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Civil war over park

A meeting of community leaders and Brooklyn Bridge Park planners held
Tuesday to address development of the south end of the park, including
Pier Six at the foot of Atlantic Avenue “and its environs,”
turned into a civil war among park proponents.

Thirty guests — all residents of Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red
Hook and Brooklyn Heights — were invited via e-mail to what lead
park designer Michael Van Valkenburgh called a “work session”
at his Manhattan office. The meeting was also attended by Wendy Leventer,
president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation (BBPDC),
a subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation charged with
implementing the park plan.

What emerged was an airing of grievances compiled over the past month
since radically altered plans were released for the 1.3-mile waterfront
development.

The most contentious point of the new plans, first shown on Dec. 22 to
a handful of invited community members, has been the addition of four
residential buildings, totaling 730 new units of market-rate co-ops.

Planners have refused to make available to the general public a model
of the new park plan, which they’ve shown in private meetings with
selected civic leaders, and have instead distributed renderings that do
not include representations of the housing. The Brooklyn Papers was refused
permission to photograph the model.

The revamped designs were necessary, according to the planners, once a
thorough analysis of the $15.4 million annual maintenance cost of the
park was completed. That figure is nearly double the original anticipated
annual budget. They also said the original plans, including a pool and
Chelsea Piers-style recreation center, would have cost $300 million to
build, double the park’s $150 million budget.

Several people expressed interest at the meeting in finding out what other
revenue sources were explored, and Van Valkenburgh suggested setting up
a separate meeting to focus on the finances. A Van Valkenburgh associate
said an alternative that had been explored for Pier 6 was a “factory-style,”
80,000-square-foot big box store.

Two of the guiding principles under which the park planners were mandated
to work explicitly rejected housing and big box retail.

Sandy Balboza, president of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association,
said the housing in the plan “privatizes the waterfront.”

“Atlantic Avenue is supposed to be one of the grand entrances to
the park,” she said.“I don’t see it there. I see people
having to maneuver around these buildings.

“Was there an option before luxury housing? You’re telling us
all these options, but they all include luxury housing,” Balboza
said. “I thought you said we were going to talk about the uses of
Pier 6.”

Leventer jumped in and chastised Balboza for the criticism. “We dont
think that it is privatized. We know you don’t agree, but why don’t
you let us make our presentation for the other people in the room?”

Roy Sloane, a Cobble Hill activist and member of the Community Advisory
Committee, renewed the attack.

“It looks like housing is your priority here, not making a grand
[Atlantic Avenue] entrance,” he said. “This part is just a residential
housing development, and there’s some park made with whatever you
could find left over.”

Van Valkenburgh responded that the scheme was admittedly “radical,”
but noted that they had worked “with real estate developers for three
or four months while you didn’t hear from us.” He later said
the consultants were not developers, but real-estate experts.

A visibly flustered Leventer retorted, “It’s true, it is all
about housing,” before noting that the BBPDC’s mandate that
the park pay for itself made the housing component necessary.

Rather than argue the merits of the housing, Van Valkenburgh suggested
critics move on to the next step. “Now,” he said, “how
do we make it feel like the housing is part of the city, and the park
is something else?”

Most residents learned of the brand-new revenue scheme — which would
profit from ground leases and common charges, or park fees, paid by the
homeowners — from newspaper coverage.

Some of the many livid community members at the Jan. 18 meeting were more
upset about the decision-making process than the decisions made.

“It’s one thing to come to us before everything was planned,
but to all of a sudden throw it in our face and let us read about it in
the New York Times,” said Barbara Brookhart, a Carroll Gardens resident
and former park coalition member, “I just want to know why you think
we don’t need to be joined in on the process?”

Marianna Koval, a Brooklyn Heights resident and co-director of the Brooklyn
Bridge Park Conservancy, a non-profit group that has advocated construction
of the waterfront park and commercial development for more than 20 years,
cut in. “Just to be fair, this is a part of the public process,”
she said of the meeting.

But Murray Adams, president of the Cobble Hill Association, disagreed.

“It isn’t, because this isn’t a public meeting,” he
said, and criticized how the BBPDC had been meeting and presenting the
new model to only small, select groups. [See
story in this issue
.]

“So far, even the community boards have been left out of this process
— for what reason I don’t understand!” said Adams.

“We might have handled this wrong,” Van Valkenburgh conceded.
“But as we’re hearing things from you we’re continuing
to test new ideas. That’s why the small groups. Maybe we could have
had a series of public meetings, but with all our balls still in the air
I think you would’ve been very confused.”

“That is a mistake,” said Brookhart.

“Well, then that is a mistake, but we can’t go back now,”
Van Valkenburgh said.

Brookhart argued that the public should have been kept informed all along.
“If you had brought us along throughout what you were doing maybe
we could have a better idea of why it ended up looking like this,”
she said.

Van Valkenburgh argued that plans to let the community weigh in were always
in the cards. “Before the ink was dry we scheduled the meetings with
you,” he said.

Leventer echoed that argument. “It’s not because we don’t
think you’re smart people, it just wasn’t done yet,” she
said. “Really, that’s why we invited you to be here through
the evolution of the thinking of Pier 6 and its environs — to sort
of let you in on the sausage making, some of the things we’re thinking
about.”

But being “let in,” rather than an active participant in the
planning process, is how many people felt as the evening wore on and Van
Valkenburgh went from a PowerPoint presentation to a description of the
scale model.

To some residents, like Franklin Stone, of Cobble Hill, a Community Advisory
Committee member, it became evident that housing wasn’t so much an
option as a mandate.

In arriving at the earlier plans, which involved a series of community
workshops, Stone had been a vocal proponent of building a sports and recreation
facility on Pier 5, or on the uplands of Pier 6, where two of the residential
towers now sit under the revised plan. Pier 5 has been ceded completely
to green space following a determination by the park planners that it
would cost too much to make the pier stable enough to hold a structure.

“The near-absence of year-round recreation is a major stumbling block
for me,” she told Van Valkenburgh. Pointing at the two towers that
stood where her recreational center once was planned, her voice wavered
as she said, “Knowing that there’s probably going to be a recreational
facility built in there for them [the residents of the co-ops] —
that would really piss me off.”

Stone pointed out that earlier ideas of having ice-skating rinks, a Chelsea
Piers-like sports complex and a swimming pool, all potential year-round
revenue-generators, were somehow just cut from the plans.

But Koval, who noted that she has a 12-year-old child, moved to Stone’s
side, and said, “I’d really like to have an indoor recreational
center, too, but we do have more opportunities in the future.”

“I disagree with you Marianna,” said Stone. “I disagree
with you.”


View
images of the Brooklyn Bridge Park plan
.