Did the City Miscalculate Value of Bushwick Inlet Park?

Short answer – yes.

Yolane Almanzar of the fledgling New York World has a very thorough rundown of why Williamsburg and Greenpoint may never see a park at Bushwick Inlet.

The article is mostly about how grossly the city underestimated the value of the properties – by an order of magnitude, as it turns out. But the real issue is that by rushing to rezone without first acquiring (or at least negotiating prices for) the inlet properties, the city in effect raised the value of those properties to unattainable levels.

So now, more than six years after the rezoning became reality, and with thousands of new housing units already added to the area, the city has committed over $200 million to acquire part of a park, and will probably need close to that amount again to acquire the rest. (Putting aside the question of whether they can ever acquire the Monitor Museum site).