Battle on the Brooklyn Waterfront

It would not be New York if a disagreement involving two of its most precious things — green space and housing — did not end up as a ferocious debate, with fiery public meetings, petition drives, accusations of elitism and racism and the specter of doom for The City as We Know It.

That is what has been happening at Brooklyn Bridge Park, on the waterfront between Atlantic Avenue and the Manhattan Bridge, with dazzling views of Lower Manhattan and the islands of New York Harbor. It used to be all rotting docks and industrial squalor. Now it’s trees and dunes, bike paths and ball courts, dog walkers, skaters, kayakers and Pilates crunchers.

The park, which is still being built, is uncommonly lovely, and unusual, too, in that rich people are paying for it. It was created under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki as a public-private venture. Under a 2006 plan, revenue from several luxury apartment towers and commercial developments built at the edges of the park is to cover the cost of annual operations and long-term maintenance. A nonprofit group, Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, runs the place, but the park is supposed to pay for itself, to the tune of about $16 million a year.

The compromise was meant to settle decades of argument over the fate of the waterfront. But enter Mayor Bill de Blasio, who altered and improved — some say upended — the plan this spring. His administration has set a bold goal of building 200,000 units of affordable housing in 10 years and decided to enlist Brooklyn Bridge Park in that effort. In May, it solicited proposals for the construction of the last two apartment towers in the park, stipulating that 30 percent of the units be set aside at prices that moderate- and middle-income families could afford. The buildings will rise about 15 and 31 stories each, at the park’s southern entrance.

The de Blasio administration contends that the building boom in Brooklyn makes it easier for developers to include affordable housing and still make a profit, without harming the park’s financing arrangement. It says that nothing drastic has happened: all housing revenue will still go to the park; the towers will still be going up on a spot that was always planned for high-rise housing. The project will help ease the city’s housing crunch and, as an added benefit, bring in a broader mix of tenants that better reflects the borough’s diversity.

Mr. de Blasio’s move has set off a frenzy of not-in-my-backyard-park activism. Opponents have sued, arguing that affordable units by definition don’t fit the 2006 plan because they don’t contribute revenues to the park. Many say that they don’t oppose affordable housing, they just want it somewhere else.

Thankfully, many of their neighbors in Brooklyn see through those arguments. They recognize that raising a ruckus about “crowding,” property values, traffic and school capacity is just a less obvious way to try to keep poor, or poorer, people off your block, and out of your park. The following statements are true, and not incompatible: Private development is essential to Brooklyn Bridge Park’s success. But a lack of affordable housing is a citywide emergency. Brooklyn Bridge Park can sustain itself through its public-private model and still have some affordable units built on its edges. The Brooklyn waterfront can and should stay green without becoming a luxury enclave, because this city gem is nobody’s private backyard.