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While million-dollar condos are selling like hotcakes at One Brooklyn Bridge Park, the “park” itself is again at a standstill.

A fresh examination of the finances behind the state’s controversial housing, commercial and open space project has delayed the start of construction of promised park areas. Construction of the park areas was supposed to begin this summer.

Empire State Development Corporation spokesman Errol Cockfield told The Brooklyn Paper this week that the Spitzer administration was modifying the project’s budget and hiring a new chief planner to replace the official who managed it under the Pataki administration.

He said that construction would not commence before the fall at the earliest — contradicting previous ESDC predictions of a summer groundbreaking on the public spaces.

“Right now our focus is on updating the budget for the park and getting a new [Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation] president,” said Cockfield. “A shovel can’t go into the ground until those things happen.”

In March, Cockfield told The Paper that the firing of former project planner Wendy Leventer was part of larger changes by the Spitzer administration.

Those changes now involve a reexamination of the park’s $15-million annual budget, a model that relies on revenue from four residential buildings, a hotel, shops and restaurants to pay for the maintenance of public open space.

Critics have lambasted the park’s maintenance cost projections as inflated and said the high costs were a ruse to encourage planners to reserve space in the “park” for private commercial development.

“This project has been mismanaged from the start with costs two-and-a-half times that of other waterfront parks in order to allow for more development,” said Judi Francis, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Defense Fund, which has sued the state.

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy — a group allied with the project’s developers — said this week her organization “had no idea” when construction would begin.

“We had hoped for construction to begin sometime during this summer and we still hope it will begin sometime this summer,” said Nancy Webster.

The park’s delay hasn’t hurt sales at One Brooklyn Bridge Park, the waterfront factory being converted to condos at 360 Furman St., where developer Robert Levine is touting the park that’s been nearly 20 years in the making.

“We anticipate Park Construction will commence within six to eight weeks,” said Levine.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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