“This is going to be huge!” Bob Townley bellowed, as he strode onto Pier 25 one afternoon last month.

Manhattan Youth’s executive director was not talking about the newly opened, five-block-long recreational pier, already packed with families even on this chilly  day. He was looking north, to the unfinished area between Piers 25 and 26.

Even as Townley and Manhattan Youth prepare to take over the pier’s minigolf course, volleyball court and food concession, due to open in the spring, he is visualizing the kinds of loose gatherings and events that made the old pier popular before it was torn down.

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“Everyone says, ‘I miss the open space of the old pier,’” said Townley, whose organization leased the former Pier 25 from the Hudson River Park Trust. “We will have room for parties and school gatherings and dances and outdoor community life. That space is under the radar now.”

Two sections make up that area: a new over-water paved platform and the original platform, now covered with dirt. While Townley already envisions cartloads of hot dogs being wheeled from the snack bar to birthday parties in the yet to be completed section, it remains unclear just when that space—all 11,000 square feet of it—will be ready.

With construction yet to begin on Pier 26, where a boathouse, restaurant and eventually a river research station are to be housed, that space will be used as staging for the work.

“We need this area to remain unfinished so that we don’t box ourselves out of the ability to complete Pier 26,” said HRPT Vice President Noreen Doyle, who confirmed that the Trust, too, is interested in using that space for some activities that took place on the former pier. “We’ll need an area for vehicles to enter, exit, deliver and store materials.”

In addition, Doyle said, it is still unknown how much completion of the platform will cost. As of now, the Trust still lacks funding to finish the park between Laight and North Moore Streets.

“It was never looked at as a stand-alone component so it wasn’t estimated that way,” she said.

On a visit to the pier, Townley is already stopped by people who want to know about volleyball leagues and end-of-school-year parties, more than half a year away.

He gets the thumbs up from a man who yells to him, “It looks great, Bob!” as though Townley had built the pier himself.

“I was walking on the pier with [Hudson River Park Trust President] Connie Fishman and someone said, ‘Great job, Bob.’ I said, ‘No, Connie and her staff did that. We’re just going to run the minigolf.’ That’s much easier. They’re going to maintain the pier. It’s totally ridiculous.”

Well, not quite. On that day, as he walked along the pier and talked of his dreams for its expansion to the north, Townley came across the residue of one of the many dogs that are now being walked there.

“You can quote me on this,” he declared. “I’m going to get the dog shit stains off of here.”

Indeed, some of what gave the old pier its character was Townley’s oversized presence—sweeping, moving stuff, performing various dirty tasks—caring for it like it was his own.

“I like to clean,” he said. “Just because they say it’s not my job doesn’t mean it can’t be my job.”