News Fort Greene

Fort Greene’s BAM Park reopens after remaining closed for 13 years

June 19, 2018 By Gordon Walker Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Eagle file photo
Eagle file photo
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BAM Park in Fort Greene reopened unannounced after being shuttered since 2005.

The park has been renovated, the grass has been cut, and paths have been cleared for strollers.

The park had become extremely overgrown over the years but is now an aesthetically pleasing green space.

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The triangular park spans 14,000-square-feet from Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue to St. Felix Street.

Residents last weekend noticed that the padlock that had kept visitors out for more than a decade had been removed. A few park benches were occupied by the first returners, Brownstoner reported.

The fence surrounding the park was cleared of the majority of its weeds and plants and pots were resodded.

The original 1984 park benches still adorn the park, but some have sagging planks or are missing them completely.

The reason the park has been in the works for years is that in 2012, Langan Environmental Services found “high levels of contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, lead and pesticides buried in the soil”, according to DNAinfo.

In 2014, the city requested proposals to revamp the park and chose Quennell Rothschild & Partners.

In 2017, the landscape architects for the park told Community Board 2 that cleaning up the soil would mean killing all the trees, so the park remained untouched.

The solution found for the park is a deck and an elevated walkway that are planned to prevent harm to the roots of the trees.

The long-awaited $2.5 million park is being funded with money from city and state coffers, and plans include the removal of four trees that are creating too much shade and saving three beech trees that have managed to survive in the noxious soil.


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