Piecemeal Process And Million-Dollar Toilets

The park-starved residents of North Brooklyn came out in force last Thursday, Nov. 1, for the unveiling of preliminary plans for two new North Brooklyn parks. Under the watchful eye of North Brooklyn parks director Mary Salig, design firm Stantec walked the members of Brooklyn Community Board 1’s Parks Committee, and guests, through the rudiments of their designs for both the 50 Kent St. parcel of the long-aborning Bushwick Inlet Park in Williamsburg, and the reimagined Box Street Park at the far Northern end of Greenpoint.

PIECEMEAL PROCESS
First up was Stantec’s design for the 50 Kent parcel of what will ultimately be Bushwick Inlet Park(BIP). In a design that incorporates several popular features arising from last June’s community input meeting, Stantec’s plans for the rectangular parcel focus on a central hill overlooking the East River and the towers of Midtown beyond. Rising to a height of 22.5 feet, this hill serves dual purpose as both a lookout and a “berm” — the latter being an landscape term for a raised embankment, here serving as a buffer against the noxious business of Kent Ave.

Flanked to the East by service paths and a welcoming plaza, the hill feature serves both as viewshed amenity and flood protection: Unlike some governments (Ahem…), the City of New York believes in the fact of global warming, and its attendant sea-level rise, and its new park designs take such eventualities as the 100-year flood-plain into consideration. Stantec’s hill, in addition to maximizing excellent midtown views, conveniently manages to put a large part of the park above the city’s rising waters — useful, in a picnic, and an elegant solution to a real problem.

Beyond the hill feature, however, Stantec’s design offers little in the way of surprise. A rudimentary water feature drew both plaudits for its inclusion, and criticism for its simplistic design. Attendees also commented on an apparent overabundance of concrete, and questioned the desirability of tree groves that, at least in this preliminary design, are fenced-off from pedestrians. The general concern, as expressed by the community, was for more “softness” throughout: gravel paths instead of pavement, muted edges instead of hard fencing, and permeable boundaries between path and forest.

A deeper concern, however, is the piecemeal process by which this parcel, and BIP itself, is being developed. As one small portion of what will eventually be a 28-acre park, the 1.8 acres of 50 Kent is just the second patch of BIP to come online, following the playfield down the street. The vast bulk of the park, which combines the iron towers of the Bayside Fuel colony, the wild shore of the Motiva site, and the still-occupied heart of the CitiStorage site, remains in something of a procurement/design/build limbo — though, as of November 2016, at least the city is in possession of all the proposed real-estate to deliver.

Stated frankly, the clumsy, protracted nature of BIP’s development is bound to retard efforts at excellence. Given the high stakes involved in what is, for the foreseeable future, North Brooklyn’s last chance at a great public park, it seems a missed opportunity to be designing this amenity piecemeal, off of a rudimentary design that is now over 15 years old. An example from Thursday night: the interior borders of the 50 Kent parcel feel, in this initial design, half-baked and vague, with the South, West, and Northern borders loaded with timid features such as the aforementioned small, fenced tree groves, where a larger, more inviting forest might be possible with an integrated design.

That said, the Parks Committee in the end moved to accept the designs as presented, pending clarification of a few key planting and material details, such as bench design, planting selection, and more naturalistic pathways.

MILLION DOLLAR TOILETS
The design presented for Box Street Park, at the far North end of Greenpoint, was similarly underwhelming. While the City and the designers should be commended for their flexibility in adapting their original 2005 plan, which featured an active, synthetic turn playfield, to the more-passive uses now favored by the community, the resulting design feels inchoate and simplistic.

Paramount among the concerns voiced by the community is the proposed park’s treatment of its prized waterfront. As presented, the park calls for a linear concrete waterfront esplanade cantilevered 10’ above the Newtown Creek, in a design that seems to favor ease of construction and parity with the commercial properties abutting it over any possible connection to the waterline itself.

“The shoreline design presented here is a complete missed opportunity,” said Community Board 1 member (and Newtown Creek Alliance ED) Willis Elkins, to a roomful of spontaneous applause. “It is a waterfront park and should have a real connection to Newtown Creek — especially since this is one of the few spaces where we have significant upland space to work with and not just the 40 foot requirement on the adjacent private development sites."

The residents assembled in the room seemed unmoved by the designers’ claim that a waterfront connection would eat into parkspace, and prove too expensive due to associated costs of environmental remediation. Citing successful waterline connections at both Hunters Point South Park just across the creek, and the Newtown Creek Nature Walk just a few blocks West, attendees pushed hard for a supplemental design review.

Another concern voiced was the city’s insistence on a comfort station at the park’s entrance. Concerns here were twofold: First, given existing constraints on layout (the city has no current plans to move an Emergency Response Unit squeezing the park’s street-side terminus), the addition of what will likely be a fetid, unkempt box at the already compromised entrance would seem short-sighted. Second, given the absurd economics of a city-built comfort station (estimates are around $3.5 Million for a 660 square foot concrete bunker!), the decision to expend scant dollars on such an amenity seems questionable — especially with an existing public comfort station available not 75 yards away in the DuPont Playground.

These concerns and others led the assembled members of CB1’s parks committee to send designs for Box Street Park back to the drawing board.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE
And therein lies the rub: Inevitably, any pushback on the city’s designs effectively delays the provision of a finished park, in terms measured in months and even years. The park-starved residents of North Brooklyn thus face a Sophie’s Choice, to either accept less-than-great designs, or to push for a standard of excellence that means the parks may not be realized in their lifetimes.

What is clear is that it will require dogged community input either way. Indeed, it is only through extensive community advocacy that the process has made it this far. Given the often-asymmetrical support of the City, which has a tendency to fast-track private-development-friendly rezonings while lagging in the delivery of public amenities, the advocacy of community groups and individuals alike is evermore vital.

To learn more about North Brooklyn’s proposed parks, or to get involved yourself, check out the following groups:

• Community Board 1
• North Brooklyn Parks Alliance
• Newtown Creek Alliance
• North Brooklyn Neighbors