Markowitz Urges ‘Destination Restaurant’ At Bay Center
Borough President Marty Markowitz has released his official recommendations to the City Planning Commission concerning Joe Sitt’s Bay Center.
Chief among Markowitz’s recommendations, such as suggestions for addressing traffic concerns, was the desire for waterfront dining to come to the Bay Center.
“Given Brooklyn’s population, the borough is truly lacking when it comes to having waterfront dining opportunities,” wrote BP Markowitz in a June 9, 2011, letter to Joseph Sitt of Thor Equities. “There are really only a handful of opportunities that I believe can entice destination restaurants such as Legal Seafood (sic) and Grand Lux Café to open the first venue in Brooklyn. This is the perfect site. Having such a dining opportunity would benefit the publicly accessible area by bringing more people to enjoy this waterfront, while the landscaping of the open space would provide the perfect foreground to the marvelous harbor vistas extending from Sea Gate to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.”While public utilization of the waterfront is repeatedly brought up in the documents released by the Borough President, the exact words ‘public parkland’ was not.
As we had mentioned in our previous story, public amenities mentioned at CB 11’s meeting, such as an Eco Dock, were not mandatory for the down-zoning motion’s approval.
