After languishing on the drawing boards for a dozen years, work on a 1.7-mile, tree-lined promenade along Flushing Bay in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is finally scheduled to begin this spring.

Getting the stink out of Flushing Bay isn’t cheap. City officials said it could cost almost $50 million to dredge just a small section of the waterway, well known for its less-than-aromatic scent.

Flushing Bay no longer smells like its name. More than 89,000 cubic yards of sediment packed with decaying organic material have been dredged from the Queens waterway as part of a $200 million ...