Battle Of Brooklyn Bridge Park Heats Up

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The fight is raging on between the city's nonprofit wing responsible for planning the development of the Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 6 and a local Brooklyn Heights residential activist group.

Brooklyn Heights Association, a group that represents Brooklyn Heights residents, has argued against The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation constructing two apartment buildings with 266 units on Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 6, which the corporation owns. The association has tried several methods to stop the nonprofit from developing the buildings.

The argument has gotten so contentious that both sides recently went down the rabbit hole of tax valuations.

The BHA wrote a letter to the BBPC alleging that 2018 the Department of Finance's tax valuation predictions for the housing that was already built on Brooklyn Bridge Park's land are 30 percent ahead of the city's projections. That means, according to BHA, that an extra $300 million would be created in revenue in the next 50 years, and the revenue received from new apartment developments would be unnecessary.

The BBPC responded this week in its own letter that BHA used only specific statistics in order to manipulate the numbers. More specifically, BHA used a tax valuation for just one of five developments in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the average tax valuation is nearly 30 percent lower.

The valuation calculations are just the latest in Brooklyn Heights residents' efforts to keep more development out of their neighborhood.

"The BHA initiated the concept of a park as a replacement for the waterfront’s defunct shipping piers, and we continue to be a strong park advocate, but now we also must work to address the congestion it has added to our streets and sidewalks," said BHA President Patrick Killackey in a statement. "More distressingly, the iconic views of the harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge have now been compromised by those charged with the park’s development."

BHA filed a lawsuit against the BBPC in July 2016, and the case is set to begin in court in a few weeks.

Photo via Brooklyn Bridge Park Facebook