City Limits

The view from the uncompleted, unopened park on the East River waterfront.

Last month, our Brooklyn Bureau told the story of Bush Terminal Piers Park, one of those juicy amenities the Bloomberg administration offered to waterfront communities as a sort of balance to all the high-rise, luxury development the previous mayor welcomed to the river’s edge. The park had been downsized and delayed, our Norman Oder reported, raising the neighborhood’s ire.

Brooklyn Community Board 7 just published a letter it sent to the Economic Development Corporation expressing its displeasure that “EDC has delayed the opening of Bush Terminal Piers Park and has not made any public accounting for this delay or any projection for an opening date.”

Lamenting the lack of media attention to the un-delivered park, the Board added:

Since the initial planning for the park, our community has seen the footprint significantly scaled back, the lack of any discussion on the originally-planned-for Phase 2 and no discussion of Bush Terminal Piers 5. The children’s playground and environmental center were not funded, secondary egress from 51st Street was purged and the lighting fixtures in the park were not built to completion. We have learned from the Department of Parks and Recreation that the subsurface of the ball fields is not satisfactory and might be considered a hazardous condition.

The letter also notes that the community’s only existing access to the water is about to be lost to make way for an industrial use. “It appears that EDC cannot even wait for the public park to open before snatching away our current public access.”

EDC did not reply to a request for comment.