Brooklyn Bridge Park
Strategic Plan for Programming
Congregation Mt. Sanai
250 Cadman Plaza West

November 26

Bill Bergeron attended along with about 200 - 250 other members of the public, some of whom were standing.

The meeting had an ambitious agenda, even for a three-hour event; to update the public on the latest of the parks designs, to discuss potential programming in a large group and  in break-out sessions devoted to Recreation, Arts and Culture and Education.

I should mention the news cameras from channel 12.

The meeting started congenial enough with the presenters going through the motions and the architect presenting his latest design on three 6’ x 20’ printouts around the room each labeled differently in an effort to get across “more information”.

As soon as the main presenter of the meeting, a consultant hired to develop the programming and program funding plan for the park, opened for the first suggestion the meeting broke down completely. Many citizens, often older but not always, had come to demand answers to questions that they had been sitting on for quite sometime as there had been no public meetings for 10 months.

Some came with legitimate concerns about building schedule and demolition phasing, 9 months of demolition, unphased and simultaneous throughout the park, others to complain about being shut out of the process, others to vent frustration about the process, the lack of oversight, transparency and costs unrelated to building the park. (I should note that there are ongoing lawsuits against the EDC with regards to the residential development within the Park.)

These concerns continued to be expressed until one helpful citizen began to list the expenses of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, staff expenses vs programming for instance, which no one was all that interested in. (He stated that they spent $500K on staff out of a $850K budget)

Public officials, who’s names I did not write down, some of whom were hissed at made short impromptu statements that basically said, “Hey this is going to be a great park why don’t we just decide what we are going to do here and get this thing built”

Along the way we learned that, in fact, no one present at the meeting had any stake in the outcome of the meeting as there is no governance for the park in place. There was not a mention of even passing the findings on as a recommendation to whomever it was that would eventually run the park.

I attended the breakout session on recreation, naturally. This breakout sessions got nowhere as the moderator was the paid consultant and led the group in a very earnest but patronizing tone. The citizenry spent much time explaining that this exercise had in fact been completed at least 3x prior and that the outcome was identical to this evenings list. The number one request was swimming. (Actually, one very reasonable woman explained that in fact swimming was number two the number one request was for having drinks at the waters edge) This degraded badly enough that reps from the Conservancy came over to talk pool.
The cost of an in-ground pool, which could be used year round, was stated at $40 million and thus was too expensive for the park. However, they were looking into the possibility of funding a floating pool via the Neptune Foundation. Aparently, the floating pool cost $5 million but has to be drained in the winter. (The Conservancy stated that 70,000 people visited the floating pool last summer while it was anchored in the park. The floating pool will be in the Bronx next summer.)

I asked about the boating facilities, the plans show a boathouse but as with the rest of the park there are no details in pictures or writing of any kind. The ‘plan’ is to have boat build and “kayaking” including storage at the boathouse. (The boathouse is currently placed too far from the water, in my opinion, for either access or to run public programs within the “artificial” boat basin the park proposes) With no details at hand it is hard to say what the facility may look like or include. I made a suggestion that kayak storage could be provided throughout the year and during construction. They estimate it will take until the end of 2009 to complete the park.

There was much discussion of the ‘wave attenuators’ which have been in the plan for sometime and are hoped will create an artificial basin for public kayaking and to protect a couple of artificial beaches which are planned. Only one person in the entire evening expressed the opinion these were a good idea. Many asked how much they would cost, since no one wants them, but no answers were forthcoming.

Currently, the plan is that kayaks will have access to the harbor out of the lower portion of the park Piers 5 and 6, nearest Red hook, and at the current State Park site at Dumbo.

There was discussion of winter use and why no skating could be provided. The Conservancy explained a process where they discussed proposals from 3 temporary rink operators and no one could make any of the available space work this year. They plan to have skating in the park when complete which the Conservancy explained in minute technical detail.

Representatives from Floating the Apple and Gowanus Dregers were in attendance and both expressed to me how much better the current plan was for boaters since prior to this version of the plan no harbor access was to provided nor a boathouse.

The room had emptied by the time the breakout groups came back together for a summary. The interesting thing to note was that Recreation was by far the largest group with the Arts and Culture close behind only 6 people made up the Education component.


Afterward, I spoke to a Conservancy rep about wave attenuators and why I thought a pool would serve the function of training kids to kayak better than the current plan.

I also spoke to another Conservancy rep and the architect about the marina. No one in the public wants yachts of course but the marina persists. It had been stated by the Conservancy that a marina is expensive to build but they were considering making a long-term lease to a developer who might then recoup the expense of building it by renting slips etc. I explained our findings from the RFP process at 66 that modest boatslips could be a good source of revenue to fund public programming.

An additional survey for programming suggestions will be made to the general public, and the world, via the Conservancy website in the next couple weeks. I plan to notify members when it becomes available but you can also sign up at the Conservancy website here: www.brooklynbridgepark.org