On Wednesday, NYC Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura and Council Member Lincoln Restler are cutting a ribbon on the new “Motiva” section of Bushwick Inlet Park, a $9.8 million stretch of restored tidal wetland with a sand beach and a kayak launch on the Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront. It is a real and genuinely lovely piece of public space. It is also, by the city’s own timeline, a celebration of something the public has already been using for more than a month.

The Motiva parcel opened to the public on April 30, so the June 3 ceremony is a victory lap, not a first-access moment. And the victory is small. Motiva adds a sliver, reported between 1.66 and 1.8 acres depending on the source, to a park that was supposed to run roughly 28 acres. Only three sections, 86 Kent, 50 Kent and now Motiva, are finished, more than 20 years after the 2005 Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning that promised North Brooklyn a single connected waterfront park.