They paved over a wetland to create a parking lot

"This newly created parking lot was once all parkland at Four Sparrow Marsh. It wouldn’t surprise me if they continued selling this off until none of it was left…and apparently there isn’t sh*t we can do about it!" - Rob

The sordid history of the Four Sparrow Marsh project

From the Daily News:

Construction on a project that includes a major car dealership has quietly started on a controversial piece of land in Mill Basin twice tied to scandal-scarred politicians who have tried to help developers buy the land from the city.

In April, the Bloomberg administration announced it had sold the 110,000-square-foot parcel near the Four Sparrow Marsh and the Belt Parkway to Brooklyn auto dealer Lilaahar (Sammy) Bical, owner of Kristal Auto Mall, one of the biggest Cadillac dealers on the East Coast.

Bical was helped in his bid to obtain the land after paying tainted state Sen. John Sampson (D-Canarsie) a $10,000 "retainer fee" to help arrange a sit-down with Bloomberg administration officials, the News reported last month.

Those meetings occurred in early 2012, and this past March the city sold him the land for $4.2 million.

Sampson and his lawyer, Zachary Carter, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The FBI is investigating whether Sampson broke the law by seeking and receiving retainer fees from Bical, and another businessman, in an unrelated case, who sought his assistance in dealing with the government, sources said.

Originally, the city planned to sell the land to Forest City Ratner to build a mini mall. That plan was scuttled in September 2011 after a Forest City Ratner official was revealed to have asked disgraced former state Sen. Carl Kruger for state funds, according to a criminal complaint.

As part of the new deal, the city also sold Toys R Us the land it currently occupies for $13 million.

The first part of construction, which has just begun, entails carving out a spot for a new parking lot for the toy store, which park advocates charge is being built on protected marsh land. The expanded car dealership will later be built on the old Toys R Us parking lot, city officials said.

Conservation groups and park advocates plan to sue to block the city's sale of the land on the grounds that it lacked proper state approval.

City destroys "Forever Wild" area

Four Sparrow Marsh in Brooklyn was spared from Ratnerization in 2011. A new hearing was held in 2012, but then the project was kept very quiet until now.

When is a nature preserve not a nature preserve? When Parks owns it and Michael Bloomberg is mayor. Then it's just another development site. And one that the EDC is keeping a secret. They removed all mention of it from their website even though they are the lead agency overseeing the project. Which probably means that what NYC Audubon shilled for has been drastically altered.

I hope I'm wrong.






Photos by Rob Jett

City to unveil its latest scheme to mess up the marsh

***IMPORTANT MEETING - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE! Wednesday January 18 @ 8 PM***

Community Board 18 will present the NEW PLANS for the Four Sparrow Marsh area -
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18 @ 8 PM, Kings Plaza Community Room (enter near the garage on Flatbush Ave., the community room is to your right)

Hi folks,

Four Sparrow Marsh is located on southbound Flatbush Ave, just past Toys R Us but before Floyd Bennet Field. It bears the NYC Parks Dept's "Forever Wild" logo. The NYC Parks Dept. website says:

"Named by naturalists Ron and Jean Bourque, Four Sparrow Marsh Preserve is home to four native species which require undisturbed marshland for nesting: Sharptailed, Seaside, Swamp, and Song Sparrows. Because of its relative isolation from residential areas in Brooklyn, Four Sparrow Marsh Preserve has been allowed to remain in a fairly natural condition. This makes it ideal for many permanently nesting species, including several types of ducks, gulls, and wading and woodland birds, as well as for the common seashore mollusks and crustaceans which feed those birds. It is an important part of the Jamaica Bay estuary system. "

Note the final sentence: "It is an important part of the Jamaica Bay estuary system".

Last winter, the NYC Economic Development Corp. announced plans to turn a sizable portion of the marsh into a shopping mall. Although the site was marked by Parks Dept. signs, it turned out that the land had never been officially turned over to the Parks Dept.!!!

A number of us went to the Feb. 2011 Scoping Meeting. We've been to a lot of these meetings, but there was something really off kilter about this one. I remember turning to my colleagues & saying "something isn't right here". Several weeks later, we learned that State Senator Carl Kruger had been indicted, for among other things, being in cahoots with the developer. That was why things didn't feel right.

In the fall of 2011, the plan for the retail center was withdrawn. However, there are still plans in the works which may impact a small portion of the area that everyone thought was parkland. The new plans for development on the Toys R Us site are similar to what was previously announced (a car dealership & renovation/expansion of the existing marina). This will be built on the existing parking lot, etc. of Toys R Us. But there is an additional strip of land south of Toys R Us that is also included in the development. We need to see if this will intrude on the parkland of Four Sparrow Marsh.

We also need to insist that the remaining 60+ acres of land is OFFICIALLY turned over to the Parks Dept. Otherwise, there is a good possibility that sooner or later this site will be turned over to developers.

We lost the Vandalia Dunes to the Gateway Mall. Let's make sure that Four Sparrow Marsh does not suffer the same fate.

Ratner project dies silent death

This unannounced change of plans comes courtesy of the Mayor's Office of Environmental Coordination...

See previously:

A foolish proposition
Mike replacing marsh with mall
Green mayor plans to develop mall on nature preserve

Glory, glory, hallelujah!!!

A foolish proposition

From Backyard and Beyond:

The marsh itself was mosquito-free. And tranquil-looking… but don’t let looks deceive you. Salt-marshes are one of the most productive of ecosystems, nursing fish and many invertebrates, filtering water and absorbing storm surges, pumping blessed oxygen into the air, providing food for everything from bacteria to mammals.

Green with two species of spartina, ringed by phragmites, studded with the keystone ribbed mussels, soft and hard shell clams, mud snails, fiddler crabs, and plentiful little fish in the rising tide. Is this Brooklyn? Yes, it is. A Forever Wild remnant of the salt-marshes that once ringed Jamaica Bay and much of the city. (JFK, LGA, EWR and TEB were all built on salt marshes). But “Forever Wild,” a Parks Department designation without much legal pull, doesn’t mean all that much unless we fight for it.

The EDC wants to give part of this land to Bruce Ratner so he can build a strip mall and large parking lot. The attitude is: "Who needs nature? This is NYC, damn it!"