DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership has named its new president, after its president of five years stepped down last month.
Regina Myer — who has led the Brooklyn Bridge Park corporation since 2008 — will take the helm of the nonprofit development corporation in early November. Former president Tucker Reed stepped down on Aug. 5.
“Now that Brooklyn Bridge Park is teeming with visitors, financially secure and nearly fully built, it makes sense to head back up the hill to Downtown, where I’m ready to embrace the exciting challenge of building on the area’s success over the past decade," Myer said in the statement.
“This was an opportunity I just couldn’t refuse — a chance to really come full circle,” Myer said in a statement.
In taking over, she will build on the partnership’s work of growing Brooklyn’s Cultural District, as well as the so-called Brooklyn Tech Triangle — a hub that spans Downtown Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and DUMBO, the statement said.
Myer will also continue to advocate for the Brooklyn Strand project, a plan to revamp parks, plazas and walkways from Brooklyn Borough Hall to the waterfront. The project aims to restore nearly 50 acres of public space to better connect Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding neighborhoods to the waterfront.
"Through smart public and private investment — in open space, in commercial development, in the burgeoning Brooklyn Cultural District — we really have the chance to shape the future of Downtown in a holistic way, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Myer — who has led Brooklyn Bridge Park since 2008, before major construction of the park began — leaves with 90 percent of the park complete or under construction, the statement noted. Only 3.7 out of 85 acres remain to be built.
Prior to Brooklyn Bridge Park, Myer worked at the city’s Department of City Planning for 22 years — first as a project manager at the Manhattan office, and later as the director of the Brooklyn office. There, she spearheaded the 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, which led to mass development in the neighborhood, the statement said.
Over the last decade, the neighborhood has received more than $400 million in public investment and $11 billion in private investment, the statement added. Downtown Brooklyn’s population has since grown by 17 percent, with 6,758 housing units built in the last 10 years and 13,000 more planned.
