(Photo: Matthew Caton)
For 10 years, the residents of Greenpoint and Williamsburg have been waiting patiently for the City to fulfill its promise of Bushwick Inlet Park, a 28-acre expanse of open, leafy space located along the North Brooklyn waterfront. This month, in the wake of a colossal warehouse fire, they’ve started to clamor for it with military precision.
About 50 residents gathered Monday to strategize a March 12 rally at City Hall. Jens Rasmussen, one of the Greenpointers leading the charge, describes the demonstration as a warning shot to ensure the voice of the North Brooklyn community is heard by the City.
“The CitiStorage fire has removed the luxury of waiting,” says Rasmussen, who worries that the leveled lot will be sold to private developers. “We needed to act.”
The long-term resilience of the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park campaign is, in part, because the resource has become an increasing necessity for North Brooklyn’s growing population. In 2005, the park was promised alongside plans to build a series of high-rise apartments along the waterfront. This was part of rezoning effort that affected 200 blocks within Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The buildings were built and new residents flooded in, but only a portion of the park space was constructed on the southern end of the proposed plot. This now includes a children’s play area, a playing field and the park’s headquarters building. The project cost $93 million – not quite enough to acquire all the land from the CitiStorage plot that sat in the middle of the planned site.
Kim Fraser’s family has been living in the area for three or four generations. She tells me that every member of the North Brooklyn community, new and old, needs Bushwick Inlet Park. “It’s about feeling and living like a human,” she says.
But it’s also because residents feel the need to ensure a governing body keeps its promises. “De Blasio needs to recognize this is an obligation that the city made,” says North Brooklyn Councilman Stephen Levin. “It’s a commitment that transcends specific administrations.”
There were indicators last spring that the City was prepared to acquire another portion of the land needed to complete Bushwick Inlet Park, but the CitiStorage plot has remained elusive. The Brooklyn Paper reports that the city’s slowness to acquire it “may have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars,” since its estimated value of $30 million in 2005 has almost tripled.
Earlier this month, the CitiStorage plot’s owner, Norman Brodsky, told Bedford + Bowery that he hadn’t spoken to the city since Bloomberg left office. “I haven’t even thought about that,” he said regarding the possibility of selling. “I’m concentrating on getting my personal life together.”
Many in the North Brooklyn community are unsympathetic to the City’s financial concerns. “I don’t believe it,” says Frazer. “The City can figure it out.” This week, Crain’s New York Business reported that the city “will finish fiscal 2015 with $1 billion more than what the de Blasio administration has budgeted.”
When I tell Matthew Caton, a photographer and a resident of the new riverside apartments, that the City feels it’s inhibited by money, he responds, “How can they say that?”
To get the word out to the wider North Brooklyn community in advance of the rally in early March, the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park have divided themselves into sub groups. One of the most prominent and successful so far has been the dog-owning contingent. The fact that there are over 10 pet supply stores lining the streets in North Brooklyn is testament to the many dogs and dog owners that call the area home.
Eli Kapauanau, owner of a pitbull-shepherd hybrid, tells me the only place his dog gets the exercise it needs is in McGolrick and McCarren parks, which are frequently over-crowded. For Kapauanau, the expansion of Bushwick Inlet Park would reflect the make-up of the modern face of North Brooklyn, both in terms of the number of dog owners and the young residents that will eventually be starting families in the aea.
Caton sees the urgent push for Bushwick Inlet Park as a way of distilling the good from the destruction that the North Brooklyn waterfront faced at the start of this month. He describes it as regeneration: “the phoenix of the park coming out of the ashes of the fire.”
The Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park meet again this Monday evening at Dirck the Norseman in Greenpoint.
