The flags hanging from the windows of homes lining the only cobblestone blocks in Brooklyn Heights all bear the same Revolutionary War motto, ''Don't Tread on Me.''
The flag-waving residents want to stop a park they fear will bring thousands of people walking along their streets every weekend.
On the waterfront below Brooklyn Heights, a state-sponsored local development corporation has proposed building a 70-acre $150 million park with green lawns, recreation areas, marshlands, an amphitheater, a hotel and restaurants from Atlantic Avenue to Jay Street.
New York City has pledged $64 million to build the park if the state will pay the rest. Now Gov. George E. Pataki and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns a majority of the proposed parkland, must decide whether to support the project and allow an environmental impact study of the site to go forward.
While Mr. Pataki weighs whether to support the park, the debate in Brooklyn Heights has taken on an increasingly bitter tone. Opponents fear that the park will attract hordes of people from outside the neighborhood to the narrow streets of well-preserved brownstones. They have accused supporters, their own neighbors, of putting the character, peace and property values of Brooklyn Heights in jeopardy.
In response, some park supporters have argued that concern over traffic, quality of life, crime and litter are code words that betray a fear of blacks and Hispanics from poorer sections of the borough. And that perpetuates Brooklyn Heights' elitist reputation, they have said.
Karen Sebiri, who lives in a 160-year-old home on Joralemon Street, flies a red and white ''Don't Tread on Me'' flag and believes a park will ruin the Heights. ''This is a small neighborhood with a significant traffic problem,'' she said. ''It can't support an influx of people. A park will make traffic impossible and it will raise crime rates.''
Jim Rios, 48, lives on Columbia Place, a block away from Ms. Sebiri, who says she is in her 40's. There are no nearby ball fields, so each afternoon Mr. Rios plays whiffle ball in the street with 20 boys from the Heights and nearby neighborhoods. The opposition to the park by Ms. Sebiri and other neighbors angers him. He fears, he said, that his neighbors are turning their backs on a needed amenity because they want to isolate themselves from poor parts of Brooklyn. ''They want to live in their own little world,'' he said. ''They want a suburb in the city, and that is ridiculous.''
The plan, created by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, would use tax money to build grassy lawns and recreation centers on the waterfront. It would use rents from commercial tenants like a hotel and restaurants to pay for maintenance and security.
Since park budgets have been cut sharply in the last decade, public officials have said the park should not require a continuing subsidy by taxpayers. The borough president, Howard Golden, who founded the development corporation, has said commercial development would increase park use, improve waterfront safety and create economic growth.
Development corporation officials say that once the governor gives his approval, construction can begin on the part of the park between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. The southern part of the park, on what is now Port Authority land, could take years to build, because an environmental study still has to be conducted (and debated).
The plan has the support of many in the area, including the Brooklyn Heights Association, a neighborhood group. Park boosters do not understand how people could oppose building a park on a fallow strip of land with such extraordinary views, especially when the alternative could be luxury housing or a mall.
Last month, Babette Krolik, a Heights resident, stood on the deck of a boat chartered to view the site of the proposed park. As the sun fell toward New Jersey, it pushed the Manhattan skyline into silhouette, poured an orange light over the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage and drew a sigh from Ms. Krolik. ''If you need any other argument for a park,'' she said, ''look at this sunset.''
The Brooklyn Bridge park is not the first waterfront esplanade with spectacular views to face opposition in the city in recent years. Some West Village residents opposed the creation of the Hudson River Park because they feared that the project would be too commercial and draw too many people to already crowded streets. Although ultimately unsuccessful in Manhattan, those arguments are now echoed in Brooklyn.
Residents skeptical of the Brooklyn park plan say they believe that government and private foundations, not commercial ventures, ought to pay to keep up the park. ''This is a citizens' protest against what we perceive as a huge real estate deal,'' said Catherine M. Fitzsimons, who hung the first ''Don't Tread on Me'' flag along Joralemon Street on May 1. ''I don't call something with a huge hotel, conference center and restaurants a park.''
Although park plan opponents can be found all over the Heights, the organized opposition is centered on cobblestone blocks at the western end of Joralemon Street. Under the current plan, the most direct path from the downtown Brooklyn subway lines to the park would be to walk down Joralemon, a narrow residential street lined with twisting old trees, overflowing flower boxes and brownstones worth up to $3 million.
Some opponents of the plan have said they would support a park if it had no commercial development and less active recreation facilities, thereby attracting fewer visitors. Others want an iron gate to seal Joralemon off from the waterfront. Still others, like Ms. Sebiri, do not want any sort of park.
Ms. Sebiri said the marsh would lure mosquitoes and the amphitheater would bring Britney Spears and rambunctious fans. She wants neither more insects nor more teenagers. Six months after the park opens, she predicted, the buildings will be covered with graffiti, rowdy young people will plague the neighborhood and there will be muggings up and down the street.
''I don't see this as the eighth wonder of the world,'' she said.
Many opponents say that the park will make every day in Brooklyn Heights like Independence Day. On the Fourth of July, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the harbor, is packed with visitors, many of whom are black.
Frank Folisi, a Heights resident who lives near Monroe Place and Clark Street, complained that he would not even hang an American flag on July 4 without its being stolen. Mr. Folisi said the park would attract too many young people to the recreation and activity centers.
''The quality-of-life crimes are committed by young people,'' he said. ''I'd rather see a Costco or a Target down there than see this neighborhood overwhelmed by people who come from someplace else.''
But park supporters cringe when they hear such arguments. Brooklyn Heights is mostly white and wealthy. Supporters believe that opponents are using a code that means black and Hispanic teenagers from poor areas of Brooklyn. ''What you have to realize is that a lot of people in Brooklyn Heights are afraid of people from other parts of Brooklyn coming to the neighborhood,'' Ms. Krolik said.
Development corporation board members have long worried about reaction to the park plan in the Heights. Although political leaders will commit the millions needed to build a park only if it is designed to serve all of Brooklyn, planners say they know the Heights has the political muscle to kill the plan. From last winter until this spring, planners held a series of public workshops to build support for the park. The workshops converted many skeptics, but opposition remains.
Hazel Fershleiser, a Heights resident and a supporter of the plan, compared the opposition to the contention over a 12-screen movie theater that opened at the edge of the neighborhood last month. Both projects, Mrs. Fershleiser said, have created fears that black residents would come to the Heights.
''To some extent it's been isolated, and the fact it's not as isolated anymore concerns people,'' she said.
Most opponents of the park bristle at suggestions that they fear people from other parts of Brooklyn. Pearl Bowser, a Joralemon Street resident for 50 years, an opponent of the current plan and an African-American, said park boosters were using labels like xenophobia and elitism to smear the opponents and minimize their concerns. Ms. Bowser supports a park, but one without commercial development. ''No one in this community objects to the variety of the people coming to the waterfront,'' she said. ''We object to the volume of traffic coming through. It's not a park. It's a hotel and convention center with a lawn.''
But not all the residents reject the elitist label. They ask: What is wrong with trying to preserve the peacefulness and community spirit of a neighborhood? ''People want to isolate their community, but that is normal,'' Ms. Sebiri said. ''To call it elitism is too easy. Everyone wants his or her neighborhood isolated. What makes a neighborhood? Having a small community where people know each other.''
Allowing thousands of people to come to the Brooklyn waterfront every weekend through a residential area will destroy homeowners' ability to keep an eye on their property and maintain the beauty of their streets, Ms. Sebiri said.
''I don't think Brooklyn Heights asked for this,'' she said. ''If you are really thinking of the less fortunate, you would want to help put parks in their neighborhoods.''
Joralemon Street residents said their fight against the park proposal had created a new neighborhood solidarity that could be seen in all the houses participating in the Greenest Block contest.
For two years the part of Joralemon Street lined with cobblestones has finished second in the contest to a block on State Street in Boerum Hill. Earlier this year there were hopes of a victory for Joralemon, thanks to a fund-raiser and a $900 investment in cascading geraniums and oak-leaf hydrangeas.
But the contest is run by Mr. Golden, the borough president, who has pledged $7 million to build the park that many on Joralemon hate.
''Now forget it,'' Ms. Fitzsimons said. ''Howie Golden's never going to pick this block.''