The future site of Brigham Street Park
In the 1990’s, city officials made a promise to Sheepshead Bay residents that a park will be built south of Emmons Avenue at Brigham Street on city-owned parkland. Two decades later, that promise is closer to being kept with Councilman Lew Fidler, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other public officials securing more than $3 million in new funds for the development of the park project at Brigham Street.
Nearly a year after initial designs were unveiled for the Brigham Street Park and news of the project teetered off, the little park we’re all hoping for is back. Councilman Lew Fidler has given it new life with an injection of $400,000 of capital funds, and Borough President Marty Markowitz is kicking in an additional $100,000.
The funds will be used by the Parks Department to conduct soil testing and begin reworking the designs. “This money will begin to get us answers to turn a concept into a reality,” Fidler told Sheepshead Bites.
But the money is also creating a bit of the political surreal and stirring up serious questions about the park’s future. You see, the park initiative is spearheaded by Fidler’s electoral challenger, Gene Berardelli of the Sheepshead Bay/Plumb Beach Civic Association. And as the money funnels in they’re both using the park to pump up their campaigns, leaving us wondering what really will happen to the park after the election. Continue Reading »
Fact: The Brigham Street Park Project is without question the Bay’s most innovative and captivating community initiative in recent years. The project’s benefits to the community are many, including developing a blighted lot into a sprawling greenspace for public use, adding a fantastic viewing point of the Bay’s mouth (take that, Breakers), and giving the neighborhood a venue for concerts and shows. But the real clincher for me, and where it deserves the highest praise, is in its focus on protecting the environment by preventing thousands of gallons of polluted storm runoff from mixing with Sheepshead’s water.
I don’t think I can emphasize this enough – this system is really cool. Like, super cool. Gene Berardelli, the attorney for Sheepshead Bay/Plumb Beach Civic Association and one of the lead organizers of the effort, calls the park and its runoff system an “example of how proper planning can benefit the environment.” Using a network of bioswales – a natural landscaping feature designed to collect, filter and redirect water through channels – storm water from Emmons Ave. and Brigham Street’s de facto parking lot will be prevented from entering the Bay. Instead, the oily, crack- and condom-filled fluid will run down a slope and through the park in an irrigation ditch of sorts. Nature takes over from there as a collection of plants such as Cinnamon Ferns, Giant Sunflowers and Turtlehead flowers filter the pollutants out of the water. The system is estimated to keep more than 35,500 gallons of icky-sticky water out of the Bay over 10 years.
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The Sheepshead Bay/Plumb Beach Civic Association has been doing some great work to bring the community a new green space. The Brigham Street Park Project is a community initiative to build a park on Emmons Ave. and Brigham Street in the currently ugly, vacant lot next to the Windjammer hotel and along the water. They’ve already secured grants and permission to do the park, and have also found two architects to help build it – one from nearby Gerritsen Beach. Now SBPB is opening up the planning for community input, with an online survey to make sure the park meets residents’ recreational interests, asking questions about activities, safety and usage. The survey is short, quick and simple. Please take the time to make sure the park is the best it can be. CLICK HERE.
