A meeting between local elected officials and established community groups
held at Borough Hall April 22 to address concerns over plans for Brooklyn
Bridge Park left both sides of the table realizing they have their work
cut out for them.
The project is a commercial, housing and open space development that would
stretch along the waterfront from Atlantic Avenue to the Manhattan Bridge.
“We were very impressed that all the elected officials came,”
said Laurie Maurer, a Cobble Hill architect, citing the long list of attendees,
which included local City Council members David Yassky, Letitia James
and Bill DeBlasio; state senators Velmanette Montgomery and Martin Connor;
members of Congress Nydia Velazquez and Major Owens; Assemblywoman Joan
Millman; and Borough President Marty Markowitz.
“A bunch of people spoke,” said Maurer, referring to the civic
leaders who presented objections to the drastically altered version of
the park plans released this year, which they say privatize the park by
supplementing recreational space with open areas that lack any active
programs and block the park’s main entrances with luxury condominium
apartment buildings.
“It is not a Brooklyn park and they seemed really well to understand
that,” said Maurer’s husband, Stanley Maurer. The couple own
a home in Brooklyn Heights.
Cobble Hill activist Roy Sloane — who organized the meeting led by
local park advocates including the former head of the Brooklyn Bridge
Park Coalition, Anthony Manheim, and Community Board 6 Chairman Jerry
Armer and First Vice Chairwoman Pauline Blake — said everyone left
the meeting feeling as if the elected officials had really understood
them.
“At this point there can be no doubt that all our elected officials
understand what our underlying concerns are, and why we have those concerns,”
Sloane said after the meeting. He said he was impressed and surprised
that the meeting, scheduled for only an hour, lasted just over three hours,
with nearly all the elected officials staying for the duration.
According to meeting attendees, who came from DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Fulton
Ferry Landing, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene
and Park Slope, elected officials seemed none too pleased with the park
plans, either.
Sloane said that “much to our surprise we found many of [the elected
officials] shared our concern and our deep frustrations.”
“After an hour and 15 minutes there became a frank interchange between
both parties,” he said. “We now all feel that our local elected
officials have genuinely heard what our concerns are and they made a commitment
to address them. But there were no specifics as to what they were going
to do.”
The idea for the meeting, which was held in the Borough Hall community
room at 3 pm, came after several weeks of discussions among members of
the Cobble Hill Association, who live near the southern end of the park,
which has an entrance at Atlantic Avenue.
Those community members have been vocal about their concern over plans
to build two condo high-rises, one as tall as 30 stories, on the uplands
of Pier 6.
Soon, many other neighborhood organizations and community members followed
suit.
The 450 new housing units for that end of the park aren’t the only
residential high-rises planned, and DUMBO neighbors at the northern end
of the park had already issued a letter of dissent to the president of
the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, Wendy Leventer, to plans
for a 16-story, 150-unit luxury building to be built on an open space
at John and Adams streets.
Michelle Whetten, the new president of the DUMBO Neighborhood Association,
said she was glad her group was able to offer a PowerPoint presentation
on the effects the building in DUMBO would have on the north-end residents.
“We told them we have been basically unable to form any thoughtful
input without the broken-down costs [of why the plan relies on housing],”
she said. “It’s difficult for us to form an opinion without
any numbers we can even look at,” she said, and mentioned that the
politicians seemed to agree.
“It was surprising that we all have the same questions.”
Nicholas Evans-Cato, president of the neighboring Vinegar Hill Association,
prepared the slideshow. “The people we wanted to be there were there,”
he said, noting that it was a positive meeting.
An additional 150 condo units is planned for a building next door to a
hotel at the end of Old Fulton Street at Fulton Ferry Landing.
Leventer, whose state authority is charged with planning the park, has
cited the need for housing as the only viable revenue-generating source
to help the park fulfill its mandate to “pay for itself.”
But to the chagrin of community activists who worked to develop the park
over the last 20 years — which was created as an alternative to a
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plan to sell the property to
housing developers in the early 1980s — no alternative revenue sources,
such as commercial developments that would create more foot-traffic for
visitors and tourists have yet been provided by Leventer or her agency.
Although he called their presentation more of a general airing of problems
felt around the community, Evans-Cato said there was pointed discussion
about the leadership of the BBPDC, and even members of the park’s
Board of Directors had been complaining, according to the elected officials.
But until something changes significantly, he said, it’s hard to
pinpoint the next step.
“You’re really looking at the stage being set, you’re not
hearing the music,” he said.
“Because she was not invited to the meeting, Wendy [Leventer] says
she cannot comment on what was proposed,” said Empire State Development
spokeswoman Deborah Wetzel.
Elected officials dodged answering questions after the meeting, but according
to one legislative aide, plan to meet again.
“We declared victory on Friday,” said Sloane this week.
“Today, of course, is a new day. But we were very pleased with our
local elected officials.”
