Brooklyn Bridge Park is getting an express lane.
Honchos overseeing the 85-acre waterfront park project have finally gotten approval for a 396-foot-long wooden pedestrian bridge that will slope down from a small rooftop playground off the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade to the new park’s Pier 1 section.
“It will be the most wonderful bridge built in New York in many years,” said Guy Nordenson, a Manhattan-based structural engineer and member of the city’s Public Design Commission, which green-lighted the new bridge design this week.
After years of delays, the $4.9 million, city-funded Squibb Park Bridge project is set to break ground this summer and be completed by next summer.
Staring from tiny Squibb Park on Columbia Heights off Cranberry Street, the bridge will offer magnificent New York Harbor views and descend 30 feet to Brooklyn Bridge Park.
It would zigzag around oak trees – and potentially a hotel and high-rise condo complex proposed within Brooklyn Bridge Park – before ending up near the waterfront.
The bridge will be the first direct connection from Brooklyn Heights to the waterfront since the old Penny Bridge, which connected Montague Street to the riverfront, was torn down to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in 1946.
It will give park-goers coming from the A/C subway station at High Street and 2/3 Clark Street station in Brooklyn Heights a quicker path to the park than do the two current entrances at Old Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue.
Officials opted to use rot-resistant, sustainable woods like Black locust rather than metal because they felt it would allow the bridge to better blend in with the rest of the Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Nordenson called the bridge’s designs “a remarkable synthesis of structure and landscape.”
Most of the bridge is now being built off-site, including its two 120-foot spans, officials said.
Award-winning engineer Ted Zoli of HNTB New York Engineering & Architecture designed the project. He is considered a top expert in terror-proofing bridges and infrastructure.