Agency Adopts Park Plan for Brooklyn Waterfront
July 27, 2005, NY Times — State officials approved a draft plan yesterday for an 85-acre waterfront park near Downtown Brooklyn that would include playing fields, marinas, restaurants and offices, and 1,200 units of luxury housing. The proposed plan for a 1.3-mile shoreline park stretching from the Manhattan Bridge to Cobble Hill is an important…
July 27, 2005, NY Times — State officials approved a draft plan yesterday for an 85-acre waterfront park near Downtown Brooklyn that would include playing fields, marinas, restaurants and offices, and 1,200 units of luxury housing. The proposed plan for a 1.3-mile shoreline park stretching from the Manhattan Bridge to Cobble Hill is an important step forward in a contentious effort over nearly 20 years to develop the largely neglected waterfront area. The park plan and a draft environmental review will go before public hearings in September.
By far the most controversial part of the plan is the proposal to build or renovate five residential buildings, including a new 30-story tower. The decision to include housing was first made public in December, as part of a plan to make the park finance its own upkeep. But the number of housing units, first revealed yesterday, elicited angry reactions from a number of community groups that have opposed the plan. If it goes forward, building on the park project is expected to begin in 2008 and to be completed by 2012, according to the plan released yesterday. The park’s design, by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, includes “canals, boardwalks and floating bridges that wind around the existing piers.” There would be 12 acres of paddling waters for kayaking, rowboating and other water sports. The entrances to the park would be at Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Ferry Landing and in Dumbo (for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).
The project would also include a 224-room hotel, restaurants and cafes, 150,000 square feet of retail space and 1,100 parking spaces. But it is the residential element that has galvanized opposition among many Brooklynites. Although a few civic groups have come out in favor of the plan, opponents say the housing element was pushed through largely in secret. Some have accused the park’s planners of catering to developers, particularly at 360 Furman Street, a privately owned warehouse near the northern edge of the park.
Agency Adopts Park Plan [NY Times]
i think we are close in opinion. I like your thinking about creating incentives.
I do think williamsburg front should be develop.
But could it be done in more small humain way?
Yes i do think hi rise does not create comiunity.
All projects (public housing) is hi rise and fails becouse of lack of commiunity. Low income housing can be very sucesfull in lower scale. (well proven in san fransisko).
I grow up and live in hi rise development i dont want to do it again.
It’s very noble to want affordable housing for all. While we’re at it, how about universal healthcare and world peace? The fact remains that trying to shoehorn high-rise and low-rise residential housing into a sliver of land betwen Brooklyn Heights and the river will have a significant impact on the area, effecting quality of life for those of us that live there already.
first of all, there is no law that says low-rise=community, high-rise doesn’t. why are you so infatuated with small bldgs? second of all, have you ever been to the wburg waterfront? how on earth can you call a weed and rat infested wasteland charming?
finally, does it ever occur to you to ask why there’s all that empty space in poor bklyn nabes? i agree, i’d love to see those areas developed, but in order to do so, you need to create incentives, unless you plan on building 100,000 units of govt-owned housing and turning the city into a vast housing project at the mercy of the city.
creating incentives involves: no rent control, no obstructionist “community” opposition, reasonable tax laws, low crime, good schools, and so forth. In other words, you need to make it profitable for developers; but the “profit is evil” mentality is what brought us this shortage in the first place.
Take a trip to parts of bed stuy or bushwick a lot of emty lots an buildings that are waiting to be improve. I can imagine a lot of nice low rise housing contribiuting towards improvment of the area.
It can create a commiunities, hi rise does not.
Malymis, unfortunately you are just plain wrong on the facts. NY has a housing vacancy rate of less than 3%. The national average is 9-10%. “A lot of space” doesn’t translate into a lot of housing, unless you actually build housing on the space. But everytime someone tries to do that, they are accused of “over-development.”
There are a lot of space in brooklyn for new houses and a lot of housing waiting for rehabilitation, problem is that everybody wants to live in few hot hoods and expect have an afordable housing right there. Truth is that if they overdevelop, some places will get Trump-enized and lost its charm forever.
“This is shocking selfishness and myopia”. Escap, enough. You’re nuts.
??? You’re comparing Central Park to a broken down waterfront in Brooklyn? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Trump did want to build in Central Park afterall. What was so bad about that?