A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  In addition to his skills as a negotiator with public officials, Fox had a passion for promoting and facilitating community involvement in park development and environmental activism, particularly among groups with diverging opinions about what should and should not be done. “The public participation process takes patience,” he explains, “and people don’t have patience to listen to everybody. But you have to. If you don’t listen to them, then you’ve left them out. Even if you don’t agree with them, spend time with them. We would have meetings that would last until two o’clock in the morning and just let people talk. Give them respect.”17

  Once the new co-chairs had been selected, the next task was coming up with a suitable name for the new organization—one that would capture the imagination of the general public and dispel any lingering suspicions that the park was the pet project of the Brooklyn Heights community. All the new co-chairs supported the conviction of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of the New York City park tradition, that the names of public parks and public spaces should directly reflect the location or physical form of the park itself. “It’s the fine Olmsted tradition of simple names that describe the place or the function of the property,” says Fox. “We had Ocean Parkway, which went out to the ocean. Eastern Parkway, which went out to Long Island. And the Long Meadow was a long meadow. And the Sheep’s Meadow where you grazed sheep.”18

  With Olmsted in mind, the original choice was to continue to refer to the proposed space as Harbor Park, following the example of Terry Schnadelbach’s report (figure 14), and to name the organization Coalition for a Harbor Park on Brooklyn Piers 1–6. Stretching along the mouth of the East River, Piers 1–6 occupied a substantial part of the eastern shore of the entrance to the great New York Harbor, after all, and would inevitably provide visitors with spectacular views of the maritime activities that took place in the harbor each day.

  While the new co-chairs continued to champion Olmsted’s principle of naming a park after the physical characteristics of the site it occupies, the name Harbor Park soon gave way to Brooklyn Bridge Park, reflecting the decision to expand the property that would be included in the park plan. The new name and the proposed additions to the park property were greeted with great enthusiasm by everyone involved. “Branding is important, and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition was a little catchier than the Coalition for a Harbor Park on Brooklyn Piers 1–6,” says Fox of the public-relations advantage of the Brooklyn Bridge association. “It seemed more press worthy and easier to sell, saving the setting around the Brooklyn Bridge and nestling it in a park, like the Golden Gate, which gave its name to the National Recreation Area in San Francisco.”19

  FIGURE 14

  Schnadelbach’s “Harbor Park” featured forty-eight acres of park, including open spaces, playing fields, seating areas, interactive waterfalls, a skating rink, a conference center and hotel, an expansive marina, and a continuous walkway.

  COURTESY OF R. TERRY SCHNADELBACH, FAAR

  The new name and expanded park concept quickly gained momentum both within the new organization and throughout the broader community, providing park advocates with an immediately recognizable name that matched the public’s growing enthusiasm for the park concept. “We finally had something that we could use to get the community excited about what we were doing,” recalls Favuzzi.20

  WITH A NEW NAME AND NEW LEADERSHIP for the organization, the next challenge facing the co-chairs was to create a legal entity for the organization that was fully independent of its old associations with the BHA and the Brooklyn Heights community. The incorporation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition was notable for the involvement of Brooklyn Heights resident Mark Baker, a young attorney who had recently assisted Tom Fox in the Westway negotiations in Manhattan. As his first task for the Coalition, Baker filed a Certificate of Amendment to New York State, through which the newly formed organization was granted the not-for profit status previously awarded to the Friends of Fulton Ferry Landing, a dormant group formed by Scott Hand a few years earlier. Baker would continue to provide legal guidance and various other types of assistance for the Coalition during the next twenty-five years.

  “I was a young lawyer, and I was looking for pro bono work,” Baker recalls of his initial foray into the controversy over Piers 1–6. “Tom was a Green Guerilla and had become the leader of the community-garden organizations in the city. I worked as his lawyer in the community-garden movement, and then he became very interested in parks and open spaces, and we worked extensively in Hudson River Park, where I got my firm to write opinions that underpinned turning that into a park in the aftermath of the whole Westway debacle.

  “After Tom ended up being one of the three co-chairs here,” Baker continues, “he called me up and said, ‘They need a good lawyer over here, and it’s right in your backyard. Why don’t you meet Tony Manheim?’ So I met him and seemed to hit it off with him, and he said, ‘Okay, why won’t you be our lawyer?’ And then Tony said, ‘Call Scott Hand.’ And I called Scott, and he had this organization that had Fulton Ferry Landing in the title, and he said, ‘Why don’t you use that organization?’ So we changed the name of that organization to the Brooklyn Bridge [Park] Coalition, and that’s the legal entity that is today the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.”21

  DURING THE FIRST MONTHS of its operation, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition operated largely outside the scrutiny of the media and the general public, with Manheim, Favuzzi, and Fox working behind the scenes to enlist the support of leaders of local, city, and state organizations (with more than sixty recruited by the end of the year) and cultivate relationships with political and community leaders, including State Senator Martin Connor, Assemblywoman Eileen Dugan, Congressman Stephen Solarz, Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, and Jerry Renzini and Stephanie Twin, the chairs of Community Boards 2 and 6, respectively.22

  Another important task facing the newly formed Coalition was the formulation of a set of shared guiding principles for the development of the west Brooklyn piers, which would collectively reflect the priorities and expectations of the organization’s increasingly diverse constituency. Although not everyone who supported the general aims of the Coalition could agree on a single vision for the park, Manheim, Favuzzi, and Fox recognized that a consensus had begun to emerge throughout the park movement regarding a variety of factors relating to the appropriate disposition of the piers property (public benefit, substantial allocation of public space, the need for comprehensive planning, limitations on private development, view preservation, maximum public access and use, self-sustainability, and so on).

  By clarifying, assembling, and disseminating these shared principles, the Coalition could simultaneously unify its diverse membership (who might disagree regarding specific aspects of a detailed park design), recruit new supporters for the emerging park movement, and resist forthcoming plans for private development that failed to address shared public concerns for the piers property. The difficult and time-consuming process of developing and building public consensus around the guiding principles for the park would be a central occupation of the Coalition over the next several years and would become one of its signature contributions to the park movement.

  THE COALITION ENCOUNTERED its first major challenge toward the end of 1989, when the Port Authority announced tentative plans to lease Piers 1–5 to real-estate developers Larry A. Silverstein and Arthur G. Cohen, the owners of a three-acre slice of upland property between Piers 3 and 5, with an option to purchase the property outright after four years. At the time, the decision had not yet been approved by the Port Authority board, which was scheduled to meet the following January. If approved by the board, the decision would also require the approval of Governor Mario Cuomo.

  In a New York Times report announcing the proposed development, the Coalition urged Governor Cuomo and Mayor David Dinkins to delay a decision until the Brooklyn community was allowed to present an alternative plan providing greater opportunities for public use of the
waterfront property. “This is a very critical site to the city as a whole,” Manheim explained to David Dunlap of the Times. “It cries out for planning, and that is what has not been done. Our program goal is maximum feasible public benefit. You just don’t turn over a site, with no controls, to a development team. These are public assets.”23

  In a letter to Manheim, Hugh B. O’Neill, the Port Authority executive in charge of the Brooklyn piers project, tried unsuccessfully to reassure the Coalition that, in contrast to the plans supported by the Port Authority in the past, the proposed development by Silverstein and Cohen was sensitive to the community’s concerns and that the two real-estate titans had actually “come up with an attractive concept for developing the site that will balance the various public interests involved (the need for housing, the need for open space, continuation of maritime-related activity) in a financially feasible way.”24 “The result could be a mixed-use development of a size and density that’s consistent with good planning and the needs of the community,” explained Silverstein in the Times report. “We could not in any way violate the view planes.”25

  Not surprisingly given its past experience, the Coalition’s leaders were unimpressed with the assurances by the Port Authority and the potential developers. “I don’t think the city should lose the opportunity to create a major public facility,” Tom Fox said at the time. “I can’t believe a resource like this would be piddled away on a housing development that could be built anywhere.”26

  By the time of the public announcement of the Port Authority’s new plans for Piers 1–5, the Coalition was prepared to do far more than argue its case through the media. On hearing of the proposed Silverstein–Cohen development project, the Coalition leaders immediately alerted the public officials with whom they had been cultivating relationships during the preceding months, including Howard Golden. While Golden had reservations about the Coalition’s proposal for a park on the west Brooklyn piers, he shared the organization’s revulsion to the prospect of turning the area beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade into a vast residential development, and he was quickly enlisted into the current conflict with the Port Authority.

  On December 4, 1989, the same day that the Times article announced the Port Authority’s consideration of the Silverstein–Cohen development scheme, Golden wrote to Mario Cuomo, explaining his objection to the proposed project and urging the governor to veto any plans for Piers 1–5 that were based solely on financial considerations, without attention to the impact of the proposed action on the adjacent communities and the city as a whole. “This great Brooklyn resource must not be the subject of a dollar and cents negotiation in the absence of a shared set of development guidelines, acceptable to all,” Golden reasoned. “I firmly believe that development guidelines directed toward implementation of a comprehensive plan must precede any financial disposition of the property.”27

  As an attachment to his letter, Golden included a set of sixteen guidelines for the development of the piers that he had drawn up with the assistance of his staff and the informal guidance of the Coalition, which had briefed him on the guiding principles that they were currently developing with their constituents.28 Motivated by both the letter from Golden and the request from the Coalition, the governor subsequently instructed the Port Authority to abandon the terms of the proposed arrangement with Silverstein and Cohen, while also demanding that all future negotiations between the Port Authority and private developers reflect a greater sensitivity to the needs and interests of the Brooklyn community.29

  FOUR

  THE “13 GUIDING PRINCIPLES”

  “We were all arguing over things that might never happen and focusing on where we disagreed. I, in my naiveté or wishful thinking, basically invited in a lot of the community players to my office in Borough Hall and said, “Why don’t we focus on what we agree on, instead of all the things we keep fighting about?””

  MARILYN GELBER

  GOVERNOR MARIO CUOMO’S REJECTION of the Port Authority’s tentative arrangement with real-estate developers Larry A. Silverstein and Arthur G. Cohen brought the agency’s plans for the private development of the west Brooklyn piers to a grinding halt at the end of 1989. Faced with the governor’s call for a revised development plan that reflected a greater sensitivity to the needs and interests of the Brooklyn community, the Port Authority and its partners in city government, having spent the previous five years ignoring the community’s recommendations and concerns, were forced to go back to the drawing board in their plans for the Brooklyn piers. Nearly a year would pass before the public entities would be prepared to offer a new proposal for the disposition of the waterfront property.

  The temporary hiatus in the public confrontations with the Port Authority and the city provided Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition co-chairs Anthony Manheim, Tom Fox, and Maria Favuzzi with invaluable time to focus their attention on the important task of building their new organization, generating support for the park concept in and beyond the neighborhoods adjacent to the west Brooklyn waterfront, and devising an effective strategy for promoting the development of a public park along the piers.

  THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD, the members of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition continued to discuss and debate the core principles that would ultimately guide the development of the park. The task at hand was to formulate a set of guidelines that would simultaneously address the concerns of the Brooklyn communities immediately adjacent to the piers; satisfy the public entities’ demand for a fiscally responsible, self-sustainable use of the site; preserve the physical and environmental integrity of the entire waterfront property; and continue to generate enthusiasm for the park concept among residents citywide.

  If balancing the competing interests and priorities of these various constituencies wasn’t difficult enough, the Coalition members often had difficulty agreeing among themselves about the guidelines for developing the park. Disagreements about residential housing on the waterfront had already been responsible for a change in the leadership of the west Brooklyn piers movement in January 1989, when Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA) Piers Committee chair Scott Hand and vice chair Otis Pearsall, both of whom supported the construction of limited housing on the piers, resigned their positions in deference to the anti-housing majority on the Piers Committee.1

  The resignations of Hand and Pearsall had not been the end of the housing debate. Following the formation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, a growing number of west Brooklyn residents and some Coalition members had begun to believe that limited housing was not only acceptable as part of the waterfront development plan but also necessary to the safety and security of a park along the piers. In reaction to the growing support for a park on Piers 1–6 following the Community Board 2 (CB2) Piers Subcommittee hearings, Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden had repeatedly warned that without the inclusion of at least some amount of housing, the waterfront property would soon become a haven for drug dealers at night. Even some of the members of the Coalition had begun to warm to the prospect of private residences providing twenty-four-hour “eyes on the park,” increasing the safety and accessibility of the piers property for everyone. In contrast, other Coalition members and longtime park supporters continued to view residential housing on the piers as unacceptable on any scale, insisting that private residencies on the waterfront would inevitably privatize the park, with park residents viewing the open space as an extension of their own property, while the lights from the high-rise dwellings would also obscure the nighttime views of the Manhattan skyline and the East River from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

  Coalition members also disagreed about the most appropriate method for visitors to gain access to the park. Most Brooklyn Heights residents in the Coalition were committed to preserving the cul-de-sac design of the neighborhood and consequently opposed the construction of any type of public corridor linking the elevated Promenade with the waterfront property. In contrast to this position, co-chair Tom Fox was far more concerned about
maximizing access to the park for people from outside Brooklyn Heights, promoting increased public transit and a broad pedestrian thoroughfare for visitors to the park, even if it meant disturbing the tranquility of the neighborhood’s streets and sidewalks. “One of the things I lost on was a pedestrian connection for Montague Street,” Fox remembers of the compromises that were ultimately required to create a common set of guiding principles around which the Coalition could unite. “Where are all the trains? Where’s all the mass transit? Right here. It’s a beautiful street whose store owners could all benefit from pedestrian traffic.”2

  Resolving these and many other issues relating to the design, use, and funding of the piers property was a difficult and time-consuming process. Working Group meetings and informal discussions often lasted late into the night, with little or no apparent progress toward a consensus. “I was coming there as a Wall Street lawyer, and my deals were going a hundred miles an hour,” recalls Mark Baker of the lengthy, exhausting, frequently unresolved discussions that occupied the Coalition members during the early years of its existence. “And then I would come into that room, and we would debate and it felt like I was moving in molasses. But then I began to learn, ‘No, this is how it gets done. This is how you build it.’ Late at night. In the back of Wolf Spille’s offices. And we talked about everything under the sun.”3