Submitted for your consideration, dueling headlines:
“Court Dismisses Suit Against Plan for Pier Parks” – Brooklyn Heights Press (11/30/06)
“Park backers lose waterfront lawsuit” – Brooklyn Papers (12/2/06)
So who’s right? Did those who want the park win, or those who want to stop it?
As I’ve documented, it’s been quite clear for well over a decade that the only way a Park was ever going to be built on the Brooklyn Heights Waterfront was if it were self supporting. The lawsuit mentioned in the headlines sought to block the use of the revenue sources (including apartment buildings) proposed in the plan to create “Brooklyn Bridge Park”. Those behind the lawsuit, brought by the Orwellingly named “Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund”, include the Willowtown Association, which has opposed any park on the Brooklyn Bridge Waterfront, long before housing became part of the plan, because it would lead to people from outside the neighborhood walking past their homes (residents of Joralemon Street actually hung up signs saying "Don't Tread On Me"). Also in the opposition is Roy Sloane of the Cobble Hill Association, who has stated quite clearly that he opposes the building of any park except on his terms, which are fiscally insupportable. Thus, those who supported the lawsuit, including publisher Ed Weintrob of the Brooklyn Paper (a resident of Willowtown), can only be termed park opponents, since they oppose the only plan which has any hope of bringing a park to fruition.
Or, in plainer terms, Ed Weintrob is a lying sacks of shit. I will reserve judgment on the motives of his hired gun, Gersh Kuntzman (although none of the possibilities are very pretty).
[NOTE: In the original version of this post, in an effort to avoid the need to zap, I followed my comments with a cut and paste response I’d compiled entirely out of actual quotations from the “irrational rants” (her term) of Dorothy Siegel, a person for whom, in a former life, I was once actually proud to cast a ballot, but who has seemingly evolved into a female version of FUSTB, albeit one with a spell checker, and far better hygiene and dental work. Now, in the light of day, I've deleted this blather, feeling that she had not earned an entitlement to free rent on this blog. The Post's original title was "Point/Counterpoint", a blatant effort to remind those who might remember of exactly the term used by Dan Ackroyd to describe Jane Curtin; the deletions necessitated that the title be changed]