Tuesday, June 5, 2007

NY Daily News: Gateway Park Open for Major Makeover by Xana O'Neill...

A stretch of the beleaguered Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn will get a makeover - courtesy of two recent college grads.

Former University of Michigan college classmates Ashley Scott Kelly, 22, and Rikako Wakabayashi, 23, drafted the winning proposal to remodel the 1,358-acre Floyd Bennett Field - a former municipal airport which was the city's first - using a system of jetties and piers to emphasize the area's waterfront along Jamaica Bay.

The winning team spent three months creating "Mapping the Ecotone," which includes a tidal pool, pedestrian bridges and a channel that cuts into the park and is equipped to handle rising sea levels.

The 26,000-acre Gateway park that spans portions of Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey was ranked as "poor" in nearly every category of the State of the Parks report released last month by the National Parks Conservation Association.

"Gateway was probably the most needy park in the national park system," said Alexander Brash, the group's regional director. "We felt one of the biggest holdbacks was that there was no clear vision."

The Envision Gateway competition, sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association, Columbia University and the Van Alen Institute, provided that focus, Brash said.

Although Kelly and Wakabayashi's design was the contest winner, the public can weigh in by voting online for their favorite design among the six finalists on the Web (www.npca.org/gateway ).