City Takes Control of Brooklyn Bridge Park Today

The Bloomberg administration will finally gets its wish today when New York State officially hands over full control of Brooklyn Bridge Park to the city after years of an imperfect power-sharing arrangement. With the state in fiscal crisis, the city was able to ultimately close the deal by committing to pony up $55 million over the next year to fund the construction of the athletic center on Pier 2 of the park. Now is the time when we need to make sure the long-term funding for these types of projects is in place, said Robert C. Lieber, deputy mayor for economic development. So we’ll step up and fund it, and with that we want the responsibility for working with everyone and getting it done. Even an official for the state acknowledged that it made more sense to have just one cook in the kitchen. You’d just rather have one government body at the point of making decisions, said Peter Davidson, the state’s chief development official and chairman of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation. As part of the agreement, though, the state will retain some say over the contentious issue of developing housing in the park as a way to make the park self-funding…On a related note, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation has issued a handful of Requests for Proposals for food concessions in the park. Responses are due by April 1 and there’s a tour of the park for interested vendors tomorrow. More details here.
State Agrees to Let the City Finish Brooklyn Bridge Park [NY Times]
Brooklyn Bridge Park To Go To City Control [City Hall News]