Bushwick Inlet Park Activists Feel Sideswiped by 'Maker Park' Plan

WILLIAMSBURG, NY — After a fight that lasted more than a decade, several long-term residents of Williamsburg and Greenpoint finally won their hard-earned battle a few weeks ago to have the city fulfill its 2005 promise to give the 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park to the community.

But just days after the community's proud win, a group of city planners, environmental lawyers, and activists announced their official plan for part of the park that involves repurposing towering dilapidated oil tanks on the land, called Maker Park. Outspoken community members who were active for years in the fight for the park were furious with Maker Park and the coverage it received in several local publications.

Maker Park's plan involves turning the seven-acre site within Bushwick Inlet Park that used to be the Bayside Oil Depot into a new site in which the 50-ft-tall oil tanks (of which there are 10) would be reused as a theater, a green space, community classes, and other performances and activities.

Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, along with other community members who have a 10-year skin in the game, say they need that seven acres for green space, and they plan to demolish the tanks.

Those community members made it clear in some closed online forums that they consider the people behind Maker Park to be a group of opportunist outsiders swooping in now that the city has bought the park, so that they can monopolize the planning process.

Adam Perlmutter, a Williamsburg attorney who is a member of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park and chairman of the Open Space Alliance, which advocates for green space in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, wrote a scathing public Facebook post about Maker Park, arguing its members had no interest in working with the community.

"...'Maker Park' has marred a time when we should be coming together to celebrate, rather than feeling under siege by a development-driven media blitz pushing an agenda that threatens to do great damage to our community," the post says. Perlmutter, who has been deeply involved in the fight for the city to buy the park, ended the post by encouraging the community to show up to Maker Park's proposal meeting on Tuesday night to voice their opposition.

Steve Chesler, a member of the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, told Curbed that reusing the oil tanks is "the antithesis of what people are striving for" because of potential pollutants underneath the surface of the tanks. "Scores of people in the community have been putting blood, sweat, and tears into getting the city to save the full 28 acres," he said.

Under the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park plan, the space that Maker Park wants to use would be more open green space with a beach and planted terraces. Here is the NYC Parks Department plan put together after input from community members.

Maker Park understands the backlash against their plan and hopes to clear up misunderstandings and offer an olive branch at their proposal meeting Tuesday night, Municipal Art Society public programming director Stacey Anderson, a member of Maker Park, told Patch.

"There's a show called Parks & Recreation for a reason. People have a great amount of emotional tie-ins with public space," Anderson said, relaying that she has deep respect for the community members' plans for the park, and hopes they will hear out her group's ideas for Maker Park.

Anderson said Maker Park hopes to shine a light on the process of the community deciding what to do with its 28 new acres of land. "Even if the Maker Park vision doesn't ultimately become realized, we hope to have done a public service by engaging people in the conversation and showing that it's a completely democratic process."

Many residents argued on a closed Facebook forum for North Brooklyn that they wanted open space for the community, and they saw Maker Park as another venue for, as one person put it, "businesses to sell stuff."

Anderson told Patch that Maker Park represents the community just as well as Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park — just a different subset of the community.

"The neighborhood itself is very diverse, and there might be an appetite for this idea."

Photo credit: NYC Parks Department