Condos 1, Park Defense Fund 0

By on April 25, 2008 6:37 pm in Development

Brooklyn Bridge Park will have condos, so shut your piehole the State Supreme Court says:

Brooklyn Paper: Brooklyn Bridge Park Goes Forward: Brooklyn Bridge Park cleared another hurdle this week, as the State Supreme Court ruled against opponents of the open space and luxury housing development, unanimously upholding the state’s inclusion of private housing inside the park’s footprint.

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund had filed the lawsuit to force the state to revise its plans for the 85-acre parkland and commercial development along the DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights waterfront by eliminating the controversial condominiums and hotel slated for the park.

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  • Edward

    Can anyone explain how this is a park and not a private development with public space ?

  • Pro-Park

    Edward-
    Who cares? Call it whatever you want… It will replace those ugly warehouses with greens. And if it takes a condo development to make it happen, it’s fine with me!

  • http://adsformyself.blogspot.com Tim N.

    Umm… not so. If it was just turning old buildings to new uses, then that would be fine. But that’s not the case… check out http://www.parkdefense.org/ and you’ll see what the impact of the new buildings will be.

    I could save you the trouble… just say bye-bye to the Promenade view and hello to the backs of buildings.

  • http://adsformyself.blogspot.com Tim N.

    My mistake… it’s http://www.parkdefense.org/Current.html and click on “total housing impacts” and you’ll see what’s coming our way.

  • Bee Heights

    I live on Columbia Heights and just checked out the website above with the before and after shots of the proposed buildings. I have to say they don’t look that bad. The views pretty much remain the same give or take. In exchange for some change I get a park instead of some blue crap to look at each day.

    Now if you told me that they were going to block the view with some 60 story hotel/condo smack in the middle of the promenade that’s a different story.

    I get a bit sick of these people always complaining about change.

  • Bart

    Just a side note: According to maps I’ve consulted, the extending piers actually belong to the borough of Manhattan, not Brooklyn.

  • anon

    A damn shame this so-called “park”. It simply isn’t. And the idea that housing is compatible with a park is ludicrous. I hope the Park Defense Fund goes on to the highest court – maybe they will act to protect our public park lands. Otherwise nix on parks in future.

  • clarknt67

    Wow, Tim, so they’re going to build condos tall enough to block the view of Wall street from the Promenade? I also hear they are going to hire Blackwater to patrol the park with Uzis and shoot to kill anyone who’s not a condo owner and dares enter!

  • nabeguy

    If the high maintenance costs that I’ve heard proposed for the BBP are true, then Blackwater security doesn’t seem that farfetched. After all, they’re gonna have to figure out SOME way to make money once Dicky boy is out of DC!

  • Buddy

    You got that right nabeguy! This will be 3 times more costly than the most expensive “park” in the city and that one isn’t a park either – Battery Park City. I think the ESDC is going all out for Dickyt. Maybe get Bush to be the Park Jester for “sport”.

  • kirkaldy

    How silly, of course it is a park – there are maybe 9 acres of total not-park that are situated up against the BQE (but not blocking the view from the Promenade, because that is protected by law, despite what the self-annointed “legal defenders” say). And then there are 76 acres of clear and free publicly accessible parkland stretching all the way out to the water’s edge.

    The funny thing to me, as a person who is fundamentally pro-park (in case you didn’t notice), is that you check in on some blogs and the handwringers say that the park will ruin the view from the Heights. And then, you go to other places and you see people up in arms about the idea that everything is being done at the behest of the rich people living in the Heights. AND the folks like anon, above, who are concerned that it is some kind of heresy to have residential buildings next to parks don’t seem to have ever been to the Promenade to see that there is plenty of housing very intimately related to the heights and that hasn’t stopped anybody from going out there.

    The only enemy that everybody can seem to agree on is the 76 acre park – surely there must be something really sinister going on if Brooklyn’s waterfront is going to become a 76 acre park. And surely the high maintenance costs are a sham, because everybody knows that 50 year-old piers supported by wooden toothpicks don’t require any maintenance.