A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  “What we didn’t understand at the time,” confides Witty, “is that the Port Authority needed us as much as we needed them. They wanted the same things that we did.”44

  As a part of the methodology for the Master Plan, Witty and the other LDC board members decided to face the debates and disagreements within the community head on, proposing a series of borough-wide public planning sessions (or “charrettes”) that would allow everyone with an opinion about the park and its relationship to the adjacent neighborhoods to contribute feedback to be used in the creation of the Master Plan.

  “We really had to figure out how to create a plan that all these different people could support,” says Witty, “that was viable and not some pie-in-the-sky daydream, something that could actually be built and that was financially possible. Our challenge was, ‘How do you do that?’ And the idea that we came up with and executed was the idea of a unique public planning process for the park that really brought in people from every walk of life, from every neighborhood and the business community, the community boards, everyone who cared about this, with hundreds and hundreds of people sitting around.”45

  The public charrettes, which were conducted over a two-year period in dozens of neighborhoods throughout the borough, became the first cooperative activity between the Coalition and the LDC. “The LDC and the Coalition worked collaboratively together to bring the community out,” Coalition board member Dick Dadey recalls of the early interactions between the two groups. “And, you know, there were differences of opinion, but I think you just needed to mention the park, and people showed up. And what was interesting was that when the initial meetings were taking place and people would go back into the neighborhood and talk about what had happened, it would excite others, and others then would come and want to be a part of it. Others would come to see what was happening. And so it grew through word of mouth.”46

  “When parks had been built in the past, there really wasn’t a public dialogue to determine what people wanted. It was just something that happened,” says architect Matt Urbanski, a member of the Michael Van Valkenburgh design team that led landscape design for the HR&A design team. “But this park from the beginning was going to be about a public dialogue, based on the public interest in making this space. The challenge was in creating a forum and a means of talking to everyone, bringing people together, conveying what are the possibilities and also trying to find out from people what they thought were the possibilities. That was a big challenge.”

  According to Urbanski, one of the biggest problems the team faced was the public’s lack of knowledge about the role of landscapes in the park’s design (figure 19). “It wasn’t understood at the time that landscaping actually had uses,” says Urbanski, “that it wasn’t just direction. We made up four types of landscapes (civic, boundless, natural, and urban) that we used to illustrate the different uses. It turned out to be a very fruitful way of talking.”47

  FIGURE 19

  Brooklyn Bridge Park Final Plan, 2015.

  COURTESY OF MICHAEL VAN VALKENBURGH ASSOCIATES, INC., LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, P.C. BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK CORPORATION, © 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Another problem the design team encountered was the strong resistance to the park concept from some people in Brooklyn. “There was a lot of acrimony in the beginning at these meetings,” remembers park designer Michael Van Valkenburgh, “probably more than at any park that I’ve ever made in my life—and we’ve built them all over the country. But there’s never been the level of acrimony that this one started out from.

  “You have to remember,” continues Van Valkenburgh, “that it hadn’t been that long since Elizabeth Barlow Rogers founded the Central Park Conservancy in 1980. She had completely dragged that park back from the total brink of disaster. It was just ruined. So the idea that a public space could be accessible and beautiful and calming was not a part of public consciousness. By culling out and isolating the different types of landscapes, we were able to allow people to talk about what they liked, rather than just venting about things that were frightening or worrisome.”48

  According to HR&A partner Candace Damon, who assisted in the organization and facilitation of the early charrettes, the public meetings were conducted in phases, a process that allowed park advocates to build consensus for the general idea of the park among the broader community before soliciting feedback on more specific and, in some cases, controversial features of the park design. The earliest meetings consisted of large public gatherings that were designed to introduce the entire Brooklyn community to the general concept and essential features of the proposed park. “After having completed some due diligence on our own [during the early meetings and negotiations of the LDC board],” explains Damon, “we went to the community and said, ‘Here’s what the land looks like. Here’s what we’re hoping to do. Here are some of the initial design issues.’ And then we gave them an opportunity to respond.”49

  Following the general presentations and discussions at the large public meetings, smaller meetings were held with disparate groups throughout Brooklyn as the discussions became more focused on the needs and concerns of particular neighborhoods and community residents. It was during this second phase that the park team began to reach out to specific groups and to focus on issues that were particularly controversial or about which it was difficult to build consensus, such as access, financing, and the appropriate balance between active and passive space.

  According to Damon, the Coalition played a particularly important role in expanding the reach of the planning process for the park into neighborhoods beyond Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill and in recruiting individuals from various age groups, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic positions to attend the charrettes. “I remember one of the charrettes that we co-organized with the Coalition,” recalls Damon, “with the specific intent of bringing in eighteen-year-olds, and we somehow managed to attract 150 kids. They were mostly from St. Ann’s, of course, but some Caribbean kids from Canarsie also somehow made it to the meeting. Leaving aside the obvious racial aspect [of a group of ethnic children visiting a park in Brooklyn Heights], there was also the whole issue of what was the best way for these kids to gain access to what was for them a strange site. I remember that we were debating the viability of building a bridge from Montague Street to the center of the site, an idea that had already ignited resistance from some elements of the community, and this Caribbean girl from Canarsie suddenly interjected, ‘If you build it, we’ll come. Regardless of the access. There are no other parks for us to go to. Just build it, and we’ll come.’ ”50

  Along with the hundreds of local residents who flocked to the meetings, the charrettes also quickly gained the attention of the elected officials and public authorities that would soon play an important role in the planning and construction of the park. “It wasn’t just about local neighborhood activists,” recalls Dick Dadey. “There were elected officials coming to these community-planning charrettes and seeing hundreds and hundreds of people excited about the prospect of Brooklyn Bridge Park and spending not just one night but several nights over the course of several months and really offering some great ideas. And seeing all this come together showed our public officials how serious the community was about making this happen and how committed we were to doing whatever was necessary to get government to act to build this park.”51

  “By the time we were done, we had thousands of people involved,” recalls Witty of the yearlong charrettes process. “You name it, we had it. People expressed concerns about everything imaginable. So, of course, we left issues open and weren’t able to satisfy everyone. And there finally came a point where we had to shut it down. Our attitude was that this wasn’t the end of the process. This was only the beginning.”52

  SEVEN

  TEARING DOWN THE BARBED WIRE

  “If you come, we will build it.”

  MARIANNA KOVAL

  WITH THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (LDC) in charge of the design and constru
ction of Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, having just led a successful citizens’ campaign for the inclusion in the park of the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, decided to focus its attention on building enthusiasm and support for the park, both among residents of Brooklyn and the rest of New York City and among the elected officials and public authorities whose ongoing financial support was essential for the park’s realization. The best way to build support for the park, Marianna Koval, executive director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, increasingly realized, was to get people onto the site where they could witness for themselves the spectacular views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline, the natural beauty of the landscape (the decaying piers and warehouses notwithstanding), and the invigorating experience of reclaiming a waterfront that had been virtually inaccessible to most of the borough’s residents for generations.

  Motivating local residents to experience the waterfront firsthand would be far easier said than done, however. The piers and the inter-bridge area, which were a lengthy walk from any of the adjoining neighborhoods or bus and subway stops, were generally viewed as dark, threatening places where residents rarely, if ever, ventured, with barricades or barbed-wire fences blocking the entrance of those who did.

  “When I came to the city in the 1970s to go to college,” explains Mark Baker of the borough’s residents’ simultaneous fascination with and aversion to the East River piers, “you didn’t go down to the waterfront. Right here [the current headquarters of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation (BBP Corporation) and Conservancy at 334 Furman Street, near Pier 6] was an abandoned building. But I lived four blocks away. It was barbed wire. So this was about tearing down the barbed wire.”1

  To overcome the public’s lack of knowledge about and fear of the waterfront, Koval recommended that the Coalition host a series of programmed activities that would motivate residents to visit the park site. “The way to get people [onto the park property],” she explains, “was to begin acting as if the park was already there—through programming and creating activities. It was cultural, recreational, educational, stewardship. How did you get people to feel ownership? Well, you get them down there doing something that’s for them.”2

  Koval and the other Coalition members viewed the organization’s new strategy to gain support for the park by bringing people to the site as supportive of and complementary to the LDC’s official mandate as the designer and developer of the park. “The Coalition is actively involved in the LDC planning effort,” explained Koval in the spring 2000 issue of the Coalition’s newsletter, Waterfront Matters. “Our goal is to help shape a plan that reflects the wishes of our constituent groups and possesses the benefits and economic reality that will enable us to convince public officials that it is a park worth funding. And that is the key. Brooklyn Bridge Park will become reality only if we obtain the political buy-in of the governor and the mayor, because only they have access to the funding—some $100 million—needed to create the basic infrastructure.”3

  MARIANNA KOVAL’S STRATEGY of building support for the park by bringing people to the waterfront proved to be enormously successful from the beginning. On June 7, 2000, the Coalition hosted a highly publicized event to open the park property to the public. Sunset Samba, as the event was advertised, was an organizational fund-raiser in the guise of a Brazilian carnival. More than 800 people crowded into and danced outside an enormous covered tent on Fulton Ferry Landing, directly opposite lower Manhattan across the East River.4

  “We put together a fund-raiser that Brooklyn had never seen before,” says Koval. “Up until this time, the Coalition had had little tiny benefits, but this was ‘big city.’ We put a tent up on Fulton Ferry pier, and [set designer] Mary Howard took all these ropes and stanchions, and then she created a grass walkway with sod. My dad got napkins, and [board member] Dick Dadey was rushing around doing things with the sod. We had Brazilian dancers with pasties. We got [River Café owner] Buzzy O’Keefe to do the caipirinhas. And it was fabulous.”5

  In addition to its success as a fund-raiser and publicity event, Sunset Samba served as a “victory party” for the Coalition, the LDC, and the entire waterfront movement, which had just received word of substantial financial commitments to park planning and development by both the borough and city governments. While the $72,000 raised from ticket sales and individual and corporate donations paled in comparison with the $14 million committed by Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden and the additional $50 million pledged by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (both contributions to be paid over four years), it marked the continuing commitment of the community to contribute to the park’s success.6

  “It is no longer a dream: Brooklyn Bridge Park will be built,” proclaimed Koval to those in attendance, expressing the gratitude of all those in the park movement to the elected officials who had helped make the funding possible, including City Council members Ken Fisher and Herb Berman, Mayor Giuliani, City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Deputy Mayor Tony Coles, and Borough President Golden.7

  Among those in attendance, the “hero of the hour” was Fisher, who had skillfully masterminded the negotiations for the funding from city government and who received a lengthy ovation from his fellow revelers.8 “I get a call from Joe Lhota,” remembers Fisher, reconstructing the interactions with city government that precipitated the significant financial commitment from Giuliani, “who was then the first deputy mayor. He was the former budget director. He lived on Pierrepont Street [in Brooklyn Heights], and his wife, Tamara, was the president of the Pierrepont Playground.

  “I said, ‘Joe, you’re not gonna believe this, but that son-of-a-bitch Howie Golden (because I knew the mayor and Golden hated each other, and by that point, I had had my own falling out with Howie) has put $14 million in the budget for Brooklyn Bridge Park. They’re gonna call this the frigging “Golden” Gate Park. You can’t let him get away with that.’

  “So he takes some time and then calls me back and says, ‘Do you need the $50 million all in one year?’ And I say, ‘No, I’ll take it over four years.’ And then he calls me back about a week later, maybe it was a little longer, and he says, ‘Okay, you got it.’ ”9

  One local hero was noticeably absent from Sunset Samba: Howard Golden, who had secured the $14 million of borough funds that Fisher was able to leverage in his informal negotiations with Lhota and Giuliani. Since the deliberate exclusion of the Coalition from the LDC at the time of its formation in 1998, little love had been lost between the borough president and the Coalition, whose members believed the organization had continued to exist in spite of Golden’s efforts to the contrary. In spite of his initial concerns about the proper use and security of the waterfront property during the early years of the park movement, however, Golden had become firmly committed to the park over time, and the dedication of $14 million of the borough’s money to the project was a crucial factor in the park’s realization.

  “If there’s anybody that deserves the statue [for the realization of the park],” insists Tom Montvel-Cohen, a political consultant who worked with the city government on the piers development during the late 1980s and later conducted a transportation study on behalf of the LDC, “it’s Howard Golden. At first, he wasn’t convinced about the importance of [Brooklyn Bridge Park] the way he was about the development projects at MetroTech and Atlantic Avenue, but once he was on board, he made it happen. The man was relentless in pursuing the difference-making projects that he felt were game changers.”10

  In addition to Golden’s undeniable importance to the funding and realization of the park, the Coalition played a critical role in ensuring that city funding was available for the project, both in its public activities and in its private negotiations with public officials behind the scenes. According to Koval, the funding that Fisher secured from the city would never have been available in the first place without the Coalition’s public campaign to halt the development of Two Trees Management’s multiplex in Dumbo (Down U
nder the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and to include the inter-bridge area, which was owned by the city, as a part of the park. “There had been a deal made with [David] Walentas that Brooklyn Bridge Park would stop at Pier 1 and not continue beyond the Brooklyn Bridge,” she explains. “And everyone was supposed to understand and toe that line, and the Development Corporation was only going to plan for Piers 1 to 5. The reason why [our success in undermining Walentas’s proposal] was so critically important is that, if the deal with Walentas had held, then there would have been no city land and the city would not have been a partner in the development of the park. And, of course, it was the city that put the first $50 million in.”11

  Coalition president Albert Butzel had also been working diligently behind the scenes, lobbying officials in state and city government to secure the necessary funding for the project. “The central effort was to try to get the state and the city to commit money to the park. I had a couple of advantages in that I had gotten to be quite close with Brad Race, who was Pataki’s chief of staff, and Charles Gargano, who was the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation [ESDC]. And over at the city, I had a pretty close friend, Tony Coles, who became the Deputy Mayor for Planning, Education and Cultural Affairs, and I spent a lot of time lobbying them for the money.