WILLIAMSBURG — Even critics are calling the "Maker Park" proposal for the developing Bushwick Inlet Park a "titillating industrial playground."
Recently released renderings show butterfly gardens, koi ponds and an open air amphitheater inside the bellies of re-purposed steel oil tanks on the waterfront.
The trio behind "Maker Park" — Karen Zabarsky, a creative director at Kushner Companies, Stacey Anderson, the public programs director of the Municipal Art Society’s and Zachary Waldman, a digital strategist plan to present the designs to the community on Dec. 6 at 6:30 p.m. at 64 Dobbin St. in Greenpoint.
"Maker Park is poised to achieve the acute community need for green open space while also serving as a dynamic, interactive, and educational public park that speaks to Brooklyn’s past, present, and future," their website reads, with the new renderings from architectural firm Studio V.
But the Maker Park plan has been opposed by the Parks Department, who've dismissed the idea because they say they'd have to completely demolish the oil tanks in order to remediate them, DNAinfo New York previously reported.
And other advocates for green space in North Brooklyn bristle at the idea of preserving the tanks that have polluted the community for decades and if they remain intact, will continue detract from open space in the park they've battled so hard for.
"This kind of turning a blind eye to the history of the community and what the community was promised and what their needs are in terms open space," said Steve Chesler, whose group Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, have made it their rally cry to push for the full park promised to the community in 2005.
Their activism paid off last week when the city to finally agree to fork over $160 million for the last piece of land it needed to piece together Bushwick Inlet Park.
"A titillating industrial playground is not worth the sacrifice," Chesler said.
The Curbed first reported on the latest renderings of Maker Park.
