Theme of Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting: Change vs Preservation
The theme of the Brooklyn Heights Association’s 2015 annual meeting, held at Grace Church Wednesday night, was the inevitability and necessity of change.
Paraphrasing the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said, “You cannot step into the same river twice,” BHA President Alexandra Bowie told the crowd, “In New York, we’ve learned that you never walk on the same block twice.”
While the neighborhood owes “a huge debt of gratitude to the residents of the 1960s” who won the passage of the New York City Landmarks Law, “what we love comes at a cost,” she said.
“There’s not enough of our neighborhood to go around. Now that the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn rezoning has resulted in a large amount of residential construction, and Brooklyn Bridge Park is open, we are a quiet corner no longer,” Bowie said. “A lot of people want to share what we have, and who can blame them? Change is not just coming; change is here.