lists real obstacles alongside each site. Site 3 has electric company facilities to its south and high-pressure natural gas lines buried nearby. Site 1 has Long Island Rail Road tracks along its east side. The city calls Site 5, the small garage you pass on Long Beach Boulevard after crossing the bridge, a possible "gateway" to future bayfront development because so many people see it.

The StoryMap also limits what's in scope. The six sites are the opportunity areas. The surrounding neighborhood is studied only to make sure anything new fits next to it, and the study "is not evaluating the rezoning or redevelopment of any residential or noncommercial privately-owned properties."

The Waterfront Has to Wait for Two Infrastructure Projects

According to the city, a bayfront vision is possible now only because of two multi-year infrastructure projects. Neither one is finished, and their schedules set the pace for Sites 1 through 4.

The North Shore bulkhead. This project adds 2,500 linear feet of steel bulkhead from the municipal boat launch at National Boulevard to the Long Beach Tennis Center on Monroe Boulevard. It also includes a force main and a pump station to move floodwater out of the city's drainage system. The StoryMap gives the cost as nearly $40 million, funded by FEMA and the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, and says it "will soon be completed."

The schedule reported at City Hall is longer than that. At the March 18, 2026 City Council meeting, City Manager Dan Creighton said the project, first slated for completion in October 2024, is now expected in March 2027, with 22 change orders since 2023. The Long Beach Herald reported the details. Electrical cables and other equipment owned by National Grid, PSEG Long Island, Verizon and the LIRR were in the bulkhead's path. Soil at a former gun range on Water Street had to be removed. Crews hit sheeting refusal by the tennis center, meaning they couldn't drive the bulkhead sheets deep enough. Under the Long Beach Bridge, the work switched to jet grouting. Public Works Commissioner Ken Arnold put the job at "about 70 percent completed" at that meeting.

The sewage plant consolidation. This $77 million project, part of Nassau County's Bay Park Conveyance Project, turns the Long Beach plant into a pump station that sends the city's sewage to Bay Park for treatment. The city says this will stop about 75 million gallons a day of treated effluent from going into Long Beach's back bays, free up nearly five acres of bayfront, and be finished by the end of 2027. The city's May 2026 capital plan still listed the diversion as under construction in 2026/27.

The two projects are linked through the study's most-discussed amenity, a possible bayfront walkway. The city has right-of-way along the water, mostly next to its own utilities, that could carry a walkway connecting Sites 1, 2 and 3 to the existing walkway to the west. The StoryMap says that walkway is feasible "due to the recent bulkheading of this area." So the walkway depends on the bulkhead. Site 1 depends on the sewer conversion. And Site 4 is still in daily use as the place the city keeps road salt and sand.

The One Site That Doesn't Wait on the Water

Site 6 is the exception. It doesn't depend on the bulkhead or on Bay Park. It sits in the Central Business District, with the LIRR station and the city's multimodal transportation facility to the east, West Park Avenue to the south, the library's Central Branch to the west, and Channel Park Homes, run by the Long Beach Housing Authority, to the north.

Site 6 has its own constraint. The building at 1 West Chester Street houses more than City Hall offices. The Fire Department, the Police Department and the City Courthouse all work out of it. The StoryMap says any redevelopment of Site 6 "would require the relocation of City Hall, either on-site in a new building or to a nearby property." So while Sites 1 through 4 wait on infrastructure, Site 6 depends on where the city would put its core public services.

That's why the plaza matters to residents now. Kennedy Plaza is the setting for a Saturday festival, a costume parade and the season-ending arts market. Of the six sites, it is the only one that already works as public space. The study is the city's process for deciding whether that changes, and it is still early.

What 1,500 Survey Answers Are Feeding

The first public workshop was a drop-in open house on June 22 at the MLK Community Center, 615 Riverside Boulevard. The community survey that followed ran July 10 through September 15 and drew more than 1,500 responses. The Herald reported that its 19 questions covered possible housing and commercial uses, restaurants, entertainment, performing arts, oyster filtration, and marinas and boat storage. In January 2025 coverage of the state grant, Creighton and City Council President Brendan Finn spoke in favor of a marina as one possible use, and Creighton said officials wanted public input before deciding.

The survey deadline was extended. In August, North Park residents and civic leaders met at the Margaret Evans Center. Citizen Portal reported that they asked for more in-person outreach and more time, saying a digital survey could leave out seniors and lower-income residents. At the August 18 Council meeting, Creighton described the study's stage this way:

"To be clear, we are in the initial stage of the study. There is no plan. There are no proposed projects."

The city extended the survey deadline to September 15 on August 21.

The idea itself is older than the survey. Long Beach's 2023 Comprehensive Plan, adopted August 1, 2023, already recommends "development of the Bayfront with uses that capitalize on and provide public access to the waterfront." The current study costs up to $200,000: $170,000 from a New York State Department of State grant through the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, plus a $30,000 city match. It pays for planning, an economic and market analysis, and conceptual designs. It doesn't pay for any construction.

What Happens at the Library on October 15

Public Workshop #2 runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, at the Long Beach Public Library, 111 W. Park Ave. The city plans to open with the results of the open house and the survey. Then attendees break into small groups, led by the consultant team, to go through the sites, possible land uses and design considerations, and each group presents its ideas at the end.

The city's sequence after that:

1. Economic and market analysis of possible land-use scenarios
2. Conceptual designs, shown at Public Workshop #3, which hasn't been scheduled yet
3. A draft planning study with short-, medium- and long-range recommendations
4. State Environmental Quality Review, more public meetings and formal adoption

Some practical details for the workshop:

• You don't have to RSVP, but the city asks for one through its workshop RSVP form to help with planning.
• The city says the workshop will present the survey results, and a summary of all workshops and feedback will go into the final report.
• Come with the site numbers in mind. The table above matches the six properties the groups will be discussing.

The Fall Festival's pumpkins will be gone from Kennedy Plaza long before Workshop #3 is on the calendar. Site 6 will still be on the map when it is.

If you're thinking about what the bayfront plans could mean for your street or your own plans, the team at Lucky To Live Here follows these workshops closely and is happy to talk through what's known so far. Contact Us anytime.