To quote the bard of pop music: oops, they did it again. State officials have let us down in an inexcusable, shameful way.
The latest example of government-sponsored fraud comes at the so-called Brooklyn Bridge Park, the 85-acre retail, condo and open space development that is proposed along the Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO waterfront.
The need for a true public park at that glorious site in the shadow of the immortal Brooklyn Bridge is not in question here. Community groups and local elected officials have been devising plans for decades to make it a reality — and, for a while, those locals had gone about it the right way, by involving the public in the process and keeping profit-focused state bureaucrats at bay.
But in 2002, the Empire State Development Corporation, a quasi-state agency then controlled by cronies of Gov. Pataki, took over the project, envisioning a grandiose “world class” park that they said would cost $150 million to build and $15 million a year to maintain, with the maintenance covered by fees paid in lieu of real-estate taxes by luxury condo owners within the footprint of the park.
We have long had a problem with this funding scheme — and this week, state and city officials freshly validated our suspicions.
Earlier this year, the city quietly added $75 million in taxpayer money for Brooklyn Bridge Park’s construction, bringing its estimated cost to $225 million.
Then, last week, state Sen. Marty Connor said that construction would cost another $75 million to $125 million more!
That’s $300 million to $350 million for a project that just four years ago had a budget of $150 million. And, of course, there is no reason to believe we’ve heard the last cash register bell ring.
Brooklyn could have had a simple public park at this site years ago — at a greatly reduced cost — if the ESDC, then run by the oily Charles Gargano, had not muscled in and subverted the process so that his well-connected friends could control a grandiose, Battery Park City–style open space.
The cost overruns not only imperil construction of the project’s park component, but they undermine public confidence in the state’s funding scheme for maintaining the park. If construction costs can more than double in just six years, we can assume that the yearly maintenance budget will also skyrocket, requiring the construction of additional condos or more retail to pay the bills.
Currently, about 10 acres of the entire site are set aside for revenue generation. But that number can — and, given the existing cost overruns, will — increase, meaning that more of the “park” will be taken over by developers.
The only thing that might prevent such a land grab is for Albany to pass a Conservation Easement that would guarantee the amount of open space at Brooklyn Bridge Park (although it would not specify what parklike amenities would actually be built on that newly protected empty space).
State officials don’t want such an easement because it would hinder further development when the pool of maintenance funds falls short of cost estimates, but it is the only way to win back public trust.
