Community Board 2, which encompasses most of the neighborhoods that would
surround the 1.3-mile Brooklyn Bridge Park housing, commercial and open-space
waterfront development, has thus far been silent on the contentious plan,
while CB6, a board whose district grazes the southern end of the proposed
development, has held or participated in repeated hearings to discuss
the plan and its potential impacts.
But this month, CB2 finally began to talk, and in no time heated discussions
broke out in nearly all the board’s committees.
Some were more productive than others.
The purpose of discussing the project separately is so committee members
can have points to present at the full board meeting on Wednesday, Oct.
12, at which time the board may vote on a collective statement. That would
come in lieu of any CB2 presence or comment at the only public hearing
on the park’s draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), held at
6 Metrotech Center — just across the street from CB2’s Jay Street
district office — on Sept. 19.
CB2 Chairwoman Shirley McRae and District Manager Robert Perris were unable
to attend the park public hearing due to conflicts in scheduling, they
said.
Members of the park-planning Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation
(BBPDC), and its parent authority, the Empire State Development Corporation,
heard four hours of public testimony on a draft environmental impact statement
(DEIS) to the park plan that was presented for community review in July.
At the board’s last monthly public meeting, on Sept. 14, the chairwoman
of the board’s parks committee, Joan Thorne-Manning, made no mention
of the heated debate that has pushed on through the better part of the
summer, and no discussion about the park took place before the meeting
lost its quorum of members needed for any vote.
Instead, the board plans to issue a written comment before the state agency’s
one-month deadline for public comment expires on Oct. 19.
Judi Francis, a resident of Brooklyn Heights who is against the development
of the 1,200 condominium units proposed as part of the park plan, including
a 30-story tower, said she’d gone to several of the CB2 committee
meetings, each with slightly different protocol and procedures for voting.
“CB2 has had meetings every day since the 19th of September [when
the public hearing took place],” said Francis, a member of the Willowtown
Association and petitioner in a forthcoming lawsuit against the BBPDC.
Only one, the traffic and transportation committee, which met on Sept.
22, successfully created a bulleted list of 12 requests for evaluations
and amenities in regards to the DEIS, Francis said.
“It was very clear that everybody on that committee wanted us to
come up with something,” said Kenn Lowy, a community member of the
traffic and transportation committee and president of Friends of Brooklyn
Bridge Park.
He said the committee tried to stick to traffic and transportation issues.
No other committee to date has prepared a list of recommendations or concerns.
At each committee meeting, some members of either her neighborhood association,
or other groups that oppose the park plans in their current form showed
up to talk with board members.
The parks committee meeting on Sept. 22 did not allow for public comments,
discussion or interactions throughout the course of the meeting after
each scheduled speaker was allowed three minutes.
Though committee meetings are supposed to be open to the public, and many
involve non-members in discussions and presentations, the chairwoman,
Thorne-Manning, forbade it, and insisted that instead of taking a vote
on anything, only minutes of the meeting would be filed with the board,
said Francis.
“[Someone] asked if there would be a vote — the chair said no,”
they’d consider the comments, said Francis. “Ninety-nine percent
of which were negative. The question of will they ever vote — the
answer was not given. They’re just going to issue minutes.”
Lowy, who is also president of Friends of Brooklyn Bridge Park, a group
that has raised concern over the plan’s dependence on high-rise luxury
condominiums to pay its annual maintenance costs, added that his experience
in the CB2 land use committee was similarly disheartening.
“The reality is that two Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA) people
killed the idea of there being any idea kind of resolution,” he said,
naming Irene Janner, a board vice chair, and Judy Stanton, executive director
of the BHA, who is also a land use committee member.
Janner could not be reached for comment by press time.
Stanton said no resolutions were passed because it wasn’t the board’s
place to make recommendations in the state-led environmental review.
“There was tension among those who didn’t feel in a position
responsible to call for an elimination of housing, which I didn’t,
and I felt that we didn’t have enough information or role to call
for the cutback of housing,” Stanton said.
“I tried to make it clear to them there’s no way this current
plan is going forward,” Lowy said of his interactions with Stanton
and Janner at the land use meeting.
“The Heights seems to think that if they just muscle their way ahead,
that because they want it, it will happen, regardless of all the people
who are coming out against it.” he said.
“I don’t think they have any idea how upset people really are
about this.”
Public comments on the park DEIS can be submitted before Oct. 19 to: BBPDC,
33rd floor, 633 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017.
