Cobble Hill

LICH garage, slated for demolition, was built over local objections

February 23, 2017 By Raanan Geberer Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The Long Island College Hospital garage is seen in the foreground. Eagle photo by Mary Frost
Share this:

In the recent controversy about the Fortis plan for the Long Island College Hospital (LICH) campus, which — among other things —would tear down the LICH garage and put up a 17-story building on the site, little mention has been made of the fact that this very garage, in its day, was also the subject of bitter controversy.

Most Cobble Hill residents are familiar with Van Voorhees Park. But many, especially younger residents, don’t know that it was once Lower Van Voorhees Park. Until the mid-1990s, there was also an Upper Van Voorhees Park. This park, on the west side of Hicks Street, was sold by the city to LICH to construct the current 430-car garage on the site.

I remember Upper Van Voorhees Park. It was an awkward, triangle-like space, bounded on one side by the hospital, across Hicks Street, and on another by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). There was a set of toddler-type swings there, and some local observers questioned whether it was appropriate for local mothers and caretakers to take their children to a park where they could breathe in the fumes of the BQE.

Despite the small park’s shortcomings, the issues were the loss of part of Cobble Hill’s already small amount of green space and whether it was proper for the city to sell off parkland to another entity.

Subscribe to our newsletters

In 1993, a local group known as the Friends of Van Voorhees Park filed a lawsuit charging that the city failed to consider alternative sites for the garage, and that the City Council had no right to allow the transfer of the park to the hospital because the Board of Estimate, the city’s governing body at the time the park was established, had been dissolved. The city and LICH countered that the Board of Estimate’s functions had been absorbed by the City Council when the board was abolished in 1990.

The hospital itself maintained that parking was needed because its nurses, doctors and others worked around the clock, and finding on-street parking at, say, 10 p.m., could be both difficult and dangerous. LICH spokespersons pointed out that many of the doctors came from far-off places like New Jersey and Staten Island where public transportation wasn’t practical. But the biking, walking and public transit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives said the garage would “add to local traffic woes” and would encourage more cars to enter the neighborhood.

On top of it all, the community was split on the issue. While Friends of Van Voorhees Park was an implacable foe of the garage project, the Cobble Hill Association (CHA) felt otherwise. “This is a good deal and good for the community,” The New York Times quoted longtime CHA civic leader Roy Sloane as saying after then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani approved the deal.

The controversy was intense, but in the end the lawsuits were denied and the eight-story garage got built. As part of the agreement, three mini-parks, two of which have playground equipment, were built nearby.

Now, the garage is empty and awaiting demolition, and the future of the small parks is in doubt.

One more thought — only in New York City would a building that is a mere 20 or so years old become expendable!

 


Leave a Comment


Leave a Comment