BHB: How is the conservancy managing the overwhelming popularity of BBP?
NW: There are a couple of different pieces to that question. First, and it’s something that I wanted to clarify in regards to park numbers, park visitation over a typical summer weekend is around 120,000 folks on Saturday and Sunday. There had been attribution to me that there was around 120,000 or 110,000 each day of the weekend. I did just want to set that straight if that was a figure that you had seen.
In terms of managing for the popularity of the park, the first thing I would say is it’s absolutely fantastic. The park is living up to its mission to be a park that everyone in Brooklyn and New York City feels is their park. Brooklyn Bridge Park is of such significance that it is a citywide resource and is much greater than a neighborhood park. The fact that we’re seeing robust visitations in the park is actually wonderful news.
In terms of how that’s managed you really have two organizations. Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp, which manages day-to-day park operations, is continually and thoughtfully looking at park visitor [numbers], looking at park usage, evaluating what sorts of resources and infrastructure are either strained or underutilized and taking corrective measures to manage that. Managing visitation is an ongoing process here at the park.
We try to extend events and activities across the entire footprint of the park, not concentrate them in any one particular area.
I think you have to look at things in context when you have a park that’s being built in stages sometimes that can create challenges with management because [for example] the sequence of the bathrooms that you have planned to have open to serve visitors, they’re potentially in a phase of the park that is still under construction. You really have to judge the smoothness of operations after you have a complete park. That being said, I am continually impressed with the level of thoughtfulness that our colleagues at BBPC put into park operations.
How the conservancy thinks about managing visitation is we try to be very careful and intentional about public programs. We try to extend events and activities across the entire footprint of the park, not concentrate them in any one particular area. We think very much about the days of the week that we program events on. We try to go program lighter during the weekend when the park has more of a natural visitation.
In other words, it’s an ongoing process of trying to optimize the park’s infrastructure and it’s events and activities to accommodate the many, many people who are coming here, which we think is a mark of the success of the park.
BHB: BBP is free, so there is no way to control attendance at park events. Has the conservancy been surprised by the number of people who attend free events at the park?
NW: [C]learly the movie series is proving very popular. Thankfully, it’s not as popular as Bryant Park movie series [in Manhattan] because we have a very large, generous lawn to work with. Other events that we do are clearly very popular. I would say they are hitting their targets. If we do an event that does not get a lot of visitation, then perhaps this is an event that people don’t particularly want to see in here in the park. And we might take it out of our rotation.
We experiment with the different sorts of events that we do. Which is not to say that we don’t like small events. We absolutely love doing park tours where we actually do take RSVPs and limit the number of people who can come so that everyone who comes can have a good experience.
Again it’s a constant balance and tinkering.
