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New Waterfront Park Opens at Hunters Point South With 'Rail Garden'

 The 5-acre park includes a children's playground, basketball courts, a spacious dog run and large lawn.
Hunters Point South Waterfront Park
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HUNTERS POINT — A new park opened to the public on the Long Island City waterfront comes complete with a spacious new dog run and a landscaped "rail garden" that pays homage to the area's industrial past. 

The new 5-acre greenspace, opened last week, is part of the city's planned Hunters Point South development, a middle-income housing community planned for 30 acres of underutilized waterfront near 50th and Borden avenues.

The city broke ground on the first phase of residential housing for the project in March, but the park had been in construction earlier.

The new space includes a children's playground, basketball courts, a spacious dog run and a large recreational lawn, as well as a landscaped "rail garden" with plants and flowers growing around a set of train tracks.

"It's gorgeous," said Tiffini Minatel, who owns a nearby dog walking business and took one of her pups to the new park on a recent weekday. The neighborhood's other main park, Gantry Plaza State Park, only allows dogs in certain areas.

"It's nice to have an area like this to walk a dog," she said. "This is a peaceful place."

Hunters Point South will also include a new 1,100-seat school building, slated to open at the start of the coming school year.

It will be home to the relocated Academy for Careers in Television and Film, plus a new middle school.