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Originally Posted by NYguy
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/ny...11seaside.html
Clash Over Plans for a Brooklyn Park
Free summer concerts are offered at the band shell at Seaside Park, also known as Asser Levy Park,
on the edge of Coney Island.
By MIREYA NAVARRO
February 10, 2010
The way Marty Markowitz sees it, the rundown nine-acre park where Coney Island and Brighton Beach meet is ripe for a sparkling transformation.
Mr. Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, envisions Asser Levy Park, also known as Seaside Park, as the gateway to a spruced-up amusement complex evoking Coney Island’s splashy past. An enormous new outdoor amphitheater would have room for 8,000 people and draw top entertainers, he said — maybe even favorites of his like Carole King or Neil Diamond.
“It’ll be absolutely gorgeous,” Mr. Markowitz said, and “a really great attraction for the future of Coney Island.”
City officials hope to have the amphitheater, the largest in a city park, ready for the 2013 outdoor concert season.
But for many neighbors, the project is about as subtle as a spaceship. They say they like Asser Levy Park just as it is — a quiet oasis with a modest band shell — not as a place, they say, that would draw more traffic, disrupt services at two synagogues and, perhaps most critically, diminish their only decent patch of open space.
“His dream is our nightmare,” said Al Turk, president of Temple Beth Abraham, on Sea Breeze Avenue, opposite the park. “They’re destroying a park to turn it over to a concrete amphitheater. This thing is right on top of us.”
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.
As the city’s Department of Design and Construction prepares an environmental assessment for the parks department and the Design Commission, which has final approval over the plans, neighbors have gathered more than 12,000 signatures on a petition opposing the project.
“This is an enormous project that should be in a commercial area,” said Geoffrey Croft, executive director of NYC Park Advocates, a watchdog group that has joined the fray.
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.
The plan calls for rebuilding, moving and expanding the park’s playground and bathrooms and creating gardens and pathways and a storm-water system to prevent flooding. Yet those elements are eclipsed by the proposed 65,000-square-foot amphitheater, which would replace the 8,000-square-foot band shell now used for free concerts in July and August.
Grimshaw’s plan calls for a saddle-shape roof, rising eight stories at its highest point, over an elevated stage, and seating for 5,000. The amphitheater would be set 22 feet above the ground and include an open 29,000-square-foot lawn area that would accommodate an additional 3,000 people.
Proponents argue that very few trees will be lost to make room for the project and that the only net loss of green space would be the 22,000 square feet reserved for accommodations backstage.
But many residents say the project’s sheer size would undermine their tranquil buffer between the Coney Island Boardwalk and the New York Aquarium on one side and residential buildings on the other.
Parents have objected to relocating the playground closer to the street and traffic fumes. And older residents say they fear their sleepy park could wind up providing entertainment year-round to justify the cost of the amphitheater.
Yet some residents view the project in a positive light. “Anything would be better than now,” said Philip Snyder, 24, who was walking his dog in the park recently. He noted the park’s state of disrepair, including missing benches and a patch of dust in front of the band shell. “It’d make the place a lot nicer and increase the price of homes.”
Many other residents say they would also like to see the park fixed up — without the amphitheater. But they have a tough opponent in Mr. Markowitz, 65, who has promoted the free concerts for decades and serves as the master of ceremonies at Asser Levy. Already he has Ms. King, Mr. Diamond and Lionel Ritchie on his concert wish list.
“They don’t want anything that attracts anyone who doesn’t live a block away,” he said of the opponents. “I’m not going to allow folks who have such narrow vision to stop the future.”
Adrian Benepe, the city’s commissioner of parks, said that efforts would be made to address the neighborhood’s concerns, but that residents were up against a long tradition of live music in the city’s green spaces.
“The life of New York takes place in its parks,” he said. “It’s our common backyard. It’s an often boisterous place — that’s what makes them fun and safe.”
“What we have to remember,” he added, “is that parks just don’t serve immediate neighborhoods. Parks are citywide resources.”
Yet opponents may have found a weapon in the city’s administrative code. A provision bans the use of amplified sound within 500 feet of a school or church during hours of classroom work or worship, and Mr. Turk said his synagogue would seek to have it enforced during the Sabbath, Friday night and Saturday.
In a hallowed New York tradition, even the park’s location has become politically charged: residents say it is in Brighton Beach, and the city says Coney Island.