Walk north along the water past the 60s this month and the path holds together nicely: smooth pavers, new railings, the kind of unbroken sightline to Roosevelt Island that makes the detour signs from a few years back feel like they belonged to someone else's summer. Then, somewhere past East 73rd Street, the esplanade stops. A green construction wall closes off the water, and the flow of runners and cyclists peels left onto the sidewalk to find another way north.
That wall has moved. For most of the past four years it sat further south, near 71st Street, blocking the entire stretch up to 78th. Now it sits a few blocks closer to its finish line. The instinct is to read that as a project winding down. The more useful read, and the one this piece is built around, is that the Upper East Side's waterfront isn't repairing itself so much as trading one broken stretch for another, and knowing which stretch is broken this particular week matters more than knowing the overall percentage complete.
Five Summers of the Same Gate
The closure between 70th and 78th traces back to construction on the Hospital for Special Surgery's Kellen Tower, which broke ground in March 2022. By the summer of 2025, CBS New York was reporting that this marked the fourth consecutive summer that an eight-block stretch of the esplanade sat locked behind a gate, with runners, walkers, and cyclists forced onto city streets to get around it. Jennifer Ratner, who chairs the advocacy group Friends of the East River Esplanade, put the frustration plainly to CBS at the time: officials kept telling residents "this year," and the year kept passing without a reopening.
That history matters for how you should read this year's announcements. A single press release about progress is not new information on this waterfront. What's new is a pattern of verified, incremental handoffs, block by block, confirmed by people physically walking the finished sections rather than describing them from a podium.
What's Actually Open Right Now
Here is where things stand as of early September 2026, based on the most recent confirmed reopenings:
| Segment | Status | Expected |
|---|---|---|
| East 70th to 71st Street | Open, reopened June 15, 2026 | Complete |
| East 71st Street pedestrian ramp | Reopened, formally announced July 8, 2026 | Complete |
| East 71st to 73rd Street | Open as of early July 2026 | Complete |
| East 73rd to 78th Street | Closed, under final construction | Targeted for October 2026 |
| East 78th Street pedestrian bridge | Closed starting July 2026 for paving and equipment installation | Reopens with the segment above |
The Hospital for Special Surgery, which has been overseeing this section in coordination with NYC Parks and the Department of Transportation, states on its own project page that the remaining stretch is expected to complete in phases with full reopening anticipated by October 2026. City Council Speaker Julie Menin's office confirmed the same target in a July 2026 announcement, framing the 71st Street ramp reopening as a milestone after years of delay.
The physical work behind that timeline is specific: seawall repairs, sinkhole remediation, new pavers, landscaping, and fitness equipment installation along the 73rd to 78th stretch, plus a rebuilt 78th Street bridge deck. This isn't a coat of paint on old infrastructure. It's the kind of structural work that explains why a project that started in 2022 is only reaching completion in its fifth construction season.
The Reopening Is Real. So Is the Quote That Explains Why It Took This Long.
When NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura and Speaker Menin walked the newly opened stretch to East 73rd Street in early July, Menin called it a long time coming.
"It's been years. We're happy to finally bring this moment to fruition."
Ratner's reaction, reported the same week, carried a different note. She called the extended reopening a welcome surprise, a bonus on top of what had already been promised, which tells you something about how low expectations had sunk after years of slipped dates. She also flagged that cyclists forced onto First Avenue during the closure had been circulating a petition with hundreds of signatures, a detail worth knowing if you've been one of the people taking that detour and wondering whether anyone in city government was tracking it. They were.
The Repair Is Moving, Not Finishing
Here is the part that doesn't show up in most reopening announcements. While the 70th to 78th corridor edges toward completion, a different stretch of the same waterfront broke down this spring. In April 2026, a sinkhole between East 93rd and East 94th Streets widened enough that the city closed a seven-block section of the esplanade with almost no notice, posting the closure through its Notify NYC alert system. Parks Department officials described it as ordinary wear on a nearly century-old structure, the kind of thing the agency's inspection program is built to catch, but the timing underscores the point: the esplanade isn't a single project moving toward a finish date. It's a chain of aging infrastructure where the weak point keeps relocating.
Further north, the picture is less encouraging. The city first earmarked $75 million in 2019 to rebuild Bobby Wagner Walk between East 94th and 107th Streets, and the plan grew to a $294 million scope when the city's economic development corporation presented its blueprint in 2022. That larger plan has since run into funding trouble serious enough that the chair of Community Board 11 said at a July 2026 meeting that the portion of the walkway now going unfunded had grown from roughly half a mile to nearly a full mile. The 107th Street Pier, closed to the public since 2018, is still slated to reopen as part of that project, but without the bathrooms originally planned. If you use the esplanade north of the Upper East Side proper, that stretch is not on the same recovery timeline as the section near you. It may be years behind it.
Planning Your Route Through October
None of this means the waterfront is unusable. It means the smart way to use it right now is block by block rather than end to end. A few things worth building into your fall routine:
- The path is open and complete from the 60s through East 73rd Street, including the rebuilt 71st Street ramp and its new lighting.
- Between 73rd and 78th, plan on a street-level detour until the October target holds. First Avenue remains the standard workaround for cyclists.
- If your run or ride extends north past 90th Street, check current conditions before you go. The 93rd to 94th sinkhole closure was resolved as a short-term repair, not a structural fix, and the esplanade's inspection program has already found comparable wear once this year.
- Friends of the East River Esplanade continues to track closures and reopenings in something close to real time, which is a more current source than any static list, including this one, once the calendar turns past October.
The honest way to think about this waterfront right now is that it's improving in the place you can already feel it and deteriorating in a place a mile or two north of that. Both things are true in September 2026. Neither cancels the other out.
If you're weighing what a stretch of waterfront like this means for a specific address near it, whether that's proximity to a finished path or patience for one still under repair, the Luxury Advisory Team works this exact corridor of the Upper East Side and can talk through what a given block's relationship to the esplanade actually means day to day. Schedule a private consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
