Brooklyn Bridge Park receives prestigious national planning award
Brooklyn Bridge Park will receive the American Planning Association’s 2014 National Planning Excellence Award for Urban Design for transforming 1.3 miles of Brooklyn’s formerly inaccessible waterfront into a scenic, multi-use public space.
The Urban Design award honors efforts to create a sense of place, whether a street, public space, neighborhood or campus effort.
The site of Brooklyn Bridge Park was once part of a thriving industrial waterfront. In the 1950s, however, shipping in New York City began a steady decline, while the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway created an approximately 60-foot-high barrier that isolated the East River waterfront from the community and restricted waterfront access. The Port Authority ceased cargo operations in 1984.
In 2002, Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated state and city funding providing for the park’s construction and for the creation of Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, which eventually became the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation.