Demolition crews have shown up at the 5 Roebling Street in Williamsburg, the building that used to be a cabbage processing plant and gained the name the “Giant Fart Cloud Building” from advice blogger and writer Bad Advice. The story of what is to come there will be of interest for a number of reasons, […]

[Read more →]

We’ve got to say that we don’t have any personal experience with calling 311 to file a complaint with the Department of Buildings, but we do have experience with people that have done so and become frustrated in the process. There are those that claim they call to lodge a complaints about things like after-hours […]

[Read more →]

Something tells us that the big building that will rise along N. 9th and N. 10th Streets in Williamsburg between Driggs and Roebling Streets is going to be a prize winner. (The addresses on this side of the property are 208 and 210 N. 10th Street.) This is the third time we’ve taken note of […]

[Read more →]

We went over to N. 9th Street and Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg to check on the “Thing on Top” that had sprouted on the old industrial building whose working name is Wythe Avenue Lofts. What we found was a sidewalk shed that appears to be in danger of collapse and a work site that looks […]

[Read more →]

We went over to the Roebling Oil Building, aka 204 N. 11th Street in Williamsburg, yesterday morning to get some photos of new test wells that have been drilled. As a bonus, we discovered a Sunday Construction Symphony coming from inside. (For a long time last fall, as the builders rushed to get the building […]

[Read more →]

You can set your watch on Sunday to the start of construction work at 525 Union Avenue in Williamsburg. It as reliable as the church bells ringing at Our Lady of Mount Carmel church next door. We will give the construction workers credit for being more quiet than usual this weekend, but they were out […]

[Read more →]

The image upon which you are gazing is 149 Newell Street, which is in Greenpoint near McGuinness Boulevard. It was taken and filed by our Greenpoint correspondent, who noted that this lovely structure is doing wonders for the quality of life on the block. “This place has been derelict for months,” she write. “Could you […]

[Read more →]

Here we are again at the old concrete plant across the street from 184 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg to which we return again and again. Not because we want to, but because it’s one of the oddest demolition sites we’ve seen in all of Brooklyn, although it may not be the most dramatic. The official […]

[Read more →]

Williamsburg advice and development blogger Bad Advice hit us off with this picture of a fence that went down at the Karl Fischer building that’s going up uber fast at the corner of N. 8 and Roebling. She writes that it’s “of a destroyed construction fence on the corner of N. 8th and Roebling. There […]

[Read more →]

You might recall that one of the issues connected to the building at 360 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens was the involvement of Robert Scarano as the architect. In fact, City Council Member Bill de Blasio had previously called on Billy Stein, the developer, to “end the curse of Scarano” and demanded his removal from […]

[Read more →]

If you read GL, you know that we often post photos and videos of illegal weekend construction. We are frankly dumbfounded as to why we can find it going on so widely, but the Department of Buildings can’t or won’t. One of the neighborhoods where the problem is concentrated is Williamsburg–and a Sunday sweep of […]

[Read more →]

We found a couple of items in the email flow from the South Slope, where residents often detail the challenges and problems caused by neighborhood development sites: 1). Our Car Hit by the Jerkoffs @ 230 16th. “My mother had the car parked across the street from us (257) That big construction site was apparently […]

[Read more →]

We don’t know how many Brooklyn trees have been the collateral damage in the ongoing development boom. All we can say is that we see a significant amount of anecdotal evidence suggesting that a modest amount of deforestation is taking place. The latest tale of development doing in a tree comes from the South Slope: […]

[Read more →]

In all our wandering around and taking note of open fences and gates at construction and demolition sites, we have rarely seen a site as nasty as the demolition at 489 Driggs (aka 199-211 N. 9th) in Williamsburg. The building is part of a big demolition and future development that will include about two-thirds of […]

[Read more →]

Here is 90 N. 5th Street in Williamsburg at about 11:30 yesterday morning. While it’s on an industrial block, we’ll note that people live about a half-block away. Six complaints about the building have been lodged with the Department of Buildings, some having to do with–you guessed it–work after-hours and on weekends. Back in March, […]

[Read more →]

Once again, 525 Union Avenue was a busy place yesterday. The regularity of the Sunday work (so predictable that you can set your watch by it) and the total lack of attention to it by the Department of Buildings is starting to seriously bore us. It also makes us think the Bloomberg Administration should simply […]

[Read more →]

Normally, such topics would elicit yawns–and the headline probably just scared people away–but they’re important to those that care about new development and construction in New York City and, particularly, Brooklyn. So, we’ll note that despite the Governor’s rejection last week of a bill to require more re-inspection of building sites by the Department of […]

[Read more →]

We looked up on Union Avenue on Sunday to find workers at 525 Union Avenue climbing up the scaffolding and the sounds of power saws, hammering and other construction noise emanating from within. This is only interesting in that 525 Union‘s Sunday work had been tormenting parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and has […]

[Read more →]

Given the amount of grief we’ve given the condo development on N. 6th Street called Urban Green (perhaps you might remember it as Urban Death?) for maintaining a construction site that we thought was so wide open that it was a peril to children and drunken hipsters, it’s only fair to note that they’ve got […]

[Read more →]

(RIP, CBGB founder Hilly Kristal, who has died at the age of 75 from cancer. Mr. Kristal ran CBGB’s for three decades, until it was forced to close last October.) You might have noted this morning that Gov. Eliot Spitzer vetoed a bill yesterday to require more inspections by the Department of Buildings of structures […]

[Read more →]

That building at 18-20 Jackson Place in the South Slope that finally collapsed after significant damage during construction is almost down. Aaron Brashear of Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights, who was among those trying to spread word of the danger back in the spring, writes: All the displaced folks are in for the weekend, than […]

[Read more →]

Most of that building at 18-20 Jackson Place in the South Slope that partially collapsed on Wednesday has been demolished and neighbors at 16 and Jackson Place will be allowed to return home. In the meantime, residents that have complained about the deteriorated state of the building are upset at a suggestion that weather caused […]

[Read more →]

We only picked 208 N. 10th Street as an address in order to nail one down for this building project, which actually takes in a big part of the block between Driggs, Roebling, N. 9th and N. 10th Streets in Williamsburg. In all fairness, there was no demolition going on when we took the photo […]

[Read more →]

Williamsburg resident and community activist Phil DePaolo has keeps an eye on development around Williamsburg. So, after a story in yesterday’s NY Post about a “condo crackdown” in Williamsburg that says the Department of Buildings has been issuing more Stop Work Orders–and our own post showing unauthorized Sunday construction work going on at a site […]

[Read more →]

Remember that building at 525 Union Avenue, whose Sunday work has been tormenting parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg? (That’s the church that runs the Giglio Feast every year.) There are active complaints against the building for Sunday work, but nothing has been done to stop the noisy construction work that parishioners […]

[Read more →]