“There was one piece of land on Pier 4 that wasn’t owned by the Port Authority,” remembers Koval. “It had been owned by a private developer and had gone into foreclosure, but no one had ever foreclosed on it. I had done some research, and I actually thought the Coalition should buy it, because it was right in the middle of the park and would give us leverage as a community organization. And then Mark called me [right after September 11] and said, ‘Marianna, the Dutch are giving a million daffodil bulbs to the city of New York to commemorate all the loss of life. Let’s get some and go onto Pier 4 and plant a memorial.’ ”
Koval continues: “So Mark and I went down—I think we finally got some kind of permission from whomever had been the owners—and were given 25,000 bulbs. The trash was probably ten feet high. We cleared that lot over six to eight weeks. And we did a memorial with thousands of thousands of people who came from all over the city to help us plant the bulbs. And then they came up in the spring, and they were gorgeous. And [volunteer] Nancy Webster designed a big sign, ‘After Winter, Spring,’ and we put the sign where the World Trade Center had been.”32
With Coalition staff organizing a team of volunteers, the 25,000 daffodils were planted over five weekends beginning on October 21, as part of a citywide campaign to plant the 1 million daffodils that had been donated by the Dutch government to honor the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center. When they finally blossomed in the spring of 2002, the flowers covered a 1.2-acre site on Pier 4, filling two beds measuring 20 feet by 180 feet and re-creating the approximate shape of the World Trade Center towers. Koval recalls: “All my firemen, from the firehouse across the street from my house, were down training here when we came down to water the flowers one day, and I asked them to come down and be photographed standing in front of [the flower garden] with us. And it was all by accident.”33
“I think that 9/11 was an incredible moment for the park,” explains Baker, “because attitudes in New York City changed so dramatically. Parks and open spaces were places where people congregated. There were scenes on the Promenade looking out over the World Trade Center. The Promenade became an important place for coming together and for holding candle memorials. I think New Yorkers began to feel more strongly that parks were important for them. Particularly that sense that this area has been wounded and we need to do something to make it better became a very compelling force at the governmental level for the park. [Planting the daffodils] was part of the healing process that was really important for the community and the city. It was also our first time getting out on the piers.”34
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG and the city’s other public officials also recognized the importance of waterfronts and public parks in the city’s rebirth and recovery. On January 30, 2002, Bloomberg pledged his support to “bring new life” to the city’s waterfronts, and Daniel Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, focused his statements specifically on the west Brooklyn waterfront: “Brooklyn Bridge Park is a major priority, and we’ll do everything we can to move it forward.”35
“The Bloomberg administration’s interest in parks and open space was apparent from the beginning,” says Joshua Laird, who served as Assistant Commissioner for Planning and Natural Resources in the Department of Parks and Recreation under Bloomberg. “Brooklyn Bridge Park wasn’t priority number one, but [Bloomberg] saw early on that it was a potential win for the city and an opportunity to build an important regional park. And there was definitely a change in attitude about working with the state.”36
On May 2, 2002, Mayor Bloomberg made good on his earlier commitment, when he and Governor Pataki signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), declaring the shared commitment of the state and city governments to the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park and outlining guidelines for the creation, development, and operation of the park (figure 24). The guidelines for the park included
1 The Park will be a unified park, developed by a single entity.
2 The Park’s open space will be legally protected and commercial development limited.
3 Commercial revenues will pay for the Park’s maintenance and operation.
4 The community will continue to be directly involved in the Park’s development.
5 The Park’s development will be guided by the Master Plan developed by the LDC.
6 The Park’s development will be funded with $150 million.37
The MOU stipulated that the park would be designed and constructed by the newly formed Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, using the Illustrative Master Plan developed by the LDC as the guide. In contrast to the LDC, whose board members included appointees from the local neighborhood associations, community boards, and Chamber of Commerce, the Development Corporation’s eleven directors were appointed exclusively by the elected officials, with six appointments by Governor Pataki and five appointments by Mayor Bloomberg.38
FIGURE 24
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announces the city and state’s commitment of $150 million to design and construct Brooklyn Bridge Park and to form the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, May 2, 2002. Among those pictured are (left to right ) Governor George Pataki, Empire State Development Corporation chairman Charles Gargano, Local Development Corporation president Joanne Witty, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, City Council member David Yassky, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff, State Senator Martin Connor, Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition chair John Watts, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
COURTESY OF TOM FOX
“The MOU was the first clear sign that the park was going forward,” says Coalition board member Dick Dadey about the significance of the event. “After 9/11, everyone thought this was over. And then so soon after that, Pataki and Bloomberg signed the MOU. The ceremony was packed. People were cramming onto the pier. I was stunned by the number of people that were there. Now the park was no longer just an idea of the community, but it had the backing and the interest of the chief executives of the state and the city.”39
“There was a lot of work behind the scenes,” recalls Koval of the extensive discussions with city and state officials regarding the principles that would guide the park’s construction, “trying to reach the governor’s people, and negotiate the different pieces of the Memorandum of Understanding. We wanted to make sure that the ‘13 Guiding Principles’ were reflected in it.”40
The guidelines for the MOU fell short of the “13 Guiding Principles” developed by the Coalition and the administration of Borough President Howard Golden in 1992, but the critical principles of community involvement, limited commercial development, and comprehensive planning of a unified park were prominently featured in the agreement. While critics of the plan could (and inevitably would) complain about the omission of specific provisions from the original “13 Guiding Principles” (for example, restrictions on housing or invasive public corridors) in the language of the memorandum, the plan endorsed by the state and city administrations was based on the community’s original vision for the waterfront.
“What was unique about this process,” City Council member Ken Fisher commented at the time the borough, city, and state money was committed, “is that it started at the grassroots level. It was always driven by the community and supported by the elected officials, not the other way around. It’s very disingenuous for anyone to say, ‘The developers imposed a plan on the community,’ because in this case, the developer is us—the community.”41
ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2003, Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg appeared together at a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the official opening of the property between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges previously known as the “Main Street lot.” The governor and mayor were joined at the ceremony by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Empire State Development Corporation chairman Charles Gargano, State Senator Martin Connor, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and City Council member David Yassky.
What had been an underused parking lot leased t
o Two Trees Management by the Department of Parks and Recreation was converted into 1.5 acres of native grasses, wildflowers, and public benches, directly connected to Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park and providing visitors with an uninterrupted strip of public parkland along the inter-bridge waterfront. A small slice of the property had been opened the previous December as the Main Street Playground and had already become a popular destination for neighborhood children.
“Reclaiming the waterfront is a right of all New Yorkers,” proclaimed Bloomberg, reiterating his commitment to the city’s waterfront parks after September 11, “and opening this section of Brooklyn Bridge Park underscores our commitment to opening up our waterfronts for scores of New Yorkers.”42
“I predict that Brooklyn Bridge Park will become one of the major tourist attractions in the world,” said Markowitz. “When people come to New York, the first stop will be Brooklyn and Brooklyn Bridge Park.”43
For seasoned Coalition board members such as Mark Baker and John Watts, who had labored for so long for the park’s realization, often with little external assistance, the sudden outpouring of support from elected officials at every level was a powerful vindication. “All at once, it seemed like everyone out there, every single elected official, wanted to be associated with the park,” says Baker. “We went from almost everyone saying, ‘no,’ to everyone saying, ‘yes.’ ”44
For Koval, the most moving part of the ribbon cutting was seeing the Parks Department sign at the Main Street entrance identifying Brooklyn Bridge Park. “That said it all,” says Koval.
KEEPING WITH ITS STRATEGY to bring people to the park, the Coalition continued to sponsor interim uses and programmed activities for the park site throughout the following year. In addition to the popular outdoor film series, other activities included the public garden at Pier 4; children’s programming at the Main Street Playground and new park area at Main Street in the inter-bridge area; regular walking tours of the park area; and numerous dances, concerts, art exhibitions, and other cultural events presented in cooperation with other Brooklyn organizations.
ON FEBRUARY 26, 2004, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition’s board made the decision to rename the organization the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. With the funding for the park’s realization in place and the initial construction in the inter-bridge area under way, Executive Director Marianna Koval acknowledged that the organization’s original mission to serve as an advocate and a catalyst for the park concept was “ready for re-tooling to reflect new realities” and that a new name and organizational identity were needed to signal the change. The newly defined “job description” for the Conservancy included supporting the work of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation in designing and constructing Brooklyn Bridge Park, building a broad-based constituency for the park through interim uses and public events and activities, and raising private funds to support its ongoing activities and public programming. The emphasis on interim uses and programmed activities came as little surprise to anyone who had been following the organization during the first three years of Koval’s tenure. More than anything else, the name change represented a formal, public declaration of what had already become the defining feature of Koval’s term as the organization’s executive director: the importance of programmed activities in making the park a reality in the life of the borough and the city. “The change to the Conservancy,” says Koval of the decision to formalize the shift in organizational objectives and priorities that had already begun to take place, “that was when we outlined what we wanted to do as part of the park. We wanted to be the programming partner, and that’s what we became.”45
Since the formation of the LDC in 1998 and the intense negotiations for public funding for the park’s planning and construction, Koval and the other Coalition members had increasingly grown to believe that the vision of a pure park championed by Anthony Manheim, John Watts, Benjamin Crane, and other early park advocates was, whatever its virtues, simply not viable for the Brooklyn waterfront, particularly with the constraint of self-sustainability imposed by the “13 Guiding Principles” and the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg. Nor was the concept of a pure park consistent with the feedback generated by the public charrettes, in which Brooklyn residents had repeatedly expressed the desire for active recreational space to be included in the park. If Brooklyn Bridge Park was to become a reality, the Development Corporation and the Conservancy would have no choice but to confront the difficult political and economic realities around them head-on and create a park that the public would use and the elected officials would support.
“This was the part that was crucial,” insists Koval, “finding a way to actually get the park funded and built—and getting people on the site to support it. You can stop projects; that’s easy enough. The hard part is in taking the steps and making the compromises that it takes to get something done.”46
“Nobody was buying the idea of a passive park in the front yard of Brooklyn Heights,” explains LDC consultant Tom Montvel-Cohen. “That just wasn’t selling. If the park was going to happen, it would have to be big, and it would have to be for everyone, a grand mosaic that the public would support and that all the elected officials could get behind.”47
The shift in emphasis from a passive park (with extended sections of undisturbed meadows, wooded areas, and shoreline) to an active park (with playgrounds, recreational facilities, and planned activities to attract visitors) was far more than a reasoned compromise to secure funding from elected officials, however. Since the daffodil display following the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, had symbolically “torn down the barbed wire” that alienated the city’s residents from the Brooklyn waterfront, Koval and the Conservancy board realized that they cared much less about featuring landscape and design than about creating a public open space for all New Yorkers to enjoy as they wanted.
EIGHT
THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD
“The mantra that Al Butzel taught me early on, that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” is right. The hard thing is to figure out what the good is.”
MARIANNA KOVAL
WHILE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK CONSERVANCY was focusing its energies on bringing people onto the park site, the Development Corporation (as the newly formed Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation was popularly known) was making slow but steady progress toward the design and construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park. With the funding for the park’s planning and construction secured and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formally endorsed by the state and city governments, the Development Corporation hired the landscape-architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which had contributed to the Illustrative Master Plan for the park.
Van Valkenburgh and his associate Matt Urbanski had served as consultants in the initial public discussions of the park’s design following the formation of the Local Development Corporation (LDC) in 1998, participating in dozens of planning charrettes with more than 2,000 community leaders and other residents throughout the borough, and the design firm was already intimately familiar with the physical features of the waterfront property; the interests and expectations of local residents; and the social, political, and financial challenges that would inevitably be involved in the park’s realization.
The firm’s first assignment was to develop a preliminary project plan in consultation with representatives from the local community, followed by the formulation of a maintenance and operations budget for the park (including an analysis of the budgetary requirements of other New York parks) and the preparation of a revenue analysis to determine the type and scale of commercial development necessary to support the park over time.1
As lead designer Michael Van Valkenburgh recalls, the assignment proved to be a daunting but ultimately an extremely rewarding challenge. “The original RFP [Request for Proposals] described a role for the team leader that I don’t think has ever been matched,” explai
ns Van Valkenburgh. “It included designing the landscape, figuring out the urban parcels, balancing the maintenance budget, and then balancing the yield from the potential development from the potential cost that would allow the park to exist. It required the lead consultant to become part of a massive team—including engineers, architects, ecologists, and economic consultants—that morphed and changed as the project evolved. I have not heard of a job description like that before or after Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was very hard, but I think it made it a better park.”2
IN MARCH 2004, following repeated public complaints about delays in the park’s development and the lack of updates from the Development Corporation to the community regarding the project’s progress, Development Corporation president James Moogan was “quietly replaced” by Wendy Leventer, the former president of the Forty-second Street Development Corporation.3
Moogan, who had developed a reputation as a consensus-builder during his earlier tenure at New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, had difficulty educating the public about the laborious, time-consuming activities that were required to keep the massive project in motion, and community residents had become impatient with the lack of visible progress on the site. The momentum of the project had recently been stalled by Moogan’s negotiations with the Port Authority regarding the inclusion of Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which, although representing a tremendous addition to the overall park design, had resulted in extensive delays in an already lengthy environmental-impact study that had to be completed before the plans for the park could move forward.
“James Moogan was an earnest, thoughtful, and well-intentioned man,” says Coalition board member Dick Dadey, “but he was not effective at saying to the community, ‘This is what’s happening, and this is how long it’s going to take. There are necessary infrastructure activities that need to take place before the park gets built.’ Instead he would raise expectations, which led to this feeling that things were stalled, which ultimately led to his departure.”4
A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park Page 19