A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

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A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park Page 8

by Nancy Webster


  THE CB2 PIERS SUBCOMMITTEE held what would be the first of ten meetings on January 11, 1988. The subcommittee members were informed by a Port Authority representative attending the meeting that they would be given a three-month time frame (one month longer than the standard community board review process) to review the criteria and guidelines for the development of Piers 1–6 submitted by Beyer Blinder Belle and to establish their own community-based supplemental criteria to be included in the forthcoming RFP that would be sent to potential developers later in the year.39

  In contrast to the Port Authority’s expectations that CB2 would be receptive to its goals for Piers 1–6, the members of the CB2 Piers Subcommittee were resistant to plans for the commercial development of the piers from the start, openly questioning the proposed scale for residential development (“the propriety of calling for three million square feet of housing prior to any community input”), the limited three-month time frame for the community review, and the exclusive focus on financial profit in determining the appropriate use for the piers property.40

  Clearly caught off guard by the intensity of the questioning from Piers Subcommittee members, Philip LaRocco was defensive in his responses, particularly regarding the importance of financial profit in the proposed guidelines and criteria for developing Piers 1–6. “Financial return is a factor in this project,” responded LaRocco to an accusation that the Port Authority and the city emphasized profit at the expense of other public benefits in their goals for the waterfront property. “The public good is determined not only by recreational space, but by the creation of jobs through the development of commercial establishments. The Port Authority will consider a ‘matrix of possibilities’ to balance different interests.”41

  Hand, Pearsall, and the other BHA representatives on the CB2 Piers Subcommittee were encouraged by the direct and insightful questions that their fellow subcommittee members posed to LaRocco during the initial gathering. They quickly realized, however, that simply questioning the criteria and motivations of the Port Authority and its partners in city government would not be sufficient to thwart the Port Authority’s ambitions for lining the west Brooklyn waterfront with high-rise residential buildings. If the needs and interests of Brooklyn’s citizens were to be protected, the BHA Piers Committee would have to assume the responsibility for presenting the subcommittee with a compelling alternative for the use of Piers 1–6. The criteria for such a plan, along with illustrative schemes for its realization, had already been clearly laid out in BFHK’s study, which had been released in June. The challenge ahead was to expand BFHK’s criteria and recommendations beyond the conceptual stage, into a visual model that would capture the imaginations and address the concerns of the entire Brooklyn community.

  DURING 1987, Hand and Pearsall had continued to believe that the interests of the Brooklyn Heights community could be adequately protected by adopting provisions from the mixed-use “illustrative schemes” presented in the BFHK report, supplementing the “pure park” model of Scheme B with both the hotel and conference center described in Scheme C and “some portion of the 750 units of housing” provided in Scheme D. Not only would the model of an expansive park supplemented by a hotel, a conference center, and limited public housing satisfy the concerns and desires of most Brooklyn citizens, the two men reasoned, but it might also prove acceptable to the Port Authority and its counterparts in city government, now that they had begun to encounter broad public opposition to their own unilateral ambitions for commercial development. “With all the intellectual effort invested over the past year and a half in advancing the Committee’s thinking this far,” Pearsall would later reflect, “[we] might have been forgiven for believing that the course forward was both soundly conceived and clear.”42

  Hand and Pearsall’s continuing belief in the viability of a hybrid plan for Piers 1–6, with provisions for low- and medium-rise housing, was perfectly reasonable, based on the Piers Committee’s original goals in negotiating with the Port Authority (protecting the scenic view of the Manhattan skyline and preserving the cul-de-sac nature of Brooklyn Heights, while ensuring that at least some of the space was retained for public use).

  During the previous year and a half, however, the concept of a public park along the west Brooklyn waterfront had taken on a life of its own among many Brooklyn citizens, both within and beyond the membership of the BHA and the Piers Committee. A number of factors—including public discussions of the recently released BFHK report, the findings from Irene Janner’s study describing the critical need for recreational space throughout the borough, and growing support of the concept of a west Brooklyn waterfront park from the media—had suddenly made public aspirations for a park on the piers seem not only achievable but perhaps also inevitable for many residents, including Anthony Manheim and other members of the Piers Committee itself.

  Manheim, who had nurtured private ambitions for the public use of the piers property since his initial conversation with the Port Authority four years earlier, had been alert to the shift in public sympathy all along, and the growing public enthusiasm for a park on the piers had rekindled his original dreams for a grand public space along the waterfront beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.43 “Here you had a site that was literally at the center of the city,” Manheim remembers, “fifty acres of already publicly owned land that would never again be available. There was talk of park development in other places, but it all involved buying land from public owners. I think we all understood that this was a unique opportunity.”44

  On the evening of February 8, 1988, almost exactly a year after its first public hearing on the public authorities’ plans for the piers, the Piers Committee met once again with local community members in the undercroft of the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights. This time, however, the concerns and aspirations of a few local residents had swollen into broad-based and outspoken community support for a public park on the waterfront. In a matter of moments—and to the utter amazement of Hand and Pearsall—the terms of the debate had been completely transformed, with the balance of opinion shifting from a “hybrid” public–private development scheme to a “pure park” concept, with minimal tolerance for supplemental commercial development and no tolerance whatsoever for a plan that emphasized housing along the piers.

  “While no actual vote was taken,” remembers Pearsall, “it was clear enough from the voices of those who spoke out that housing was a dead letter not only for the purposes of a Piers Committee presentation to the CB2 Piers Subcommittee but also, unless reversed by the BHA board, as a matter of BHA strategic policy going forward.”45 At the Annual Meeting of the BHA, held the evening after the special Piers Committee meeting, Manheim enthusiastically reported to those in attendance, “The Committee strongly endorsed the concept of public benefit/public use as opposed to housing which, notwithstanding its financial benefits, is too exclusive.”46

  MEANWHILE, the CB2 Piers Subcommitee hearings continued unabated. In addition to their frustrations with the presentations at the hearings, the members’ resistance to the Port Authority’s plans for the commercial development of the piers was also inspired by an informal site visit arranged by the agency following the second subcommittee hearing. “The biggest mistake the Port Authority ever made,” remembers subcommittee member Irene Janner, “was in January. I guess they figured it was a horrible time to be out by the water. They got a little bus and we were allowed to go where no one had gone before—we were allowed to go out on a pier. Of course, that had always been closed off because they had a working waterfront. And they had a little bus for the community board on a Saturday, on a miserable January day, and they took us out and let us walk all the way out on Pier 2.

  “Well, they lost their fight right there,” concludes Janner, “because none of us had ever been out on the water. And as miserable as the weather was—what an experience! Literally being out on this pier all the way out into the East River. We loved it. They lost their battle right there.”47


  At the conclusion of the Piers Subcommittee meeting on March 30, just a few days before the three-month deadline for the subcommittee’s recommendations to be submitted to the public authorities in charge of the disposition of Piers 1–6, the eleven members who were present openly rebelled against the constraints that had been placed on them by the Port Authority and the insufficient time and information that they had been given for responding to the Port Authority’s proposal for the piers. To ensure that their responses and recommendations were fully informed about the Port Authority’s intentions and adequately represented the needs of the communities they represented, the subcommittee members demanded and voted unanimously in favor of indefinitely extending the scope and timeline for their work.

  In her closing remarks at the meeting, Chairwoman Ethel Purnell acknowledged that the Port Authority retained the legal option of issuing RFPs to potential developers and authorizing the development of the site without securing the approval of the local community board. Given the anemic condition of the development market at the time, however, and the dramatic decline in investor confidence in the outer boroughs as viable sites for development, both the subcommittee members and the public authorities fully recognized that a “no” vote (or even a non-vote) from CB2 would have a dampening effect on the RFP process, frightening away private developers already wary of the possibility of public resistance or unfavorable legal rulings to delay or restrict construction.

  Reluctant to begin the RFP process for Piers 1–6 without the formal endorsement of the local community board, the Port Authority reluctantly accommodated the CB2 Piers Subcommittee’s request for an extension. They refused an invitation from Purnell to reconvene the subcommittee meetings in April, however. It would be late July before the Port Authority and its partners in the Department of City Planning would finally agree to meet in person with the subcommittee again.

  Following the first CB2 Piers Subcommittee meeting on January 11, Scott Hand, Otis Pearsall, and Ted Liebman (the three BHA Piers Committee representatives on the Piers Subcommittee) began discussing the possibility of presenting the subcommittee with a viable alternative to the Port Authority’s expansive housing-development scheme for Piers 1–6. With the support of the Piers Committee, Liebman reached out to Terry Schnadelbach, founder and principal partner of the highly respected Schnadelbach Partnership. A landscape architect with extensive experience in environmental planning and urban design, Schnadelbach was the past recipient of numerous awards in urban and landscape design. Schnadelbach, who had worked with Liebman in the past, was immediately intrigued by the challenge of countering the public authorities’ plans for the private development of Piers 1–6 and of bringing the Piers Committee’s vision of a west Brooklyn waterfront park to life.

  Working closely with the Piers Committee, Schnadelbach completed his plan, “Harbor Park: A Maritime and Public Use Development on the Brooklyn Piers,” by late May. Building on the mixed-use “illustrative schemes” in the BFHK study, the Harbor Park plan included extensive open spaces and playing fields, shaded sitting areas, interactive waterfalls, a skating rink, a conference center and hotel, an expansive marina (with a permanently docked “boatel”), and a continuous walkway providing park visitors with easy access to all the site’s features (figure 10).48 Of vital importance for the current debate with the public authorities, Schnadelbach’s recommendations also featured colorful visual illustrations of the proposed park area, including an aerial view of the entire property, a view of the park from the perspective of lower Manhattan across the East River, and a view looking northward from the marina and upland playing fields between Piers 3 and 5, including the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and the western boundary of Brooklyn Heights.

  FIGURE 10

  The Port Authority approach versus the Brooklyn Heights “Harbor Park” approach to the redevelopment of the piers, as illustrated in the New York Times, August 19, 1988.

  COURTESY OF NEW YORK TIMES

  Aware that the Piers Committee was preparing an alternative proposal for Piers 1–6 and still not ready to present their own plans, the Port Authority and the city repeatedly delayed the next round of hearings, cancelling scheduled meetings in April and June before finally agreeing to present their plan for the piers on July 27. In addition to the Piers Subcommittee members, a roomful of reporters, consultants, BHA members, and more than forty representatives of the general public were on hand to hear Eileen Daly, from the Port Authority’s Department of World Trade and Economic Development, and Bill Woods, the director of the Brooklyn office of the Department of City Planning, present the public authorities’ plans for the commercial development of the Brooklyn piers. Although Beyer Blinder Belle had reportedly been commissioned to guide the Port Authority and the city’s design for the waterfront, representatives from the firm were conspicuously absent from the presentation.

  As the subcommittee members and others in attendance listened in disbelief, Daly and Woods presented four separate but virtually identical designs for the piers and adjacent upland areas, each one crowding more than thirty buildings representing more 3 million square feet of residential space (approximately 2,200 to 2,800 apartments) onto the fifty-five acres of waterfront property.49 A grand total of five acres (less than 10 percent of the site) was reserved for open or recreational space, including two baseball diamonds and a rooftop tennis court. Five of the proposed structures were fifteen stories high, sufficient to obscure the view of the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge and much of the view of the Manhattan skyline, and plans were also included for a pedestrian walkway that would join the Promenade at Montague Street and essentially abolish the cul-de-sac design of Brooklyn Heights.

  “The worst fears of Brooklyn Heights are realized in the planned development of the piers below the Promenade by the Port Authority and New York City,” wrote Henrik Krogius, reflecting the anger and disbelief of those in attendance. “Short of openly violating the zoning view plane, which protects the major part of the view from the Promenade, and short of filling in the water between the piers, they have wrung virtually every bit of buildable space out of that limited area, even to the extent of building condominiums out on the piers themselves.”50

  On August 3, exactly a week later, representatives of the BHA Piers Committee assembled to present the CB2 Piers Subcommittee with their alternative plan for Piers 1–6.51 The centerpiece of the Piers Committee proposal was the presentation of “Harbor Park,” the report by architect Terry Schnadelbach. Linking his vision for the park to the grand urban designs of Frederick Law Olmsted and Robert Moses, Schnadelbach provided the CB2 Piers Subcommittee members with an illustrated walk through the site, carefully explaining the rationale for the positioning of each of the integrated features while making constant reference to the vivid, colored drawings included in the report. As many of those in attendance would later recall, the contrasting visual images of the park—more than any other factor—established Harbor Park as the inevitable choice for the use of Piers 1–6.

  “The power of the image has been crucial throughout this process to get people on board in supporting the park concept,” explains Piers Committee member David Offensend. “Over the years, each step of the way, we’ve always had a picture. This is what it’s going to look like. It has the advantage of making it look real, and everybody looks at it and goes, ‘Ah, I like that.’ So, you know, it’s not just a concept.”52

  In the days that followed, the Port Authority and the Department of City Planning did their best to counter the enthusiasm of the Piers Subcommittee members and other Brooklyn residents for the Harbor Park design, focusing on what they claimed to be the prohibitive cost of building and maintaining a vast public space on the piers. “To be responsible, you must propose something that’s feasible,” Allen Morrison, a senior information officer at the Port Authority, explained to David Dunlap of the New York Times. “We have yet to see any evidence that it can be built.”53

  On November 14, when the Piers
Subcommittee reconvened to vote on the competing proposals for Piers 1–6, the outcome was all but certain. A few days earlier, Pearsall had provided Ethel Purnell and each of the subcommittee members with a six-page resolution, meticulously contrasting the two proposals while highlighting the benefits of the Harbor Park plan, along with letters of endorsement and support from organizations outside Brooklyn Heights that Anthony Manheim had spent the previous four months securing.54

  After more than ten months of hearings and deliberations, the subcommittee members voted overwhelmingly (12 for, 0 against, and 1 abstaining) in favor of a motion rejecting the housing plan for the piers proposed by the Port Authority and approving the “mixed public use plan” proposed by Schnadelbach and the BHA Piers Committee.55 Two weeks later, on November 28, the CB2 Planning and District Development Committee reaffirmed the Brooklyn community’s support for a public park on Piers 1–6, with all twelve members in attendance rejecting the Port Authority’s proposal for the commercial development of the piers and supporting the BHA Piers Committee’s Harbor Park concept.56

  Although the vote was nonbinding, the rebuke by the CB2 Piers Subcommittee had temporarily brought to a halt the Port Authority and the city’s ambitions for the commercial development of Piers 1–6. The subcommittee hearings had also drawn a wide variety of citizens from outside the Brooklyn Heights community into the waterfront debate, broadening support for a park on the piers to include representatives of other Brooklyn neighborhoods; leaders of a diverse group of local, city, and state organizations; and politicians such as Assemblywoman Eileen Dugan and State Senator Martin Connor. And the growing public support of a “pure park” concept, with little, if any, allowance for supplementary commercial development, signaled a significant shift from the diplomatic style of Hand and Pearsall to a less compromising and more confrontational approach to engagement with the public authorities.

 

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