The Brooklyn Paper reports that the proposed BQE Cantilever repair project, which won't even begin for another 10 years, would virtually wreck the soon-to-be constructed Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Brooklyn Paper: One Hand Ignoring the Other…: Long-overdue renovations to a key stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway would destroy the park component of a soon-to-be-built development along the Brooklyn Heights waterfront — and the state agency doing the roadwork isn’t talking to the state agency building the park.
Repairs to the three-layered portion of the BQE are necessary — but they won’t start for nearly a decade, years after the so-called Brooklyn Bridge Park is mostly completed.
But the only way to make the repairs, experts said, is to use Brooklyn Bridge Park as a staging area.
“It makes no sense for them to build the park, tear it apart, and then build it again,” said Brian Ketcham, a traffic expert who has been lobbying for an alternative to the BQE for more than two decades.
State transportation officials told federal officials about their latest plans last week in Washington — and shockwaves were quickly felt in Brooklyn.
“We haven’t been fully briefed,” said Marianna Koval, executive director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.
Roy Sloane, a longtime park advocate, also said that he hadn’t heard about the project.
“The news of the reconstruction was a shocker for the members of the [Brooklyn Bridge Park] board,” he said.
The current plan calls for replacing the cantilevered levels of the BQE near the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting out pieces of the two-mile stretch, and then sliding pre-fabricated pieces in their place.
Also in this week's Brooklyn Paper — "Hippie" plans for a new kids playground as part of BBP that would also include renovating Squibb Park and the BHA questions the amount of luxury housing planned around and the financing of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
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