November 11, 2006: Vol. 29, No. 44

A coalition of Brooklyn elected officials is demanding that state planners build the open space at the Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront development before building the high-rise condos.

“We urge you to proceed with park construction … and defer development,” the six officials demanded in a letter to Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, which is leading the development of the site along the DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights waterfront.

The controversial 1.3-mile waterfront project combines publicly owned parkland with luxury condos and a hotel — private developments that, according to project supporters, will generate tax revenue to pay for the maintenance of lawns, public beaches and playing fields.

In the letter sent this week, City Councilmen David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights) and Bill DeBlasio (D-Park Slope), Sen. Martin Connor (D-Brooklyn Heights), Borough President Markowitz, Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D-Brooklyn Heights) and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Red Hook) asked the state to delay seeking developers until it is certain that it will really need all the revenue-generating sites that it has set aside to underwrite the project’s $15-million annual maintenance and operating budget.

“We need to insure that they don’t build more than they need to,” Yassky told The Brooklyn Papers.

Critics of the state’s condo-and-open-space plan called the letter a “plea for a real park.”

“They are literally begging to get the park built,” said Roy Sloane, who raised funds to sue the ESDC earlier this year over its “sham” plan.

“Our elected officials are acknowledging that in fact this is a development site, not a park,” Sloane said.

One of the development sites in question is the Empire Stores, a 19th-century warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront that until recently was slated for redevelopment by Brooklyn land baron Shaya Boymelgreen.

The ESDC confirmed this week that the crumbling Civil War-era storehouse had been taken away from Boymelgreen, who had planned to convert it into a shopping center modeled on the Chelsea Market.

“In the three years since Boymelgreen was designated as the developer for Empire Stores, the plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park has taken on a new direction,” said Mark Weinberg, a spokesman for the ESDC.

“The new [development plan] for the Empire Stores will reflect that new direction.”

He declined to say what that direction was. But the ESDC’s supporters in Brooklyn Heights said they hoped the Empire Stores would be reconfigured into an arts or cultural space.

“We think it would be a tremendous if it could be done,” said Marianna Koval, executive director of The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.

©2006 The Brooklyn Paper