Winners named in design competition for Gateway BY LIZ SHEEHAN Correspondent A design team from Brooklyn, N.Y. was selected as the winner of an international competition for a new concept for Gateway National Recreation Area, which includes Sandy Hook. The winners of the competition were announced on June 4 by the Van Allan Institute, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the Tiffany & Co. Foundation and Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture in New York City. When the competition was announced earlier this year, Alexander Brash, senior director of the NPCA, said that it was aimed at two levels. The first, he said, would be asking the designers to look at all aspects of Gateway and "think about the big picture," such as a unifying theme for the park and transportation. Second would be "honing in" on Floyd Bennett Field and the Fort Tilden site and more specific landscaping and uses, Brash said at the time. He said the design competition would not directly affect Sandy Hook. On June 4, Brash said the ideas presented by the winners, such as transportation and historical use concepts could be carried over into the entire Gateway park area. There were 230 entrants from 23 countries in the contest. Winners included in first place, Ashley Scott and Rikako Wakabayashi, from Brooklyn. In second place, North Design Office, Toronto; and in third place, a team from Virginia Tech and three teams who received honorable mention, all from New York. Brash said that when the contest was being drawn up, one of the considerations in determining the area to concentrate on was that Sandy Hook was "in the best shape" of any area of Gateway. He said that there had been a "relatively low bar set for Gateway," and the aim of the competition was to "raise the bar," and improve the quality of the facilities, interpretive services and ranger services. Selecting Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, which is a "microcosm" of Gateway, as the focus of the competition made sense, Brash said. Gateway National Recreation Area was created as a national park in 1972 and includes 26,607 acres, which stretch across the New York-New Jersey harbor, according to the NPCA. Brash said that his organization is working toward making the Gateway restoration one of the initiatives of the National Park centennial in 2016. A press release announcing the winners of the competition describes the first-place winner "Mapping the Ecotone," as creating "a microcosm of shifting habitats and landforms to capture the diversity of Gateway's ecotones, or zones of ecological tension." The winning entries, will be placed on the NPCA Web site, www.npca.org/gateway, for the public to look at and vote on their favorite plan. "We hope that a transparent process, followed by extensive public input, will engage New Yorkers, regional residents and all Americans to ponder the park as it is, consider what it might be, and encourage our elected officials to support a new vision for Gateway," Brash said in the press statement.