A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  The Coalition’s objections to the LDC were compounded by a disagreement over the $1 million grant that Connor and Millman had recently secured to fund the new organization. Coalition president Anthony Manheim and other Coalition members maintained that the newly appropriated funds were actually a continuation of the remaining funds that Connor and Dugan had received the previous year. According to Manheim, Dugan had privately assured him at the time of the $500,000 award that the entire $1.5 million was “intended wholly” for use by the Coalition.25 The previous March, Manheim had submitted a $1.5 million budget grant proposal to Frank McNally, counsel of the UDC, to support the Coalition’s planning, education, and advocacy activities on behalf of the piers.26 The proposal was not granted, however, and the LDC was formed a few months later, its funding provided by what Manheim believed to be money intended for the Coalition.

  According to Connor, however, Dugan had originally intended the funds that she secured from the state budget to be used by a special Waterfront Task Force created by Borough President Howard Golden—and not by the Coalition. “In 1996,” recalls Connor, “the Assembly had extracted from the governor a lot of capital money through UDC [Urban Development Corporation], which is now called ESDC [Empire State Development Corporation]. And Eileen called me up as we were doing the budget and said, ‘I got a commitment for a million bucks, and I’m going to give it to the Brooklyn Waterfront Task Force,’ which was something that Howie Golden had set up a couple of years before. It hadn’t really done anything, but it was there.

  “Eileen called me up that summer,” says Connor of a conversation he had with Dugan after she was diagnosed with cancer, “and she said, ‘You have to promise me one thing if anything happens to me, if I don’t make it.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘Don’t you let Tony Manheim and the Coalition get my million dollars.’ And I’ve never told anyone this before, because she passed away and I didn’t want to say anything. And I’ve endured years of Tony saying that I stole his million dollars.

  “She never intended for them to get the money,” concludes Connor. “If she had intended for them to have it, she would have put ‘Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition’ into the budget.”27

  WITH THE MAJORITY OF LOCAL RESIDENTS either unaware of or unconvinced by the reasoning behind the LDC’s governance structure, news of the exclusion of the Coalition from any and all involvement in the public entity that it had labored so diligently to achieve ignited a fury of protests throughout the Brooklyn Heights community, as well as among the representatives of the sixty-one local, city, and state organizations contributing to its membership. In addition to the exclusion of the Coalition from its leadership, many park supporters were also disturbed to learn that the LDC’s mandate also denied the use of its funding to plan for waterfront development on the property between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges owned by Manhattan real-estate developer David Walentas.

  Gary VanderPutten, a local activist from the Fulton Ferry neighborhood and a Coalition board member since 1995, remembers how he first learned about the creation of the LDC and its goals for the Brooklyn piers. “I get a call from Joan Millman, my assemblywoman, who knows me very well,” says VanderPutten, “and she says, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got $1.5 million and we’re going to form a local development corporation under the ESDC. And we’re going to start the park process. But we’re only doing Piers 1 to 5, because 6 was still considered a parcel for commercial use by the International Longshoremen’s Association. And we’re not doing the inter-bridge sector; Walentas is going to do that. We’re going to have a new board, and it’s going to have representation from public officials and the local community. We want you to be on it. And we also feel there’s no need for the Coalition to exist anymore. That’s what we’re doing, and we’d like your support on it.’ And, of course, I didn’t support it. But we did end up losing some really valuable people, including the entire Cobble Hill contingent on the Coalition board.”28

  At an emergency meeting held on January 13, 1998, at the First Presbyterian Church on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, Borough President Howard Golden and Brooklyn Heights City Council member Ken Fisher did their best to maintain order among a crowd of angry Brooklyn Heights residents, many of whom were troubled by the exclusion of the Coalition from the LDC and threatened to withhold their support from the newly formed organization. Order was finally restored and public endorsement of the LDC achieved when Fisher, after trying to persuade those in attendance that the Coalition had been properly excluded from the leadership of the LDC because of its lack of “accountability to anyone” in dispersing public funds or making decisions about the planning and construction of the park, offered his own seat on the LDC board to John Watts of the Coalition. Only after the announcement of the inclusion of Watts (and hence the Coalition) on the LDC board did the Brooklyn Heights Association and the Fulton Ferry Landing Association agree to participate as well.29

  “Howie Golden put me in a very difficult position early in my first term,” recalls Fisher of the Brooklyn Heights community’s initial response to the announcement of the creation, membership, and funding of the LDC. “There was an important meeting held at the Presbyterian Church to discuss what Brooklyn Heights was going to do. It was certainly an important meeting for me, because I could see my political future passing before my eyes.

  “I remember the meeting pretty clearly,” he continues. “It was a packed house. I went in and deliberately sat down in the middle without making a fuss about being there. People were alternating between being outraged and wanting to know what I was going to do about it. I think that most people didn’t even realize that I was there. I was the new kid on the block, and expectations were higher for me than they were for the other elected officials.

  “I found myself in a position where I actually got to decide what I thought was important, because I was caught between these two important constituencies: the borough president, who was my most important political supporter, on one side and the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, which was one of my most important constituents, on the other side. I didn’t know what I was going to say until I stood up and said it. What I said was, ‘I didn’t think it was appropriate for the Coalition or any private organizations to control the money, because these were public funds and, at the end of the day, we [the elected officials] were all accountable and they [the Coalition] weren’t.’ On the other hand, since I had an appointment to the LDC, I was prepared to nominate John Watts, who was a co-chair of the Coalition, as my representative.”30

  Even after Fisher’s generous concession, the lack of regard shown to the Coalition by Golden and the other elected officials was devastating for Manheim and the other Coalition members—though not completely unexpected. “The Local Development Corporation that the government created included no role for us—zero role,” explains Mark Baker. “But the history of the Coalition has always been that government is constantly coming up to us and saying, ‘You guys have done great work. Now we’ll take it from here.’ I can’t tell you how many ‘We’ll take it from here’ conversations we’ve had. And here they were saying it again, ‘We’ll take it from here.’ ”31

  The attempt to exclude the Coalition from participation in the LDC was also intended as a rebuttal of Manheim and his leadership of the emerging movement for a park on the west Brooklyn piers. For the past several years, Manheim’s public indictments of the public entities in control of the piers and private challenges of elected officials to live up to their commitments had enabled the Coalition to overcome the forceful opposition of the Port Authority, the Department of City Planning, and the Public Development Corporation to the park concept, as well as potentially crippling delays from the UDC in the adoption of the principles to guide the formation of the park. In spite of his undeniable achievements, however, Manheim’s outspokenness and increasingly strident tone had also angered many of those whom he had criticized or held accountable.

  “It wa
s around this same time that I got a call from the borough president, whom I’d only met through the ribbon-cutting ceremonies I’d attended,” remembers VanderPutten. “All of a sudden, I get word that he wants to meet with me. And so I go down to Borough Hall in the borough president’s office to meet him, and I think to myself, ‘This must be very important.’ And he starts to talk, and it’s like the scene out of Network when Ned Beatty comes in and says, ‘You are meddling with the primal forces of the universe!’ And Golden says, ‘There’s a single reason why this is not going to go anywhere with your organization, and it’s because of Tony Manheim.’ ”32

  According to others on the Coalition, the elected officials’ decision regarding the governance of the LDC was more than just a rejection of Manheim. “There was hostility and a lot of it was directed at Tony, but it was really about us,” insists Baker. “Who were we to say what ought to happen on the site? Our authority was definitely being questioned.

  “When we were small and the idea was new,” continues Baker, “it wasn’t threatening to anybody. But when the idea began to gain currency and people began to say, ‘Yeah, there should be a park down there,’ then all of a sudden people were saying, ‘Why are they in charge?’ ”33

  THROUGHOUT THIS CHALLENGING PERIOD, Manheim continued to work faithfully toward the realization of Brooklyn Bridge Park, appearing at the Coalition’s office at 75 Montague Street every day with his assistant, Barbara Brookhart, to request funding from members of the local community, write letters to elected officials and public authorities, and review plans and recommendations for the park.

  On February 26, 1997, the Coalition released the Economic Viability Study: Piers Sector, Brooklyn Bridge Park, which included a real-estate and market-conditions overview, a construction-cost estimate, a financial-feasibility analysis, and an economic-benefits analysis for the proposed park. The six-month study, which was funded by the $250,000 grant provided to the Coalition by Governor Pataki in 1995, had been undertaken by the real-estate consulting firm Praedium Group, the accounting firm Ernst & Young, and Federman Design + Construction Consultants. The study was based on interviews conducted with seventy-five individuals, including government representatives; hotel and conference operators and developers; directors, promoters, and developers of amateur-sports operations and facilities; real-estate and professional developers; marina operators and developers; and restaurant and catering operators and developers.34

  The findings from the study, which were shared with elected officials and other attendees at the Brooklyn Bridge Park “Coming of Age” benefit on March 29, reported extensive market support for the specific features of the park plan (including strong interest from national and local companies in operating the hotel, marina, restaurants, skating rink, and other recreational facilities proposed in the park plan), the potential for adequate cash flow to cover the ongoing maintenance of the park (with projected annual revenues of $4 million, compared with an estimated $3.4 million annual maintenance cost), and a variety of public economic benefits that would result from the proposed use of the property (including $100 million of increased economic activity for the borough, the creation of 1,200 permanent jobs, and $25 million in annual tax revenues).35

  IN SPITE OF THE POSITIVE FINDINGS from Praedium’s study, Manheim was reportedly demoralized by the legal impasse with the Strober Organization and the rejection of the Coalition by the elected officials in charge of the formation of the LDC. In response to past snubs or disappointments, he had always become more determined and outspoken in his support for the park. Now, after almost fifteen years as the central figure in the waterfront park movement, he began to withdraw from the day-to-day challenges of the Brooklyn piers movement.

  As Mark Baker recalls, the first real sign of the shift in Manheim’s attitude toward the Coalition involved an argument over a boiler. “We got this building [the headquarters of the park and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy on 334 Furman Street] when I settled the lawsuit with the Port Authority over Strober,” Baker explains. “It was our first footprint on the site, and I thought it was critical for us to be there. How could we pass up on this opportunity to sit on the site in a building we’re being given? How could we pass that up?

  “It was a real test of our organization as to our ability to take this building over,” Baker continues, “and Tony fought it. He didn’t want to do it. He was at the end, and here I’m saying, ‘Look, the Port Authority is offering us this abandoned building. And why don’t we take it? We’ll put our offices in there, and we’ll be on the site finally.’ And he’s like, ‘How much work is that?’ He was just ready to go, and here was this new project, which meant that the organization would continue.”36

  WITH THE COALITION MARGINALIZED from the public entity on behalf of which it had spent the previous several years lobbying and with the LDC assuming responsibility for the design and funding structure of the park, while also serving as the official conduit between the planners of the park and the residents of the adjacent communities, the members of the Coalition were left with the inevitable question: What, if anything, was left for them to do?

  “Looking back,” Baker confides, “the creation of the LDC was definitely an important moment for the park, moving the park forward. But for the Coalition, it was the opposite. It was like we were being made redundant.”37

  Shortly after the formation of the LDC, the Coalition’s remaining board members assembled to decide if there was a legitimate reason for the organization to continue. “There’s only like seven or eight of us at the time,” recalls Gary VanderPutten, “because everybody else had left or were part of the LDC. And we’re like, ‘Is this the last meeting we’re going to have? What are we going to do?’ There was no need for an advocacy organization at this point. The LDC had that under control.”38

  After learning of the LDC’s decision to leave the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges out of the park design, VanderPutten had recently joined forces with residents in Fulton Ferry and Brooklyn Heights to resist Two Trees Management’s plan for the waterfront property. “I had innocently taken a picture of the Manhattan Bridge, and I put a building in front of it, saying, ‘This is what’s going to happen.’ And Allen Swerdloe, the architect, says, ‘No. That’s terrific, but it’s wrong. What you really need to do is go put together a graphic study of what’s going to change if they do this. And it has to be architecturally pure. You can’t just go in and do all these crappy pictures.’ So I did the images, and we formed a working group, independent of the Coalition, called the Old Brooklyn Waterfront Alliance [OBWA]. And we were a noisy group, with the mantra: It’s not good enough that the LDC is going to build a park on Piers 1 to 5. We want a park between the bridges.”39

  Instead of publishing the images right away, VanderPutten and his fellow OBWA members presented them privately to local politicians, as well as to officials at the Department of City Planning and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, assuring them that the images would be published only if Walentas’s project was allowed to continue: “So I gave [the remaining Coalition board members] this presentation of what OBWA was and what we were up to. And I said, ‘This is the only way we can battle this. We don’t have any money, but these images tell a story that’s pretty bad.’ And Maria Favuzzi just grabbed the book with the images and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to be the advocacy group to keep the inter-bridge area in Brooklyn Bridge Park.’ ”40

  It was immediately clear to everyone in attendance that the failure to include the inter-bridge property represented a critical flaw in the LDC’s plans for the park—and that the Coalition, with its expansive organizational membership and proven commitment to the park movement, had an important role to play in ensuring that the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges was included in the final park design.

  “As you can imagine, this really did not go well with a lot of these people that had put togethe
r the LDC, thinking that that would be the end of the Coalition,” says VanderPutten. “After that meeting, we came out and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to re-form the Coalition, and we’re going to make sure that the inter-bridge area is put back in the plan. We’re going to get a proper, paid executive director. We’re going to get our own funding somewhere, by some hook or crook. We’re going to keep on going.’ ”41

  SIX

  CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  “Our attitude was that this wasn’t the end of the process. It was only the beginning.”

  JOANNE WITTY

  NOW THAT THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK COALITION had found a new purpose in resisting the plan of David Walentas of Two Trees Management for a high-rise commercial multiplex in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and promoting the inclusion of the inter-bridge area in the overall park design, the next task was to find an executive director with the organizational, community-development, and fund-raising skills that would enable the Coalition to generate broad-based support for its objectives among both the general public and the elected officials who controlled the funding for the park project. The board’s original plan was to retain Anthony Manheim as the Coalition chair, to continue in his advocacy work and maintain relationships with representatives of the sixty-one organizations that the Coalition now included among its membership, while also hiring a full-time executive director with the professional skills and experience to take the lead in fund-raising, public relations, and strategic development.