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February 14, 2005
Revisiting Brooklyn Bridge Park
(this ViewPoint was written for the Brooklyn Heights Press in August of 2004. It was never submitted for a variety of reasons)
I have been reading with some amusement your articles over the past two weeks on Brooklyn Bridge Park. The amusement is short lived however, because I am a strong advocate for the park, and would like to see it build sooner, rather than later. Several years ago I wrote in this paper that the plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park was outdated and simply would not work. Your editor wrote an editorial the following week mentioning that I was overstating things. But here we are two years later, and what I found so obvious two years ago, turns out to be all to true. But it should come as no surprise to anyone. The original master plan made some sense in a pre September 11 world. But after September 11, many things changed in our city. For starters, building a hotel in a park, something I have always been against, was a questionable idea four years ago. Today it is no longer questionable, it is a mistake and should be taken out. The park has to be self sustaining. The planners should take a fresh look and find things to put in the park that will be supported by the people who live here. A good example is Chelsea Piers. Chelsea Piers survives because it brings in the community and tourists. I am not advocating a Chelsea Piers type structure in Brooklyn Bridge Park, but something that will survive in the long term because the community supports it, and that also attracts tourists.
Previous articles contained information that was somewhat surprising to me. As someone who has attended many of the meetings on Brooklyn Bridge Park, both with the Citizens Advisory Council, and with the Neighborhood Advisory Council, I had been led to believe that Pier 6 was in the master plan under Jim Moogan. It was Wendy Leventer who took it out when she was appointed, but has now put it back in. Furthermore, I had been told that although Jim Moogan had said that the EIS had started earlier in 2004, it was in fact never started. There is definitely something wrong here. I don’t believe we are being told the real story. Let’s move back to Pier 6, which is happily back in the plan. At a recent meeting of the Cobble Hill Association, I asked a member of the EDC about Pier 6. His answer was, and I am paraphrasing, that an apartment complex was not out of the question. Perhaps not for the EDC, but I think it is out of the question for those of us that support a park. Especially in light of the fact that 360 Furman Street has been sold to a developer who intends to turn it into housing. When I mentioned this at the Cobble Hill Association meeting, the EDC gentleman stated that Pier 6 is not 360 Furman Street. No, but it is, literally, a stones’ throw away.
Mr. Holt asks if it’s not time to start over. He asks if perhaps the park is too big and compares it to Central Park, Prospect Park and Bryant Park. But I have to ask a simple question. Just because a block of midtown Manhattan has the name “park” on it, does that in fact make it a park? Bryant Park is not a park in the way that the community views the promise of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Mr. Holt is correct that we need new ideas. In 2003 I saw a plan for the park drawn up by Michael Van Valkenburgh. It looked great and made me wish it was ready now. But clearly there is more work to be done. And I my opinion, we need fresh ideas, and fresh blood. We need people in the Development Corporation who have worked to create parks. With all due respect to Ms. Leventer, her prior experience in Times Square does not necasarily equip her to create a park. Why not hire real park people. People who have done this before and succeeded.
Posted by klowy at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)