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Pols and residents blast Brooklyn Bridge Park towers plan
Opposition says decade-old environmental review is out-of-sync with current neighborhood
A pair of planned residential towers at Brooklyn Bridge Park is facing opposition before it has even found a developer.
Residents and elected officials are asking the city to conduct a new environmental review for the 31 and 15-story towers set to rise above the riverside green space at Pier 6. They charge that the development plan relies on a review conducted a decade ago that fails to account for the realities on the ground today.
Opponents say the 430-unit development threatens to further burden schools and city services already strained by an influx of new residents, reports the Brooklyn Paper.
“In no way do the plans as they were generated account for this population,” Andrew Kern, a Brooklyn Heights resident said at a meeting of the park’s board of directors. “I’m hoping the board can really wrestle with these issues rather than kowtow to developers.”
The board resolved on Thursday to discuss a new environmental review in August, according to the Brooklyn Paper.
Some residents say the towers have no place in a park, but the development was conceived to fund the park in perpetuity. A number of politicians, including City Council members Brad Lander and Stephen Levin, have implored the city to find alternative financing.
The pols are unlikely to get support from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is seeking to reserve 30 percent of the towers’ units for low-income New Yorkers as part of his push to create affordable housing. [Brooklyn Paper] — Tom DiChristopher