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APRIL 14, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
A BIG PLAN: Dumbo-based Bjarke Ingels Group unveiled its proposal to turn the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway triple-cantilever
into a new park called the BQP. Bjarke Ingels Group
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Call it the BQP!
A world-famous architecture
fi rm has proposed to turn the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into
an ambitious 10-acre park on top
of a capped highway, calling it the
Brooklyn-Queens Park — or BQP.
Architects with the Dumbobased
Bjarke Ingels Group on April
2 released a plan — which they produced
pro-bono — to build a six-lane
highway along the back of Brooklyn
Bridge Park on Furman Street at
ground level, and cap it off in order
to build a new park on top.
The designers proposed to spare
the beloved Brooklyn Heights
Promenade and repurpose the existing
cantilever into either a tiered
park — similar to the “ Tri-line ”
park idea proposed by Heights local
Mark Baker — or demolish the
two lower levels and recycle the debris
into an artifi cial cliff side if the
aged structure proves too expensive
to retain, according to the fi rm’s
planner spearheading the proposal.
“We would be able to use the
BQE rubble to create a newly-reconstructed
cliff side, naturalized,
with Americans with Disabilities
Act ramps, bringing you down
and connecting from the Brooklyn
Heights Promenade to Brooklyn
Bridge Park in a way that it hasn’t
been for a long time,” said Jeremy
Alain Siegel.
The new park could also allow
for Mayor de Blasio’s beloved
Brooklyn-Queens Connector to
run along the lowest level, next to
a two-lane Furman Street for cars,
as well as an indoor parking garage
underneath the promenade,
renderings show.
Engineers from the firm’s partner
organization Arcadis deemed
that theirs is the most straightforward
way to deal with the reconstruction
because builders would
only have to construct a new roadway
once without having to take
it back down afterwards, and the
road would be at ground level instead
of the city’s proposed 50
feet height — possibly making
it a cheaper and faster process,
according to the architect.
“We think that we could very
likely do this at the same or a reduced
timetable and also at the
same or reduced cost,” he said.
Siegel and his team are considering
extending the park to the Cobble
Hill trench section of the roadway
at Atlantic Avenue, which could
even allow for a future walkway
from Brooklyn Bridge to Red Hook
if the city decides to cap that trench,
according to the Brooklyn Heights
resident.
“If you were able to do that you
would be creating a linear park
that connects you from the Brooklyn
Bridge all the way to Red Hook,
which would be quite an amazing
thing,” Siegel said.
The fi rm’s founder, Bjarke Ingels,
will also be moving to the upscale
Heights soon, according to
Siegel, so he could end up having
his own company’s creation in his
back yard.
The only difficulty with their
plan is that the city agency would
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
This panel got panned!
Mayor de Blasio’s new
“expert panel” for the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
lacks watchdogs from
elected offi ces or neighborhood
associations, according
to the attendees of an April 3
town hall.
Several audience members
at the event, held at
Brooklyn Heights’s Plymouth
Church, raised the
question of why the mayor
didn’t select more community
reps or watchdogs for
his 16-member panel , which
is chaired by the head of a
building industry advocacy
group and includes urban
planners, engineers, architects,
labor reps, and several
academics.
One of the event’s organizers
read out an audience
question addressing
this concern which she said
was common among the
submitted queries.
“This question came up
a lot,” said the co-founder
of the activist group to save
the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
A Better Way, Sabrina
Gleizer, before reading out
one submission.
“The mayor’s commission
has an impressive array
of experts but it appears to
be thin on community organizers,
representatives, and
tax-payer watchdogs. How
can we make sure we are
represented?” Gleizer read.
Gleizer and her fellow
head of the advocacy organization
Hilary Jager met
with de Blasio’s offi ce to ask
whether they could join the
panel, which was unlikely,
according to Jager.
“We asked for a seat at
the table, I don’t think that’s
going to happen,” she said.
But both activists and
their partners at the civic
group and co-hosts of the
event, the Brooklyn Heights
Association, agreed that the
panel would fi eld the community’s
input during the
whole process.
“We’re insistent, because
we can be really insistent,
that we have to have a way
to check in with community
groups, not just A Better
Way, not just the Brooklyn
Heights Association, other
groups on a regular basis,
whether that’s bi-weekly
or bi-monthly, we need to
have something really set
up and we made that clear,”
Jager said.
A spokesman for the mayor’s
offi ce said that the panel
would engage with the community
regularly over the
next months.
FULL HOUSE: Close to 1,000 people came to hear the latest news on
the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway repair project at Plymouth Church
in Brooklyn Heights on April 3. Photo by Kevin Duggan
A BQ-PLAN
Brooklynites
blast Blaz at
BQE town hall
Renowned architecture fi rm unveils park propsal
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