Battleground: Brooklyn Bridge Park

At stake: The undeveloped portions of the Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights waterfronts

The combatants: The Empire State Development Corporation (backed by Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg), the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and the Brooklyn Heights Association vs. the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund and the Sierra Club

After the Port Authority announced plans to reinvent the decaying, largely abandoned piers and industrial spaces along the East River in Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights in 1984, community groups had an idea: unpave the parking lots and put up paradise, in the form of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Two decades later, while a portion of Dumbo has been transformed, those groups are still squabbling over what the rest of the park should look like and how to pay for it.

In 2002 the state and city kicked in another $150 million for the park, with the condition that it sustain itself financially, which means raising $15.2 million in annual operating costs. Planners struck a deal in which private developers will be allowed to build housing inside the park in return for contributing to its maintenance. The scenario: 90 percent of the 1.3-mile stretch between Atlantic Avenue and Jay Street will be used for public recreation, and the rest will be set aside for commercial development (such as restaurants, concessions, a hotel and residential towers).
The idea has sparked a clash over the definition of public space. Is it still a park if it’s some condominium owner’s front yard? Tony Manheim, one of the park’s original advocates, is fiercely opposed to what he sees as the privatization of public space and the size of the proposed residences. “When you have private, residential uses, they’re in direct conflict with public use,” he says. Others accuse the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which took possession of the property in question in May, of essentially donating parkland to private interests. “There’s mischief afoot here with developers taking over the shoreline,” says Judi Francis, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund. Along with the Sierra Club, the Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit against the ESDC, seeking to block the use of high-rises as a funding source.

Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, says objections to residential development are a ruse. She thinks the Defense Fund wants to discourage an influx of visitors along Joralemon Street, a main thoroughfare between Borough Hall subway stations and the park. “It’s strictly a case of NIMBYism,” she says.

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy’s executive director, Marianna Koval, insists that the plan represents an innovative budgeting solution. “Wealthy people’s taxes should pay for a great public amenity,” she says. And Charles Gargano, chairman of the ESDC, compares the proposed buildings to the luxury high-rises on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. “Just as Central Park is surrounded by tall buildings, these are on the perimeter of the park,” he says.

The plan’s opponents are quick to note that in this case, the residential buildings are within the park’s boundaries. Asks Defense Fund supporter Jean Austin, “Would anybody want to see a 30-story tower in the middle of Sheep Meadow?”—Lisa Selin Davis