A Queens waterfront-park project will become the first city-run green space funded by the construction of new housing, The Post has learned.
City officials confirmed that daily maintenance of an 11-acre esplanade planned for Long Island City will largely be funded with revenue from 5,000 apartments in the same project.
And park advocates fear the city’s Hunters Point South development will open the door to other city parks relying on housing to survive, as a state-city quasi government entity is with Brooklyn Bridge Park.
They’re also concerned that the new park, like the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park project that includes condos, will ultimately feel more like a fancy back yard for residents of the adjoining housing than a true public park.
“It’s a dangerous precedent to rely on these funding schemes, as they create an enormous disparity between the haves and the have-nots,” said Geoffrey Croft, of New York City Park Advocates.
“Plus, it’s even worse than Brooklyn Bridge Park because Hunters Point is a denser project, with many more residents and less parkland.”
But city officials said Hunters Point is a “unique situation” they don’t plan to copy.
They also said Brooklyn Bridge Park is an “unfair” comparison because project planners in 2004 only added 1,200 units of luxury housing to that long-delayed project to save it. Hunters Point, however, is considered a housing development that happens to include an esplanade, they said.
The news of the Hunters Point park-funding plan ironically comes to light as the city is trying to convince the state to give it full control of Brooklyn Bridge Park. To garner public support, city officials earlier this month began floating the possibility that the remaining 780 condos yet to be built in Brooklyn might be unnecessary under city control.
But park advocates said the city showed its true colors at Hunters Point, so they doubt it would back off the Brooklyn housing proposal — despite years of protest by angry grass-roots groups.
A state-city entity currently is overseeing the development of Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is set to partially open next month and eventually operate on a yearly $16.1 million budget.
By drawing on $189,458 an acre annually for maintenance and operations, Brooklyn Bridge Park would only trail Manhattan’s Bryant Park ($643,833) when it comes to per-acre funding citywide.
With an anticipated budget of about $1.1 million, or $100,000 an acre, Hunters Point’s esplanade would also be among the city’s top-funded parks through the creation of 3,000 affordable and 2,000 market-rate adjacent apartments.
The city spends nearly $10,000 an acre in tax dollars to maintain the average park. Historically, the best ones — like Bryant and Central — are usually in elite neighborhoods that supplement their budgets with private dollars raised by well-funded conservancies.
The 30-acre Hunters Point housing and parkland development began construction in June along a site once eyed as the Olympic Village for the 2012 games.
The scrapped Olympic plan offered more than double the parkland and less housing.
Hunters Point is set to be complete by 2013. The project came under fire two weeks ago from Queens Community Board 2 and local residents after officials said the park would be covered in artificial turf.