Waterfront wonder. (Bing Maps)

The future design for this corner of the park. (BBP)

How would you like to wake up to views of the Manhattan Bridge and Lower Manhattan beyond, a lavish waterfront park right outside? That is the vision Brooklyn Bridge Park is hoping will entice developers into the newest private development within the libertarian park. Today, the park released a request for proposals for a development at the nexus of John and Pearl streets in Dumbo. The project calls for no more than 130 residential units in a 101,000-square foot development that can rise no higher than 13 stories.

“The addition of the residential development at the John Street site represents a critical element of our park maintenance plan,” Regina Myer, president of Brooklyn Bridge Park, said in a statement. “This development will not only benefit the DUMBO community, it will further activate the northern end of the park.”

Located at the most northern edge of the park, on the far side of the Manhattan Bridge, this section is so far untrafficked because the open space has yet to be built out, though it does have funding for construction to begin, tentatively next year. In addition to the apartments, the project will have space for ground-floor retail.

Among the requirements for the development outlined in the RFP are a strong architectural identity for the project, a design that is complimentary to the park, achieve LEED certification for sustainablity and, above all, "generate a financially feasible and economically viable project, with lease payments that will contribute to ongoing maintenance and operations of the Park."

Some locals have criticized the park for being funded by development on public land, but supporters, including the Bloomberg administration, argue that without these developments there would be no park. (This problem is not limited to Brooklyn Bridge Park, as those on the Hudson can attest.) But by reserving parcels for private development, it inherently means a smaller park (in this case, 85 acres), as well as a whiff of commercialism in what should be the public realm.

But at least the project will not be quite as big as previously proposed, at 17 stories and 140,000 square feet. Last year, State Senator Dan Squadron and Assemblywoman Joan Millman negotiated a reduction in the development's size as part of a deal with the Bloomberg administration over trying to reduce the amount of apartments in the park. This is not, however, one of the developments that could be totally eliminated by a special tax placed on Jehovah's Witnesses property.

It will be curious to see what developers turn up for this project, given the intense interest from some of the city's biggest names in the previous commercial development in the park, a development of a hotel and apartments at Pier 1. McMansion and Northside Piers builders Toll Brothers and hotel financier Starwood Capital won that project.

The John Street development is smaller and more out of the way, but considering that Dumbo has become in only a decade the borough's most expensive neighborhood, it would seem the competition for any development opportunity will be fierce.

Correction:An earlier version of this post said the project would include park amenities within the building, such as toilets and space for park workers. This is not currently in the plans. The Observer regrets the error.

Rogers Marvel has slightly updated their design from what they originally unveiled on Toll's behalf in November, but the changes are mostly in the detailing of the building, not its composition. Today's deal does bring with it more details of what is planned, however. The 1 Hotel will rise to 10 stories, stepping down into the five-story apartment building. Additionally, there will be 16,000 square-feet of restaurant space in the complex and the same amount of banquet space, as well as 2,000 square feet of retail, a 6,000 square foot fitness center and 300 parking spaces.

A day after master parks privateer Adrian Benepe has stepped down from running Parks Department, it's revealed that the Pier 1 development will generate nearly $120 million over the course of a 97 year lease, in $3.3 million chunks. On the one hand, the park could not be maintained without this money, on the other, that is a lot more park land that could have been created if these buildings were not being built on them.

Toll and Starwood—can their architects share the site? (BBP)

And then there were two, who might become one.

Next Tuesday, Brooklyn Bridge Park will decide on which of the three teams still vying for the Pier 1 development gets the right to turn the old dockland into hundreds of luxury apartments and hotel rooms. It appears there could be a partnership between two of the three of them to see the project through.

According to Crain's, Toll Brothers and Starwood Capital are trying to bring their Pier 1 developments together, though it is not clear how the two architectural schemes they have devised, by Rogers Marvel and a consortium of Bernheimer Architecture, Alloy Development and nArchitects might mesh their work.

In November, the Brooklyn Bridge Corp. released renderings and site plans for the seven proposals that were submitted ahead of the Oct. 24 deadline. Toll Brother's hotel partner was Hampshire Hotels and Resorts, which is behind the Dream Hotel brand in Manhattan. Starwood Capital, whose hotels include the St. Regis in Manhattan, teamed up with Alloy Development. Each group also has its own design team and architect. Toll has Rogers Marvel and Starwood has Bernheimer Architects and n Architects. It could not be determined what design was selected.

Dermot Company, who was working with FXFowle as its architect and a proposal to include a home for the St. Anne's Warehouse theater,  may be on the outside looking in, but Crain's, as well as The Times, both note that no final deal has yet been reached.

These were three of the most architecturally ambitious projects, so to see two of them joining forces is intriguing. Should they make the decision, too rare in New York City megadevelopment, to combine their efforts into a more varied whole, the project will be that much better off for it.

The field house will occupy this site (The New York Times)

Brooklyn bikers received a treat to the tune of $40 million dollars!

Joshua Rechnitz, a cyclist and the grandson of New York philanthropists, pledged a $40 million dollar gift to the city to build a field house in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, The New York Times reported.

The field house is set to be massive project (15,000 square feet!) with an indoor, inclined cycling track with up to 2,500 seats and a 22,000-square-foot infield for sports like basketball, tennis, volleyball and gymnastics.

The project isn't entirely funded—it remains tens of millions of dollars away–but the donation stands as a huge strep in the right direction and the largest donation to any New York City park or recreational facility. The gift is double that of the previous $20 million donation, given last year to the High Line Park by Barry Diller and designer wife Diane von Furstenberg, The Times noted.

"I am thrilled at the magnitude and generosity of this gift, which would invigorate the park in the winter months and provide much-needed active recreation space for youth all over the borough on a year-round basis," Regina Myer, the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, told The Times.

Alas, nothing in life is free, and the park will charge for use of the field house. But Mr. Rechnitz has agreed to cover any shortages in operating revenue for the first ten years.

Time to gear up, Brooklyn! We just hope that noted bicycle-hater Woody Allen doesn't catch wind of this scheme.

mewing@observer.com

The developers vying for the right to develop Pier 1, that’s who.

While all of the teams vying for the 100,000-square-foot project have found hotel operators and are prepared to make a go of a waterfront hostel, some bidders, as well as those who considered the project but ultimately decided not to make a pitch for the plot, have told The Observer that having a hotel is a drag on the project.

“It’s a great view, sure, but it’s far from mass transit, it’s far from a lot of activity, you’re basically between the BQE and the park, and that’s about it,” one participant said. “There’s Dumbo, but Dumbo isn’t exactly jumping after dark.”

According to bidders, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the city-backed agency responsible for the open space and the development underwriting it, is unwilling to nix hotel space from the project’s requirements because it is outlined in the original agreement between the city and the state. Changes would require approval in Albany, which was hard to get in the first place, and therefore officials are afraid to open the process up again and risk any unexpected consequences.

At a time when New York City is seeing record number of tourists, it seems hard to believe that hotels would not be a hot commodity. But it has more to do with long-term, reliable income streams and, more crucially, banks general unwillingness to lend to developments in the city at the moment. Adding a hotel to a project makes it that much more complex of a deal and thus a harder sell.

That is why events spaces—bars, ballrooms, conference centers—are prominent features of many of the hotel proposals submitted by developers. They add reliable income that takes advantage of the waterfront and skyline appeal.

"It wouldn't be a prime, prime location, but it is a good location," Roland Demilleret told The Observer. A managing director at hotel consultancy HVS, Mr. Demilleret actually consulted on some of the projects, and he said there was a general excitement among the hotel operators but less so among the developers.

"The only problem I see for the site is it's far from the business districts," Mr. Demilleret said. "It won't draw the commercial client, but the leisure client will still come." He also said that hotels in Brooklyn still tend to be price-sensitive, less a first choice than a cheaper alternative to Manhattan, so the room rates cannot be too high. "As long as you keep it small, it will work," Mr. Demilleret said. "I don't think a 400 room hotel would work there." The plan currently limits hotel rooms to between 170 and 225 rooms, the apparent sweet spot.

"We think a hotel is a great fit with the project and the site, and we have never thought twice about including it," Brooklyn Bridge Park spokeswoman Ellen Ryan told The Observer last week.

Still, these challenges have not deterred the final three teams still in the running, Dermot, FXFowle and Hyatt with space set aside for the St. Anne's warehouse theater; Toll Brothers, Rogers Marvel Architects and Hampshire Hotels; and Starwood Capital, Alloy Development, Bernheimer Architecture and nArchitects. (The winners were reported recently by Crain’s.) Not making the cut were bids from RAL, Extell Development, Two Trees and SDS Procida.

An announcement for the winner is expected in the next few weeks.

All three winners offer proposals with high-wattage design behind them, which is counter to what some competitors had said was a bias toward money above all else. It is an attitude that makes sense, given the conservancy’s desperate need for funds to keep the park afloat—85 acres of parkland, much of it built on piers, does not pay for their own maintenance.

Other entrants said that design has been an important part of the competition, pointing to the presence of notorious nitpickers Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commissioner, and James Polshek, chair of the Public Design Commission, as signs that quality architecture is just as important as the promised payment. “Some entries were definitely dismissed because they were not good enough,” one source said.

It echoes a commitment conservancy president Regina Meyer outlined to The Observer during a tour of the park in the fall, just before the finalist were announced. "In terms of design and pedestrian experience, we were real clear this was very important to us," Ms. Meyer said standing on the path between the lush park and the vacant development site. "We don't want anything to undermine our huge public investment in design already."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

It looked bigger from the bridge... (Gothamist)

It may be the best new park in the city that's not the High Line, maybe even better, so whenever there is news of expansion at Brooklyn Bridge Park, it is good news. In this case, the good news comes in threes.

Earlier this week, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation announced plans for a temporary pool to open this summer at the shore side of Pier 2, the latest attraction for the park. Measuring 30 feet by 50 feet and 3.5-feet-deep, the pool will cost either $150,000 according to the Post or $199,000 according to the Daily News. “I’ve long said the pool is a major priority for the park, and now the community can dive right in," local state Senator Daniel Squadron told the tabs.

The park also caved to pressure from local prep schools and the community and agreed to include a regulation-size soccer field on Pier 5, The Brooklyn Paper reports. Previously the park had said there was not enough room for a real pitch, but now the kids can kick to their hearts' content.

So with a small pool and a big field, what does Brooklyn Bridge Park really need? A miniature model of itself! That's what the Queens Museum just installed on its giant Robert Moses panorama. The museum told Gothamist that this was the first major addition since a model of Battery Park City was added two years ago.

Correction: An earlier version of this post said the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, not Corporation, had approved the new pool and soccer field. The Observer regrets the error.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

A blessed place. (Property Shark)

That shutter coursing through Brooklyn Heights today? It was the seismic news that the Jehovah's Witnesses had finally sold one of their many coveted properties in the neighborhood. This has been the fate the tony townhouse burg has been waiting decades for, and now that it has begun, things don't seem that bad.

The first property to go was a middling apartment building for $7.1 million, according to Crain's.

The five-story, 20-unit elevator building at 50 Orange St. was sold in an all cash deal, said Robert Knakal, chairman of the brokerage. The sale closed on Dec. 13. The Jehovah Witnesses' business arm, the nonprofit Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, bought the property for an undisclosed sum in 1988 and used it as a residence for the members of its religious order. Last year, the group, which is thinking about moving its headquarters upstate, decided to sell the property along with seven other buildings, ranging from a carriage house to a seven-story apartment building.

The new owner of 50 Orange St. was not disclosed. A spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses confirmed the sale, but referred further comment to Mr. Knakal. “The building was delivered vacant and in exceptional condition,” said Mr. Knakal. “The sale price was in line with expectations.”

Two other buildings, the 131-unit 183 Columbia Heights and the 7-unit 161 Columbia Heights, are said to be in contract, with a total value for all three properties being $18.45 million. Not a bad chunk of change, but also not the massive sale everyone is waiting for, which could help stave off condo development in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

All of them have hired top notch architects, offering the kind of dynamic neighborhood BBP president Regina Meyer said she was hoping for. The community was not exactly thrilled with what they saw at the unveiling of the designs tonight—more on that tomorrow—but without further ado, here they are.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

On the waterfront... someday.

The sun had not quite broken over the rowhouses and warehouses of Greenpoint Monday morning when The Observer arrived at the new concrete pier jutting out into the East River at India Street. The dock seemed barely finished, its concrete planks not entirely even, the sides of the structure lined with chain-link fencing. Whole sections were torn up and surrounded with orange construction netting.

When the ferry pulled up, ghost decals clinging to the foredeck, the passengers filed on, handing over their $4 tickets, joining the nearly 3,000 New Yorkers who have ridden the ferry each weekday since its launch in mid-June, according to the city—more than double the number officials had expected.

After ordering our locally brewed fair-trade coffee and a pain au chocolat, we turned to see a gay couple smiling across a starboard table, sharing a quiche, a floating picnic. On the port side was a pretty biracial pair staring out the window at Long Island City, its gleaming towers pulling into view. The woman held a breastfeeding baby on her lap.

The subway this was not.

But neither was it entirely new. The Bloomberg administration—and to a lesser degree its predecessors and the civic groups that surrounded them—has been dreaming about transforming the East River into the city’s new axis. It took nearly a decade of experimentation and failure, but the river is about to be flooded with people. The ferries (after two tries finally a success) are only the first sign.

Just two years ago the master plans, brand new parks, renderings and rezonings that made this stretch a seething hot bed of development and gentrification were declared dead, another casualty of an overheated real estate market that had thrust the nation into recession. But something unusual happened. Even as the unemployment rate rose, so too did the rents throughout western Brooklyn. Instead of shuttering, an almost endless stream of precious boîtes and boutiques opened on the vinyl-siding-lined streets. What the bourgeois soothsayers at New York magazine dubbed “The Billyburg Bust,” complete with operatic comparisons to Miami, never materialized. Not a few bankers and movie stars—Ed Westwick among them—moved in. So what if the critics are right, and there is a little too much South Florida glass for all the soot still in the air? This is Brooklyn circa 2012.

Packed ferries, along with subways, bike lanes and flea markets, are but only the latest sign that the Brooklyn waterfront has prospered, rather than withered during the downturn.

Developers are hard at work on nearly a dozen megaprojects, many of them all but forgotten about in the past three years. A number of firms expect to break ground sometime in 2012, as they told The Observer, and while such ambitions remain lofty, given the near impossibility to raise construction financing at this time, the strength of Brooklyn real estate market has developers scrambling to get on the waterfront.

Tour the developments bursting from the Brooklyn waterfront >>

“The ferry is really the litmus test,” Jed Walentas, the second-generation Dumbo developer, said. “If you have just one good thing on the water, a ferry makes absolutely no sense. There’s nowhere to go. But when you get enough things happening in different parts of the city on the water, all of a sudden, ferries make a ton of sense.”

None of these undertakings are as ambitious as Park Tower Group’s redevelopment of the Greenpoint Lumber Exchange. Park Tower put stock in the area long before many of its competitors, taking a stake in the defunct lumber yard in the northern-most reaches of Brooklyn, where Newtown Creek empties its Superfunded waters into the East River. With 4,000 units planned, in some 10 towers along 20 waterfront acres, Park Tower’s project is larger even than the controversial Atlantic Yards project. Despite its size, a good many community members welcome the development.

“Until stuff gets built in Greenpoint, we don’t get any waterfront access,” said Ward Dennis, co-chair of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth. “I guess some people would gladly trade that for a less crowded neighborhood, but the thing is, the rezoning is done, the land is going sit largely fallow and underused, or overused and productive, with at least some benefits to the community at large.”

Park Tower earned much of its good will by helping to shape the rezoning that made over Williamsburg and Greenpoint during the past decade. Dreamed up in 2003, a year after Park Tower took its stake in the borough (previously, it had developed and later sold off marquee office towers in midtown), the rezoning passed in 2005. Due to the expense of building on the waterfront, even during the boom, only four towers got off the ground, two by McMansion builders Toll Brothers at Northside Piers, two by Douglaston Development at the neighboring Edge.

Both projects foundered, coming online after Lehman collapsed, despite being in the beating heart of Brooklyn gentrification, North Sixth Street. (Ever been to the Thai restaurant Sea on a Friday night?) Even facing its challenges, the Edge became the best-selling building in the city this past year, moving 260 units. Douglaston has since taken over phase three of Northside Piers and is planning to build the first 40-story tower of the rezoning (at least a dozen are possible), which will house 500 luxury rentals.

“I’ve always been a big believer in Williamsburg because Williamsburg created itself,” Douglaston chairman Jeff Levine said. “Unlike some of the other areas that were built up through subsidies or rezonings first, Williamsburg was somewhere that built itself up, and then the city came in later and improved it.”

Park Tower, which has been quietly preparing its project while the gold rush was on, is making the same calculation. “The project has been there a long time, but now the market is finally there for us,” a person involved with the project told The Observer. “The only difference is we’re not looking at condos anymore.” If last decade’s boom was defined by the condo taking hold in New York, this decade, at least in the outer boroughs, will be defined by a rental resurgence. The banks are mostly to thank for this trend. The condos that remain are hard to purchase due to a lack of mortgage financing, which means greater risk, which means lenders are less likely to give money to condo projects. Meanwhile, vacancy rates hover around 1 percent across the city, even lower in the coves of Brooklyn’s gold coast.

Inside Park Tower Group's mammoth Greenpoint project >>

Not all projects have faired quite so well, however. Besides Park Tower’s Greenpoint colossus, the biggest development in the works on the waterfront, and the most contentious by far, is the conversion of the Domino Sugar refinery.

Its developer, CPC Resources, is said to be in financial trouble, according to a number of sources, and some of the city’s top developers have looked at the site beside the Williamsburg Bridge. So far none of those deals have worked out, but project manager Susan Pollock said the developer is about to reach a deal with a partner to revive the project. “It was always our understanding we would bring someone in with the experience to build tall towers,” she said. Rose Plaza, located on the south side of the bridge, is similarly on hold, as are a handful of developments in southern Greenpoint.

What unifies many of the projects making less progress are those that were not part of the city’s rezoning or that have tried to go above and beyond it, incurring extra costs and commitments—like Domino, like Rose Plaza. The India Street pier is part of one such project, a development proposed by Jonathan Bernstein that is trying to turn the surrounding streets into parkland, adding a public amenity but also many thousands of square feet to the project, as well as adding a recreational pier on Java Street that would further bulk up his project. Many in the community are against the streets-into-parks plan and even object to the second pier—while it improves waterfront access, it also gives Mr. Bernstein more air rights. “It’s the same thing we’re seeing down at Occupy Wall Street,” local City Councilman Steve Levin said. “Is this a public benefit, or it a private benefit?”

Yet it is the piers and the parks that have also paved the way for these projects. “Once the infrastructure is in, the sky’s the limit,” said Andrew Genn, senior vice president for maritime at the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Toll and Dougalston and neighboring rental 184 Kent have all finished their waterfront esplanades, which connect to East River State Park, creating a reasonable riverside park, a hint of the 14-mile emerald necklace that could someday stretch from the tip of Greenpoint all the way to the Verrazano in Sunset Park. Meanwhile, at the asphalt lot that someday will be the Edge’s 40-story tower, Brownstoner’s Jonathan Butler has set up a branch of Brooklyn Flea and the Smorgasburg, which draw some 15,000 BroBos to the waterfront every weekend in the summer.

And it is not all housing and hip hangouts, either. Mr. Genn argues that the working waterfront is more vibrant than it has been in decades. The Navy Yard is near capacity and Carnegie Mellon has proposed building its branch of the vaunted new tech campus there. New cargo operations have taken hold in Red Hook, not to mention big box stores and ocean liners—Port Authority executive director Chris Ward said it should all be redeveloped as housing someday, but then only to facilitate a stronger connection to Governors Island. The city has signed half-a-dozen new leases and partnerships at Sunset Park in the past year and also launched a sustainability plan for the massive industrial hub. “Brooklyn had been written off as a place to do maritime commerce, and now it’s back,” Mr. Genn said.

Much of this development has been during the downturn, with developers chastened and the city looking to expand its economy beyond Wall Street. If developers are already venturing in again, in a shaky economy, when things are back in full swing, the waves could kick back up.

And there are those developments causing waves already. Last week, the city received bids for the first development site at Brooklyn Bridge Park. “There is very little right about this because it takes away from the parkland,” Councilman Levin said. But the park needs the funds from a new apartment building and hotel to finance its maintenance, and even enliven the open space, its planners argue.

To make the project as palatable as possible, the city has encouraged a level of design rarely seen—or required—in Brooklyn. Among the firms submitting bids are many of the waterfront’s best builders: Mr. Walentas’s Two Trees, Toll Brothers, Dermot, Extell and Hamlin, all of which have hired some of the city’s top architects.

“We put forth a really strong statement on quality design,” Brooklyn Bridge Park president Regina Myer said during a tour of Pier 1 and the adjacent site last week. “We have put so much into the park, we do not want anything that detracts from it. This is the gateway to Brooklyn, a panorama seen all over the world. Whatever we build here has to be special.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Horsing around. (Billy Farrell Agency)

At last week's opening of Jane's Carousel, perhaps the only person more excited than the legion of children and Ms. Walentas herself was Adrian Benepe, the city's Parks Department Commissioner. "I guess it comes with the territory of being a conservator of carousels," Mr. Benepe told The Observer, finishing off the last of his bag of popcorn. By Mr. Benepe's count, there are now at least 10, perhaps 12, carousels in the city, depending on how you count them. With the exception of one at Coney Island, all are found in the city's parks.

More than half of these whirling horses are under Mr. Benepe's purview: Central Park, Prospect Park, Flushing Meadows, Forest Park, the Bronx Zoo and Willowbrook. The others are located in Bryant Park, Riverbank State Park and Hudson River Park, with one under construction in Battery Park City and another planned for Steeplechase Park, a new city park at Coney Island. "It's interesting that all of our newest parks have carousels," Mr. Benepe remarked.

"This joins into the pantheon of great carousels. The stable, if you will."

He said he greatly admired the giant acrylic home Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel had erected around the carousel. "The shed is a work of art in itself," he said. "It's airy, not dark, like so many carousel sheds." Mr. Benepe knew from carousels, and not simply because of his three decades working at the Parks Department. There were also the fond memories of growing upo in the city, and riding the mechanical horses at Central Park. He marvels at how popular they all remain.

"It's amazing to see in my job, that over the decades, carousels still spin magic, not only for kids but also adults," Mr. Benepe said. "In a digital age, of computers and video games and smart phones, it's still enchanting. I think it's because we don't have experience riding horses. This is the closest thing most New Yorkers get to riding a horse."

It is this pastoral longing, mixed with our mechanical dynamism, that might help explain New York's unique standing in the world. "I think it's a guess, but New York may have the most carousels of any city in the whole country, if not the world," Mr. Benepe said. The Observer attempted to verify this later, and with the possible exception of Orlando, Fla., Mr. Benenpe may just be right.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC