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Park backers lose waterfront lawsuit
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del.icio.usBrooklyn Heights residents who sued to block the state’s plan to include condos in the proposed Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront development vowed to appeal this week’s dismissal of their case.
On Tuesday, Brooklyn State Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Knipel dismissed the opponents’ charges that the Empire State Development Corporation broke the law when it added shops, restaurants, a hotel and 1,210 condos to an existing plan for a public park stretching 1.3 miles along the waterfront from the Manhattan Bridge to the foot of Atlantic Avenue.
The state says it needs private development to generate $15 million annually to pay for upkeep of the development’s 77-acres of open space, basketball courts, fields and public beaches.
Knipel ruled that the revenue-generating buildings don’t violate laws that prohibit private development on parkland because that part of the once-industrial Brooklyn waterfront had “never been parkland.”
The ruling was not unexpected. At a pre-trial hearing in August Knipel had questioned the legal merits of the suit.
“I can see policy reasons for not putting these buildings next to a park. But why legally?” he asked.
In Tuesday’s decision, Knipel also dismissed the claim that the state’s plan didn’t take “a hard look” at the impact that new residential development would have on existing traffic and infrastructure in the area.
State and city planners said construction would begin in January.
“Once completed, Brooklyn Bridge Park will be for the 21st century what Prospect Park was to Brooklyn in the 19th century and Marine Park was in the 20th century,” said Adrian Benepe, the city’s Parks Commissioner.
Judi Francis, one of several plaintiffs, said she knew all along that this fight would go the distance.
“As we have said from the beginning, the critical fight is in the appellate division [whose courthouse is] a few blocks away from this site — the so-called ‘park,’ ” she said.
©2006 The Brooklyn Paper
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