Tobacco Warehouse at Empire Fulton Ferry State Park. Image: CityLand.

Court ruled that the National Park Service unlawfully removed warehouse and adjacent building from park boundaries. In 2001, the National Park Service awarded to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant to help fund a cove restoration project in Empire Fulton Ferry Park in DUMBO, Brooklyn. The Park Service’s grant was contingent on the State Office of Parks agreeing that the restoration project area would be used for public outdoor recreation.

The approved boundary map of the park area included the Tobacco Warehouse building and the adjacent Empire Stores warehouse bordering the park along Water Street. The dilapidated Tobacco Warehouse has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. The State Office of Parks stabilized the Tobacco Warehouse, removed its collapsing roof, and opened the building to the public. Empire Stores was used to house the park’s administrative offices and a public restroom.  (more…)

Rendering of proposed St. Ann’s Warehouse theater in Brooklyn’s Tobacco Warehouse. Image Credit: Rogers Marvel Architects.

Commission heard testimony from those who opposed significant alterations to preserved ruin, and those who wished to see structure used as cultural space. On June 4, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to issue a favorable advisory report following a hearing on a proposal to convert the stabilized ruins of a tobacco warehouse into a theater and community facility space. The structure stands at 45 Water Street in the Empire Fulton Ferry Park within the Fulton Ferry Historic District, near the Brooklyn Bridge. The structure, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, was stabilized by the National Park Service, which removed the collapsing roof from the dilapidated building, and opened it to the public.

In 2011, a coalition of civic groups and preservationists won a lawsuit after the National Park Service wrongly excluded the structure from the park’s boundaries on the request of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in order to convey the land and warehouse to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation. The District Court decision pointed out that the Parks Department must go through a formal conversion process, in which the excised land has to be replaced with suitable land of equal or greater value. The conversion process has not yet concluded. The government still intends to convey the property to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, which awarded a contract to the St. Ann’s Warehouse theater company to convert and occupy the space after issuing a request for proposals in 2010.

(more…)