Play ball, write some code, sip a cappuccino. (Dattner Architects)

Let's take this plan for a spin. (Dattner Architects)

Last month, Douglas Durst walked away from the Friends of Hudson River Park advocacy group over a disagreement with the trust that runs the Manhattan watefront park. The key dispute had been over what to do with Pier 40, the libertarian park's former cash cow that has become a drain as its pilings deteriorate and the parking garage cum ball fields ever so slowly sinks into the river.

The trust believes that housing should be among the options considered for shoring up the pier's finances, and by extension its pilings, a move that would likely require a major overhaul of the pier. Meanwhile, Mr. Durst insists housing is undesirable and unnecessarily expensive, and the better option is to keep the pier largely as is, adaptively reusing the space to more efficiently house the roughly 1,400 cars that park on the pier, freeing up room to create commercial space, likely occupied by tech firms, art galleries and other decidely downtown tenants.

Last night, Mr. Durst presented his plan at a public meeting, where it was warmly if cautiously received. The plans were prepared by Dattner Architects, a response of sorts to similar schematics for housing drawn up by SHoP Architects for the Trust. They show tight little stacks of cars, cubicles, lawns and ballfields, a scheme that is not markedly different from what is there already, just with a few things moved around to make room for the offices. (The Observer could not attend the meeting but was provided with a copy of the proposal along with Mr. Durst's remarks.)

"We think this concept is compelling because the space available at Pier 40 for office use is exactly what is in greatest demand today by the fastest growing sector of New York’s Economy," Mr. Durst told the audience. "Tech firms want large floor plates, high ceilings, large windows and unconventional and interesting space."

The plan calls for consolidating parking in the middle of the ground floor, using car stackers, which would eliminate the need for parking at the edges of the building and on the upper floors. The plan would also boost the number of spaces to 2,000, increasing income as a result. Even with more cars, this move frees up the perimeter of the ground floor and the entire mezzanine level for some 415,000 square feet of office space and an additional 99,000 square feet of retail—an impressive spread about as big as a mid-size office tower.

The middle of the mezzanine level would still be occupied by two large ball fields while the entire roof would be turned into public open space. Currently half of it is given over to parking, with a mix of fields on top, but now, there could be vibrant plantings and six different tennis and basketball courts along the roof.

"Our concept is a relatively simple way to preserve the current uses of the pier and also provide the additional revenue to help the entire park," Mr. Durst said.

Another benefit, he argues, is that it will be easier to get changes to the act governing the park's operations to allow for commercial development than for residential. The whole reason the pier has any money making uses, rather than just being public open space like the rest of Hudson River Park, is that when the park was first created, it was mandated that its ongoing operations be funded by the park, rather than the city or state, and three piers were set aside for development, this being one of them.

The Durst proposal projects a net annual profit for the park of $10 million a year, almost twice what the pier has historically made for the park.

Mr. Durst stressed that he and Ben Korman, a fellow board member who could not attend the meeting but also supports the plan, were offering this as a proposal for the public, not for themselves. "We are presenting this concept today as interested citizens who care about Hudson River Park and its future, not as developers interested in building out this project," Mr. Durst said.

David Gruber, chair of Community Board 2, said the room was packed and many were genuinely interested in the idea, if still non-committal. "I don't have a horse in this race, housing or no housing, but what I liked about this reuse is, the idea of housing on the pier after Sandy—I don't know if anyone's thinking of that anymore," Mr. Gruber said.

Mr. Gruber said that it was important to have options for the community to consider, including housing, and the board would be convening a forum in February to debate them all.

"What I do know is, we've tried big box stores and Circ de Soleil, we've tried everything, and people are tired of waiting," Mr. Gruber said. "There's a real sense in the community that something has to happen and people just want to make sure they do the right thing."

Correction: A previous version of this article said the presentation was given at a community board meeting. It was instead presented at a meeting of the Hudson River Park advisory council.

Sink or swim. (David Shankbone)

When Sandy swept into the town almost two months ago, Hudson River Park—as its name might suggest—was among the places inundated by the swelling sea under more than a dozen feet of water.

The surge washed over the historic piers and brand-new lawns, filling skate parks, swamping ball fields, submerging mini golf holes and surrounding the merry-go-round. Yet much of the park, in the traditional sense, came through fine."I think we lost only five trees and a few plants,” Madelyn Wils, president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust, said at a post-Sandy conference last Thursday.

It was the more manmade features, the development that undergirds the park and pays for its upkeep, that struggled to weather the storm.“The buildings, however, did not fare quite as well," Ms. Wils explains. "We’re still without power, because we are on our own grid, and we’ve had to work on our own to restore that.”

This is only the latest, and in some ways the least, of the troubles on the waterfront, where a bitter disagreement between Ms. Wils and the park's biggest backer, developer Douglas Durst, reveals cracks in the public-private model by which the city’s parks are so often built and maintained these days. These partnerships are both sustainer and straightjacket, leading to the creation of more parks in a generation, but also limited means to keep them up and running. Call them libertarian parks.

On October 29, the very night Sandy hit, Mr. Durst, the iconoclastic developer, was scheduled to appear before Community Board 2 to present a study he had recently paid for out of pocket on the dilapidated Pier 40, the earliest centerpiece of the park.

The 14-acre pier, built just off Spring Street in 1964 as the New York base for the Holland America Line, has more than  2,000 parking spaces along with two massive ball fields. Also home to a kayak launch, two harbor cruises and the New York Trapeze School, the pier is not only an asset for the community, but also for Hudson River Park itself, as it generates some $6 million a year in revenues for the park trust.

But the pier has slowly become a drag on the park, its roof starting to crumble—leading to the closing of a rooftop soccer field and a number of parking spots—and the nearly 4,000 pilings holding up the two-story structure starting to give.

While Ms. Wils and the trust estimate the price of repairing everything to be as much as $125 million, Mr. Durst had planned to go before the community board and argue that the repairs could be made for only $30 million, and that they should be paid for as soon as possible with the trust’s money.

The meeting was rained out, and now Mr. Durst pegs his plan at $44 million, because he believes the central ball fields, along with some other important pieces of the pier’s infrastructure, should be elevated out of the floodplain post-Sandy.

Mr. Durst has long been a staunch advocate for the park, serving since 2002as chairman of the board of Friends of Hudson River Park, an affiliated group that acts as both a fund-raiser and watchdog for the trust that operates the park. He was also its largest donor, giving a total of $2.3 million over that span and frequently buying the biggest tables at the annual fund-raising gala.

Since the summer, Mr. Durst began to float an idea that the pier should be fixed up as soon as possible, with the parking consolidated to the lower floor, and the upper areas turned into office space for tech firms and art galleries. The ball fields and other facilities would remain intact.

Meanwhile Ms. Wils and other Friends board members have been pushing for an approach in which a private developer would come in and pay for the repairs, along with what is expected to be a transformation of the pier. It would no doubt be a grander project, but also a more expensive one, and probably a more privatized one too.

Housing has been bandied about as a sort of panacea—ever since Richard Meier built his Perry Street “lofts,” who wouldn’t want to live on the Hudson River waterfront?—but locals also hate the idea of allowing the park to become some millionaire’s backyard.

That is why Mr. Durst has been pushing his plan for adaptive reuse on his own. It is also why Mr. Durst quit the Friends board last week. His name has already been wiped from the advocacy group's website, along with that of vice-chair Ben Korman, who used to run the parking at Pier 40 and also quit the board in protest.

“There was a difference of opinion of the direction that the park should go in,” Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mr. Durst, told The Observer on Friday. “Douglas is still deeply committed to the park, but given his difference of opinion from the leadership of the park, it became impractical for him to continue with the trust and with Friends.”

One person close to the situation said this amounted to “a pissing match” between Mr. Durst and Ms. Wils, who was appointed president and CEO of the trust in June 2011. “He’s taking his ball and going home,” said the source.

But in many ways, the pair, who both share a passion for the park and its future, would not even be having this fight if Hudson River Park were not so desperate for funds, a conundrum that is at the very foundation of the park's creation.

It goes without saying that every open space needs money coming in, but for Hudson River Park, it is especially crucial. This is, after all, one of the first public-private, or “self-sustaining,” parks created in the city. Championed by Governor Pataki and launched through an act of the Legislature in 1998, Hudson River Park has become a popular model for fostering new parks, particularly for the Bloomberg administration.

The public-private model has taken hold everywhere from Governors Island to the High Line to Brooklyn Bridge Park, the idea being that the government pays the up-front costs of getting the parks built, but after that it is up to quasi-public agencies to keep them up and running, usually through a mix of commercial activities and fund-raising.

It is a controversial arrangement, since it can often mean that what was once public space must now be given over, at least in part, to private interests. But many supporters of the model, especially in this age of fiscal austerity, argue that without such arrangements, the parks would never get built at all. Those privatizers are winning for now.

On Monday, Brooklyn Bridge Park announced it was seeking developers for the third apartment complex to be built on public land on John Street, within the waterfront park, while a competition earlier this year to develop housing at Pier 1 attracted some of the city’s top builders. On Wednesday, prospective tenants for historic buildings on Governors Island, ranging from local chefs to national chains, will tour the island, hoping to open up shop in one of the 48 pre-Civil War structures. And when the third section of the High Line broke ground in September, nearly one-third of the construction funds came from the Related Companies and Oxford Properties, which are developing the Hudson Yards project the elevated park will surround. All of them are hoping to cash in on the parks, which will benefit the public too, but the question remains: who benefits more?

This is not how it always was. Look at the original urban park, Central Park, which was developed in part to buoy real estate values uptown, but was largely paid for and maintained by the public, as a public benefit that subsequently paid for itself through rising property values.

The Bloomberg administration last year touted the $2 billion boom that resulted from its $150 million investment in the High Line. But the city contributes almost nothing to the ongoing operations of the park—easily the most expensive for a park of its size, with a $9 million annual budget.

In 2008, The Regional Plan Association did a study that found the Greenwich Village segment of Hudson River Park had generated $200 million in economic development while only costing $75 million to build up to that point. Yet very little of that money was reinvested in the park. Meanwhile, capital funds from the city have fallen from a high of $42 million in 2008 to only $7 million this year, due to recessionary cuts at City Hall. Operating expenses for the park are roughly $14 million a year, almost all of it coming from the trust.

“The biggest thing that concerns me is that Hudson River Park was the first in this new, quote-unquote sustainable park model,” Holly Leicht, executive director of advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said in an interview. “What we’re seeing right now is not very reassuring for this model.”

This debate is at the heart of the fight between Mr. Durst and the rest of the park’s leadership. He wanted up-front investments to protect the park, while other board members wanted the private sector to pay—perhaps rightly so, since the park could barely afford even the $30 million-to-$44 million tab Mr. Durst had touted.

“If it was up to me, not one more dime goes into Pier 40,” Diana Taylor declared at a recent board meeting. “Period.” (In addition to being a Friends board member, Ms. Taylor is, of course, Mayor Bloomberg’s girlfriend and in some ways his surrogate.)

The problem is that the legislation that created the park—by virtue of it being the first—is the most restrictive of the public-private parks in the city. It limits residential and certain other types of development and caps leases at 29 years. In comparison, more than 1,000 apartments will be built as part of Brooklyn Bridge Park, with leases up to 99 years.

The trust has been lobbying Albany for years now to relax the restrictions, often to fierce outcry from locals, who oppose most forms of new development. (It’s the Village and Soho, after all.) So far, everything from an outpost of Cirque du Soleil to a Major League Soccer stadium has been proposed, but all have been sunk by neighbors.

The trust insists it does not favor housing, it simply wants that as one of the options on the table. “The community needs to understand that if they want a park, they need to be willing to do what it takes to maintain a park,” Ms. Wils told Crain’s in May, when she unveiled plans for a 115-room hotel and 800 apartments on the pier—but with expanded open space as well, a palliative to all that development.

“It’s never what you want to do, for sure,” said Rob Pirani, a vice president at the Regional Plan Association and member of the Governors Island Alliance, that park’s watchdog. “It’s the difference between a real estate project and building a neighborhood.” But he also conceded that without the public-private partnerships, public officials might not have agreed to underwrite these parks in the first place.

Meanwhile, the entertainment complex Chelsea Piers, the other big money-maker for the trust, has sued, alleging two decades of deferred maintenance on its piles. The repair costs have been estimated at $100 million, a price the trust could hardly afford. (The fact that there is an expensive place for people to rock climb, ice skate and drive golf balls on what is ostensibly public land, meanwhile, gets at the heart of the problems with this type of park. It’s a nice amenity for the neighborhood, but only for those who can afford it.)

There is some hope on the horizon, as the park’s third major commercial project, Pier 57, is finally getting underway after years of delays. Young Woo, a hip downtown developer, has teamed up with designers Lot-Ek, known for building with shipping containers, to transform the pier into an artisanal market. Cute, but again, commercial. There will be a public walkway around the pier and expansive open space on the 1.6-acre roof—but there would be even more public space without those stores. The proposal was just approved by the Community Board last week, the first step in the months-long public approval process.

“Despite these and other challenges, including the recent impact of Superstorm Sandy, the Friends and the trust remain wholly committed to working together to secure resources for the park and sustaining its future,” Ms. Wils and Friends executive director A.J. Pietrantone said in a statement released after Mr. Durst’s departure.

Ms. Leicht hopes they can pull it off. “I do think getting it right here is essential before we continue to forge ahead on these types of parks,” she said.

Adrift. (HRP Trust)

Even before Hurricane Sandy buried it under more than a dozen feet of water, Hudson River Park was struggling to stay afloat.

The past decade had seen substantial progress on the long-planned park, made possible by the demolition of the old West Side Highway (which provided some of the initial funding) and the realization New Yorkers actually wanted to return to the waterfront (which provided the drive). By last year, more than 70 percent of the park had been completed, including many of the piers, transformed from places of work into ones for play, and the generous esplanade connecting them all, running from the Battery all the way up to Riverside Park.

But the grass is not always greener in a new park. Like so many other open spaces created in recent years, Hudson River Park receives limited public funding. Instead, it is expected to generate its own revenue through not only fundraising but also development within the bounds of the park, everything from floating restaurants to parking garages. Everything from rock climbers at Chelsea Piers to the tourists taking Circle Line cruises contributes in its own way.

At one time, Pier 40 was the park's biggest single source of funds, but increasingly, it has become a drag on the park, and a dispute over its future has led to the departure of one of its biggest backers.

Built in 1958 as an air marine terminal for the Holland America Line, Pier 40 is actually one of the younger protrusions from the park, and also the biggest, at 14 acres. But unlike its predecessors, Pier 40 has not been substantially rebuilt to accommodate its new uses, chiefly as a parking garage but also as a popular downtown ballfield (one of the few) as well as being home to a few harbor cruisers (Affairs Afloat and the Hornblower), a dog run, a kayaking company and a trapeze school. The parking alone brought in $5 million a year.

That was before the pier began to crumble. There has been growing concern over the piles holding up the pier, which have only been intermittently repaired over the years, and part of the roof has begun to collapse, closing one of the three ball fields. The Hudson River Park Trust, which runs the parks, pegs the cost of fixing the pier at $125 million, at least $80 million for just the piles. This is money the trust argues it can hardly afford to spend, and it wants to foster some new type of development, most likely housing, to help offset the cost.

Pier 40, located between Spring and LeRoy streets in the Village, has gone from a buoy to a concrete boot dragging the park down.

But Douglas Durst, chairman of Friends of Hudson River Park, a booster group affiliated with the trust, believes the cost of preserving the peer has been greatly exaggerated, and he has been pushing his own plans for the pier for months now, to shore up the piles and then adaptively reuse the structure, adding offices for tech firms to the mix of parking and sports, providing fresh funds and space for a booming Silicon Alley downtown. He has also proposed gallery space.

Mr. Durst even went so far as to pay for a study of the costs of repairing the piles, which was revealed this week in The Villager, where the developer pegs the cost at only $30 million, or as much as $44 million if money is spent to raise the ball fields, which he believes should be the case following Hurricane Sandy. (Ironically, his study was completed just four days before the storm hit, and Mr. Durst had been poised to present it to the local community board on October 29, the day Sandy made landfall in New York.)

Without support for his plan either at the trust or Friends of Hudson River Park, late last week, Mr. Durst left the group, stepping down as chairman. Already his name has been scrubbed from the Friends' site, as has that of Ben Korman, a vice-chair who also stepped down. Mr. Korman used to run the parking operation on the pier and supported Mr. Durst's plan.

"There was a difference of opinion of the direction that the park should go in," Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mr. Durst, told The Observer on Friday. "Douglas is still deeply committed to the park, but given his difference of opinion from the leadership of the park, it became impractical for him to continue with the trust and with Friends."

Justin Sadrian, a Friends board member and managing director at private equity outfit Warburg Pincus, was named acting chairman in the wake of Mr. Durst's departure, a promotion already reflected online.

Pier 40, flooded during Sandy. (HRPT/Flickr)

Mr. Durst believed that his expertise in matters of development was being ignored, and he had openly questioned the desire to build housing on the pier, which he told The Villager "doesn't work." Part of the problem, Mr. Durst argued, was that additional development would add to the cost of shoring up the piers—the more built up top, the more that must go down below to hold it up. He wanted the trust to spend money now to protect it, but other board members insisted there was no funds for such work.

“If it was up to me, not one more dime goes into Pier 40," Diana Taylor declared at a recent board meeting. "Period.”

One person close to the situation said this amounted to "a pissing match" between Mr. Durst and Madelyn Wils, who was appointed president and CEO of the trust in July 2011. "He's taking his ball and going home," said the source.

In a statement, Ms. Wils and Friends executive director A.J. Pietrantone said: "The Friends of Hudson River Park and the Hudson River Park Trust are extremely grateful for the many contributions of Douglas Durst and the Durst Organization to Hudson River Park  His philanthropy and advocacy for the waterfront and this distinct New York City amenity have had a profound effect on the quality of life for countless New Yorkers."

Mr. Barowitz said that Mr. Durst, who has not only provided his time to the Friends group but also his money as its biggest donor, would still continue to advocate for the park as a private citizen. Mr. Korman, who could not be reached by The Observer, will attempt the same, as he told Capital New York, which also reported the split.

"With the recent organizational changes made to the Friends, and my growing discomfort with regards to the Trust’s management, I felt that my advocacy would be more effective outside the Friends framework," Mr. Korman wrote in an email.

Losing two well-to-do backers seems like it could cause a serious blow to the park at a time that it is already desperate for funding, but another Friends board member said it should not have a material impact on the day-to-day operations of the Trust.

In many ways, this is a debate about the nature of how parks get built, maintained and funded in the city. New York has seen a number of public-private parks pop up in the past decade, from Brooklyn Bridge Park to the High Line. The city or state will help pay to build these grand edifices, but unlike Central Park or Prospect Park before them, the city takes little role in the new parks ongoing upkeep. Instead the parks are left to fend for themselves.

(Granted, most ever major open space from Central Park to Bryant Park now has some sort of conservancy, friends group or business improvement district that helps pay a good chunk of the costs for running it, ever since the city began divesting itself of this responsibility in the bankrupt 1970s.)

The argument over who should pay what is playing itself out here, as well. Mr. Durst and Mr. Korman believed the park should front the money to fix Pier 40, and then bring in new tenants to help cover those costs and add to the maintenance kitty going forward. But the bulk of the park's leadership insists it cannot pay for these fixes up front, and instead wants a private developer to come in and cover them.

In the past, there has been flirtations with everything from building schools here to an outpost for Circ de Soleil, all of which have been defeated for one reason or another, most usually through public outcry. Earlier this year the MLS had even considered it as a possible site for a soccer stadium, but transportation and crowding concerns from the surrounding community quickly stymied that idea.

Among the options the trust would like to see on the table is housing development, currently forbidden by the Hudson River Park Act of 1998, and SHoP Architects was even hired to make a compelling case for such a model earlier this year. The trust insists it is agnostic on which approach would be most suitable, and while housing would probably be the most lucrative—this is housing on the Hudson River waterfront, after all—locals tend to hate residential development, particularly on waterfront plots within public parkland (see: Brooklyn Bridge Park).

The trust has been working for the past year with lawmakers in Albany to try and revise the park act to allow for more types of development. Beyond restricting housing, the legislation limits leases to 29 years, which is seen as too short a time frame to attract a developer who would shoulder the costs of fixing up the pier as part of a larger development package.

But this may be the least of the park's problems at the moment. It remains without power six weeks after the Sandy storm surge washed over much of the park, including totally flooding Pier 40. "Most of our plants are O.K.," Ms. Wils said during a panel at a post-Sandy conference hosted by the Municipal Art Socity and Columbia on Thursday. "They're made to survive underwater, well not underwater, but they can put up with some flooding. I think we lost only five trees and a few plants."

"The buildings, however, did not fare quite as well," she said. "We're still without power, because we are on our own grid, and we've had to work on our own to restore that."

Meanwhile, there is some positive development news, as Pier 57, a cultural and shopping hub also long in the works at 15th Street, won approval from the local community board earlier this month. It will offer activities and access to the pier, as well as desperately needed funds to the park.

Whether something similar will get built at Pier 40, especially before the structure should deteriorate beyond repair, remains to be seen.

"Despite these and other challenges, including the recent impact of Superstorm Sandy, the Friends and the Trust remain wholly committed to working together to secure resources for the Park and sustaining its future," Ms. Wils and Mr. Pietrantone concluded their statement.

"Now with Douglas out of the way, the trust can start to work cohesively on fixing this pier," said the park source. The trust just has to convince Albany, and its angry neighbors, of the same thing.

Correction:A previous version of this story said the new acting board chair was Jason Sadrian, not Justin Sadrian. The Observer regrets the error.

Mayor Bloomberg and his Parks Commissioner Veronica White had crossed the river not only to take in the scene but also cut the ribbon on the 1.6-acre, $12 million project. It was Ms. White‘s first official public appearance after replacing Adrian Benepe, who had been in the job since 2001. It was her coming out, if a quiet one, with limited fanfare and few workers. Just another day on the job.

“Our administration has been revitalizing old infrastructure and recasting it in new ways that makes sense for New Yorkers today,” the mayor said proudly, pointing to the success of other projects like the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park as well.

But unlike those open space developments, heralded the world over, the waterfront of Williamsburg and Greenpoint has long languished. Not only was it cut off from the surrounding community for decades, but, despite the best efforts of the administration, little progress has been made on creating an emerald chain of parks and promenades following a major rezoning of the waterfront in 2004.

“WNYC Transmitter Park is also part of an ongoing effort to convert much of North Brooklyn’s waterfront shoreline into a network of interconnected open spaces,” the mayor said. “And that’s a big part of why we worked so hard with City Planning to rezone much of the area.”

After eight years, this is the first and only new park to fully open, though even it is not finished. A recreational pier is still under construction. The old WNYC transmitter station will eventually be turned into a café. There is a lovely green lawn in place and a nautical-themed playground, of which the mayor joked “I know where Marty is going to be later,” referring to the over-the-top Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz.

Even more a Monday afternoon, the park was busy, and on weekends, it is packed. The esplanade at Northside Piers and the Edge, which was built with private funds by the developers of the adjacent Miami-esque condo towers, are equally busy throughout the year, suggesting a hunger for access to the waterfront, one that remains unmet. “I think it’s the most important unresolved issue from the rezoning,” local Councilman Steve Levin told The Observer following the ceremony.

Every park has its own unique problems, he said. At 65 Commercial Street, the city spent years negotiating with the MTA on where it ought to move its vehicles parked there, taking up valuable waterfront real estate. Neighboring Barge Park was held up for capital construction delays and complications surrounding the construction of a new $100 million Department of Environmental Protection barge, whose predecessor docks on the site (hence the planned park's name).

Even Transmitter Park took longer to build than expected, as there were struggles with neighbors to gain access to the site, and then a lengthy construction process. The park was supposed to have opened at the beginning of summer, not the end of it.

Bushwick Inlet Park, running from North 11th to North 15th Street in a crescent along Kent Avenue and West Streets, is the biggest and most challenging of all the open spaces. As with so many waterfront parks, costs have ballooned--you think building on land is hard, try doing it riverside, with the tides and the toxic post-industrial conditions--and that is before the matter of buying out local landlords is even broached. Not only do they know the city wants their land, but it is also located in one of the hottest real estate markets in the five boroughs, meaning the acquisition costs have been grossly underestimated. (Funny the city will use eminent domain to build a new arena or office tower, but not a truly public amenity like a park.)

Ms. White had witnessed the open space excitement herself, as she explained in her brief remarks prior to cutting the ribbon. “This is a great example of Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment of opening up these waters to all New Yorkers,” she said. “This park is such a great example, I was out here last week, out here enjoying the view out there, the water and the green space, people playing with their children, their dogs, etcetera. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day here.”

After the event, The Observer wanted to meet the new Parks Commissioner and ask her about the status of the other parks. Ms. White’s press secretary warned, “only on-topic questions.” In non-press speak, that means ask about the ribbon cutting, this park, that’s it. So we did.

“It’s great to have my first ribbon cutting in Brooklyn, because as the borough president mentioned, I am from Bay Ridge,” she said. “It’s great to be out here and open up another of these gorgeous waterfront parks. It‘s a beautiful park.”

So, with a little less than a year-and-a-half left, what’s next? “We have lots of parks in the works, parks take a lot of time, as described here in detail, sometimes in terms of acquisition, sometimes in terms of remediation, and in building and opening the parks up

And there was the opening. Commissioner White had mentioned lots of parks in the works, so how about the ones just to our north and south? “That’s all, we have to go,” the press secretary cut in. As she was pulled away, Ms. White mumbled, “We’re working on it. Each piece is going forward.”

Locals are desperate to have these parks sown up before the mayor leaves office, because once the Bloomberg administration is gone, there is no promise the next mayor will take the same interest in these open spaces. That said, Mr. Levin remains genuinely hopeful.

“Over the last few months, especially since we had the hearing on what was going on with these parks, there’s definitely been an uptick in interest at City Hall, from the mayor’s office,” Mr. Levin said. “I think there’s a real desire to get the rest of this commitment fulfilled.”

It is an important piece of the mayor’s legacy, after all, this return to the water. “I can honestly say, all these parks are the best thing the mayor did,” Emily Nicolson said. She moved down the block eight years ago and used to sneak onto the site when it was just an empty lot. Now she brings her two young children here often, four times she said since the park opened a week earlier.

“Everything else he’s done is up for debate,” Ms. Nicolson continued. “But the parks, and the bike lanes, are pretty great.”

Spiffy sports. (Adidas)

Brought to you by the Parks Department and Adidas.

Bedford Avenue, the perfect home for a mural.

Everyone is waiting to dive into the revamped McCarren Park Pool at the end of the month, restored to its Robert Moses-era glory after decades of neglect. But another corner every hipster's favorite park has just been spiffed up thanks to Adidas.

On the other end of McCarren lies a run of seven popular tennis courts besides Automotive High School. Like much of the park, it is a little worse for the wear. Efforts have been afoot to install a bubble for the winter, but at least for the time being, a new windscreen will help keep conditions better during the blustery spring and fall months. And this being Brooklyn, the windscreen had to take on an artistic flair.

Adidas Originals tabbed L.A.-born, Brooklyn-based designer Brent Rollins to come up with a mural for the screen. He hit upon the idea Brooklyn-Love. Not only does this express his and his neighbors' abiding love of their home borough, but it is also a tennis pun, according to Adidas. Love-love being the starting score in any game, the mural means Brooklyn always wins. Brooklyn beats all.

The players already love the installation, though this project underscores the funding challenges for such work. "Our group of volunteers has been working hard to improve these public courts, but much of the success we've had over the last few years stems from the generosity of donors like Adidas Originals," said Sean Hoess, president of the McCarren Tennis Association.

The Parks Department has recently come under fire for seeking sponsors for some of its amenities—welcome to the Dunkin Donuts playground!

In this project, no money exchanged hands, according to an Adidas rep, though the windscreen was paid for and donated by the company. On the one hand the court gets a new windscreen, and a very nice one at that, with a cool new mural blazing down Williamsburg main street Bedford Avenue. But not without a little Adidas logo poking out next to the Parks Department one.

We have ads on subways and buses, and logos can be found all over the court. Is a little cross-promotions in the park so bad?

Disconcertingly disconnected. Click to zoom in for a better view. (Bing Maps)

A reader sends along this thoughtful critique of the problems inherent in the latest plans for Willets Point:

What a horrible idea. A parking lot and a mall? That neighborhood is a mess already, though. Just a few hundred feet from the bay in one direction and Flushing Meadows in the other, and they're both nearly impossible to access. It should be a wonderful spot to hang out before a ballgame, and instead it's just a tangle of highways. Thank you, Robert Moses.

It's a very interesting point, and perhaps points to a better way forward for this forlorn corner of the city.

After all, just look at this picture. A giant parking lot on one side, a giant (though very vibrant) pit on the other. All of it surrounded by a mess of highways, just beyond, lush lawns and open water. Indeed, this was the fine work of Robert Moses, master of the World('s Fair), so it makes sense that roads are bisecting and bifurcating everything, keeping the various masses, washed and unwashed, from crossing paths.

But this has been less the prerogative of this mayor, thankfully, which is why the decision to go all cars-n-malls—yes, even in Queens—makes so little sense. This is still a dense area, one well-served by mass-transit, one begging for improvement. The proposal for two huge malls actually makes the original plan conceived by the mayor five years ago, to build an actual neighborhood here, look even more impressive than it already did. Something new, with plenty of jobs and affordable housing, maybe even a convention center.

Now, instead, Queens is getting more suburban development, when it deserves better. As our reader points out, wouldn't it be nice to extend the park all the way up, doubling it in size? Here is a place where capping some railyards would make sense—push the development to the edges, and open up the rest. Madison Square Garden has no parking, and it gets along fine.

There is the added advantage that the expense of remediation and infrastructure to build up Willets Point to where it needs to be—it's seven feet below the flood plane in some places—would be considerably cheaper were it to be turned into a park rather than streets and homes and shopping malls. Instead, we sell it off to the highest bidder, and do their bidding at that, so that the development might commence cost-free. We already know that is how the administration likes to do business.

Which is not all bad. Times are tough, money is tight, would anything really happen without some private help? Probably not. No plans have yet been unveiled, so it remains to early to judge, but for the city's sake, whatever gets built here, may it be as innovative and ambitious as what came before.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

What price paradise? (Wired New York)

Much work to be done. (WSJ)

Parks funding is something of an obsession around these parts, particularly those open spaces The Observer has deemed libertarian parks, spaces ranging from Brooklyn Bridge Park to the High Line, which are either built or maintained with outside funds. On the one hand, these parks might never have been created without private investment.

On the other, it shows a troubling lack of respect and appreciation for the public trust—where would the city be if the same we-just-can't-afford-'em attitude of today persisted in the past? Central Park, Prospect Park, Pelham Bay Park, even the controversial work of Robert Moses, would any of it have happened if  it had been undertaken by private interests?

Hudson River Park, first proposed in the 1980s, launched a decade later and by all accounts the first libertarian park, has been facing funding shortfalls for years now, hindering the ability of parks officials to finish construction of many of the piers and maintaining the ones it has already redeveloped.

A year ago, they floated the idea of selling off board seats and naming rights to generate funds. That effort has failed to generate the necessary moneys, many hundreds of millions of dollar, and so the park is now digging into its original charter, hoping to alter what can be built, how and seeking the ability to release bonds to raise funds. According to The Journal, Hudson River Parks' efforts are receiving a mixed reaction in Albany.

Trust officials said the 1998 Hudson River Park Act signed by Gov. George Pataki puts too many restrictions on lucrative commercial development that would give it a revenue stream to pay for maintaining the park. In addition to the power to issue government-back bonds, the trust wants greater freedom to do mixed-use development and to offer leases longer than the current maximum of 30 years.

"Nobody knew at that time what it would cost to maintain a park in the water because they were never built before," said Madelyn Wils, president and chief executive of the Hudson River Park Trust. "We are completely hamstrung."

A task force has been convened by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, in whose district parts of the park lies, to figure out what can be done for the park. "It's pretty clear that the park needs new financial resources," Assemblyman Richard Gottfried told The Journal. He is a member of the task force and one of the original champions of the park plan.

As anyone who has enjoyed the growing park in recent years can attest, it has been a boon for the west side of Manhattan. So here is a novel idea: why not fund it from the general fund? Then again, that would rob money from some other cash-strapped part of the state or the city. Where did all the money go? Not to parks, that's for sure.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

If you build it, how will you pay for it? (Maya Palmer)

In his first dispatch in almost a month, Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman heads (back) overseas, where he tours a new riverfront park in Madrid. Like the story of Hudson River Park and the West Side Highway before it, or Boston's Big Dig, Madrid decided almost a decade ago to bury a major highway that flanked the Manzanares River in the heart of the city. Naturally, there has been a return to the bucolic, Mr. Kimmelman writes: "All around the world, highways are being torn down and waterfronts reclaimed; decades of thinking about cars and cities reversed; new public spaces created."

Mr. Kimmelman has proven himself, even after an exile in Berlin, intimately concerned with the goings on in New York, and he finds them yet again halfway around the globe:

Of course Madrid is now just about broke, and Mr. Gallardón’s opponents point to his civic improvements as one cause. They were indeed expensive, albeit a fraction of what the costs would have been in America. Pilar Martínez, who oversaw the park project in the mayor’s office, told me that the official price tag of Madrid Río hovers near $5 billion, all but $500 million of it spent to bury the highway.Twenty-seven miles of new tunnels were dug; countless tons of granite installed to make paths and fountains; some 8,000 pine trees planted. A new, elegantly simple boathouse has been designed, and a 19th-century complex of brick and glass buildings, including a derelict slaughterhouse and greenhouse, are now being renovated to house art studios and a dance theater.

Add to this wading pools for toddlers that landlocked Madrid parents already fondly call “the beach,” and a paved plaza, in patterned tiles, large enough to fit a few hundred thousand people.

New York has recently benefited from the growth and upgrading of its own parks, but much of the city’s expanding public realm is now dependent on private investment. At the epicenter of laissez-faire capitalism, a skepticism about big government, a web of well-meaning regulations and opposition groups empowered by easy access to the courts combine to create barriers to the investment of public money in major infrastructural improvements. Change happens slowly and incrementally, certainly compared with what Madrid has accomplished.

So we confront the problem yet again of how and even why to invest in public infrastructure and space. The Observer has been suspicious of Libertarian Parks for some time now, a fact only underscored by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the lack of quality public space created in the past few generations. Madrid Rio proves that the public sector can still build public space, but it is not any easier to pay for. There is no clear answer to our skyrocketing everything.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Bridging the public and private. (BBP)

Just yesterday, The Observer reported that a request for proposals for a third development site at Brooklyn Bridge Park, which was not part of a deal announced the day before to reduce the amount of development in the park, was expected "shortly." Turns out shortly meant one day.

The city-run Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation is now seeking developers for two parcels adjacent to Pier 1, one rising to 100 feet and covering 65,000 square feet and the other 45 feet and 35,000 square feet. These two will house a combination of 225 hotel rooms and 150 apartments or 175 hotel rooms and 180 apartments. The project will be built by the same developer, along with inducements for ground-floor dining along with parking, restrooms and support facilities for the park.

"The hotel and residential component represent a critical element of our park maintenance plan and the development’s amenities will benefit all park users for decades to come,” BBP president Regina Myer said in a release.

Payments in lou of taxes, or PILOTs, from the two parcels are expected to fund a portion of the park's maintenance. Already One Brooklyn Bridge Park, the hulking converted warehouse on the park's southern under, has contributed a few million dollars to the fund since 2006. Construction costs are still coming from the city, which in part of Tuesday's deal pledged $55 million to begin work on Pier 2. Responses are due October 24.

It is not surprising that Pier 1 is the first ground-up site to be developed. The Empire Stores was to have been converted years ago, but stability, preservation and disagreements over its commercialization held that up. Meanwhile, Pier 1 opened last year, providing developers the best front yard possible, so to speak. The other sites, at Atlantic and John streets are next to plots still under development.

For those who feel that private property built on public parkland is a problem, the city has gone ahead and transformed Brooklyn Bridge Park from boring old public space into a full-on brand, as evinced in this video that accompanies the RFP. Wedged between America's Oldest Suburb and Silicon Beach, this fits nicely with the borough that has become a way of life.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

So long, it's been good frustrating you. (MVVA)

If they can reach a compromise on Capital Hill, why not on the Brooklyn waterfront?

After years of bickering over Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Bloomberg administration has finally struck a deal with two local pols who opposed plans to erect condos along the park to help pay for its maintenance. Instead of the two new condo towers, along with the hulking One Brooklyn Bridge Park, they have settled on one shorter tower, though maybe still a second one, along with a handful of additional funding mechanisms to make up the difference.

Decades in the making, the park finally took off during the real estate boom, when the idea of condo towers sandwiched between the BQE and the derelict docks no longer seemed absurd. Instead of paying annual real estate taxes, that money would be diverted to maintenance for the park. Some people, who have the audacity to think the public sector and not the private should be responsible for building and maintaining parks, were appalled. The Brooklyn Paper began calling it Brooklyn Bridge "Park" for this very reason, while The Observer prefers the name libertarian parks. Then there were the Brooklyn Heights residents, who feared the views from their multimillion-dollar brownstones would be besmirched.

A committee set-up last year sought to find alternatives that could raise enough money to fund the park without having to build any condos, such as building a parking lot—which is so much better than condos. This proved untenable, at least on its own. As had been the previous hope, a rezoning and air rights sale of the Watchtower properties in Dumbo owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses will go forward, but it will only replace one of the condos, at Atlantic Avenue, and then only if there is enough interest in buying the development rights. The city explains the deal thusly:

Such a rezoning and sale to tax-paying entities would have to take place by December 31, 2013 to be counted as an offset. For each square foot of Watchtower property rezoned and sold, the Pier 6 development sites would then be reduced by 0.30 square feet. Total incremental revenues allocable to the park from these sites would be capped at $6.27 million per fiscal year, escalating at 3 percent per year (or the amount previously anticipated from the Pier 6 Development Site).

People had better hope the market picks up by then. Meanwhile, a tower at John Street remains, but it has been reduced to a height of 140 feet from 170, with 40,000 square feet less of development.

“By reducing or eliminating housing and requiring Watchtower and other alternatives to be used, we have dramatically changed the plan,” State Senator Daniel Squadron said in a release. “We found a path to complete Brooklyn Bridge Park and address long-standing community concerns about housing on the site.

Those other funding mechanisms include increased concessions and new parking fees, which will raise $750,000 per year. So if we won't commercialize the park one way, we will another. “Before investing further City capital to build out the park, it was critical that we come to an agreement on a long-term funding plan for its maintenance so the park would be self-sustaining," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Bad as this may sound to some purists, considering parks are closing around the country, it may not be such a bad deal.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC