Pop-Up Park Pops in Brooklyn Bridge Park
To coincide with the Waterfalls launch, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation are opening the gates to their temporary “Pop-Up” park at Pier 1 by Fulton Ferry Landing today at 10 a.m. The 26,000-square-foot landscaped space has a sand play area and lots of picnic tables at which to…
To coincide with the Waterfalls launch, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation are opening the gates to their temporary “Pop-Up” park at Pier 1 by Fulton Ferry Landing today at 10 a.m. The 26,000-square-foot landscaped space has a sand play area and lots of picnic tables at which to eat the food being served all summer by RICE in the tented cafe. The park will be open every day through Labor Day. The Daily News runs a rendering (below) from Michael Van Valkenburg today of how the park is ultimately expected to look; the paper also reports that while “key parts” of the park will be ready as soon as the end of 2009, the Development Corporation has secured only two-thirds of the money it needs to complete the park by 2012.”There is no benefit to waiting,” said BBPDC’s Regina Myer. “The construction costs go up every day and we need to get the public out there as soon as possible.”
This is just a simple way to placate the masses. Look closely at the renderings. They are false. They suggest the hotel complex is smaller and moved away from the existing brownstones – it isn’t. Look at pier 6 – more of the same. Right where they show a playground will be a 30 story and a 20 story tower is planned. It is really shameful, the falsehood. They are wasting our tax dollars to draw nice pictures. This is going to be a condo-landscaped “park” without a pool, an ice rink, year round field house or anything else Brooklyn needs. Bring back the community’s park plan and banish the condo cheerleaders – the “conservancy” (they are doing a great job conserving their jobs, that is for sure)!
We discovered this little park last Friday and had a great time. Plenty of seating, great views, a sandbox for my kid and beers! More playgrounds should serve wine and beer, incidentally, to take the edge off all us uptight parents. I’m not sure I get what’s not to like considering it was previously an unaccessible concrete pier.
As someone who works in Battery Park – let me say we would be very very very luck if the BB-Park ended up like the PUBLIC park along Battery Park City- it is gorgeous.
The problem with the park around Battery Park City is not the condos or the park (which if you have visited you would realize how nice it is) – the problem is that it is hard to get to – (far from the subway) and effectively walled-off from the rest of the city b/c of the WTC and Westside Highway.
The fact that BB-Park will be slightly closer to mass transit and much more accessible to the general population, plus the residential component will be on the periphery can only means that it will be even better…..
that may be, 8:42- but there are other ways to make it self-sufficient. And once you go that route of luxury housing, then you start to get all the issues of luxury housing residents vs the needs of a public park. And it still remains to be seen how once you go down that road what the impact of using residential housing to support a park will really mean.
And who will oversee all of this? the PA? the Conservancy? How much public funding is involved? there are a lot of questions and uncertainties but the way things go in this city, when it comes to a question of private interests with money vs public interest, private always wins. While the idea of a self-sufficient public park is a nice one, what happens if it isn’t? Do they take it away? Isn’t there an inherent conflict of interest in trying to make a public space a commercial venture? Some things just aren’t meant to be because it compromises what they are.
I went down there last night and am cautiously optimistic that the luxury housing will remain on the periphery. Adults and children all seemed to have a wide-eyed appreciation for the pop up park. While it represents a fraction of the entire pier area, I was longingly looking through the chain link fence trying to imagine what will follow. There’s huge potential and I’m even more excited now with the prospect of more green space and activities down there.
I agree completely with 6:34 and propose an additional theory: development of the park has dragged on for so long that many people don’t remember that the only way we were able to get a park was to offer to make it financially self-sufficient. Anybody who complains about the modest amount of housing that is proposed along the periphery of the park should take another look at the plan floated by the Port Authority, which covered the entire site with buildings.
And, since I’m encouraging rhetorical honesty here, I will note that when people agreed to a self-sufficient park, there was explicit opposition to housing as the revenue generater. But I, for one, agree that nothing kicks back as much income on a per square foot basis as residential development … which is on the periphery of the park, not in it as so many people like to fudge.
what is happening, that “park” looks like a marketing campaign.
nyc is getting kinda lame and trying to be better and cool at the same time. nothing sadder than watching someone trying to be cool.
I didn’t realize the PA owned that site- I was under the impression the City did (Or did the PA do a trade?).
I feel like the city lost so much as the waterfront gets eaten up by luxury housing. the harbor and the piers are becoming a theme park. It must have been a great sight seeing the ships docked at the piers. I remember the ships that used to dock in Manhattan- NYC was a magnificent port city – sad that future generations won’t know it. And how stupid the City was to send all that business to New Jersey.
bxgirl, that stretch of land was never public cuz it was ‘owned’ by the PA. So if it’s a gated community in 5 years, we’re exactly in the same spot we are today–screwed.
I lived in BH when at least the piers were used for their original purpose. GranColombia used to berth there.