A massive waterfall built at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge as part of a much-touted art project left a famed restaurant swimming in bills after it was doused with hundreds of tons of salt water, a lawsuit alleges.
The owners of the River Café (right) in Brooklyn claim that their eatery suffered $3 million in damage after being soaked by the art installation, “The New York City Waterfalls.”
Their suit, filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court last week, demands that the project’s creators — New York’s Public Art Fund and Danish artist Olafur Eliasson — be ordered to cough up the cash for repairs.
“There were 90 to 120 days of saltwater rain coming down on us,” restaurateur Buzzy O’Keeffe said.
“It ate up aluminum and steel. It short-circuited our electrics. We had fires on our roof.”
“The paint was ruined, the awnings were ruined, our outdoor lights are broken, and a lot of our trees just couldn’t take it. It’s left the place destroyed,” O’Keeffe said.
The restaurant’s gardens — much of which had been growing for more than 30 years — started to turn brown days after the waterfall was turned on, he said.
Amid complaints, a Parks Department official confirmed that the water was damaging trees — but the soaking didn’t stop.
“They did nothing,” O’Keeffe said. “They knew it was happening, but the waterfall kept on going.
“Now our lindens and weeping birch are dead, and a lot of the other trees are brown. We’ve pruned them back, and we’re hoping they’ll survive, but only time will tell.”
The $15.5 million waterfalls project — which had the backing of Mayor Bloomberg — consisted of four falls from 80 to 120 feet tall cascading into the harbor and East River between June and October last year.
It was hailed as a huge tourism draw and moneymaker for the city.
A spokeswoman for the Public Art Fund, a nonprofit supported by public and private monies, said it had recently pruned the River Café’s trees in an attempt to restore them to health. Discussions with O’Keeffe have been ongoing, she said.
“We didn’t know about the lawsuit,” she said.