A land trust nonprofit is pulling back from a years-long plan to redevelop a decrepit pier into a waterfront park in East Boston, after raising more than $30 million in pledges toward the project.
Katie Theoharides, CEO of the Trustees of Reservations, said in an interview Wednesday that work on the design to transform the old industrial pier owned by the Massachusetts Port Authority is “on pause.”
Theoharides said the land trust is now considering alternative locations in the neighborhood for a green space project after finding that the Piers Park Phase III project, as it stands, would not provide adequate protection, given the costs, from rising sea levels and floods as the climate warms.
“This work of building resilient coastlines in urban communities is difficult, expensive, and there’s permitting challenges,” she said. “We’re learning as we go.”
Piers Park III was conceived of as a “world-class, climate resilient park” in an environmental justice community inspired by the long-gone natural ecology. East Boston is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Boston and one of the city’s most exposed to air pollution and coastal flooding.
The design featured a fishing pier, kayak launch, beach, and other outdoor recreation features for the public. To provide that, the plan would require partially removing and fixing the 4-acre pier owned by MassPort, then creating tidal pools, salt marshes, and coastal woodlands.
The project was seen as a significant strategic move for the Trustees as the organization’s first urban waterfront redevelopment project of its kind. The land trust has a more than 100-year history of preserving land in Massachusetts, including woodlands, parks, farms, and historic homes; Piers Park Phase III had signaled a push into urban spaces.
The project, however, was repeatedly scaled back over the years due to the complexity of the site and the estimated cost, which had ballooned to $55 million as of last fall. Originally, the nonprofit planned a 2-acre park built on a significant amount of artificial land (known as fill). The most recent design plan would have covered only half that at high tide.
The nonprofit would have to dedicate more than a third of the budget to fix the structural integrity of the pier to make construction of the park possible.
The Trustees’ former CEO, Barbara Erickson, who had championed the project, died from cancer in 2021. Since her death, the organization has had three different leaders — two interim CEOs and then Theoharides, who started as the permanent leader last summer. The nonprofit then laid off 30 employees, a 10 percent cut, in February to address a “multimillion-dollar structural deficit.”
Since the East Boston project was conceived in 2018, sea level rise projections have gotten worse. A state model of coastal flood risk shows that much of the site would be underwater by 2050, and the rest of it highly susceptible to coastal flooding during storms.
With the updated data, the organization no longer believes the park’s current design would provide the neighborhood with meaningful protection from coastal flooding, Theoharides said. Protecting the neighborhood from flooding was a key part of the pitch to funders.
“We really have one chance to get this investment right,” Theoharides said. “What we’re trying to determine is: How do we spend tens of millions of dollars in East Boston to have the most impact [on coastal resilience]? … That’s why we’re taking a hard look at this.”
The first two larger phases of Piers Park are already complete; those projects included building a berm and elevating the land to block areas where flood waters could penetrate low-lying neighborhood as sea levels rise. The redeveloped pier was meant to be the final link for what would have been a little more than 14 acres of open space on East Boston’s waterfront.
“To have another setback in realizing the full potential of our waterfront is very disappointing,” said Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata, who represents District 1, which includes East Boston. “I am hopeful that the Trustees will make good on their promise to continue working with the community. All the funds raised for this project should stay in the neighborhood.”
Coletta Zapata added that she trusts the organization’s analysis of the problem and Theoharides’s leadership. If the organization pursues another site, she said, they ought to select one that would block one of the many pathways that floodwaters could take during an extreme storm.
The City of Boston plans to discuss the future of the pier with MassPort, said Stacia Sheputa, a spokesperson for Boston’s environmental office.
Jennifer Mehigan, a spokesperson for MassPort, which owns the site, said in a statement that given the pier’s condition and location, “converting it to a park is an extremely complicated project.”
Because the park would have connected to the larger and already redeveloped sections of Piers Park, Mehigan said that MassPort will now work “as quickly as possible” to redevelop a small portion of land at the edge of the existing park that had been fenced off.
Construction on the Phase III park was supposed to begin this year for a spring 2025 opening, and tens of millions of dollars had been pledged by Boston-area corporations. The project also received $2 million in federal funds in 2022 that were requested from Congress by Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.
When the Trustees decide how to proceed — either with Piers Park or a new site — the group will return to the funders and ask if they still want to pledge the dollars in East Boston, according to Mary Dettloff, spokesperson for the Trustees.
Theoharides said the nonprofit is not moving away from working in environmental justice communities. While urban coastal projects are challenging, she said, “It’s work that we are absolutely committed to, and it’s work that needs to happen.”
Erin Douglas can be reached at erin.douglas@globe.com. Follow her @erinmdouglas23.