Will Bushwick Inlet Park, the 28-acre park planned for land north of East River State Park in Williamsburg & Greenpoint around the Bushwick Inlet, happen? Putting the land together for the park and securing all the funding is a complicated issue. GWAPP (Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning) has been working to do some community advocacy and will be having the first meeting tonight of a group tentatively called Friends of BIP. The park was one of the major promises to the community that accompanied the major Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning with the waterfront open space being one of the trades for buildings up to 40 stories tall along Kent Avenue. The city is working on Phase I of the park, but has not acquired property for the rest of it. We talked recently with Evan Thies, who is running for David Yassky’s seat on the City Council and is a member of Community Board 1. Mr. Thies argues that the Bloomberg Administration “has completely reneged on the community-based promises it made in the rezoning.” Many involved affordable housing that hasn’t been built, but one of the projects that has lagged, and that could be threatened by a change in administration is Bushwick Inlet Park. Two of the biggest parcels of land are privately held–one by an owner willing to work with the city and the other held by TransGas, which has been waging an unsuccessful campaign to build a power plant. There is also land on the north side of the inlet whose fate is far from settled. Mr. Thies said the city “isn’t having the conversations yet” with the landowners. (He favors taking the TransGas property by eminent domain.) “The rezone was in 2005,” he said. “It is getting really late in the Bloomberg Adminstration to start some of the projects.”

One of the strategies that park advocates are pushing in North Brooklyn is to get money spent on starting park projects so that they will be too far along for a Bloomberg successor who might oppose them to stop. The Friends of BIP group meets tonight at The Gutter Bar, which is lcoated at 200 N. 14 Street, at 7PM.