City Calls $10.5M Overhaul Of Fort Greene Park 'Routine Work'

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — Environmental activists say a $10.5 million revamp of Fort Greene Park is a radical change that will forever shift the park's historic character. But, according to the city, the renovation is just their standard maintenance.

Lawyers with the Sierra Club and the Parks Department butted heads in court Tuesday over how to define the reconstruction project during the first hearing on a lawsuit claiming the city incorrectly categorized the plans to avoid doing a full environmental review.

The lawsuit, filed by the Sierra Club and a local group, argue that the city's plan to build a promenade and remove at least 58 trees means they are required by state law to do a full environmental study of the plans.

But instead, the Parks Department marked the project as "routine agency work," or renovations exempt from those requirements.

"The parks department should not be allowed to escape the procedural requirements," Richard Lippes, the Sierra Club's attorney, told a judge. "(The environmental study) does not mean that the work will not happen — what it means is they have to do an environmental assessment…the environmental impact statement is a consideration of alternatives that was not done here."

Lippes and Robert Martin, the city's legal counsel, went back and forth about how judges in the past have defined what and what does not make a project "routine agency work."

In previous cases, Lippes claimed, judges have defined maintenance as normal cleaning and minor repairs, like retiling a ceiling or trimming existing shrubs. The city's plan to add 13,000 feet of pavement, remove a garden and cut down 30 percent of the trees in that end of the park don't seem to fit that definition, he said.

But Martin pointed to other instances, like a Staten Island case, where judges said there should be a higher bar so that legal claims don't turn into differences in aesthetic opinions.

"Routine activity does not somehow blossom into non-routine activity just because it changes the status quo," Martin said. "That's a disagreement about design, but it does not give the petitioners legal claim."

He added that just because the project hasn't gone through the New York State Environmental Conservation Law study, doesn't mean it hasn't been reviewed. The plans passed the local community board nearly unanimously and were approved by the city's Landmark Preservation Commission and Public Design Commission.

The project, Martin contended, was "requested by the community" back when it was one of eight New York City parks selected for a renovation back in 2016. The city then held meetings with residents before coming up with the final plans, he said.

But Fort Greene residents who showed up to the hearing Tuesday either said there weren't enough of those meetings or that those that were held were a form of "bait and switch."

"When they came to our community the parks department said they wanted to turn hard-scapes into green-scapes...and then a year later they are turning our greenery into plaza," Ling Hsu, a member of Friends of Fort Greene Park said.

Georgette Poe, who lives in the Walt Whitman Houses, said the parks department barely reached out to NYCHA complexes that border the portion of the project that will go under construction.

"They didn't even get to know us," Poe said. "How dare you come into our neighborhood park and change it all."

Tuesday's hearing is the latest legal challenge for the park project. Another decision in July forced the city to release the architect's report it used as the reasoning to not do an environmental study.

Lippes said the ruling on the Sierra Club case will likely come in a few months.