Brooklyn Eagle, Bay Ridge Eagle Brooklyn, NY

Architectsâ€™ Group Unveils Plan for 'Gowanus Skywayâ€™ on First Avenue

By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE -- What would Third Avenue in Sunset Park look like without the dark and gloomy deck of the aging, traffic-choked Gowanus Expressway looming overhead?

Community Board 10, covering Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights divided by the Gowanus's below-ground-level southern portion, found out on Monday evening, with a report about an architects groupâ€™s "roadmap" to a greener and livelier commercial district.

The board's traffic and transportation committee recently got a preview of the design concept by Glen Cutrona of the Brooklyn American Institute of Architects chapter when the proposal was detailed at a meeting at Board 10's office, as was reported at the board's meeting this past Monday evening.

But the board whose community is at the center of the proposal, Community Board 7 serving Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace, has not yet been given a presentation.

At its Monday evening meeting, Board 10 voted to send a letter to Boards 6 and 7, local elected officials and the state Department of Transportation to take a look at the AIA proposal. But Board 10 did not vote on the plan itself.

The central feature of the concept is a six-lane Gowanus Skyway, a cable suspension bridge, built over First Avenue near the Sunset Park waterfront to replace the deteriorating six mile long elevated expressway. The plan envisions a transformed Third Avenue as a "greenway" of new cafes and businesses, with bike paths. The plan calls for enhancements to existing businesses.

Board 7 has so far been left out of the loop. "It's nothing more than a fantasy plan," said Randy Peers, chair of Board 7. "We were never informed of the plan." Board 7 District Manager Jeremy Laufer has said to the media that the board was not notified by the Brooklyn AIA about its proposal.

Brooklyn's AIA proposal follows on the heels of a controversial citywide AIA contextual zoning proposal that was recently rejected by Board 10 and other community boards as a plan that would overturn and reverse the zoning reforms of recent years.

Deteriorating Expressway Opens Way for New Ideas

The Gowanus Expressway was built in 1940, enlarged in the early 1960s and also extended through Bay Ridge between 65th Street and the then-new Verrazano Bridge, opened in November 1964. The raised expressway in Sunset Park has been under constant repair for nearly 20 years, as Southwest Brooklyn communities await its renovation or demolition for a waterfront tunnel or other new alternative expressway.

Since 1990, various proposals have been made, first generated by a controversial proposal for a major reconstruction of the expressway. That ignited a grassroots controversy from Sunset Park, the heart of the Gowanus plan, to Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and communities just north of the Gowanus.

Arising from that discussion were community-based concepts to dismantle the expressway entirely in favor of a waterfront tunnel, constructed with a state-of-the-art tunnel-boring machine. It is a concept that has gained favor in both Community Board 10 in Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights and Board 7 of Sunset Park-Windsor Terrace.

Proposal architect Cutrona, who was Brooklyn AIA chapter president in 2002-2003, states in the plan, "We want to make the neighborhood sustainable and livable," he said, "It's our way to give back to the community."

Design work started in 2005 on the occasion of the American Institute of Architects 150 anniversary, part of the national organizations "Blueprint for America" program in which its chapters were encouraged to developing architecture that would advance local communities.

The skyway would be a six-lane expressway between 16th and 64th streets above First Avenue and the waterfront. A deepwater container port would be constructed between 39th and 52nd streets, a proposal made at Community Board 7's Waterfront Revitalization Committee.

A four-mile stretch of Third Avenue, without the Gowanus Expressway overhead, would experience a beautification "green-way renewal," Cutrona's plan states, similar to what happened to Manhattan's Third Avenue after the dismantling of the Third Avenue "El" in 1955, â€” but without plans for huge skyscrapers.

Wide sidewalks, festooned with trees, plants, benches and a bike-way would make the renewed Third Avenue friendly for an assortment of new businesses, such as cafes and a variety of stores, and help build the businesses already lining the avenue.

The proposal, said to be designed to help the continuing economic growth of Sunset Park, is one of several that have been that have put forward over the last 20 years. It would obviously impact directly on Sunset Park, with the other half of the expressway slicing its way through Bay Ridge at or below ground level to the Verrazano Bridge, with the Gowanus extended through Bay Ridge during the bridge's construction in the early 1960s.

When the Gowanus Reconstruction Project was announced around 1990, a Sunset Park community leader Tony Giordano of the Friends of Sunset Park, proposed shops, restaurants and mini-malls to be placed under the reconstructed expressway. Illustrations of the concept were presented at various civic meetings.