New Architectural Consultant Addresses
Brooklyn Bridge Park Planning Body
Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — The business of housing was on several Brooklyn agendas last week, with one of them being featured tomorrow with a major groundbreaking.

This newspaper reported last week that the architectural firm Robert A. M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), had joined the design team, headed by Michael Van Valkenburg, to build Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Its job will be to oversee and create the very important guidelines that will become part of the request for propos-
News Analysis
als primarily for the income-producing elements of the park — the three residential buildings and the hotel.

The RAMSA team leaders — Paul Whalen and Jack Robbins — led a regular meeting of the Community Advisory Committee to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, on Thursday, May 18. The main purpose of the meeting, which had the largest attendance of any meeting on the subject in months, was to brief the committee on the next several steps that will be taken, and to solicit input as to what the guidelines should include.

For example, one of the issues that must be incorporated into such guidelines is what kind of buildings should be constructed. “Do we want a building that visually says something about the park and would be an ‘icon’ building, or do we want something that blends in with its neighboring communities?� asked Whalen.

There were no ready answers from those in attendance, and it is clear that many members have strong opinions on certain aspects of the overall plan, but were not prepared to reflect on such weighty issues.

(Whatever design or designs are chosen, one of the challenges facing any architect designing the park buildings is that at every site, Pier 6, Pier 1 and DUMBO, the nearby buildings are all large and blocky: they were not built for housing.

) Hank Gutman, part of the park planning teams, recommended that another meeting be held on the general subject of design considerations with a specific agenda.

The Atlantic Yards proposal was also in the news last week, with a proposal by State Assemblyman James Brennan to bring the state back into supporting moderate-income housing by subsidizing the moderate-income elements of the housing part of this large proposal.

This approach, taking the responsibility of financing the low-income portion off the developer, would lead to a reduction in the physical size of the overall project by at least one third.

The Hoyt-Schermerhorn project in Boerum Hill is the largest housing development now under way in Downtown Brooklyn. (Both Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Yards will be larger, but they haven’t started constructed yet).

Part of that project includes building single-family houses on State Street between Smith and Hoyt Streets: this is the first major row of single-family town houses to be developed in New York since the 1920s.

The first house will host a variety of open houses called “blockparty� this spring and summer. The events will feature the works of 42 designers and 25 Brooklyn artists, something not attempted before in any modern housing development. The leader of this effort was Abby Hamlin of Hamlin Ventures, the developer of the row houses and other parts of the project.

Yet another part of the project will take center stage tomorrow as ground is broken for another major part of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn project.

That will be for the Schermerhorn House, a 217-unit supportive housing development, unique to Brooklyn. Half of these units will be reserved for formerly homeless and special-needs people. The remainder of the units will be occupied by local actors and artists.

The facility will also include a 200-seat black box theater and a multi-purpose public space for community art shows, rehearsals and performances.

Interests involved in this project include Actors’ Fund of America, Common Ground Community, Hamlin Ventures and Time Equities.

It is early in the process, but Hamlin, for one, is disturbed about prisoners coming back to the House of Detention, which is now surrounded by quality housing developments. She is trying to enlist support to resist that effort, scheduled for next year.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
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