[All photos courtesy of Adrian Kinloch/Brit in Brooklyn]

The Brooklyn Museum’s sold-out Gala honoring developer Bruce Ratner drew a crowd both inside and out last night. The photos here were shot by Brit in Brooklyn blogger Adrian Kinloch, who has his own post on the event here. Atlantic Yards Report gives this description of the “angry” demonstration:

Maybe it was the parade of limousines and SUVs bringing well-dressed guests–at $500 to $1000 and more a plate–to an event that protesters likely arrived at via the 2/3 subway line. Maybe it was a sense that Forest City Ratner, however stalled in its plans for most of Atlantic Yards, is in the driver’s seat, with most elected officials yet to challenge the developer. Maybe it’s that demolitions promise increased blight around the Atlantic Yards footprint. Maybe it’s just the accumulation of grievances.

But the protest organized by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn last night outside the museum was notably angry, with some 80 people gathering at one point, many chanting “Ratner is a liar” and “Shame on you” at vehicles coming to drop off their passengers. (More people arrived later, as others left, so total attendance probably topped 100.) Taking off from the museum’s function, several people carried signs calling Ratner a “con artist.”

Mr. Oder has excellent (as always) complete coverage. Meanwhile, the objections to the Museum’s honor of Mr. Ratner and the reverberations continue. Here is an email that one Boerum Hill resident sent to the museum yesterday:

To the Brooklyn Museum: I am a member as well as being a resident of Boerum Hill. I am very displeased to learn that you are honoring a man who proposes to do such lasting damage to our wonderful neighborhood. I may reconsider my membership when it comes time to renew it. Perhaps you will be in luck if either court decisions or the present recession destroys Ratner’s plans. Then your neighboring members may be able to forgive this extraordinary error in judgment on your part.

No Land Grab also has photos from last night.

The Clarett Group’s Daniel Hollander visited Carroll Gardens last night along with architect Robert Rogers of Rogers Marvel and members of their construction team to present their plans for a building at 340 Court Street that has been the subject of much discussion. We will have much coverage today. Here we will say that it was a stormy meeting, marked by angry outbursts from the crowd from time to time. To provide some of the flavor of what a contentious community meeting can be like, here’s a short clip from last night.

There is something about this juxtaposition of images–the “available” sign and the art painted on the wall–of this building on Hope Street in Williamsburg just east of the BQE that makes the sale offering more compelling than the $9 million asking price. The 20,000 square foot lot could support a 54,000 square foot building. It’s only steps from the massive condo activity down the block and on Union Avenue.

Cafe 11, a relatively new cafe on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope between 11th and 12th Street has bitten the dust. The establishment closed its doors sometime this week. It was located in a fairly (for Seventh Avenue) cafe-heavy area, given the presence of the Tea Lounge and Naidres nearby, never seemed to do very well in terms of attracting customers despite the cheerful look and free wi-fi.

[Photo courtesy of Adrian Kinloch/Brit in Brooklyn]

These two photos of ongoing development on the Park Slope side of Fourth Avenue come to us from Brit in Brooklyn blogger Adrian Kinloch. The photo above is the tall, thin building at Fourth and Carroll that we called the Monolith because during the early part of its construction there were few windows. The building below is on First Street behind a McDonald’s and we had jokingly called it the Big Mac Building in the past until we were chastened after learning that it may be called the Gowanus.

[Photo courtesy of Adrian Kinloch/Brit in Brooklyn]

If you depend on the F train to get places and you normally catch the train between Jay Street-Borough Hall and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, be prepared to take shuttle buses this weekend or walk. The same set of disruptions that occurred a few weeks ago are happening again and the instructions are so complex that we watched people stop and stare at the notices for long periods of time. Here is the rundown, from the MTA Service Advisory page:

Free shuttle buses replace F G trains between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts and 7 Av
Weekend, Apr 5 – 7, 12:01 AM Sat to 5 AM Mon

• Transfer between the A, F, G trains and shuttle buses at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts.

• For service to/from Bergen, Carroll, and Smith-9 Sts, transfer between the F G trains and local shuttle bus at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts or transfer between F trains and local shuttle bus at 7 Av, southbound, or 4 Av, northbound.

• F trains run between 179 and Jay Sts and then replace the C to Euclid Av; the F also runs from 7 Av to Stillwell Av, southbound and from Stillwell Av to 4 Av,
northbound.

• D trains run on the R track between Pacific and 36 Sts.

Best way to Manhattan: Take the F to 4 Av and transfer to a Manhattan-bound D on the local track to West 4 St and transfer back to the F.

Best way to Brooklyn: Take the F to West 4 St and transfer to a Brooklyn-bound D to 4 Av. Transfer to a shuttle bus to 7 Av where F service to Coney Island is available.

Note: Coney Island-bound F trains leaving 7 Av skip 15 St-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Pkwy. A shuttle train at 7 Av will serve 15 St-Prospect Park and Fort Hamilton Pkwy, southbound.

Simple, right?

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

Crime-Related:

• Brooklynite Creates Rape T-Shirt [NYT]
• “Tears for Rap Bash Bullet Ma” [NYP]
• SUV Kills Teen in Sunset Park [NYDN]

Not Crime-Related:

• 14 Commercial Townhouses in Red Hook [Brownstoner]
• Educators Accuse Mayor of Forcing Out Arabic School Principal [Sun]
• Epic Bed-Stuy Murals [Bed-Stuy Banana]
• Greetings from the Luna Park Saloon [Brooklynometry]
• Smart Little Car on Court Street [PMFA]
• Major Downtown Brooklyn Median Work [McBrooklyn]
• It’s the New Cortelyou Road Clock [Ditmas Park Blog]
• Wallabout Mechanic [Fading Ad Blog]
• Featured Painter in Burg Helps Women [NYDN]
• Check Out Murakami [Brooklyn Based]
• View of the Artificial Waterfalls Being Built [Dumbo NYC]
• Congrats on a Real New Brooklyn Life [ABL]
• Take the Brooklyn Pizza Tour [OTBKB]

It’s the “Go Greenpoint” Earth Day Festival in McCarren Park on April 19!

Again, we’ve posted about this previously, but the Coney Island “Boardwalk Barrels of Fun” painting event is on Saturday (4/5). It starts at 10AM and runs through 2PM with judging at 1PM. (This is another event for which the forecast, assuming it holds, is less than promising.) It takes place between West 10th St. and West 12th St. Per the release: “Artists all of all ages will be painting the trash receptacles that will be used on the Boardwalk for the summer beach season. They will be adorned with seascapes, landscapes and carnival theme art in keeping with Coney Island’s colorful history. Participating artists will use their talents to beautify the Coney Island Boardwalk.”

GL Analysis:
This is a wonderful event and the results will be on display for everyone to see, however, we will take this opportunity to post a plea to the Parks Department: we love the painted trashcans and the beautification of the boardwalk. Please, please, please, please do some emergency repairs on the truly frightening stretch of the boardwalk that is going to seriously injure people this summer. It is small comfort that the last thing someone falling through the boardwalk will see before waking up at Coney Island Hospital is a beautifully painted trashcan. Seriously. It has gone from bad to genuinely scary.

Developer Joe Sitt flip his Albee Square property because he wanted to make a killing or because he failed to find a way to develop it? “Sitt paid $25 million for the mall in 2001, floating plans to build a roughly 1 million-square-foot tower, but instead sold it last year to Acadia Realty Trust for $125 million after making relatively minor improvements. Chris Havens, who has long worked in the Downtown Brooklyn market, said Sitt actually tried to find investors and an anchor tenant for the tower but came up dry.”–Brownstoner

Nothing says spring quite like twisted metal from a building being demolished and the bright early blossoms of a yellow forsythia. The scene is from Carroll Gardens. Superb!

We noted this a couple of weeks ago, but it’s worth a reminder: Tomorrow (4/5) is “Opening Day” at Prospect Park. The day includes the annual Little League Parade through Park Slope, which starts at 10AM. (Right now, the weather forecast is very iffy for tomorrow morning.) It starts at Seventh Ave. & Carroll St. and ends up at the Bandshell in the park. Thousands usually attend. There’s also a Spring Wash Day at the Lefferts Historic House from 1PM-4PM and a volunteer Clean-Up from 10AM-2PM. Plus, the Carousel is open and the electric boat tours on the lake are back. (For full info, see the original post.)

This isn’t so much an altered or battered street sign as it is an arty street sign, but we like those too. It comes from Union Street near Third Avenue in Gowanus, mere steps from the Holiday Inn Express.

Here’s a look into the new Rialto condo on N. 5 Street in Williamsburg, which is another one of those places that one will like or dislike based on personal taste and inclinations. Regardless, the unit was photographed from a cherry picker and is sandwiched between unfinished floors. Cool pic.–Curbed

This very compelling piece of street furniture comes from Green Street in Greenpoint and it reaches us via the digicam of Miss Heather. Nice.

There is gloom and heavy rain at the Brooklyn Weather Observatory early this morning with a current temperature of 42. The forecast simply says, “Colder with rain.” The high will be 46. Tonight will be rainy with a low of 45. The rain is supposed to end tomorrow, perhaps by late morning.–Accuweather

Of all the events happening in Brooklyn tonight, one that will generate the most feeling among some people is the Brooklyn Museum Gala honoring developer Bruce Ratner. A protest has been organized and there have been angry letters circulating about the event, including an “open letter” to the Museum, which would seem to indicate that some of its members and supporters are upset. The letter said, in part: “I do not believe it is appropriate for a respected public institution like the Brooklyn Museum to be honoring Bruce Ratner…A museum should be a good neighbor to its community. You cannot be a good neighbor by promoting the activities of someone who is a bad neighbor, and worse, to the community.”

From the museum’s perspective, however, the Gala is a big-ticket institutional thank you to a major supporter. The museum refused to tell the Daily News how much Mr. Ratner has donated, but Atlantic Yards Report notes that IRS records show donations of $100,000 in each of 2005 and 2006 (with 2007 records not yet available) from the Forest City Ratner Companies Foundation. AYR writes:

Given that tables of 12 with premier seating at the gala are going for $50,000 to $75,000, and tables of ten range from $5000 to $25,000, it’s a good bet that the honor for Ratner will draw significant sums. And it’s not unlikely that Ratner and colleagues have made individual donations.

Clearly, tonight’s even will raise millions for the museum. Meanwhile, Rachel Monahan and Jotham Sederstrom look at the Gala in today’s Daily News. Here’s an excerpt:

At least two museum trustees have close ties to Forest City Ratner, with Joanne Minieri acting as president of the development company and former museum director RobertRubin a Nets owner. “Bruce C. Ratner is being honored with the Augustus Graham Medal at the Brooklyn Museum’s Ball in recognition of his longstanding support of this museum and art and cultural institutions throughout New York City,” [Museum Spokesperson Sally] Williams said. “For nearly three decades, the Brooklyn Museum has awarded this honor to a distinguished group of individuals who have helped to sustain the arts in our community.”

Meanwhile, photographer Tracey Collins, who is producing an invaluable historical record of photos of the Atlantic Yards footprint, writes of his dismay in participating in the museum’s “Click!” exhibit:

In a nutshell, I’m very reluctant to participate in, let alone, promote what I believe to be a great concept when the board of the museum chooses to bestow an honor on a developer whose signature project would leave a lasting scar on Brooklyn’s “changing face.”

Kanye West is performing at tonight’s event. Whether the controversy will blow over quickly or whether the bitter divisions of opinion about Atlantic Yards will spill over into the museum’s community fund raising, membership and activities remains to be seen.

Tonight is the fourth of four recent reveals of big and potentially neighborhood-changing projects in Carroll Gardens and Gowanus since the beginning of the year. The Clarett Group will be showing plans for a seven-story condo designed by Rogers Marvel for 340 Court Street. While demolition prep work has been underway at the former International Longshoreman’s Association Building since the beginning of the year, work got underway in earnest yesterday. The presentation that will take place tonight was set up by the Union-Sackett Block Association which, itself, was created in response to issues raised by the Clarett development. Fliers have been posted around the neighborhood and people have been handing them out. They ask, “Do we want a 7-story, 70 foot-plus facade on Court St.? Do we want a ‘big box’ national retailer? Are you concerned about safety during construction?” The developer does not need any special approvals to build on the site and applications have already been submitted to the Department of Buildings. The early demolition process has been contentious, with concerns arising over asbestos removal and some damage being caused to an adjacent brownstone. Previous “reveals” in the neighborhood have included 360 Smith Street, Public Place and the Toll Brothers Gowanus development.

Anyone who’s been in Dumbo recently has no doubt noted the presence of the NYPD’s “skywatch,” a thing we like to call the Tower of Fun, under the Manhattan Bridge and elsewhere. It’s a patrol tower that is used to establish a police presence and, ostensibly, reduce crime. The tower goes up two stories and includes cameras, video monitors and spotlights. It was placed in Dumbo after a spike in crime and means the immediate area around it is probably the safest spot in Brooklyn at the moment. The NYPD says it has already cut crime according to Dumbo NYC.

A couple of weeks ago, INSIJS exclusively reported that Con Ed may be preparing a power plant on Kent Avenue for demolition, but what about turning it over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for preservation? “The hulking Renaissance Revival structure borders the anticipated Navy Yard annex on two sides, and fits perfectly within the wide range of existing industrial buildings on the former Naval base. The huge, high-ceilinged turbine room could host a set-building business or serve as an additional soundstage for Steiner Studios. The plant is also filled with smaller-scaled industial floors perfect for warehousing or light manufacturing. And the street side fronts directly on the sidewalk, meaning it works with the Navy Yard’s proposal to include some retail frontage along the desolate stretch of Kent Avenue.”–INSIJS

This is a building on Avenue P in Gravesend (near Ocean Parkway) that was featured yesterday on Curbed in both its rendering and under construction state It is being developed by Sitt Asset Management (no relationship to Joe Sitt and/or Thor Equities). It is called The Venetian and condos start at $1 million and go up to $4 million.

Want to see which City Council Districts had members that voted for congestion pricing and which ones voted against? Look no further than this map, which is coded in green for “yes” and purple for “no,” along with the one now very well known “not present,” which is gray.–Streets Blog

The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins wades into the morass this week that is one of our favorite topics: the mess that is the construction and regulation (or lack thereof). The story focuses at length on Assem. Jim Brennan and a proposal that would have toughened enforcement by the Department of Buildings that was passed by the legislature and vetoed by former Gov. Spitzer last year, partly at the urging of the Mayor. We recommend it in its entirety, but will go to the copy and past for a few excerpts:

…while the crane horror adds a whole new dimension to the problem, this is hardly the first time the building surge of the past few years has prompted public fear and rage. For all its economic benefits, the boom has turned vacant lots and demolition sites into battle zones across the city. The weapons of assault are backhoes, bulldozers, and piledrivers. And while many local elected officials have tried to respond to panicky constituents, the complaints have generally prompted little more than snickers at City Hall.

There, the dominant attitude remains the Doctoroff Doctrine—the policy espoused by ex–deputy mayor and still top Bloomberg economic adviser Daniel Doctoroff: The more building the better, and don’t sweat the small stuff….As chairman of the assembly’s Committee on Cities, Brennan held hearings in September 2006 to put a spotlight on the department’s enforcement shortfall. So many people wanted to testify that the hearings had to be extended an extra day. First to speak was Buildings Commissioner [Patricia] Lancaster, who lamented that she’d inherited “a neglected agency that was in complete disarray,” where “one-third of staff positions were vacant and computers crashed daily.” Agency morale “was at an all-time low,” she said, and “documents and files were unaccounted for.”

Lancaster went on to describe the yeoman effort her agency has made to make information available on the Web and to redo the city’s building code…More disturbing was the testimony of witnesses who described desperate, hand-to-hand combat with lawless builders. A Williamsburg woman described how her home had been showered with asbestos, her water pipes burst, and her electric lines illegally tapped. A homeowner in Greenpoint told how her home’s foundation had been cracked so badly thanks to plans drawn up by a notorious architect that her family, including her 83-year-old mother, had to vacate.

For the record, we’ve tagged 230 posts since April, 2007 with “construction issues,” which is the label we give items with safety and quality of life issues related to construction. We’ve probably neglected to tag a whole bunch more. Clicking here will bring up some of them from March.

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

• Resigned Director of Troubled Sunset Park Agency Still There [NYDN]
• Forest City Ratner’s “Shadowy Foundation” Dispenses $1.7M [AYR]
• Three Firefighters Hurt in Brownsville [NYT]
• Father of the Year: Gives Two-Year-Old a Gun, She Shoots Herself [NYDN]
• Lawmaker Seeks Help for Sick Brooklyn Girl [Sun]
• Post-Fire Scenes at Brooklyn Heights Gristedes [BHB]
• So, is That Northside Pier Almost Ready for the Public? [INSIJS]
• Ohio Knitting Mill Bites Dust on Smith Street [PMFA]
• Empty Retail Space on Columbia St. Becomes a Botanica [ABL]
• Pretty Kitties Needs a Home [OTBKB]
• The Surest Sign of Spring: Mr. Softee [BK 11201]
• Earth Day at Hattie Carthan Memorial Garden [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Daffodil Project Blooms on Cortelyou Road [Flatbush Gardener]
• Doll Neighborhood [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Magnolias and Dancers [A Year in the Park]

Council Members Bill de Blasio and David Yassky are cutting the ribbon on a new Computer Lab at MS 447 on Dean Street today. Per an email: “grants were awarded to the school upon learning that the school would be moving from one location to another. The total cost of the technology lab which includes complete reconstruction, wiring, furniture and technological equipment was $335,000.00. The new lab will have a total of 15 Apple desktops and 16 wireless laptops networked with the most current operating system, and application software. The lab also has an interactive Smartboard for whole class lesson presentation. MS 447 (The Math & Exploratory School) has grades 6 to 8 with a total of 457 students.”–GL Inbox