NY1
June 17, 2016

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams unveiled a clock Friday, counting down the days the owner of a Williamsburg warehouse has to accept the city’s offer to buy the land needed to complete Bushwick Inlet Park.

The city has offered site owner Norm Broadsky $100 million for the land in Williamsburg now occupied by a burned-up warehouse.

It would be the last piece needed to complete the park.

The Citi Storage warehouse at the site burned to the ground in January of last year.

Adams says it’s not a moment too soon to make the city’s deal happen.

“The clock is ticking, and we cannot allow time to tick out, if we don’t have our park,” Adams said.

Plans for the nearly 28-acre park were made in 2005 as part of a rezoning deal that led to a number of high-rise buildings going up in Williamsburg.

“It’s been important to me for 30 years,” resident Kim Fraser said. “Greenpoint and Williamsburg do not have enough green space.

“I understand Norm Brodsky’s wanting to make a much bigger deal. But there’s also an opportunity for him to be like a city father, community leader,” said Joe Mayock, the executive director of the Open Space Alliance.

The Open Space Alliance has a stated goal of raising private funds to expand and improve open space in North Brooklyn.

“We are saying to the owner, ‘Help us, help the city, help the future, help clean air, help healthy living space,'” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents parts of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Broadsky says he is waiting for an appraisal of the land’s value before considering the city’s offer.

The owner has said in the past he thinks the land could be worth $500 million.

Park advocates claim the city’s offer is more than fair, saying the land is already estimated to be worth less than $100 million, and represents approximately $3 million more per acre than the average price paid for other sites contained within the Bushwick Inlet Park footprint.

The new city budget just approved by the mayor and the city council would provide the $100 million  to buy the Citi Storage site.

As for the countdown chart, Brodsky’s response to that was that he has a calendar too.

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