Daily News from New York, New York • 349

i IV N3E? Michael Van Valkenburgh (front Matthew Urbanski (front and their team of landscape architects at Brooklyn Bridge Park -fT" Hi! J. i i I it fa- ffi i SLrl I fcZBteSiu-- It a IT Hfl'DDDDDDDDIIr i iHHiinr If! I VW AJ -Sv1 IT it- I 1 Vr-t tap Arl I I ft JSI ViS mini UUI It A 4ll I I 1 I 1 rf if Sf Is Lal 1 pening next month, in the dead of winter, Section 1 A of the Brooklyn I i Bridge Park, entered at Old Fulton Cami ECues marks the first phase of the most important public space to be a men iraew Cental created in the borough in 120 years When completed, the $350 million, 85-acre, 1 83-mile park will extend the neighborhoods of DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, giving vital outdoor space to Brook-lynites who live with the least amount of parkland per acre of any urban area in the country. It will increase real-estate values in the vicinity and include modern architecture and a hotel on park grounds "This park is possibly the most important public space in the last century anywhere in the country," says NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "It fills a huge void for downtown Brooklyn and five local neighborhoods. Sitting on the New York Harbor, looking right at the lower Manhattan skyline, there might not be a more spectacular place for a new park in the world." Shockingly, on a former Port Authority pier, a man-made hill rises more than 28 feet, separating two large lawns One faces the Brooklyn Bridge, and one faces 900 acres of space in the New York Harbor Like something out of a movie set, there is a stone staircase, doubling as a seating area, leading up to a stage of granite star- ing right at the Manhattan skyline Music superstars, according to Benepe.

will fight to shoot the first videos there. Below that to the left, and you can't see it till you reach the top of the hill, there are hundreds of wooden piles, paying homage to 150 years of maritime history and helping preserve the marine life that lives around them. In the 10 years since the city and stale began working with (he public to transform the former Port Aulhority-owncd industrial site under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the site has remained behind a chain-link fence. During that time, Brooklyn based landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates has been busy turning the former parking lots, warehouses and piers into green space No landscape architects since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. who created Central and Prospect Parks, have shaped more New York greenery than continued on nrxl piu'r Parlk foir Broolltilp?.