BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, NY — The Brooklyn Heights Promenade will have to shut down for several years regardless of how the city goes about replacing the highway underneath it, city officials told concerned locals Thursday. Department of Transportation officials presented dueling plans for overhauling the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street at a packed public meeting in Downtown Brooklyn Thursday evening.

Both options involve removing and replacing the iconic promenade, which sits above two levels of highway at the top of a deteriorating triple-cantilever structure, said Tanvi Pandya, the DOT’s senior program manager for the project. “In many ways we’re facing a decision about which level of purgatory we want to be in,” Peter Bray, the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, said at the meeting. The decades-old walkway would be closed for up to six years under the DOT’s preferred method: Erecting a six-lane highway at the same level as the promenade while the new permanent highway is built below at a cost of up to $3.6 billion.The temporary artery would be transformed into a new, wider promenade once construction is finished, Pandya said.

“We have to replace the promenade anyway, so this roadway’s essentially replacing the promenade first, using it temporarily as a roadway and then eventually putting it back where it belongs,” she said. The other option — replacing the BQE lane by lane — would only shutter the promenade for two to three years, the DOT says. But it would be far more disruptive to traffic and wouldn’t create a bigger walkway in the end, Pandya said.

That method would cost more — up to $4 billion — take more than eight years, and come with less of a guarantee that the work gets done on time, the DOT says. It would also leave a “forest” of columns along Furman Street to support the new structure, Pandya said.

“This is like doing surgery,” she said. “… This is very painstaking work, and if anybody has done any work on a house, you rip open a wall and then all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Ugh, I didn’t know that was there.'”

Transportation officials said the project is a unprecedented undertaking that will impact not just Brooklyn Heights but potentially all five boroughs. But it has to be done, as the BQE would have to be closed to vehicles around 2036 if its problems are not addressed, said Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. “Fortunately, it’s not falling down tomorrow, but unfortunately, it’s really deteriorating,” Trottenberg said. The work isn’t expected to start until at least 2020. But locals at the packed meeting said they’re already worried about whether they can trust the city’s promises about the work. Some also expressed concerns about air quality and whether the city would be able to pay for the entire project. “What guarantees are you going to give us that will stand up in 10 years that we actually will get the promenade back?” said Brooklyn Heights resident Susan Rifkin.

DOT officials emphasized that Thursday’s meeting was just the start of a long outreach and environmental review process leading up to a final decision on which option to use.

– Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO Patch