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Imagine a beach where the rules of the outside world simply do not apply. A place where people of every background, every identity, every body, and every expression of queerness arrive and exhale. Where the person next to you on the sand might be a drag queen in full regalia, a family chosen rather than born into, an elder who has been coming since the 1970s, or a young trans person experiencing safety in public for the first time. A place where, for a few hours on a summer afternoon, the world feels like it was built for you rather than against you.

That place is real. It is called Jacob Riis Beach, and it sits on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York. For nearly a century it has functioned as one of the oldest and most historically significant LGBTQIA public sanctuaries in the United States. And right now, it is being taken away.

What is happening at Jacob Riis Beach is not a series of separate threats. It is one coordinated pattern of displacement playing out simultaneously on multiple fronts. A private developer holds a 60-year federal lease on the bathhouse. Federal park police are partnering with ICE in the parking lot. Elected officials at every level have offered silence or endorsement. Each threat targets the same communities. Each one follows the same logic of extraction, privatization, and erasure.

A Sanctuary Under Siege

The demolition of the Neponsit Beach Hospital in 2023 marked a turning point that the community had long feared. For decades the abandoned hospital building had functioned as more than a relic of the past. It had served as a natural visual barrier, shielding the queer section of the beach from the surrounding conservative residential community that has historically been hostile to the LGBTQIA people gathering just beyond its walls. With the building gone, the People’s Beach lost something more than a landmark. It lost its anonymity.

The surrounding communities of Belle Harbor, Neponsit, and Breezy Point have documented histories of racism and consistent conservative voting patterns that place them in direct ideological opposition to the queer, multiracial, immigrant, and working-class communities that have made Jacob Riis Beach their sanctuary. Council Member Joann Ariola, the Republican who represents this district, has consistently sided with the conservative residential community while ignoring the presence of LGBTQIA beachgoers who have gathered on the sand within her own district for nearly a century.

10 Years After Pulse, Protecting Queer Spaces Is Critical for Liberation

The demolition of the Neponsit Hospital did not just expose the beach physically. It exposed the community politically. And the forces that have always wanted them gone now have a clearer line of sight.

The enforcement is already changing on the ground. In late May 2026, a longtime beachgoer who asked not to be named told me how she was stopped by park police near the historic bathhouse while walking topless to use the restroom, something she had done regularly for years without incident. She said the officer told her she would need to cover up to be in that area going forward. When she pushed back, citing years of visiting the beach without issue, the officer told her that “things are about to change,” that the area was becoming “a family-friendly zone,” and that she needed to be mindful of the changes that were coming. She complied. On the same visit, park police arrived at Bay 1 and ordered approximately a dozen beachgoers who had gathered there to move, erecting rope barriers and posted signs citing erosion. For weeks prior, those same beachgoers had gathered at Bay 1 without incident.

The timing is difficult to ignore. The historic Jacob Riis Bathhouse, a 1930s Art Deco landmark designed as a public facility to serve the diverse communities of New York City, sits directly adjacent to Bay 1. For decades the bathhouse was exactly that, a free and accessible public space where generations of New Yorkers could shower, change, and gather regardless of their background or income. It fell into disrepair over the years and sustained significant additional damage during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, leaving it abandoned and deteriorating for over a decade. Rather than restoring it as the public facility it was always meant to be, the National Park Service (NPS) instead granted a 60-year concession lease to a private developer who is converting it into a private luxury club. According to reporting by The New York Times, its membership fees range from $1,000 per year for local Rockaway Peninsula residents to $3,500 for families outside those ZIP codes. The community that actually built the cultural life of that space for nearly a century cannot afford even the discounted rate.

Three Administrations, One Outcome

The process that led to this outcome spans three presidential administrations and nearly a decade. According to National Park Service records, under the first Trump administration in 2017 the NPS issued a competitive request for proposals inviting private developers to propose plans for the rehabilitation of the historic bathhouse. Brooklyn Bazaar was selected as the winning applicant and a letter of intent was signed in March 2018.

The conversion of this publicly administered historic landmark into a private luxury amenity has been substantially subsidized by federal tax dollars.

The conversion of this publicly administered historic landmark into a private luxury amenity has been substantially subsidized by federal tax dollars.

Under the Biden administration in October 2022, the 60-year concession lease was formally signed. According to financing records reported by the Commercial Observer, the initial 2023 financing package included a $32.5 million construction loan from private lender Procida Funding and a $15 million historic tax credit equity investment from Foss & Company on behalf of undisclosed institutional investors. The total renovation cost has since been reported at approximately $88 million, meaning the conversion of this publicly administered historic landmark into a private luxury amenity has been substantially subsidized by federal tax dollars. The LGBTQIA community that had used this space for nearly a century was not consulted at any point in this process under any administration. The first Trump administration chose the developer. The Biden administration signed the lease and provided the federal funding. The second Trump administration is presiding over the opening. Three administrations. Not one protected the community.

The Developer: A Slumlord

The developer behind the Rockaway Ocean Club is Jonah Bamberger, founder and managing partner of Aulder Capital, a real estate investment firm whose entire senior leadership was professionally formed within Israel. In a 2024 interview on The Deal Makers podcast, Bamberger confirmed that he........

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