Now even supporters of the state’s Brooklyn Bridge Park plan are questioning how much luxury housing must be in the development.
At a hearing on Monday night, the venerable Brooklyn Heights Association, which supports the state’s plan to pay for the waterfront parkland with revenue from condos, a hotel and shops, said that a lease agreement between a politically connected developer and the state obscured crucial facts that could help planners reduce the amount of commercial development.
“The state must be clear that it is doing all that it can to minimize the amount of development within the park,” said Nancy Wolf, a spokeswoman for the BHA.
The hearing focused largely on the lease agreement between the Empire State Development Corporation and Robert Levine, one of several developers who will build within the 1.3-mile, waterfront development.
Levine has already begun to sell his “One Brooklyn Bridge Park” condos at 360 Furman Street, which would be at the southern end of the strip of greenspace and new buildings along the Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO waterfront.
Yet many speakers grumbled that the state has not started the “park” part of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Disappointment with that lack of progress was at the root of much of the criticism about the plan’s “transparency.”
Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights) supported the lease agreement with Levine as a “crucial step in moving forward,” but warned ESDC that the deal should “not set a precedent.”
“The process was not a good one,” he said.
Even Marianna Koval, director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, had some problems with the state’s process.
She did commend Levine for the agreement he made with the state — but urged ESDC “to show its plans and move forward quickly.”
Koval also disclosed that her group has received $41,000 in donations from Levine, who was also a contributor to Gov. Pataki’s campaigns at the same time that Pataki’s ESDC was pushing development in the park, the New York Post has reported.
Like Wolf and Koval, Yassky called on the state to begin working on the park before selecting proposals for its other development parcels.
ESDC spokesman, AJ Carter, said that the secretive public agency would “consider” all of Yassky’s recommendations.
“The Spitzer administration is now doing a full, methodical review of all ESDC projects,” Carter said. “We want to get a sense of what is going on, and why, so we can decide how to move forward in the future.”
For his part, Levine’s spokesman defended his boss.
“The terms of the 360 Furman lease [have already been] negotiated and approved by both the city and the state,” said the spokesman, Tom Murphy.
