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All in the family: Pier 40 is Village’s playground

A Greenwich Village Little League ball player heading toward Pier 40 in a recent G.V.L.L. opening day parade. File photo by Tequila Minsky
A Greenwich Village Little League ball player heading toward Pier 40 in a recent G.V.L.L. opening day parade. File photo by Tequila Minsky

BY MAGDALENE ZIER AND DUGAN ZIER | Before we were born, our parents made a peculiar decision to move from New York City to Kentucky. They packed up their apartment on Horatio St. and headed south to live in our mother’s hometown. The change was drastic. But what Kentucky lacked in quality bagels, it made up for in rolling backyards and ample soccer and baseball fields.

Our parents jumped at the first opportunity to head back to Greenwich Village for good. But this was years before Washington Square Park and Hudson River Park were transformed into the urban oases they are today. And in Kentucky, we had become accustomed to a certain kind of outdoor lifestyle.

While initially skeptical of sports fields suspended over the Hudson River, over time our family developed a deep affection for Pier 40 as a unique solution to our community’s open space needs. Pier 40 became our playground — as well as host to our family’s much-anticipated Thanksgiving Day football game. As early as age 5, we took to the fields as part of the Downtown United Soccer Club and Greenwich Village Little League. We both have fond memories of weekly field trips and physical-education classes at Pier 40 with our classmates from the Village Community School, and feel fortunate to have been able to visit on a near-daily basis.

At Pier 40, we met kids and families from across the city seeking play space — and many of those friendships have endured to this day. Even now, when one of us, Dugan — who committed to the New York Red Bulls Academy at age 12 and went on to become a Division I soccer player — is home over break, he immediately heads to Pier 40 for pickup games with players of all levels and ages.

Over the years, we’ve joined our fellow neighbors to vouch for the necessity of Pier 40 and fight to secure its future. As longtime residents of Greenwich Village, we support the St. John’s Terminal proposal as a way to keep Hudson River Park and the Pier 40 athletic fields viable and operational, so that generations of city kids will have the same opportunities that we did.

Magdalene, 22, and Dugan Zier, 20, grew up on E. 10th St. and attended the Village Community School. Dugan is in his third year of college at Colgate University, and Magdalene graduated from Harvard this May.