A Haunted Power Plant Becomes a Park. Is This the Future?

New York Times ^ | October 15, 2025 | Michael Kimmelman

[ProtectOurFreedom]

A shuttered plant is reimagined as Manresa Wilds, an example of an old facility repurposed to solve a new century’s problems.

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The hike up to the roof involved Escher-like flights of metal stairs and grated catwalks like high wires, dangling above a spectacular abyss of rusted machinery. The ’60s-era control room, straight out of “Apollo 13,” opened onto a turbine hall the size of the concourse at Grand Central.

I was blown away.

The plant has been shuttered since 2013 and parts of it look like workers walked out one day and left everything as it was. Suburban Connecticut is not the Bronx or Brooklyn. But my visit got me thinking about an ongoing quandary: What can be done with America’s obsolete infrastructure?

New York has been trying for years to shutter some of its filthiest power plants. A fleet of “peakers” still plagues some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Peakers are aged gas- and oil-fired facilities costing taxpayers a king’s ransom to operate. They mostly sit idle, waiting for electricity demands to spike during heat waves. Once in operation, they’re notorious polluters, contributing to high asthma rates in communities nearby.

There are countless examples of successfully converted power stations. The former Bankside Power Station in London, by Giles Gilbert Scott, became the Tate Modern museum. A one-time generating facility in Brooklyn is now Powerhouse Arts. In Paris, a decommissioned plant morphed into part of the Athletes’ Village at last year’s Summer Olympics and now belongs to an emerging neighborhood for mixed-income housing and other development.

Completed in 1960 by Connecticut Light & Power, with a smoke stack that still towers over the region, the plant outlived its usefulness and shuttered in 2013 after Hurricane Sandy flooded the site. A private equity firm acquired the property to build high-end housing.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

From his amazement and breathless hyperbole, it strikes me that scribbler Michael Kimmelman always KNEW that electricity came out of the wall socket. He believes that meat magically gets to the supermarket butcher counter from some unknown simple place that makes meat. He is one of the child-like waifs who thinks that we can magically snap our fingers and switch to "green" power and that such plants never pollute nor will they be obsolete and torn down not far in the future.

I spent a lot of my career in power plants. It grieves me to see then turned into useless "haunted" theme parks. I spent more hours than you can imagine on those "grated catwalks."

If he thinks the old "peakers" were a problem, just wait until he learns about the horrendous performance, cost and pollution problem from battery energy storage.

This is SO pathetic.

[SuperLuminal]

Back in the 1970s, the President of San Diego Gas & Electric said it best:
“Let them freeze to death in the dark”...

[Tell It Right]

If he thinks the old "peakers" were a problem, just wait until he learns about the horrendous performance, cost and pollution problem from battery energy storage.

Agreed. And if anyone doesn't pay attention to how the grid is powered and you want to know how much the grid depends on solar and wind and battery, all you have to do is look at the fact that the Dims aren't trying to shut down solar and wind. If the grid depended on them, the Dims would hate solar and wind.

What opened my eyes to this phenomenon is the hatred the Dims learned to have toward natural gas during the Trump and Brandon years, even though it was as recent as the Obama years that the Dims were forcing many power utilities to shut down coal plants and replace them with "clean burning natural gas" fueled plants. The same for promoting everyone to switch to "clean natural gas heat" and natural gas fueled busses, etc. As soon as we depended more on natural gas, the Dims hated on natural gas.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Back in the 1970s, the President of San Diego Gas & Electric said it best: “Let them freeze to death in the dark”...

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Bingo. The constantly shifting sands of the Dims. There is no core principle they will not abandon in a heartbeat.

Now that they are all against peace in the middle east tells us all we need to know. That they love criminals more than citizens (after professing to be for law & order) tells all we need to know.

[packrat35]

It was never about gas or coal, but power and I don’t mean electrical power.

Raw naked power to control people’s lives is what they want.

[UCANSEE2]

The people who want control over others always seem to have no control over themselves.

[UCANSEE2]

The people who want control over others always seem to have no control over themselves.