FIGURE 25
Anchored at Pier 5 during the summer of 2007, the “Floating Pool Lady” drew 80,000 swimmers to the site of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
© ETIENNE FROSSARD, NEW YORK, N.Y.
“That was the hardest thing I ever did in my whole life,” says Koval of the legal and logistical challenges involved in opening the floating pool to the public. “No one wanted to approve the permitting necessary to let the pool be moored anywhere in the city. And we were just unrelenting. We drove it and drove it. That was the key thing. I decided that, damn it, we should have the floating pool and there was no better site in the city of New York. It was so complicated, and government was so difficult. And we had no money. I persuaded the ESDC to allow me to take money for capital funds and to swap it out for expense money, and that had never done that before in the history of the organization.”26
WHILE THE CONSERVANCY continued to expand its schedule of programmed activities and interim uses to draw people to the waterfront, the Development Corporation and the public authorities reached a major milestone on May 31, 2006, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki announced that the Port Authority had officially authorized transfer of control of Piers 1, 2, and 3, along with parts of Pier 5, to the Development Corporation.
“This is an important milestone in the creation of what is set to become one of New York City’s most magnificent public spaces,” proclaimed Bloomberg at a ceremony held in the park’s inter-bridge area. “Brooklyn Bridge Park will become the quintessential example of our Administration’s commitment to return the city’s waterfront to its residents and improve the quality of life in all five boroughs.”27
“At the beginning of the 1900s, the wrong decisions were made. It was decided to cut people off from the waterfront,” said Pataki, reassuring citizens that the both the state and the city were now firmly committed to restoring access to the shoreline.28
“I feel that Pataki and Bloomberg both deserve tremendous credit for the creation of Brooklyn Bridge Park,” says former Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. “Pataki saw himself as a part of a Republican tradition that goes back to Roosevelt and values parks and conservation. He and his administration were willing to go out on a limb [for the city’s parks], and I got the sense that he took genuine joy in helping to make it happen.
“And Bloomberg viewed parks as an important part of the city’s economic development,” continues Benepe. “For the first time in the history of New York, there was a very definite view that parks were worth investing in.”29
“I don’t think it’s been fully appreciated the degree to which all these initiatives, including the parks, were linked together into a coherent strategy,” says Josh Sirefman of the city government’s commitment to parks at the time. “In the early months [of the Bloomberg administration], we came up with this strategy to foster New York’s competitive edge. We had an underlying philosophy that we can’t just sit still and let things happen. Before that, it was like, New York is New York, and it will always be the center of the universe. And you have to remember that this was all happening post-9/11 and everything had been shaken to its core. But under Bloomberg, there was always a mandate to think big—and also a liberation to think new—and the waterfront was a really big component of that.”30
The primary responsibility for realizing the Bloomberg administration’s plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park was assumed by First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris and her chief of staff, Nanette Smith, who also served as special assistant to the mayor. A former assistant to the deputy mayor in the administration of Ed Koch, Harris was responsible for the oversight of all the city’s efforts on behalf of the park, including securing the annual budget, arranging the hiring of Regina Myer as president of the Development Corporation, and facilitating the negotiations between the city and the state over the funding and governance of the park. Smith, who had served in the New York City Art Commission during the Koch administration, was responsible for executing the administration’s vision on the ground: meeting daily with representatives of the Development Corporation and reaching out to the Conservancy and others involved in the realization of the park.
THE IMPLEMENTATION of the General Project Plan began in earnest in December 2007 when the Development Corporation authorized the demolition of all the remaining pier sheds on the property, a number of upland structures, and the Purchase Building between the piers at the Dumbo waterfront.31 The Development Corporation’s decision to demolish the 1930s-era Purchase Building, to provide a direct connection between the southern and northern sections of the park, proved to be a controversial one, even among some of the park’s strongest supporters.
Since 2002, the 300-foot-long, 30-foot-high warehouse had been used as the temporary headquarters of the city’s Office of Emergency Management. On February 21, 2006, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had ruled by a vote of 7 to 2 that the Purchase Building was a part of but not a “contributing building” to the Brooklyn Heights Historic District and thus could be demolished to clear a view plane of the Manhattan shoreline from the inter-bridge area.32
While a number of local community groups opposed the demolition, the Conservancy lent its support to the decision to remove the building from the site. “While we are supporters of preservation,” explained Koval after the decision of the Landmarks Commission was announced, “we viewed this particular instance as one where the public interest was better served to remove the building to create the Brooklyn Bridge Park.”33
IN MARCH 2007, the ESDC announced that Wendy Leventer had been dismissed from her position as president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation. Throughout her tenure, Leventer had exhibited singular skill in addressing the institutional and financial challenges involved in the project. However, her failure to meet regularly with and listen to the concerns of community leaders about the park’s progress had led to a gradual loss of confidence among many local residents that the plan for the park would be realized. In addition, her unwillingness to hold public discussions regarding the ongoing adjustments to the park design had been greeted by open resistance by some Brooklyn residents. After taking the job in 2004, she had immediately encountered opposition from Brooklyn anti-housing activists, who were angered to learn that the maintenance of the park would be paid for with revenue generated by housing and other commercial developments on the site. The lawsuit over housing initiated by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund in 2006 had resulted in even further delays to the process and growing unrest in the community.
While many park advocates faulted Leventer for her lack of responsiveness to the concerns of local residents, others who were involved in the park’s planning and construction credited her for her tenacity and stubborn commitment to the project. “Wendy had a lot of headaches to deal with,” explains LDC president Joanne Witty. “She came in when the rubber hit the road. She had to take the project through the environmental-impact study, and in order to do that you had to have the next level of design, which was being done simultaneously. But she took us through the EIS very rapidly. She knew how to do it. She knew how to build a project.”34 “It’s my opinion,” says park designer Michael Van Valkenburgh, “that BBP [Brooklyn Bridge Park] is as good as it is because of Wendy Leventer’s spine and unwillingness to bend in the political wind.”35 “Wendy demanded that the park be great,” agrees Van Valkenburgh’s fellow designer, Matt Urbanski. “Period. That’s the spirit that she brought to the foundation of the design of the park. The fact that it was public sector was not an excuse for settling for anything less than great.”36
IN NOVEMBER 2007, the Development Corporation announced that Regina Myer had been hired as its new president. Myer had served for twenty years in the New York City Department of City Planning, the last eight as the director of the Brooklyn office, before becoming the Senior Vice President for Planning and Design at the Hudson Yards Development Corporation.37 Based on her previous experience, Myer had deep knowledge of land-u
se issues. During her tenure at the Department of City Planning, Myer had overseen the rezoning of downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo, as well as the comprehensive rezoning of Williamsburg–Greenpoint, one of the first major waterfront-development initiatives in the borough, and was familiar with the planning process at Brooklyn Bridge Park.
“Regina Myer is someone who could not only build the park,” asserts Patricia Harris regarding the positive impact that Myers would have on the project, “but was also effective in working with creative partners like the Conservancy, the Public Art Fund, and others to bring innovative programming to the park. We needed someone for this role who could be bold, innovative and forward looking. Sometimes in government, you need to really think outside the box in order to make big, lasting projects like this one happen. Regina is that person and Brooklyn Bridge Park, and New York, are better off because of it.”38
Encouraged by the commitment of the city and state governments to the construction of the park, Myer was eager to bring momentum to what many in the community perceived as a stalled endeavor. The official groundbreaking on Pier 1 began on February 13, 2008, with demolition in full swing by March (figure 26) and potential contractors bidding on park construction throughout the summer and beginning work on Piers 1 and 6 in January 2009.
FIGURE 26
Marianna Koval, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, and Regina Myer, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, watch as construction crews tear down the Pier 1 shed on the first day of site construction, 2008.
© JULIENNE SCHAER
“The approvals were in place for the park,” remembers Myer of the sudden burst of activity that accompanied her arrival at the Development Corporation, “and we already had a good deal of the park design. We were ready to finally build the park. Our attitude was to get this thing started. Money was allocated, and the pressure was from both the government and the community to show results or the money would be pulled. That to me was the wonderful challenge. Everybody was done talking about whether we should have a park. We should just build the park.”39
WHILE THE CHALLENGES AHEAD OF HER were formidable, given the obstacles that her predecessors had encountered, Myer was energized by the project from the beginning, both by the nature of the assignment and by the level of support she received from her partners in city government and the team of professionals she began to assemble around her at the Development Corporation. “As a planner,” explains Myer, “having the ability to implement this vision is the coolest thing that could ever have happened to me. It is the job of a lifetime.
“What was exciting to me about this project,” she recalls, “was that, while there was obviously an evolution of community support for the park, the government was really interested in making the park and understood that it was of value for the city.
“The importance of what Bloomberg people like Josh Sirefman [chief of staff to Daniel Doctoroff] and [Deputy Mayor for Economic Development] Dan Doctoroff did for the park just can’t be overstated,” says Myer. “They had the guts to put Pier 6 in the project. They just made it happen. They also had the guts to put 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park in. We would not have been able to open and have the government maintain it, had we not had 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park. They also signed onto the pilot legislation, which meant that they signed away taxes to the general fund for this park. So that was a decision that they made, and that they don’t make very often.
“They were willing to take risks because they were willing to be innovative,” continues Myer. “They were completely comfortable with the park’s public–private model, and they were willing to be creative to build the park. They didn’t say, ‘We’re not doing that. We only do it this way.’ They just weren’t that kind of people.”40
Myer’s original phasing plan for the park was given a boost by a substantial financial contribution from the Bloomberg administration shortly after she assumed the leadership of the Development Corporation. “When I first came in,” recalls Myer, “we had a budget of $150 million, but within the first few months, the city had increased its contribution by $75 million. That gave us the ability to develop a phasing plan, which we announced in June 2008, showing an additional $75 million from the city.”
Another challenge facing Myer was to develop a budget plan for the park. “It’s what makes the whole thing tick,” says Myer. “We had the revenue coming forward from day one from 1 Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was pretty exciting when we got the first check from them.”41
IN THE SUMMER OF 2008, the Development Corporation and the Conservancy decided to take advantage of the gap in time between the demolition and construction on Pier 1 and the installation by the Public Art Fund of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to provide visitors with a taste of what the finished park would be like. The “Pop-Up Park” was a 26,000-square-foot site on Pier 1 near Fulton Ferry Landing designed by Brooklyn resident and landscape architect Susannah Drake’s dlandstudio. Opening on June 26, “Pop-Up Park” featured a café, landscaping with trees and grass mounds, benches and picnic tables, a large sandbox, and a spectacular view of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline. For local families, many of whom were making their first visit to the park site, the main attraction was the opportunity for children to play together in the large sandbox while parents enjoyed a glass of wine on the waterfront.
By the time the site closed on September 28, it had attracted more than 120,000 visitors to the west Brooklyn waterfront, representing a remarkably diverse group of people, including 21 percent from the adjoining neighborhoods, 23 percent from elsewhere in Brooklyn, 14 percent from elsewhere in New York City, 17 percent from the rest of the United States, and 25 percent from fifty-two foreign countries. While the site itself was modest in size—little more than a strip of walkway along part of the pier—the size and diversity of the crowds that it attracted clearly demonstrated the future park’s potential as a popular regional destination.
With the initial construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park now fully under way, Myer was outspoken in her support of the Conservancy’s latest creative activity to generate interest in and support for the park. “We are so pleased with the success of Summer ’08 at Pier 1,” said Myer at the time. “Pier 1 proved to be a magnificent destination for Brooklynites. New Yorkers and tourists, and allowed people to experience the beauty and incredible views of New York Harbor.”42
Not everyone in the Brooklyn community was impressed with the features of the temporary installation. Judi Francis, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund, who had led the local protests against housing on the park site, described “Pop-Up Park” and the other interim uses sponsored by the Conservancy as a “bait-and-switch,” contending that essential but expensive park features such as swimming pools, skating rinks, ball fields, and food and drink concession stands (which had been featured in one or more of the interim projects) would not be included in the park’s final design. While the Development Corporation insisted that Brooklyn Bridge Park would, in fact, ultimately include all those amenities and more, a spokesperson from the organization did concede that the ice-skating rink proposed in the General Project Plan had been delayed by at least five years due to an interagency battle between the city and state governments.43
IN FEBRUARY 2009, ten years after she assumed the leadership of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, Marianna Koval announced her resignation as the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. As a widow and single parent, Koval was no longer able to sustain the eighty-hour work weeks necessary to navigate the external challenges and internal conflicts of the park movement. Renewed after two years of distance and perspective from her role leading the Conservancy, Koval enrolled at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she modeled the lessons she had learned at the Conservancy for use by other parks around the nation and the world.
ON MARCH 12, 2009, a month after Koval’s resignation, Nancy Webster was tapped to be the Conse
rvancy’s acting executive director. A former creative director at Marsteller Advertising, a division of the large public-relations firm Burson Marsteller, Webster had become tangentially involved in the Coalition’s activities during the summer of 2000 when her partner, Nell Archer, organized the Coalition’s popular outdoor film series and she was enlisted to help promote the event. A few months later, she joined the Coalition staff as director of marketing and communications and was promoted to deputy director the following year.
Webster had been drawn into the controversies on the Brooklyn waterfront in the late 1990s, when she was persuaded by her friend Michael Crane (son of Benjamin Crane, who had called for a park on the piers more than a decade earlier) to take the reins of the Dumbo Neighborhood Association (DNA). Dumbo was an emerging neighborhood of artists and young professionals in the inter-bridge area just north of the west Brooklyn piers, and Webster soon found herself at the forefront of a series of public protests over development projects in the quiet, formerly industrial district. Working in conjunction with Nancy Bowe at the Brooklyn Heights Association and Gary VanderPutten at the Fulton Ferry Landing Association, Webster led a successful effort in the spring of 2002 to halt a sixteen-story apartment building at 38 Water Street, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
A few months later, Webster and the DNA also opposed the Watchtower’s plans to rezone a large parking lot at 85 Jay Street, on the northern side of the Brooklyn Bridge, in order to construct a 1,000-occupant apartment building and underground parking garage. After failing to gain the support of the City Council, Webster decided that it was smarter to take a more pragmatic approach to the conflict and work to secure improvements to Bridge Park 2, a long-neglected city park on York Street across from the Jay Street site and adjacent to the Farragut Houses.
A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park Page 21