Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz wants the feds to turn Brooklyn’s biggest open space into a massive antiques road show.
During a meeting Monday night on the future of Floyd Bennett Field in Mill Basin, Markowitz said the 1,358-acre former Navy airfield is perfect for hosting antique shows similar to a famous three-week show held annually in Brimfield, Mass. that attracts 6,000 vendors and hundreds of thousands of visitors.
“I’m not talking about a flea market,” he later told the Post. “This could be huge.”
His other pitches for the underused site include giving the borough its own drive-in movie theater there and also using the parkland for cultural celebrations and even family reunions.
A blue ribbon panel created by Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Anthony Weiner is pushing the National Parks Service for greater cleanup and to boost transit services and programming at Floyd Bennett Field, which is the lowest-rated federal park in the nation.
About 100 community members convened at the Aviator Sports Center to discuss the park’s future and make recommendations on how to improve.
Among the better ideas brought up at a table of local residents that this reporter sat in on was changing the main entrance to a little-used roadway near heavily-used Aviator, instead of the existing entrance further south on Flatbush Avenue by the Marine Parkway Bridge into the Rockaways.
Others include adding ferry service, increasing bike access and opening up access to the entire waterfront.
A second community meeting will be held Monday at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens.
Go to www.rpa.org/floydbennett for more information on the meeting and the Blue Ribbon Panel.
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