A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  DURING THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1987, public support for a park along Piers 1–6 was strengthened by the findings from a borough-wide study conducted by the BHA’s Subcommittee for the Recreational Use of the Brooklyn Piers 1–6, chaired by Piers Committee member Irene Janner. The study, which had been completed in November 1986 and the findings of which were included in BFHK’s report, The Future of the Piers: Planning and Design Criteria for Brooklyn Piers 1–6, surveyed the recreational requirements and available public resources of a diverse collection of primary and secondary schools, colleges, and youth organizations across the borough, including the Brooklyn Friends School, Packer Collegiate Institute, St. Charles Borromeo School, St. Francis College, St. Ann’s School, Long Island University (Brooklyn Campus), the Brooklyn YMCA, the American Youth Soccer Organization, Public Schools 8 and 29, and Community School Districts 13 and 15.18

  The findings from the study were both distressing and compelling: the collective recreational needs of the borough’s youth far exceeded the resources and space that were currently available to address those needs. “We did a survey in the neighborhood of local athletic associations, schools, anyone we could think of, really,” remembers Piers Committee member and survey organizer Irene Janner. “And we had a survey that ran in the Heights Press also for residents to comment on what they wanted to see there. That was basically it: What do you want there? And the overwhelming response was that there was a crying need for active recreational space.”19

  At the time, formal statements released by the BHA Piers Committee still endorsed the hybrid concept of extensive commercial development on Piers 1–6 with some allowances for public space. The percentage of space that the Piers Committee maintained should be reserved for open parkland and recreational use had substantially increased over the first three years of the committee’s existence—from early requests that “some fraction” of the property be devoted to public use to the more recent demand for “up to a third of the park to be used for passive, and possibly active, recreation.”20 The basic assumption remained, however, that the piers would be primarily dedicated to commercial redevelopment, with minimal disruption of the views and lifestyle of the adjacent neighborhoods and with a reasonable (still-to-be-determined) amount of “supplemental” public space.

  The findings of Janner’s subcommittee survey reinforced a growing sentiment among the general public—as well as an emerging private conviction among many Piers Committee members—that the waterfront property should be devoted primarily (if not exclusively) to the park concept, with open and recreational space comprising the primary use of the waterfront property. Commercial constructions (such as restaurants, stores, parking facilities, and conference centers), if they were to be included at all, would be supplemental to and supportive of the park concept.

  AS PUBLIC TOLERANCE of the commercial development of Piers 1–6 declined, the authorities in charge of the disposition of the property continued to make a case for the private development of the New York City waterfront, not limited to but including the west Brooklyn piers. During the spring and summer of 1987, PDC director James Stuckey was back in the spotlight, working the media to persuade political leaders and reassure real-estate developers about the public benefit and commercial viability of developing the city’s extensive waterfront properties, including the abandoned west Brooklyn piers.

  “From our point of view, there’s a wealth of opportunity, and we want to make sure the city takes advantage of it,” Stuckey told a reporter from Round-Up. The recent designation of the powerful PDC as the lead agency in waterfront development, Stuckey assured readers, was a clear sign of the city’s commitment to do whatever was necessary to facilitate the development process and address the concerns of potential investors. “We approach development like a private developer,” Stuckey insisted, echoing Mayor Ed Koch’s conviction that public benefit and private investment were essentially the same. “But we represent the city.”21

  As Stuckey openly acknowledged, his aggressive promotion of the benefits of private development was driven, at least in part, by the specter of stalled waterfront-development projects across the city and a precipitous decline in confidence among potential real-estate investors. Faced with ubiquitous zoning restrictions and growing public resistance to the Koch administration’s ambitions for the waterfront, corporate planners and real-estate developers—many of whom had long-standing concerns regarding crime, transportation, and the quality of public schools in the outer boroughs—were beginning to reweigh the risks versus the benefits of investing in development projects in Brooklyn and Queens, with a particularly dampening effect on proposed projects along the East River.22 “A major problem the city has had in competing is it inability to convince tenants that it can deliver space,” Stuckey explained to a New York Times reporter in June. “We promised to deliver and Morgan Stanley believed us, but other tenants aren’t so sure.”23

  As waterfront-development projects like Westway in Manhattan and a $17 million commercial construction project at Pier 10 in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn encountered public opposition and the confidence of investors began to decline, Stuckey became increasingly passionate in his promotion of the virtues of the private development of the city’s waterfronts, particularly the vast, abandoned waterfronts along both sides of the East River. “New York is sitting on a tremendous opportunity for expansion along the East River waterfront,” Stuckey explained to a New York Times reporter in August, “for both the commercial space that the city, as a world financial center, needs and better housing, which the city demands.”24

  WHILE STUCKEY WAS PUBLICLY EXTOLLING the virtues of private development of the Brooklyn waterfront, the idea of a public park along Piers 1–6 continued to gain traction throughout Brooklyn Heights and the adjacent communities, as well as in the local media. The release of the final version of the full report of the findings from the BFHK study, The Future of the Piers: Planning and Design Criteria for Brooklyn Piers 1–6, in June 1987 added further credibility to the idea that a park along the west Brooklyn piers was a worthy and achievable goal with enormous potential benefit to the greater New York region—and not just the romantic fantasy of a small group of privileged elites.

  “One hundred years from now, looking back at the decisions made,” wrote BFHK partner Ernest Hutton, the report’s principal author, “it will have been important to have fully examined this opportunity [for a park along the piers]: an area of this size already recognized and protected by zoning legislation because of its unsurpassed view, could provide for the long-term benefit of future New Yorkers and visitors a regional resource containing both active and passive open space, comparable to such other large waterfront open spaces as Riverside Park, the open space adjacent to the Belt Parkway, or Liberty State Park in New Jersey.

  “In this development possibility, the pier area would be developed for active open space,” the report continued, providing readers with an enticing vision of the types of opportunities that a waterfront park could provide, “large open play areas, tennis courts, tot lots and passive open space. The ends of each pier, looking west towards the view of Manhattan and the bay, would contain a park/plaza area for strolling, sitting or picnicking. Considerations could be given to enclosed recreation structures for year-round use. Water-related uses could include a boat basin for berthing of both work and pleasure craft along the existing piers, as well as sites for facilities such as a restaurant or floating swimming pool.”25

  IN SEPTEMBER 1987, the Piers Committee suddenly found itself in the midst of a long-standing dispute between the Port Authority and the New York State Legislature over the appropriate use of the west Brooklyn waterfront. Since the late 1950s, with the opening of the massive containerization terminals at Port Elizabeth and Port Newark, New York State legislators had repeatedly accused the Port Authority of concentrating its maritime development activities in New Jersey, to the neglect and eventual abandonment of the Brooklyn piers as viable shipping facilities
. As a continuation of this ongoing and still unresolved conflict, both legislative bodies had recently convened special task forces to investigate the Port Authority’s current plans for the piers in Red Hook, Brooklyn Heights, and Fulton Ferry Landing and the potential impact of these plans on the adjacent communities.26

  As part of this bicameral investigation, State Senator Martin Connor, who represented waterfront areas in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, invited a representative from the BHA Piers Committee to testify before a newly formed investigative body that he chaired, the New York State Democratic Task Force on Waterfront Development. Along with his colleague in the New York State Assembly, Eileen C. Dugan, Connor suspected that the Port Authority was preparing to sell the west Brooklyn piers to the highest bidder to finance the exorbitant costs of maintaining its maritime facilities in New Jersey, including the ongoing dredging of silt required to allow the enormous containerships to dock, and he was eager to hear what local leaders felt about the proposed commercial development of the piers. “The Port Authority made a major investment twenty-five years ago in New Jersey for container-handling facilities,” Connor explained to a journalist at the time, “and now they must cover that investment.”27

  “The Port Authority has made a conscious decision to move the waterfront to New Jersey,” charged Dugan, who was conducting parallel hearings in the Assembly and who also represented Brooklyn Heights in the state legislature. “They want to see the Brooklyn waterfront developed as real estate. There are great views of downtown Manhattan from there, and they think there is more revenue in land than in cargo. But we say that is a misuse of Port Authority funds.”28

  In response to a request from Connor, Piers Committee vice chair Otis Pearsall appeared before the Task Force on Waterfront Development on September 23, 1987, responding to questions from the legislators while making extensive use of a comprehensive statement prepared in advance by the Piers Committee. “Brooklyn has a far lower percentage of its area devoted to parkland than other boroughs,” Pearsall explained to the task force members, “and as the most populous borough, has far less parkland than the others on a per capita basis. There is a strong case to be made,” he continued, “that this spectacular harborside site should be devoted 100 percent to active and passive recreation since, with its ownership already in public hands and at least morally subject to the public trust, there should be no requirement here for a private development that must pay its own way.”29

  In addition to making a compelling case for the conversion of Piers 1–6 into a public park, Pearsall complained to the legislators that the Piers Committee had been treated as an outsider in the development process by the Port Authority and its partners in city government, which seemed determined to “maximize development profit at the cost of irretrievably lost public benefit,” indifferent to the concerns and suggestions of the communities affected by their actions. “While the agencies have always been willing to receive us courteously and hear our planning ideas, they never, never share theirs,” Pearsall charged.30

  While Connor and Dugan were holding their respective hearings in the state legislature, the Port Authority and the city were preparing to move ahead with the commercial development of Piers 1–6. In August, they composed a tentative RFP to be sent to potential developers for the site, and the Manhattan architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle was retained in November to assist in the finalization of the criteria and guidelines that would be included in the request.

  As the members of the Piers Committee would later learn, however, the initial RFP included a mandate for high-density commercial development totaling 2.3 million square feet of housing and an additional 700,000 square feet of commercial development, with virtually no room reserved for public space or other alternatives. According to Pearsall, the thankless task assigned to the urban designers at Beyer Blinder Belle amounted to little more than “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”31

  JUST DAYS AFTER PEARSALL’S TESTIMONY before the New York State Democratic Task Force on Waterfront Development, the Port Authority took a further step toward the commercial development of Piers 1–6 when Public Relations Director Rita Schwartz issued a formal request at the monthly meeting of Community Board 2 (CB2) for the formation of a community board subcommittee on waterfront development “to act as a sounding board” for the Port Authority’s plans for the piers.32

  The City Charter required that the disposition of all city-owned property pass through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, through which the Board of Estimate, the City Planning Commission, and the local community board each had sixty days to review and vote on a development proposal. Only the approval of the Board of Estimate was considered binding, though a negative response by a local community board would further undermine the confidence of a real-estate market that was already wary of the risks involved in development projects in the outer boroughs.33 Although the Port Authority was actually exempted from the three-party review process and was subject only to approval by the Board of Estimate, its formal partnership with the PDC and the New York City Department of City Planning necessitated the full standard review in this case.

  While the inclusion of local community boards was a routine part of the dispossession and private development of public land in New York City, the Port Authority’s stated intention of using the CB2 subcommittee as a “sounding board” for its commercial-development plans struck the BHA Piers Committee as an outright betrayal of the informal relationship that had been established between the Port Authority and the Waterfront and Piers Committees over the previous three years. Faced with continuing resistance and increasingly sophisticated counterproposals from the Piers Committee, the Port Authority and its partners in city government had apparently decided to take their case for the commercial development of Piers 1–6 to what they considered to be a more hospitable audience.

  “At some point, the Port Authority just stopped cooperating with us and sought to go around us by endeavoring, with the help of City Planning, to draw up a housing plan for the piers and then to take their design to the Community Board 2 planning committee,” recalls Anthony Manheim of the Port Authority’s sudden shift in strategy and abrupt abandonment of the relationship that it had cultivated with the BHA committees during the previous three years. “This would allow them to say in the RFP that they already had the endorsement of the community board, whereas they knew they would probably encounter resistance from us.”34

  “We have not had a response from the Port Authority,” Otis Pearsall complained to a reporter from the Brooklyn Paper after learning of Schwartz’s announcement. “At the same time we are being greeted by a stone wall as we see the Port Authority actively seeking to pursue an apparent community participation in another forum.”35

  When questioned by the same reporter about the Port Authority’s motivations in reaching out to CB2, Schwartz denied Pearsall’s claims that the Port Authority was turning its back on the BHA or the Piers Committee. Given its multiple activities in redevelopment projects throughout the city, Schwartz insisted, the Port Authority simply lacked the time and resources to interact directly with every community group that had something to say about the proposed redevelopment of the piers. CB2 (which included the west Brooklyn neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Fulton Mall, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Fulton Ferry) had been selected by the Port Authority as the most appropriate surrogate for representing the needs and concerns of the entire community. “We want the community board to develop an appropriate mechanism for community input,” Schwartz insisted. “I can’t continue to meet with every community group.”36

  Based strictly on CB2’s recent involvement in local redevelopment schemes, the Port Authority and its partners in city government would have expected the community board to be a receptive audience for the proposed dispossession and commercial development of Piers 1–6. During the mid-1980s, CB2 had become known for its aggressive focus on economic growth and its enthusiastic
support of downtown redevelopment projects (including major constructions at Cadman Plaza, Atlantic Avenue, and MetroTech), even when tenants and residents in the affected neighborhoods opposed the projects. In May 1987, for example, CB2 had voted 25 to 0 to support a development project at Livingston Plaza, over the vigorous objections of local merchants who feared that their businesses would be permanently displaced by the proposed construction. “The community feels that development is needed to keep business in New York,” CB2 chairman Jerry J. Renzini explained to a New York Times reporter at the time of the Livingston Plaza vote.37

  With almost three years invested in their efforts to ensure the greatest public benefit for the west Brooklyn waterfront, Scott, Pearsall, Manheim, and the other members of the BHA were not prepared to give up without a fight. “To the extent that the Port Authority thinks that by promoting CB2’s involvement on the issue they are going to be able to ignore the concerns of the Brooklyn Heights community, they are wrong,” Pearsall proclaimed to a local reporter at the time.38

  Shortly after Schwartz’s call for the creation of a CB2 subcommittee on waterfront development, recently elected BHA president Denise Clayton persuaded Renzini to include six BHA members on the newly formed Piers Subcommittee (including Hand, Pearsall, Fred Bland, Carol Bellamy, Irene Janner, and Mary Ellen Murphy). While the BHA and the Piers Committee could not determine the final decision that came out of the CB2 Piers Subcommittee, they could ensure that the other subcommittee members would be fully informed of the concerns of the Brooklyn Heights community and of the BHA Piers Committee’s alternative plans for Piers 1–6.