Almost 10 years ago, City Council approved then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious plan to transform 75 blocks of a largely industrial area along Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront into a futuristic high-rise enclave of luxury condos.
The plan triggered fierce opposition from longtime working-class residents who feared being pushed out of their neighborhood by spiraling housing costs.
In the end, though, local leaders and the Council relented. They agreed to back the rezoning plan after Bloomberg promised to build a wondrous new amenity — a 28-acre waterfront park. The new Bushwick Inlet Park would be complete with ballfields, a picnic area, an amphitheater, a running track and a riverbank promenade, residents were told.
The offer was too tempting to ignore for a neighborhood with one of the city’s lowest ratios of open space per resident.
“This rezoning would not have passed if it wasn’t for the open space commitment,” Steve Levin, the area’s current councilman, said this week.
Well, Bloomberg is gone. Luxury condos have sprouted all over Williamsburg and Greenpoint. And housing prices have indeed zoomed into the stratosphere.
Oh, and that park?
Only a tiny sliver of it exists.
Even worse, the price tag for completing all 28 acres is on pace to reach more than half a billion dollars — five times the original projected cost — the Daily News has learned.
The price has gotten so high that aides to Mayor de Blasio have quietly floated ideas to sell off some of the designated parkland to pay the bill, according to several neighborhood leaders.
“The solution to the problem of open space isn’t to add more people,” said Ward Dennis, a member of the local community board when the rezoning was approved in 2005.
The issue literally flared up again in January, after a massive fire destroyed much of the CitiStorage industrial site, a parcel of nearly 7 acres that was rezoned as part of proposed park, but which the city has yet to acquire. Hundreds of neighborhood residents later protested in front of City Hall.
The owner of CitiStorage is seeking nearly $140 million for his land. He claims it is worth at least that much given the area’s sizzling housing market.
Amazingly, the rezoning itself drove up the cost of acquiring land for the promised park.
By June, the city will have paid nearly $200 million to condemn and buy the first 21 acres for the park. If the owner of CitiStorage prevails, acquisition costs alone could reach nearly $350 million.
On top of that, $26 million has already gone to landscaping the first 4.7 acres of parkland. But that still leaves more than 23 acres to go. The Parks Department refuses to estimate costs for cleaning up any pollutants on the remaining land and finishing the park, but acknowledges they could exceed another $130 million.
“Yes, the Bloomberg administration screwed up by not acquiring the land when they could have, and now the City is stuck with a bigger bill,” said Dewey Thompson, a longtime local leader. “But City Hall can’t say now, ‘It’s too expensive for us.’ “
De Blasio’s aides point to several parcels of projected parkland the new administration has acquired.
“We are committed to providing residents of Greenpoint and Williamsburg with high-quality parks and outdoor space,” de Blasio spokesman Peter Kadushin said.
But 10 years later, Bushwick Inlet Park remains an unkept promise.
