Who is in charge here? Brooklyn Bridge Park

With a final cost projected to be in the neighborhood of $350 to $375 million, New York City's Brooklyn Bridge Park is too small to be included on most megaproject lists. There are, however, other reasons that merit its inclusion in this volume. Foremost among them is size: at 85 acres, Brooklyn Bridge Park is one of the largest parks to be constructed in the midst of a major U.S. city since World War II. Brooklyn Bridge Park is also a preeminent example of how old and obsolete industrial waterfronts are being repurposed as urban amenities, thereby supporting the resurgence of nearby urban neighborhoods. Brooklyn Bridge Park is also notable for how it is being financed. A substantial share of BBP's construction and operating expenditures are (and will be) derived from on-site land sales (so-called "development in the park") as well as from special tax assessments. This type of financial mechanism is commonly used to finance urban development and transportation projects, but until the 1980s, was rarely used to finance public parks. These singular aspects notwithstanding, Brooklyn Bridge Park offers a cautionary tale of the problems that ensue when multiple governmental and community stakeholders fail to get on the same page around a megaproject's purpose or program. Since Brooklyn Bridge Park's designation as a public park in 1988, it took 25 years to get to a point where its final completion was finally in sight. If this record ultimately renders Brooklyn Bridge Park a megaproject failure, it will not be for the usual reasons of over-promised benefits, under-estimated costs or a poorly-specified program. Rather, it will be because Brooklyn Bridge Park was conceived and implemented within a contentious public decision-making process that offered too many openings for stakeholders to pursue individual agendas at the expense of delivering a broadly popular project in a timely way. Alternately, to the degree that Brooklyn Bridge Park is someday regarded as a megaproject success, it will be because its underlying program and design are flexible enough to allow future generations to use the park in a way that works best for them.