Henrik Krogius has a great blow-by-blow retrospective on Brooklyn Bridge Park in the Brooklyn Eagle. Just reading it requires some carbo-loading and light training, but it looks like we might just have a park in our lifetime:
Brooklyn Eagle: The Park Begins: Alarmed, the Brooklyn Heights Association said it would commission its own study of the piers, which took a while, but resulted early in 1987 with recommendations for maintaining maritime uses there and enhancing public access. Alarmed in turn by the prospect of lost revenue, the Port Authority presented a plan for condominiums all along the piers. Local worries grew about the view from the Heights Promenade. The Heights Association came back with a plan for an “American landscape” that would be called Harbor Park. (Inclusion of the DUMBO section was a much later idea, influenced by local political strife with DUMBO developer David Walentas.) The Port Authority adamantly opposed a park and stayed with its intent to sell the land for private development as late as 1996 (reneging on a 1993 agreement to transfer it to New York State). While the park idea enjoyed considerable community support, it also met a good deal of opposition, including from some who feared the kind of public a park would attract and thought it would become a “drug haven.” [Full Story]
