![]() “If we’re going to allow people the privilege of living in the park, it should be available not just to the highest bidder.” Cohen, a resident of One Brooklyn Bridge Park, a board member of the park corporation and a former aide to Gov. “We wouldn’t be having this debate if the park weren’t so successful,” said Steven M. He helped form guiding principles for a park and brought in analysts to produce two studies of the economic viability of turning the piers into a park. Manheim worked tirelessly in that effort from 1983, first as the president of the Brooklyn Heights Association and then as president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition. ![]() A former investment banker who grew up with a key to Gramercy Park, Mr. At the time, in the 1980s, the Port Authority was planning to sell the piers and land along the East River. Thirty years ago, Tony Manheim was one of the first to call for the disused piers on the Brooklyn waterfront to become a park. Schomp added: “It has a higher calling as a park than as a place for a few people to live.” “But we don’t want it in the wrong place, meaning there’s a right way to build it.” “That’s an old game because you know very well we do prefer low-income housing,” Mr. ![]() He and his late wife developed senior housing in Buffalo, he said, and served as conservationists for Prospect Park. Merz said from his sunken living room overlooking a Zen garden. “There will be those maybe pointing at us, saying, ‘Aha, you don’t want low-income housing,’ ” Mr. Merz, who lectures softly on social theory, insisting on separating parkland from development. Schomp, who wants her view of the water on her frequent runs preserved, and Mr. They make an odd couple of litigants - Ms. A Modified General Project Plan, issued in 2006, laid out the parcels that would be developed. Those buildings were to produce the revenue to cover annual operating costs and long-term maintenance. Bloomberg mandated in 2002 the construction of residential and commercial developments on the perimeter of what would become a 1.3-mile-long park curving along the Brooklyn waterfront from the Manhattan Bridge to Atlantic Avenue. It exists only because of a hybrid public-private model and an agreement between the state and the city that requires that the park be funded by private development. The rest of the city, which is struggling with issues of affordable housing and poor people’s entrances and Sandy recovery, really doesn’t care what shape housing takes in what is a beautifully manicured, gorgeous city park.”īrooklyn Bridge Park is not like other city parks. Michael Tobman, 41, a Brooklyn-born political consultant, takes the long view. But a park that has to pay for itself is not supposed to pay for the ills of the city.” “Affordable housing is a noble and fine thing. I said, ‘You are making me ashamed to be your neighbor, please stop.’ ” “After two months of those comments, I sent out an email to everyone. “It felt very Nimby, like ‘We don’t want poor people in the backyard,’ ” she said recently. When some people intimated that affordable housing could bring down property values, the debate took a tone that was offensive to Nina Lorez Collins, a writer and former literary agent. Other residents were angry that a 31-story tower would block their views. The messages expressed outrage over how the two new buildings would increase crowds in the park and cramp the already oversubscribed local public school, P.S. Some condo owners reacted with unfiltered fury. When city officials said they were ready to solicit requests for proposals to develop two parcels of land north of Atlantic Avenue and directly south of the building, they altered a 2006 plan so that it would include affordable housing, for moderate- to middle-income residents. Last spring, residents used it to air their dirty laundry. The internal message board of the One Brooklyn Bridge Park luxury condominium is generally used to post “babysitter wanted” notes or to remind residents to pick up their dry cleaning.
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