A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  To date, however, no substantive research had been conducted to determine a viable plan for the property using the traditional indicators for urban development (environmental impact, land use, technical and engineering requirements, zoning and regulatory constraints, market potential), nor (apart from Halcyon’s ill-fated international city) had any specific plans been submitted for the consideration of public officials, potential investors, or the general public. The Port Authority and the city’s strategy was simply to opt for private development in advance and then hope for the best, both in the results of the environmental impact and engineering reviews to follow and in the interest of potential developers.

  TWO

  FIGHTING BACK

  “No one else was doing planning. The Port Authority wasn’t, and the city wasn’t. There was no such thing as a citywide waterfront plan.”

  ANTHONY MANHEIM

  THE DECISION TO COMMISSION A PLANNING STUDY for the piers property and the commitment to a more aggressive public campaign inevitably involved substantial changes in the size, organization, and skill set of the Waterfront Committee of the Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA). Since its creation by Anthony Manheim in late 1983, the committee “had functioned as a small, hands-on operating unit,” occasionally adding another member to provide assistance with a specific issue or concern.1 In the face of the Port Authority and the city’s rapidly evolving ambitions for the development of the piers and the increasing concern of local media and residents, the committee members soon realized that they simply lacked the financial resources, expertise, and influence throughout the broader Brooklyn community to keep pace with the challenges with which they were confronted on a day-to-day basis. If the Brooklyn Heights community was to have any hope of ensuring that its interests were protected in the current rush to development, a new committee was needed with a significantly expanded membership and clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

  The Committee for the Redevelopment of the Brooklyn Piers (more commonly known as the Piers Committee) was formed and convened in August 1986, with Scott Hand as chair and Anthony Manheim and Otis Pearsall as vice chairs. Manheim proposed the name for the new committee, the term “redevelopment” carefully chosen to counter “any possible identification of the committee as ‘anti-development zealots,’ ” a pejorative that the Brooklyn Paper had used to caricature opponents of local development projects in the past.2

  Within a few months, the small, ad hoc Waterfront Committee had been transformed into the broad-based, influential forty-eight-member Piers Committee, which included leaders in business and financial management such as John Watts and John S. Wadsworth Jr.; respected journalist Henrik Krogius; John Dozier Hasty, publisher of the Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News; Carol Bellamy, president of the City Council and mayoral candidate; novelist Norman Mailer; and Martin Segal, founder of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

  “There was nobody you couldn’t get to by knowing someone in Brooklyn Heights,” remembers Manheim of the relative ease with which he and his colleagues were able to recruit the highly qualified membership for the committee. “If you wanted to arrange a meeting with the governor of Washington, there would be someone in the Heights whose sister’s daughter had a friend who knew somebody who knew him.”3

  By the end of the year, the Piers Committee had also gained the nominal endorsement and support of the fourteen-member Advisory Committee, which included the Municipal Art Society, the Parks Council, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Open Space Coalition, Brooklyn Community Boards 2 and 6, and representatives of the various neighborhood associations from the other communities surrounding the piers.

  Hand, Manheim, and Pearsall worked diligently during the last months of 1986 to get the Piers Committee up and running and to reassure the Brooklyn Heights community that they now had sufficient leverage with the Port Authority and its partners in city government to ensure that their community’s interests were protected in the dispossession and development of the piers. During this period, however, Port Authority and city officials seemed to be going out of their way to convince the media, the general public, and local politicians that they had no intention of respecting the community’s concerns in their ambitions for the private development of the piers.

  In his annual report to the mayor, New York City’s Waterfront: A Plan for Development, released in July 1986, James Stuckey, executive director of the New York City Public Development Corporation (PDC), openly acknowledged his agency’s willingness to modify existing zoning restrictions in the private development of the city’s abandoned waterfronts. “To this day, most waterfront property continues to be zoned in such a way as to effectively prevent development,” Stuckey reported, explaining the need to take the necessary legal actions to change or suspend current restrictions. “While the implementation of new zoning will require several years, we believe it will serve to eliminate a tremendous amount of ambiguity and, in the long run, facilitate both public and private efforts to develop the city’s waterfront.”4

  Public announcements of the city’s intention to override existing zoning restrictions quickly attracted the attention of journalists and political leaders, both in Brooklyn Heights and throughout New York City. In August, a New York Times editorial by Brooklyn journalist and Piers Committee member Henrik Krogius introduced the concerns of the Brooklyn Heights community and the surrounding neighborhoods to a much broader audience. Citing both the Port Authority’s right to seek exemptions from municipal zoning restrictions and the vulnerability of the unprotected properties immediately outside the scenic zone to high-rise development, Krogius openly questioned the commitment of the Port Authority and its counterparts in city government to preserve the existing views of the East River and the Manhattan skyline. “To diminish so remarkable an achievement and to spoil a public view that is nothing less than a national treasure would seem unthinkable,” Krogius wrote. “However, in this age of the unthinkable there’s a real danger of ill-conceived development.”5

  IN RESPONSE TO THE PORT AUTHORITY and the city’s failure to provide a reasonable development plan for the piers property, the Waterfront Committee decided to commission its own planning study. As BHA president Earl Weiner explained to his membership at the time, it was imperative that the Waterfront Committee come up with a plan of its own in the early stages of the development process and “not have to react to someone else’s plan well down the line when the possibilities for modifications and change are remote.”6

  In the spring of 1986, Waterfront Committee chair Scott Hand again solicited the assistance of Ted Liebman to determine the appropriate scope and rationale for an independent planning study for the development of the piers and to identify potential consulting firms with the experience and credibility to conduct the study. Hand followed up by mailing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to ten consulting firms, followed by a second round of invitations during the summer. As Hand explained in his letter to potential consultants, the proposed study was to reflect the priorities and expectations not only of Brooklyn Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods but also of the entire city.7 In late August, the Selection Sub-Committee (consisting of Manheim, Pearsall, Hand, and local architects Ted Liebman, Fred Bland, and Michael Zisser) selected the New York City planning and design firm Buckhurst Fish Hutton Katz (BFHK) as the consultant for the planning study.8 Among the factors that resulted in the selection of BFHK was the firm’s extensive experience conducting planning, zoning, and economic-feasibility studies for New York City, including recent projects at Snug Harbor and Bay Street Landing on Staten Island, the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal, and the Riverwalk development at East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan.

  Predictably, Philip LaRocco, Director of World Trade and Economic Development at the Port Authority, and his counterparts in city government were opposed to the idea of an independent planning study commissioned by the residents of the affected community. In a meeting with the committee leaders at the Port
Authority headquarters in July, LaRocco urged that the committee defer from retaining a consultant until after the Port Authority had selected its own developer for the site, “when collective attention could be focused on fleshing out and refining that developers’ proposals.”9 With each new encounter with the Port Authority, it became increasingly clear that community input was to be limited to choosing among preestablished options, not actively contributing to the planning and design process.

  In a letter to LaRocco announcing the selection of BFHK to conduct the piers planning study, Waterfront Committee chair Scott Hand managed to turn the table on the past attempts by the Port Authority and its Halcyon consultants to portray representatives of the waterfront movement in Brooklyn Heights as a small group of self-interested elites with little concern for the public good. Hand’s measured comments instead suggested that it was the Port Authority, in its single-minded commitment to financial profit—not the Brooklyn Heights community—that was actually turning its back on the greater public good. The forthcoming planning study, Hand insisted, “may not necessarily be the one that returns the largest immediate cash return to the Port Authority but nevertheless may well earn highest public benefit over time.”10

  In spite of the public authorities’ resistance, the Piers Committee continued unabated with its planning study for the piers property. A working group met regularly throughout late 1986 and early 1987 with BFHK partner Ernest Hutton to prepare a preliminary presentation of the findings and recommendations from the planning study at the Annual Meeting of the BHA in February.

  On February 5, 1987, two weeks before the Annual Meeting, a special joint meeting of the BHA board of governors, the Piers Committee, and the Advisory Committee was held in the undercroft of First Unitarian Church at 50 Monroe Place in Brooklyn Heights. The purpose of the meeting was to provide the BHA governors and committee members with an advance briefing on the findings and recommendations from the BFHK study and to allow the association’s leaders to prepare collectively for the open community discussion that would follow the presentation of the study at the Annual Meeting.

  The meeting was notable for a passionate, impromptu presentation by Piers Committee member Benjamin Crane, a Wall Street lawyer and forty-year resident of Brooklyn Heights. Along with many other Brooklyn Heights residents, Crane was disturbed by the Port Authority’s refusal to provide assurances that the neighborhood’s scenic view would be protected in the forthcoming development of the piers as well as by recent rumors circulating throughout the neighborhood that much of the waterfront property would be devoted to luxury condominiums. The sudden increase in the Heights population that would inevitably be generated by the construction of multiple high-rise condominiums along the waterfront was a particularly unappealing prospect for many residents, who were originally drawn to the neighborhood by its quiet streets and sidewalks and tranquil public spaces. “I’d lived in the Heights for forty years and close to the Promenade for most of that time,” Crane recalls. “So this notion of the Port Authority, that they wanted to have housing down on the piers, came as a dreadful shock.”11

  Shortly before the meeting, Crane, who had been only nominally involved in the Piers Committee up until this point, visited the local public library, where he discovered some provocative information about the availability of both parks and recreational space in the borough of Brooklyn and the statutory rights and responsibilities of the Port Authority.

  “I had had absolutely no role in anything of this sort before this meeting,” Crane acknowledges. “I had a couple of days off, and so I looked up a couple of things. I looked up the availability of parks in Brooklyn and found that Brooklyn was severely underparked, certainly compared to Manhattan.

  “And then I looked up the statute creating the Port Authority,” he continues. “I’m a lawyer and that’s what you do. And I looked up the statute, which said they could do this and they could do that and they could appropriate things, but they could not do housing. There was a specific prohibition on the Port Authority doing housing.

  “So I stood up in the meeting and gave them my report on the results into the research on the Port Authority’s authority and the real need for park space in Brooklyn, and I also made the argument that you can’t say, ‘no,’ forever, and we must have a goal. And because of the under-parked situation in Brooklyn, the perfectly logical goal for Brooklyn Heights was to go for a park. And that really spread widely in the neighborhood.”12

  Crane’s unexpected presentation captured the current public mood on two important levels. In the first place, he openly challenged the Port Authority’s right to dispose of the piers for private development, particularly for housing. To date, all of the committee’s negotiations with the Port Authority and the city had been based on the presupposition that some type of private development of the piers was a foregone conclusion. The Brooklyn Heights community could and should work diligently to mitigate the negative impact of private development by protecting its historic view and the tranquil, cul-de-sac design of the neighborhood, the committee members had reasoned, but there was nothing that could realistically be done to stop private development altogether. For many Brooklyn Heights residents, however, the trustworthiness and the authority of the Port Authority and its partners in city government were no longer simply taken for granted.

  Second, Crane expressed the growing conviction among many in the Brooklyn Heights community that the waterfront property should be devoted primarily to public, not private, interests—and that a park was the most natural and appropriate way to serve the public good. While the discussions between the BHA Waterfront and Piers Committees and the Port Authority had always included some public access and use of the site, allowances for park and recreational space had been minimal to date. What was needed, many Heights residents believed, was a park—not a massive private development with token public space here and there.

  While many of those in attendance at the meeting on February 5 recognized that Crane’s call for a community-owned and -sponsored public park was neither politically nor financially feasible under the current circumstances, Crane’s demand that the property be devoted to the public good and that the Brooklyn Heights community should assume greater control of the development process deeply resonated with many of the community’s residents—and would have a profound impact on the future development of the waterfront property.13

  TWO WEEKS LATER, on February 24, 1987, more than 400 people crowded into St. Ann’s Church to hear Ernest Hutton’s presentation about what could and should be done with the piers. Recognizing that many in the crowd might be unfamiliar with the history of the Piers Committee’s negotiations with the Port Authority, BHA president Earl Weiner’s opening remarks emphasized the inevitability of at least some level of private development of the piers and the importance of continuing to work cooperatively with the Port Authority and its partners in city government in finalizing a plan for the waterfront. In commissioning a plan for the piers, the BHA itself was not advocating development, he explained: “We are forced, however, to consider development because of the Port Authority’s stated intention to develop the piers in conjunction with the city.”14

  Hutton began his presentation by identifying six criteria that he and his partners had used to guide their plans for the waterfront:

  1 Preserving and enhancing the area’s unique view of the Manhattan skyline

  2 Maintaining maritime use of the piers

  3 Enhancing public access and use of the waterfront area

  4 Ensuring environmentally sensitive development

  5 Providing character, quality, and scale compatible with the surrounding historic district

  6 Providing uses appropriate to the local and regional context 15

  Next Hutton introduced four “illustrative schemes” for developing the waterfront property along Piers 1–6.

  Scheme A involved an enhanced working waterfront, which could provide the area with traditional maritime services t
hat had been displaced by other local development projects. Scheme B—the one that predictably caused the greatest stir among those in attendance—proposed the dedication of the entire waterfront property, including the available upland areas, as a “Major Public Park.” The proposed park would feature a balanced mix of active and passive recreational space, along with a park-length pedestrian walkway, a museum, a performing arts center, a boat basin, and public restaurants. Scheme C described a “Moderate Mixed-Use Development,” preserving much of the active and passive recreational space of the second scheme, while adding a hotel/conference center. Finally, Scheme D, which called for “Intensive Mixed-Use Development,” added 750 units of residential housing.

  In the question-and-answer session that followed Hutton’s presentation, Piers Committee chair Scott Hand explained that the committee’s goal in commissioning the planning study was to fulfill a crucial responsibility that the Port Authority and the city had repeatedly neglected to take on—providing the community and potential developers with viable development models from which to choose. “Our goal is not to endorse any specific plan,” he insisted, “but to suggest ideas for the responses of residents.”16

  With the public presentation and subsequent positive media coverage of the findings from the BFHK planning study, the Piers Committee had gained the upper hand from the Port Authority and the city in the public debate about the future of the Brooklyn waterfront.17 In the wake of the public presentation by Benjamin Crane and the barrage of newspaper editorials openly questioning the reliability of the Port Authority and the city as a partner for developing the piers, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Piers Committee would have to pay far more attention to the fears and aspirations of the community itself if it was to be successful in its ongoing negotiations with the Port Authority.