Today City Council Votes on Dock Street

Today the City Council will vote on the proposal by Jed Walentas of DUMBO's Two Trees Management to build a 325-unit tower on Dock Street that has a lot of people up in arms because it will partially blockviews of the Brooklyn Bridge.

David Yassky, City Council member in the 33rd district which includes DUMBO, opposes the tower as planned as do many community groups.

Perhaps the most outspoken and articulate opponent of the project is David McCullough, who wrote The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), and had a column in  Newsweek, a few weeks ago:

The most long lasting of great American works, the structure destined "to convey some knowledge of us to remote posterity," said a New York writer long ago, was "not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge."   That was in the spring of 1883, 126 years past, when the completed Brooklyn Bridge opened to the most exuberant public celebration of the era, complete with the president of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, leading the grand parade on foot from New York to Brooklyn over the bridge high above the East River.

"The Great Bridge" was news everywhere. It was the moon shot of its time, a brave, surpassing technical triumph, and more. For it was besides a great work of art and a thrilling overture to the high-rise city in America. Its giant granite towers stood taller by far than anything on the New York skyline, taller indeed than any structure in all of North America then. Over the years it has been photographed more than anything ever built by Americans. It has been the inspiration for songs, poems, paintings, no end of personal reminiscences and thesetting for scenes in movies. It has remained New York's most famous, best-loved landmark...

...In the years since, its importance has seldom ever been doubted or seriously challenged. The sanctity of its own space has been unviolated by and large. Until lately. Now, alas, plans are proceeding to build an 18-story luxury apartment building within a hundred feet of the bridge on the Brooklyn side. (A vote in the process is expected this week.) The building, as proposed by the Two Trees Management Co., would stand 184 feet high and just about ruin the view of the bridge from on shore, as well as the view from the bridge looking toward Brooklyn—in other words, the view for just about everyone except those living in the apartments. To permit such a project so close to the bridge would be a shameful, inexcusable mistake. There is no other way to say it.

Would we wish to see an 18-story building go up beside the Statue of Liberty, or next to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, or beside the Washington Monument? Of course not.

Would the city of Paris permit an 18-story building beside the Arc de Triomphe or Notre Dame? Unthinkable.

Usually Council members go along with the local council member on matters that pertain to that member's district. But not in this case.

Last week the Land Use Committee of the City Council approved the Two Trees' plan. They didn't go with Yassky and many say that's because the Council Speaker Christine Quinn is in favor of the Walentas project as well. 

So what will happen today. My bet: the City Council will approve Dock Street. Sadly.