Keeping Tabs on Brooklyn Bridge Park Development

There is a whole lot of development planned for Brooklyn Bridge Park, and this Crain’s piece does a pretty good job capturing the massive scope of all that’s to come. To recap: On Labor Day, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation will announce developers for the 19th-century Empire Stores warehouses and for the condo tower on John Street. And construction is beginning soon for Toll Brothers and Starwood Capital Group’s hotel and condo project planned for Pier One, pictured above. All this is expected to yield millions of dollars of revenue for the maintenance of the park. Meanwhile, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are slowly getting rid of their many properties in Brooklyn Heights, including the 400,000-square-foot 55 Furman Street, warehouses along Pearl Street in Dumbo, and two huge parking lots. As Crain’s notes, those are “properties with as much as 2.9 million square feet of development rights.” (Mega developer Related Cos. is eyeing the Pearl Street warehouses.) All these changes, of course, do not come without some controversy. Crain’s talks to the executive director of the Dumbo Neighborhood Association, who says the focus is too much on the projects, not the park. And the union is pushing for work on the three development projects planned because the projects are going up on public land and receiving public subsidies.
Brooklyn Bridge Park Sows Seeds for Borough Land Grab [Crain’s]