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On Sunday afternoon, a small crowd gathered near a large patch of asphalt at the southern end of Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn. If you've ever walked past it, you might have come to think of it as the parking lot next to the Kings County Supreme Court building, beside the eternal scaffolding that connects Cadman Plaza outside Brooklyn Borough Hall to Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard. That's because for 60 years, state court judges have used it as their own private parking lot.
But the lot, part of that vast concrete expanse at the heart of Downtown Brooklyn, is actually zoned as a park, and so the crowd of community advocates, including Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and local Councilmember Lincoln Restler, say it's time to evict the judges, and make it look like one. They've cooked up a $21 million plan to turn the lot green—which has stalled because the judges refuse to move.
On Sunday, Restler noted that the judges have plenty of places to park that don't require residents to give up precious parkland. "We offered them every single option to move under the sun," Restler said. "We offered them parking across the street in the Marriott, we offered them parking at Brooklyn Law School, even one of the local neighborhood co-ops offered them parking in their building." (There are also 160 on-street parking spots nearby that are specifically set aside for court employees, including 46 spots right next to the building.)