Floating Newtown Creek Bridge Would Connect Brooklyn and Queens

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN — A floating pedestrian bridge that connects Greenpoint and Long Island City could be coming to the Newtown Creek, if designers can crowdfund $50,000.

CRÈME — a Williamsburg-based architecture and design studio — is hoping to build a floating wood bridge that would allow people to walk across the Newtown Creek without having to brave the Pulaski Bridge, the group announced on Kickstarter.

The Timber Bridge, as the project is called, would be erected where the now-demolished Vernon Avenue Bridge once connected Manhattan Avenue Park in Brooklyn to Vernon Boulevard in Queens, designers said.

The proposed bridge would float above the water with enough room to let small boats pass underneath, then divide and pivot to make way for the large industrial boats that use Newtown creek to access the East River.

Timber Bridge is the first step in what CRÈME hopes will become a LongPoint Corridor, which will include a pathway to another walkway over the Long Island Railroad tracks at 53rd Avenue and green spaces on both coasts.

Designers argue a bridge that would provide easy access to G and 7 stations in Queens is badly needed in a neighborhood soon to lose access to the L train during the impending shutdown.

They also posted video of several residents complaining about the trek over the Pulaski Bridge, which they said is smog-infused at best and harrowing at worst.

“It’s unnerving, even for an experienced cyclist,” one local told designers in a promotional video. “It would be much more pleasurable not to have to be exposed to trucks.”

“I actually use the Pulaski Bridge on a regular basis as a walker,” said artist Susan Luss. “For me that would be excellent not to have to deal with the cars, the pollution, anything else that happens.”

But before the proposed bridge becomes a reality, the group will need to raise $50,000 to conduct feasibility research and install a promotional light installation at the site, designers wrote. As of May 21, the project had earned $1,262 which was donated by 23 backers.

Even if the Kickstarter campaign is successful, the CRÈME team faces a much larger challenge: New York.

"Permits and Approvals in NYC/NYS are a very complicated process and not always guaranteed," the designers warned. But, overall, the group's tone was optimistic, if measured.

“You might be thinking, ‘This is a massive undertaking!’” CRÈME designers wrote. “But we will be taking it one step at a time.”

CRÈME did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment.

Header photo courtesy of GoogleMaps/Nov. 2017