City Resists Giving Ft. Greene Park Docs Despite Judge's Ruling

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — As construction for a controversial revamp of Fort Greene Park nears, a group of residents fighting the plans are still waiting to get their hands on documents they requested from The Parks Department.

Parks officials expect to secure a contractor for the $10.5 million project — which will include building a promenade in the northwest corner — by this spring, a representative said, meaning construction will begin shortly thereafter.

But, there isn't word as to whether that will be before or after local group Friends of Fort Greene Park are given documents they requested as part of an effort to stop the plans. A judge ruled in October that the city must hand over an unredacted version of a 2015 report on the park generated by landscape architect Nancy Owens, but the city is appealing the decision.

The residents, who have been fighting the project for over a year, say the appeal raises eyebrows about what is in the report, which had entire pages redacted when it was first turned over.

"It seems really self-evident that there’s something in that report they don’t want the public to know," said Friends of Fort Greene Park member Enid Braun. "To go to the lengths of appealing a judge’s decision seems extreme — this is not the CIA."

The 2015 report is one of several documents the group requested under the Freedom of Information Law.

The judge's decision argued that The Parks Department had not sufficiently proved that FOIL exemptions applied to the documents. Parks officials failed to show that Nancy Owens was hired as a consultant and misidentified the pages that had been redacted, the opinion shows.

A representative for the Parks Department's legal division declined to answer specific questions about the appeal, citing pending litigation.

"We believe the ruling is incorrect as a matter of law and we are appealing," the representative said.

Braun said the group's quest for more information is in part rooted in inaccuracies revealed in earlier requests.

A FOIL request for the forestry report granted in 2017 revealed that 58 trees, not 40 as they had been told, would be removed in the northwest corner renovation. Only nine of the trees were slated for removal based on poor health, despite earlier comments by parks officials that many of the trees were at "the end of their life," the group said.

The other 49 were to be removed for design reasons.

Friends of Fort Greene Park also hired their own arborist who revealed, Braun said, that the trees with health "conditions" could be saved by changes to their maintenance. The arborist also reported that 13 additional trees are likely to die because of the construction.

The removal of the trees — which the group has called arborcide — concerns those that not only love the greenery of the park, but those who live nearby and worry about light pollution or the plaza becoming an active site for skateboarders and other noisy activities, Braun said.

She added that the Friends of Fort Greene Park plan to continue their efforts to stop the project. Opposition to the project has far from simmered down, she said.

"Besides the love so many people have for the park and the kind of real specialness of this section of the park, there’s this kind of horror that government can be this opaque," she said. "In fact, opposition is growing because the more people find out about this the more dislike it and are speaking out."

Photos of before/after provided by Friends of Fort Greene Park.