They’re gonna pass on that grass.
The♈ city Parks Department has agreed to manage the green space in a massive new Brooklyn development, but the agency wants to make sure the plan doesn’t include any lawn it will be forced to maintain, c🍃ommunity-board members told The Post.
Developer Greenpoint Landing Associates is set to build a 20,000-🍸square-foot waterfront 🌄park in the northern tip of Brooklyn as part of a tower-development deal on West Street near Eagle Street.
But the developer is asking the city to waive requirements that the park have grass, or many plants, because of a “Parks maintenance constraint,” according to materials company officials shared at a May communityꦕ-board meeting.
Th꧑e constraint is that they don’t want to mow the lawn, according to people present at the meeting.
“The main instigator for that is Parks expressing reluctance towards maintaining additional plantings and a lawn,” said Steve Chesler, a membe💛r of Brooklyn Community Board 1’s parks and waterfronts committee who was present for the May meeting.
“If they’re gonna pass rezonings that bring in tens of thousands of people to one🦂 area, then they must include the proper resources. We need green here. It’s a dangerous precedent,” he said, adding that he was speaking as a resident, not on behalf of the community board.
Open-spa⭕ce advocate Victoria Cambranes fumed, “The fact t🔯hat they don’t want to take care of more lawn is pretty egregious.”
“The private developer is paying them to take care of it. It’s not like it’s a money i💎ssue — they just don’t want to take 𓄧care of it,” she said.
The proposed park land — roughly bounded by W🌠est, Eagle, and Hurᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚon streets and the East River — is supposed to be 50 percent plants, with a lawn constituting at least half of the planted space, according to a Waterfront Access Plan implemented as part of the 2005 Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront rezoning.
“If the g⛦overnment is given a deal, they’re locked into something,” said area resident Steve Vincent, 45. “If the money is coming from this private person, then they hav🐟e it and they should be creating jobs. So then where is the money going?”
Greenpoint Landing A𝓰ssociates declined to comment.
The proposed landscaping calls for strips of grass in between amphitheater-like bench seating, a🐼ccording to a Parks Department rep, who said the agency wants to nix the grass altogether because “small patches of lawn in parks🀅 do not hold up well over time.”
Additional reporting by Katherine Lavacca