In this case it wasn’t. Some pieces “had already deteriorated significantly or had high levels of moisture and were on their way to deterioration,” Mr. Landau said.

He explained that retrofitting the bridge with a steel support structure would have cost “a little less than rebuilding” but would have been more expensive in the long run, because there would have been “significant maintenance needs and costs” after about 15 years.

“We felt a brand-new bridge could last longer,” he said.

“Look, nobody wants to build a piece of infrastructure and have it open for a short period of time, only to have to close and start again — that’s not what any of us hoped to do with this project,” Mr. Landau said.

He also said that what set Brooklyn Bridge Park apart was that it was “not the standard design in New York City.”

One of the most ambitious park projects in recent memory, the 85-acre park was built over old piers that had once served a cargo port. The new promenades, playgrounds and soccer fields were planned and are overseen not by New York City’s parks department but by Mr. Landau’s group, a nonprofit entity like the one that operates the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“Design risks were taken at every step in building this park,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of those design risks have paid off. This is one of those moments where we took a design risk and it didn’t work.”

The money for the replacement bridge is being drawn from the park’s capital reserve fund, which comes from the park’s budget. The budget, in turn, comes largely from payments in lieu of property taxes paid by buildings along the park’s perimeter as part of the original plan that the park be self-sustaining.