From the NY Times:The dispute playing out in this corner of Brooklyn reflects a clash of visions between the residents of an immigrant enclave whose biggest community event in the park is the annual Russian Heritage Festival and city officials longing for a Coney Island entertainment district that will restore the wider area to glory.
It is also a clash between development and conservation in a city where open space is ever more precious. “I need quiet and the trees,” said Rafael Grugman, 62, a professor of computer science who plays chess in the park and was strolling through it the other day.
New York City lags well behind other cities in green space. It offers 4.6 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, compared with a median of 6.8 acres in the nation’s 13 most densely populated areas, according to the Trust for Public Land. Of the five boroughs, Brooklyn has the second least amount of parkland per person, after Manhattan, officials from the parks department say.
The two sides locked horns after the unveiling last year of the ambitious park redesign, by Grimshaw Architects, an international firm that specializes in public projects and environmental design. The estimated price tag is $64 million, with Mr. Markowitz’s office footing $54 million and the mayor’s office paying the rest.
Let's be honest here. Neither Marty Markowitz nor the Mayor will be paying a dime for this.
WE WILL.
4 comments:
It looks like the Starship Enterprise just landed in Brooklyn.
It's a potato chip for a dip!!!
Don't let MARTY DCEVE the taxpayers. Fight this plan, save the park.
The city says it encourages parks and greenery but in practice it has allowed developers to use an entire foot print of a property in most cases where there were a green yard with a tree or 2 and cemented everything over. In time there has been a marked decrease in overall green space that gave us cleaner air and something natural with wildlife (BIRDS) etc that are no longer - forever gone.
If the State under Gov Pataki has spent millions to purchase land for forever wild conservation, our city has given away every last bit of green to developers it could have maintained at no cost. Residential development as well as commercial development could have stringent costs to slow the pace of development by maintaining strict laws to maintain current green spaces and brown dirt (to absorb rain water) and also introduce rooftops that incorporate green and solar. I am not per say an enviromental person but this is one way of restricting overdevelopment by making it a costly hurdle or that the benefits of the law is desired by prospective buyers.
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