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"Just
to add some of the more recent history, the Brooklyn Bridge
Park Coalition has existed for more than ten years, and has
been trying to translate a dream, a vision that began twenty
years ago of creating a public park running from Atlantic
Avenue all the way up to the Manhattan Bridge, along publically
owned waterfront. The piece from Atlantic Avenue up to the
Brooklyn Bridge is owned by the Port Authority, almost exclusively;
and then all of the land between the Brooklyn Bridge and the
Manhattan Bridge is owned by the State - the only State Park
in the Borough of Brooklyn; and then four additional city
lots that are not being used except for the DEP water meter
repair. And now that Walentas is on the scene, and has bought
so many of the buildings upland and is converting them for
residential purposes..our strategy is to try to develop an
alternative vision. We are in the process of hiring an urban
design team to develop a plan for a self-sustaining park in
this area running all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge up
perhaps as far north now as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which
would be very exciting if there is a new movie studio built
there. The Con Ed lots are going to be sold in the next four
to five years, and so there's an opportunity to create this
huge park. And so we're going to create this alternative vision,
and then try to go and find the political and community support
as we're developing that vision. We'll have community charrettes,
and talk to people that would be effected..about what they'd
like to see here. "We're
in an era where we need to find a way to make that park self-sustaining.
We hope that we can find public and private money to fund
the capital costs, but where we are right now is that we need
to find some commercial engine that will fund the maintenance
costs. During Community Board Two's 197-a planning process,
we were considering different uses of the Empire Stores for
example. Not a festival marketplace with a neon flashing sign,
"DUMBO, Brooklyn," as has been proposed by the developer,
but finding some way that would be consistent with the historic
character of the Empire Stores. Some of the suggestions that
some people have made in this community planning process are
beginning a phased development of the Empire Stores, including
perhaps an Historic Preservation High School, perhaps having
some commercial things like restaurants, having some gallery
space, but orienting those commercial things so that they
would face out onto Water Street, rather than onto the only
State Park in the Borough of Brooklyn.
"Back
in 1968, Mayor Lindsay's administration tried to relocate
the Fort Greene Meat Market to a very large area running all
the way from Old Fulton to Main Street. The population - largely
Brooklyn Heights, because that's where the population was
- rose up and opposed it, sued the Lindsay administration,
and were successful in persuading him to move the meat market
to Sunset Park. And then people from Brooklyn Height again
persuaded the State to acquire this land from Con Ed and then
turn it into a State Park. But since it became a State Park
in the mid-1970s, State Parks has been trying to unload it
because of the enormous costs of maintaining the Empire Stores. "I
think it's very important now as we're facing the huge momentum
of the public relations machine that Two Trees has been able
to engage, that we understand the history, and we take the
history and shape it so that we can create this vision that
so many people have had for so long, that would be consistent
with the nature of this site and embrace the waterfront." "I think underlying the future, the past and present of this area is how people got to the waterfront and how they can get to waterfront now, or how they can't get to it now, which is really more the case. When I heard that long list of industries, I wondered what was the method of transportation for those industries. Some of it was shipping at one point, but it sounds like a lot of it - Benjamin Moore, you know - was post-shipping. So was it trucks, what was the means of transportation?
"You
know the most controversial part of the Walentas development
plan is to have two huge garages with a thousand cars in each.
We don't want to be overwhelmed by cars on the waterfront;
I think we all firmly believe that the waterfront is not a
place for parking garages. But how do we get here? You know
I think we all want to see the wonderful vistas, and get down
here, but it is a hike from the subway. So in order to bring
more people here, we have to tackle that the whole issue of
transportation is an underlying problem and concern here. "I'm
just looking at the picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the
vehicles on the bridge. That was one phase of transportation.
What went before, what's going to be the future. You know,
are we forever condemned by the car, is that going to be it,
we're never going to go back to any other means of transportation,
and what does that mean for the future of this area?"
"There
was a lot of paint works, bookbinding, handkerchiefs, bottles,
Grand Union Tea Company, breweries. Oh yes, the Eskimo Pie
building, which was originally the Thompson Meter Building,
and according to the architectural historians who were touring
today, it is the most important example of terra cotta and
the French technique of concrete construction in America.
There've been efforts to landmark that buiding because it's
been threatened for a number of years, however it's rumored
that the owner refuses, so we don't know what's going to happen
with that. "Typewriters,
Coffee Roasting, Jewelry. Kirkman and Son Soap Company - until
last year that building still had the painted signs from over
a hundred years ago (it was built in 1883), and the person
who bought the building just painted it white last year. Benjamin
Moore started here on Water Street, on the other side of Bridge.
Their building was built by William Tubby, who is apparently
a very important Brooklyn Architect. Lots of coffee, varnish,
paint, metal stamps, paper bags, boilers, gas and electric
fixtures. "The
Gair industrial complex which is owned by David Walentas the
developer, was a cardboard box manufacturer, and I think during
the heyday of Gair that little area was called
Gairville. And then the Zaracas Sons Macaroni Company, it's
a 1930's building on Front Street, it's now got something
to do with cars. And then there are a lot of industries existing
today, brush makers, metal stampers, transfer station. And
a lot of new manufacturing with the influx of artists and
craftspeople. So manufacturing is as prosperous as ever here,
it's just sort changing face and scale." |
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