The Illuminator’s work during Occupy Wall Street.
The future of Bushwick Inlet Park looks bright — or at least, it will be on Friday night. North Brooklyn residents will push for the conversion of the CitiStorage site into a park by projecting “light graffiti” on the building’s charred remains.
Inspired by the Illuminator used by Occupy Wall Street, organizer Jens Rasmussen, a stage and screen actor who has lived in North Brooklyn for 19 years, plans to display computer-generated text and graphics via a 12,000-lumens projector. “It’s no different from the system that’s used for your basic corporate presentation when you sit in a boardroom and someone gives a Powerpoint presentation,” Rasmussen told us.
The remains of the CitiStorage warehouse sit on a plot of land that could be turned into the umpteenth high-rise complex unless the City acquires it first. “It’s going to be our message to this administration about what we think should go on that site,” Rasmussen said of the presentation. “We’ve been very clear that anything other than a park there is unacceptable to this community, and all the messaging will reflect that.”
Ten years after the city promised to build a 28-acre park as part of the 2005 waterfront rezoning, only a portion of it has been constructed and there are no scheduled plans to finish it. Activists are certain that the CitiStorage site won’t remain vacant for long. “Something’s going to happen. Either the property owner is going to build or someone’s going to buy it and rebuild or it’s going to be sold,” said Rasmussen. “It does not matter to me if it’s a high rise, a Trader Joe’s or a Best Buy. All of those are unacceptable. The only thing that’s acceptable is a park space, a park space for the whole community, for the whole city to enjoy.”
As previously reported, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, described by Rasmussen as a “loose collective” of advocates, will also rally on March 12 at City Hall.