Brooklyn Bridge Park Prez, Regina Myer Tapped as Head of Brooklyn Bridge Partnership

By on September 20, 2016 12:52 am in brooklyn bridge park, Brooklyn Heights, Commercial Real Estate, Development, Downtown Brooklyn, Neighborhoods, News, Real Estate

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports via re-printed press release Regina Meyer, current President of Brooklyn Bridge Park has been named the new President of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Meyer will take the helm in November. She replaces Tucker Reed who stepped down from DPP in August after an almost five year run.

“This was an opportunity I just couldn’t refuse — a chance to really come full circle,” said Myer. “Now that Brooklyn Bridge Park is teeming with visitors, financially secure and nearly fully built, it makes sense to head back up the hill to Downtown, where I’m ready to embrace the exciting challenge of building on the area’s success over the past decade. Through smart public and private investment — in open space, in commercial development, in the burgeoning Brooklyn Cultural District — we really have the chance to shape the future of Downtown in a holistic way, and I can’t wait to get started.”

Immediately prior to her position at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Ms. Myer served as senior vice president for Planning and Design at the Hudson Yards Corporation.  During her 22-year tenure within the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) she helped spearhead the 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn as Director of DCP’s Brooklyn office, an initiative that has irrevocably re-shaped Downtown Brooklyn.

“Regina is a Brooklyn visionary, and we’re lucky to have her as our next president. Over the past decade, we’ve seen tremendous growth and investment in Downtown Brooklyn — now it’s time to build on that success by stitching the neighborhood together with vital infrastructure and continuing to advocate for targeted investment in office space to meet the demands of the growing innovation economy in the area.” said MaryAnne Gilmartin and Bre Pettis, co-chairs of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership Board of Directors and president and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies.

The release continues, “At DBP, Myer will look at ways to both build on [the] success [of Brooklyn Bridge Park] and supplement it with supportive infrastructure, like the growth of the Brooklyn Cultural District and the increased open space development throughput the district.   In particular, Myer will continue DBP’s leading role in advocating for the Brooklyn Strand.”

If you’d like learn more about Ms. Myer’s new role direct from the source, “[she] will deliver opening remarks at DBP’s Make It in Brooklyn Innovation Summit on Sept. 28 at City Point in Downtown Brooklyn. For more information, go to http://www.makeitinbk.com.“

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  • Jorale-man

    What the press release doesn’t talk about (and neither does the Brooklyn Heights Blog, sadly), is the fact that Myer has been a lightning rod for constant criticism of the park for years now. She’s presided over some of the biggest blunders there — the controversial housing, the footbridge boondoggle, the inability to manage the violence at the basketball courts, the assorted design flaws (remember those metal-clad climbing domes that were burning kids in the playground?).

    To be fair, the park has brought many benefits that have been documented on this blog too (and probably boosted Heights’ property values), but one must be evenhanded about Myer’s legacy there.

  • Cranberry Beret

    Love BBP, but good riddance to Regina Meyer. Downtown can have her. Time to appoint someone who’ll put the park back in “Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation” with less focus on the corporation part.

  • Andrew Porter

    Good riddance. May her tenure in her new job be accompanied by the same indifference to crime and the lack of basic infrastructure to support all the giant new developments that has characterized her time as head of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Behemoth.

  • HicksOnHicks

    Good riddance to Regina and her affordable housing cram down.

  • MaryT

    If this downtown ‘stitching together’ plan includes the stretch on Fulton/Cadman/Court from Fulton Ferry to Borough Hall AND includes the usual type of BBP venue activities, we can look forward to even more crowds, noise and garbage. I’m not against park connectivity. I question the illusion that more attractions are desirable in and near our already crowded residential neighborhoods. I fear this group of planners only see their master vision and not its effect on us, the people who already live here. Isn’t this why Brooklyn Heights fought Moses?

  • Jorale-man

    Yes, there’s reason to be skeptical with that connector plan. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the area between Cadman Plaza and Fulton Ferry is unappealing and a pedestrian nightmare, but I wonder if this is an excuse to add more sports facilities and the like. Vigilance is required.

  • wally o’keefe

    Who smells corruption?

  • bklyn20

    Alicia Glen, De Blasio’s deputy mayor, succeeds Myer. I believe she doesn’t have a park background — she was working on De B’s affordable housing initiatives.
    Don’t get me wrong, I know we need more affordable housing, but not in a well-funded park. The uphill battle to save open green space on Pier 6 just got steeper.

  • StudioBrooklyn

    “Affordable” requires quotations around it in this context, I believe.

  • StudioBrooklyn

    Mmm Mmmm

  • bklyn20

    Yes, affordable in quotation marks is appropriate for this. Judging from
    Ms. Glen’s scalding condescension at BBP meetings, things like “park” and “community involvement” will require the same punctuation.

  • bklyn20

    Yes, the “affordable housing” planned for BBP does need quotation marks. Judging from Ms. Glen’s scalding condescension with the public at BBP board meetings, we’ll be envisioning many other punctuation marks at future meetings.

  • B.

    Of course, I remember when Downtown didn’t need urban renewal. My mother used to purchase nibs and ink for her Parker fountain pen at a little pen store near the Smith Street bus stop, we shopped at Martin’s — even as a child, I was impressed by its wood-paneled elevators — and the streets were clean. There weren’t T-shirts and other wares hanging outside shop doors, and no one sat around blasting music into Fulton Street. How did we ever let it get so bad?

  • Andrew Porter

    A long process of abandonment and failure of major retailers like Martin’s and A&S, white flight, and other factors. Remember Gage & Tollner’s?

    Then there’s the Internet, Amazon, crack cocaine, the blackouts, the…

  • NeighboorHood

    The foxes all agree, this is the perfect fox to oversee this chicken coop.