The pavilion's missing restaurant

Gigino at Wagner Park serves its last meal after 23 years in the old pavilion. Tribeca Citizen reports the operator will not necessarily return after the rebuild.

In the BPCA's design presentation to CB1's Environmental Protection Committee, the preliminary First Place design's glass-top floodwall is revised out of the final submission, replaced by movable planters and salvage-stone elements: an early, documented case of a glassy promise becoming something more utilitarian.

The park closes, with the whole project promised complete in roughly two years.

With reopening promised for 2025, the BPCA issues an RFP for a restaurant operator: a ten-year lease on 5,000 square feet with roughly 80 seats.

The first RFP draws zero responses. A relaunched RFP adds renderings, site visits, and flexible rent.

The operator emerges: food-services firm Jabber Dorado, whose public-facing brand is the fast-casual Migrant Kitchen.

The park reopens, a year late. The pavilion is entirely closed: no restrooms, no classroom, no rooftop, no restaurant.

In a presentation to CB1's Battery Park City Committee, the BPCA names Jabber Dorado Enterprises as the proposed operator and estimates six to nine months of fit-out from November 2025, with the restaurant opening in summer 2026.

The BPCA unveils the pavilion rooftop and its observation deck, with restrooms open, the classroom promised for early 2026, and the restaurant promised for summer 2026.

The BPCA's board update schedules turnover of the restaurant space to the operator for mid March.

The BPCA unveils the classroom and community space, and its release says a restaurant will open in the pavilion "this summer."

The BPCA's board update lists the restaurant as turned over, without a date.

The BPCA declares the South BPC project complete. Its release names the park's reopening, the rooftop and the classroom as milestones and does not mention the restaurant.

No opening date has been announced, and summer 2026, the target the BPCA last stated, has passed. A 2027 opening would make five years since the old restaurant closed.