City Officials to Discuss Park Plans This Evening

By on December 7, 2009 12:18 pm in Development, Events, Government

According to The Brooklyn Paper, this evening’s meeting at LICH hosted by Sen. Squadron will shed light on the City’s plans concerning further work on Brooklyn Bridge Park beyond the completion of Piers 1 and 6.

Bloomberg administration officials will be on hand at a meeting tonight at Long Island College Hospital — a meeting that the Daily News reported this morning was going to involve a city takeover of the park development project. But Mayor Bloomberg didn’t want to go that far this morning. Read more.

Comments by the Mayor this morning seemed to dampen expectations that the City will take the project over completely, and that new funding will eliminate the need for residential and commercial development on park land to defray costs of maintaining the Park. Sen. Squadron is hoping to get useful input from community residents at this evening’s meeting.

Update: There’s more on the Times City Room Blog.

Share this Story:

, , ,

  • Publius

    The NY Daily News has an article here: http://tinyurl.com/yfdu8o7

  • bklyn20

    This meeting ended about 9:00 pm tonight. To be brief, NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe was introduced by State Senator Daniel Squadron. After rhapsodizing over the park, Benepe briefly alluded to funding the park with additional residential development. There was some hope (at least from my point of view) that a new supervisory structure involving the PACB, or Public Authorities Control Board, might be more heedful of community concerns and thus look for non-residential was to raise necessary revenue. Current park oversight would be supplemented by a committee with members from State Senate, State Assembly and NY City Council, as well as some neighborhood representatives.

    Judging from the public comments and questions, the audience was over 75% against the current plan with housing and without year-round recreation. Unfortunately, Commissioner Benepe did not answer many questions, and was actually called out by one questioner for “Blackberrying” (the word she used) while she was asking him a question.

    These are my quick observations, and obviously I have my own point of view on this. Still, thanks to Senator Squadron for setting this up, for choosing people for questions in an even-handed way, and for Comm Benepe and staff for showing up, as well as State Assemplywoman Joan Millman (who said she hoped for no additional housing) and reps from new Councilmen Steve Levin and Brad Lander.

    I hope this meeting proves more productive than the many past meetings where the community expressed itself and was ignored. I hope the days of banging our heads against (ecoconscious schist) stone walls are over.