A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  Based on the public input from the hearings and the guidance of Bay Area Economics, a consulting firm, the CAH released the “Draft Report on Alternatives to Housing” the following February, which, after months of deliberations and private negotiations with the Bloomberg administration, eventually resulted in a modification of the revenue-generation plan for the park’s capital maintenance (a projected $16 million a year by the time of the agreement).

  Under the revised plan, publicly endorsed by Mayor Bloomberg on August 1, 2011, the city reaffirmed $55 million in capital funding in fiscal year 2013 for the construction of Pier 2 and the John Street site. According to the revised MOU, the size of the John Street development would be reduced based on the identification of $750,000 in new, annual revenues by the CAH. It also stipulated that the additional planned housing on Pier 6 would be potentially reduced or eliminated through a possible future rezoning and sale of other sites currently owned by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York. In the event that alternative funds were not secured by the end of 2013, the BBP Corporation would be allowed to issue requests for proposals for the residential development of the two Pier 6 properties.22

  The revised MOU relieved State Senator Daniel Squadron from the ominous prospect of exercising the veto of residential housing that he had been granted by the agreement of March 2010 between the city and the state. Without an alternative plan, the sudden removal of either the Pier 6 or the John Street residential project from the park financing plan would have undermined the ability to cover the cost of the park’s maintenance. With no revenue-generation proposal for the park’s maintenance in place, the city would almost certainly have shelved its plan for the construction of Pier 2, placing the realization of the entire park in jeopardy. Vetoing housing at the time would have ultimately resulted in the depiction of Squadron and his fellow state legislator Joan Millman (in the event that she also chose to veto the proposed housing) as obstructionists to the park. “What this agreement does,” explained Squadron at the time, “is propose a new, broader-base model—not as extreme as the plan that we’re changing, but a way to build a great new park in tough times.”23

  The revised MOU represented a win–win scenario for the Bloomberg administration, since it stipulated that either alternative funds for the park’s maintenance would be in place by the two-year deadline or that the BBP Corporation would be allowed to proceed with the Request for Proposals (RFP) process for the Pier 6 properties as originally planned. In a statement released to the press following the signing of the revised MOU, Mayor Bloomberg praised the agreement. “Our goal when we took control of the piers was to transform them into one of the world’s great waterfront parks,” he said, “and this agreement will enable us to realize that vision in its entirety.”24

  In addition to the potential reductions in the size of the residential developments, the deadline of January 1, 2014, represented a symbolic victory for housing opponents, as December 31, 2013, was the final day of the final term of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Activists in the anti-housing movement regarded the Bloomberg administration as the driving force behind the proposed residential development in the park. Many local housing opponents reasoned that, even if the Watchtower Society failed to sell enough real estate before 2014 to substantially reduce the proposed developments at Pier 6, the newly elected mayor, whatever his or her party affiliation or development policies, would inevitably be more sympathetic to their concerns than had Bloomberg.

  “Judi [Francis, of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund] disagrees,” acknowledged Cobble Hill anti-housing activist Dorothy Siegel, “but I’ll take my chances with the next mayor. Will the next mayor want to build housing at [Pier 6]?

  “Daniel Squadron and Joan Millman were able to potentially eliminate three-quarters of the housing in the park,” Siegel continued. “If Squadron had vetoed the plan, we would have lost the recreation and the $11 million that the mayor cut [which is now restored because of the deal]. The city would not have been obligated to do any more work in the park.”25

  Consistent with her uncompromising response to earlier negotiations and decisions on the role of housing in the park, Francis was unimpressed with the agreement that Squadron and Millman had achieved with the Bloomberg administration. “In today’s secret, back-room deal, Mayor Bloomberg exacted a high ransom from Brooklynites,” she said. “We urge Senator Squadron to use his veto over housing. Period.”26

  ON AUGUST 24, 2010, the BBP Corporation issued an RFP for “adaptive use” of the Tobacco Warehouse in the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. On November 17, it announced that it had entered into a provisional sublease agreement with St. Ann’s Warehouse, a Dumbo-based theater and performance group that occupied a space across Water Street from the Tobacco Warehouse that was scheduled for immediate demolition and redevelopment by Two Trees Management Company, to redevelop the property. The announcement provoked an immediate rift between local neighborhood activists, who questioned the appropriateness of locating an art and performance space in the midst of the park, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music and other representatives of the local arts community, which welcomed the use of the historic structure to support the arts and theatrical performance.

  In addition to the public’s concern about the appropriate use of the space, some residents voiced suspicion that the selection of St. Ann’s Warehouse had been determined in advance by the Bloomberg administration. In a public hearing in November, City Council member Steve Levin, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez questioned the fairness of the process through which the RFPs had been developed and issued and the lack of public participation in the proceedings.27

  The controversy intensified on March 21, 2011, when the Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA), the Fulton Ferry Landing Association, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and the Preservation League of New York State filed a federal lawsuit against the National Park Service, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar, and the BBP Corporation, asserting that the public authorities had illegally “de-mapped” the property from federally protected parkland (based on the spurious claim that both the Tobacco Warehouse and the Empire Stores had been “inadvertently overlooked” in the original federal map of the parkland) and requesting an injunction against the proposed development until the matter could be resolved by the court.28

  On April 8, 2011, District Court Judge Eric Vitaliano ruled that the Tobacco Warehouse could not be converted or renovated for use by St. Ann’s Warehouse. The project would remain on hold for an entire year, while the Bloomberg administration and the BBP Corporation negotiated a deal with several of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, with the assistance of State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblywoman Joan Millman. According to the terms of the agreement, the city donated a one-acre parcel beneath the Manhattan Bridge to be used as parkland, in exchange for which St. Ann’s Warehouse, which had signed a three-year lease with another location following the ruling of 2011, was allowed to proceed with its plans for construction on the site.

  As a part of that settlement,” explains BBP Corporation president Regina Myer, “the city designated two out-parcels from the city inventory, the Department of Environmental Protection Building and the Department of Transportation paint-storage building, as replacement parcels. This brings the Dumbo waterfront into park use, which was always a dream, and we’re finally going to achieve that.”29

  “The agreement does two things,” explained Squadron, who also ensured that the agreement included the creation of a special citizens committee to monitor the development of the site. “It’s a sign that process and community involvement are critical as we build open space, and it’s an expansion of a park that is transforming the city.”30

  WITH THE FUNDING AND GOVERNANCE ISSUES that had stalled the park’s progress in the past finally resolved, the task facing Regina Myer and the BBP Corporation was to maintain the momentum provided by the gala ribbon cutting at Pier 1.

  One of the
biggest challenges facing Myer and the BBP Corporation during the early years of construction and site openings involved the need to establish site control on Pier 6 and the inter-bridge area. “Piers 1 to 5 were all pretty clean in terms of site control,” Myer recalls, “but Pier 6 was not in our control. We had approvals [to develop the site], but we didn’t have site control until the summer of 2009. American Stevedoring was still here. We entered into contracts before we actually had site control, which is a little risky. The underlying property is owned by the city of New York and was under a lease through the Port Authority to American Stevedoring. We had to convince the Port Authority to tell its tenant to vacate.”31

  Even though Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park had been included in the master plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park, the acquisition of the nine-acre park in the inter-bridge area on June 20, 2009, was also a major challenge.32 According to Myer, “The state Parks Department didn’t give Empire–Fulton Ferry to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation until 2010. I worked on that with [New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation commissioner] Carol Ash. We worked together, with the understanding that BBP Corporation would build this park and move ahead with a great design that was funded.”33

  FIGURE 30

  Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park, with Jane’s Carousel and the Manhattan Bridge in the background, 2014.

  © ETIENNE FROSSARD, NEW YORK, N.Y.

  As Myer explains, developer David Walentas, who during the previous three decades had orchestrated the conversion of Dumbo into a thriving commercial and residential center while frequently finding his plans at odds with those of park advocates, provided the funding to upgrade the Empire–Fulton Ferry section of the park (figure 30). “This was at the same time that David and Jane [Walentas] were talking about their decision to build the carousel [the $9 million, twenty-six-foot glass pavilion that would later be erected near the shoreline at the Empire–Fulton Ferry section of the park],” recalls Myer, “and we made it as a condition to accept the donation of the carousel as long as the park would be upgraded. The Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park had been nominally upgraded for community use—and it was beloved, I should add—but it was never really designed. It had a boardwalk and a shoreline and a lot of scraggly grass and bushes. We convinced David and Jane to give us the money [approximately $4.5 million] to upgrade this park, which was wonderful, because it was not in our budget.

  “The last little thing we achieved under site control was at the foot of Old Fulton Street [in the inter-bridge area],” remembers Myer. “When I started at BBP, the plan included parking right in front of Fulton Landing pier. So I convinced all my friends in city government to move the street line, which improved the Water Street and the Old Fulton Street connection.”34

  In addition to the site-control negotiations, another important piece of the puzzle for Myer and the BPP Corporation involved the purchase of a 1.5-acre site on John Street in Dumbo from Consolidated Edison. “Before my time,” says Myer, “there had been a promise from Con Edison that they would donate the site to the park, and that promise went away for reasons unbeknownst to me. Because we have a development site in that part of the park as well, we were able to simultaneously put the development site out to bid while we had an option with Con Edison. So once we had a happy bidder [Alloy Development/Monadnock Development Partnership], we were able to pay Con Edison.”35 The combined purchase agreement and development contract, which was announced by Mayor Bloomberg on July 21, 2013, resulted in a forty-two-unit building, along with ground-floor retail space and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum annex, that will generate revenue for the ongoing operation and maintenance of the park.36

  WITH SITE CONTROL FINALLY ESTABLISHED throughout the park property by the summer of 2010 and much of the funding for development in place, the construction of the park continued to proceed unabated. “There was no doubt in my mind when we started the project that we did not have time to rethink the overall design,” explains Myer of her urgency to push the project forward. “We had to start building. People would come up to me and say, ‘What about this?’ and ‘What about that?’ But if we opened up one area for discussions, then something else would be opened and then something else and then something else. And then the whole thing would unravel, and it would take another four years to get started again. We had a very strong sense of urgency that we just had to build it. We had a beautiful design; we should just build it.”37

  The opening of Pier 1 was followed in June 2010 by the partial opening of Pier 6—which features beach-volleyball courts, concessionaires, a dog run, a marsh garden and other native plantings, four themed playgrounds, and the landing for the Governor’s Island Ferry—with additional sections of Pier 1 (3.5 acres) (figures 31–33) and Pier 2 (1.4 acres) following later in the year. Pier 5, which opened on December 13, 2012, features three athletic fields, two playgrounds, and a picnic area. The opening of the upland landscape and greenway of Piers 3 and 4 on November 13, 2013, provided the final connection in the park’s continuous greenway, along with the Granite Terrace and the first of the park’s “sound-attenuating” hills. Pier 2, which opened in the spring of 2014, features a wide variety of athletic and recreational facilities, including five full-size basketball courts, a roller rink, six handball courts, three shuffleboard courts, two bocce courts, a workout area, and a half-acre of open turf (figures 34 and 35). The northern end of the park was completed in the fall of 2015 with the opening of the John Street section, which features a 13,000-square-foot lawn and tidal pathways and a bouldering wall, and 99 Plymouth Street, home of the Conservancy’s Environmental Education Center, as well as an art gallery and a community space. At the park’s southern border, the remaining section of Pier 6 opened in October 2015 and features a central wildflower meadow and large lawns.

  FIGURE 31

  Snowy evening on Pier 1, 2014.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  FIGURE 32

  View of the Brooklyn Bridge from the lawn on Pier 1, 2014.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  FIGURE 33

  Evening on Pier 1, 2014.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  Each phase of construction, explains Myer, proceeded almost exactly according to the design in the General Project Plan of 2005. “There were so many aspects of the design that were just about perfect,” says Myer. “We have made improvements and refinements in certain areas such as the Pier 3 Greenway Terrace and the Pier 5 uplands, and we eliminated the water-garden system and hedged in the lawns on Pier 6, making it a much more open meadow instead, and we’re still working on the Squibb Bridge. But Pier 2 changed only very, very slightly, and the playgrounds on Pier 6 and Pier 5 are exactly as designed in 2005.”38

  FIGURE 34

  Pier 2 and uplands, ca. 1980.

  COURTESY OF BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK CONSERVANCY

  FIGURE 35

  Basketball court on Pier 2, 2014.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  FIGURE 36

  Main Street Playground, 2012.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  LIKE SEPTEMBER 11 and the financial crash of 2008, a catastrophic event would soon potentially threaten the park: on October 28 and 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy pounded the southern shoreline of New York City and Long Island, causing extensive flooding and wind damage to the entire area and resulting in the closing of bridges and tunnels and the suspension of subway service between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights and the other upland areas in Brooklyn were spared the brunt of the storm, but the Dumbo neighborhood in the inter-bridge area and the entire west Brooklyn waterfront were overwhelmed by flooding and violent winds, with major sections of the park immersed beneath several feet of saltwater.

  A few days after the storm, Regina Myer reported that the park had suffered “some flood damage,” including the lawns, the Swing Valley Playground on Pier 6, and the Main Street and Pier 1 playgrounds (figure 36), along with substantial damage to the electrical and irrigation equipment thr
oughout the park. Although all the park’s lawns were temporarily closed while the water subsided, the rest of the park was reopened within days, including the greenways, the dog runs, the picnic areas, and the ferry to Governor’s Island.39

  As the storm raged across the city, Jane’s Carousel, built in 1922 and housed in a $9 million, twenty-six-foot glass pavilion that had been erected on a three-foot platform thirty feet from the shoreline, was soon engulfed by the huge waves that pounded the waterfront. “Soon, with the constant waves crashing against the building, I could see the floor getting wet and the water rising,” said David Walentas, owner of Two Trees Management, who watched the storm’s progress with his wife and fellow donor, Jane, from the fifteenth-story window of their Dumbo apartment. “The only lights were in the carousel building. Then at 10:30 they started to flicker. And I said, ‘oh no.’ That’s when it was over.”40

  All told, Jane’s Carousel suffered $300,000 worth of damage from the storm, requiring the replacement of the structure’s electrical system and warped floors. Remarkably, the carousel and its irreplaceable wooden horses, along with the glass pavilion designed by Jean Nouvel, were left completely unscathed (figure 37). After having successfully endured Hurricane Sandy, however, the Walentases decided to be better prepared for the next storm. The following year, the pavilion was equipped with an “Aqua Fence” system, consisting of forty-four four-foot-high watertight panels that can be deployed to protect the property within three hours of a storm prediction.41