The Get-Down Let Down

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN - Here is a sweet fact: In New York City urban-planning parlance, the area where a shoreline development allows for and builds direct public access to the waterfront is officially known as a “get-down.” Where the term originated is a blissful mystery, best-suited to the Etymology Department at City Hall. What is more important is that everytime the planners, code-enforcers, environmental protectors, and especially developers refer to one of those put-your-toes-in-the-water areas along the waterfront, they have to say the words, “get-down,” as in:

“Coney Island is one big get-down,”

or

“I dig the get-down at East River State Park,”

or

“The community wanted a get-down near the mouth of Newtown Creek…”

At any rate, getting down is clearly one of the things North Brooklyn wants more of.

Yet here in Greenpoint, across one of the last significant stretches of Brooklyn waterfront to be developed, ain’t no getting down happening nowhere. And that sad state of affairs has brought the community to something of a reckoning.

First, background: One concession wrought from the landmark 2005 rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg was a public right to waterfront access, even on privately held waterfront parcels, with the area so dedicated determined by overall lot size. Thus, in mega-developments such as the ongoing Greenpoint Landing, as much as 20% of the lot area must be given over to public waterfront access in the form of a park. These parks must allow for public access during regular city park hours, be clearly identified, and designed according to stringent standards issued in and later amended in accordance with the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Open-Space Master Plan.

The result, we are told, will be a connected waterfront traversing both public and private lots, all the way from from the (soon to be re-designed) Box Street Park, right down the the shining example of Domino Park — which indeed is a privately-held public park.

In what would seem a missed opportunity, however, the majority of parcels currently under development in Greenpoint offer no direct waterfront access. From Greenpoint Landing’s dull esplanade, to the glorified cruise deck at The Greenpoint (see below), to the prophylactic pathway down at Client 9’s 420 Kent, the public waterfronts provided by these developments lack any get-down.

Instead, designers, in collaboration with (or possible enslavement to?) the needs of their developers, have opted for waterfront treatments that, to this author at least, appear as expedient, uninspired, alienating, and above-all cheap. Given that this current boom of development will continue to define the community for decades, these parsimonious, cookie-cutter waterfront treatments have drawn the attention and the ire of Greenpoint’s broader community in a concerted way.

In response to this upswell of insurgent neighborhood energy, City Council Member Steve Levin staged an explanatory session with several city agencies this past Tuesday, to shine a light on the process by which these privately held, publicly accessible waterfront lands are developed, designed, approved, and built.

Presumably, a deeper goal of the meeting was to empower the community to better shepherd the process, maximize public benefit, strengthen community engagement, and ensure responsiveness from developers — though given the lack of any mechanism to elicit public input on these private developments, perhaps that last intention was just a joke?

What is no joke is that it ain’t easy to push developers to get-down. In elucidating the process, the designers present convincingly explained how, between fire-lane access, sewage easements, liability insurances, ADA compliance, flood considerations, and a host of other stringent city frameworks, getting down is frankly just difficult to do. The bottom line is that it is far easier, and generally cheaper, to build up a tried-and-true cantilevered concrete bulkhead than to engineer true waterfront access. Case in point:

Unfortunately, these cheap-and-easy solutions are neither modest in impact, nor easily reversed. And so, the community is forced to watch all but helpless as the last great opportunity to truly connect North Brooklyn to its own waterfront is passed over. And sadly, absent a development getting what Council Member Levin referred to as, “the full Euler,” (Which, upon research, reveals itself in fact to be a full “ULURP” review process), it seems highly unlikely that any of the current developments will opt for a maintenance-sucking, disabilities-act challenging, insurance-premium complicating, thriving, jiving get-down.

Moreover, given the protracted and obscure nature of waterfront commercial development in general, it is by and large too late to do much about it. With the bulk of the development already deep in process, the clock would seem to be running out on getting down.

All of which underscores the community's frustration. If the current residents of Greenpoint hope to maximize our fair neighborhood’s share of get-downs, it will require significant organizational effort and oversight — all of which may still fail to produce the required change in developers’ attitudes, given the lack of legal incentives to get-down.

That said, there are still pockets of hope: Take the relatively nascent mega-development at 37 West Street, which sits atop a parcel identified as “Calyer Street-End Plaza.” In planning documents, this parcel is clearly slated to contain a get-down:

Whether or not such an amenity will actually materialize is an open question. Given that the parcel is to be built and turned over to the public without any formal mechanism for public input, it would seem premature to count on the developers, Halcyon Management, to obey the intent of the plan merely to be neighborly. However, with growing awareness of and pushback against much of the runaway development in Greenpoint, perhaps some avatar of public will will manifest itself to steer this project towards fulfilling the promise of a get-down, where it would appear none is currently planned.

At any rate, the rendering posted on the site is decidedly ambiguous - even if the public’s commentary is not.