Thursday, January 29, 2009

Brooklyn park ridiculously expensive

$16M A YEAR FOR PLANNED B'KLYN PARK
By RICH CALDER, NY Post

The controversial Brooklyn Bridge Park will cost $16.1 million a year to maintain - making it the city's second-most-expensive park per acre to operate.

Officials yesterday overseeing construction of the 85-acre waterfront park revealed a new financing plan that estimates the park will cost $346.3 million to build - more than double the $150 million price set in 2002.

Only $231 million has been budgeted, so the project is being built piecemeal.

A Post analysis found the park is now slated to receive $189,458 an acre annually for maintenance and operations, trailing only Manhattan's Bryant Park ($643,833 an acre).

The city spends an average of $9,555 an acre to maintain parks, so the best ones - like Bryant and Central - are usually in elite areas that supplement their budgets with private dollars raised by well-funded conservancies.

The annual maintenance of Brooklyn Bridge Park is supposed to be funded through revenues raised through the construction of more than 1,200 controversial high-rise condos.

The Post reported last week that plans to build 780 of them - along with a hotel - are on hold.

Regina Meyer, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp., said the huge operating expense is largely due to the fact that the park includes piers that are costly to maintain.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stupid Jerks!

Turn this over to Plaxal. Turn this over to Suna and Silvercup! Turn this over to Aquista! Turn this over to Ranter!

Develope the site, tell everyone its public access (a 40 feet) and you can make money off the land instead of wasting it for parks.

There must be some Godforsaken out of the way polluted brownfield (like the Con Ed site that every in Astoria is so happy) that would make a fine a waterfront park.

Anonymous said...

Ah Missing.

This is Brooklyn not Astoria.

The brain snyapses actually connect here.

Anonymous said...

Why isn't Greenshores pushing for a public park for the East River?

Is their agenda set by developers and poltitians.

Anonymous said...

Certainly is. They are their to do two things:

1. Pull shopping carts out of the river and run some programs - saves the city on personnel that used to do this in the 80s.

2. Create a buzz on the waterfront so developers can close deals easily and market their buildings.

3. Connecting the existing community of Astoria and pushing for an East River park in Astoria is not in the cards.

Anonymous said...

Once again the people of Queens are paying taxes to benefit the tower people who are pushing them out.

And they say the people of Queens are the happiest in NYC.

Stupid. Stupid Stupid.

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