The New York Review of Ideas » Profiles | June 2009
A Park Grows in Brooklyn
Michael van Valkenburgh takes back New York’s waterfront.
By Nicholas DeRenzo
Borrowing from the contemporary idea of sustainability, the designers have incorporated measures to ensure that the park will become environmentally self-sustaining. For example, a series of tanks will collect rainwater that will be used for the bulk of the park’s irrigation. In addition, recycled materials will be used whenever possible. Centuries-old wood taken from the Cold Storage Warehouse will be used to build benches and other onsite facilities, and reclaimed granite from Roosevelt Island will be turned into a grand staircase overlooking the harbor. The great lawn on Pier 1, a hill that will reach about twenty-six feet tall, will sit on pulverized granite brought in from the East Side Access Project, a subway tunnel connecting Queens to Manhattan. Elkovitch calls the recycling “an awesome reuse of materials,” since the granite is coming from within the city and only being shipped four miles.
In addition to environmental sustainability, a major part of the park’s original conception, as dictated by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, was to achieve financial sustainability, through real estate and retail opportunities at the periphery of the park. The large cardboard model includes two boxes towering over the southern entrance, slightly outside of the perimeter of the park. These are the controversial luxury condominiums. The Brooklyn Paper, a local weekly, has been particularly critical of the park planners for this choice, though Van Valkenburgh has had minimal input in this decision. “The people who really don’t want it have said that the park is just the front door of these developer opportunities,” Van Valkenburgh says. “You may have noticed that they put ‘park’ in quotes! It’s incredibly snarky.”
Van Valkenburgh bristles at the notion that these buildings are somehow interfering with his vision for the waterfront. After all, he says, they are not even within the limits of the park. “They’re no more in the park than the Prospect Park West buildings are in Prospect Park,” he says. “Every development parcel has a public street between the building and the park itself. So there’s no front door effect.”
Van Valkenburgh believes many of the complaints that have come from within the Brooklyn Heights community come down to the fact that its residents enjoy what he calls “the secret of the Heights.” He moved from the West Village to Brooklyn Heights earlier this year with his wife Caroline, a filmmaker. He recalls having a conversation with one of his new neighbors about his excitement at the great views afforded by the Heights for Manhattan fireworks displays. Much to his surprise, she replied, “Ugh, the fireworks! Everybody from Brooklyn comes to the Promenade and walks through the neighborhood.” In a sense, the park will work to attract even more people, thus potentially disrupting the peacefulness and exclusivity which have come to be the trademarks of the Heights.
Towards the end of his tour, Elkovitch points to a larger-scale model of the southern end of the park, split into two pieces, lying haphazardly on the floor. He explains that Van Valkenburgh recently took this piece, which represents the state-of-the-art playground that will line the southern border of the park, to show to his granddaughter’s class. The area, with sections dubbed “Slide Mountain” and “Swing Valley,” will showcase Van Valkenburgh’s trademark sense of playfulness. The slide, for example, will cut its way down a natural-looking hill that children will have to climb instead of the average playground slide’s ladder. Swing Valley will be made up of a number of traditional swing sets built into valleys between man-made slopes. To an onlooker, children will pop out of the landscape like prairie dogs.
Van Valkenburgh says that his children and now grandchildren have broadened his perspective. “It’s easy for me, for example, to not feel funny saying that I appreciate and honor a child’s perspective,” he says. “That might not be cool to some people that are twenty-five.” ♦