Once a week, we like to look at some of the comments left by readers during the previous seven days. Here are a few random selections from this week’s batch:

Toll Brothers Team Talks Up the Gowanus Project. “It was all a bit scary, that group, parading in single file with their renderings and statistics. They were like a team from Walt Disney with visions of the future complete with a shrinking machine and flying cars. I had a mini fantasy of myself: soaking up rays along a processed canal of filtered water, waving to my husband on the Water Taxi to my own private dock, racing with the 8 hour shadow being cast from my glass box. I also saw that maufactured forest of transplanted trees, swaying in an artificial breeze downwind from the unfiltered part of the canal while slipping on my wellies to wade through the flood plane to my above ground parking garage. Sigh…it’s just too big, too ambitious..too much what we want, but, not enough of what we need in a realistic context.”

Brooklyn’s Ugliest Karl Fischer Looking Great. “I love the 2 faux balconies over the entry. Class-o-rama, and such grand vistas of the BQE. The sole good omen for this project, is that it is where Sugar The Cockatoo ‘flew the coop’ to this past october. It confirms his tastes…Glad there was a bland bright spot to fly to. Thank you, Karl Fischer!!”

Pampered Burg Rock Star Dogs, Part II: Plush Toy Edition. “This Dog Addiction place says in their manifesto that they “encourage pack behavior”. I see this as a huge problem. And do dogs really need and want rock music 24/7? With their hearing? This place sounds like trouble.”

With Public Place Work Underway, Safety Questions Remain. “NIMBYs? Do you live in the neighborhood? Are your windows constantly covered with white dust from the concrete factories? Do you smell the stench from the canal? Those of us with children are concerned about heavy metals and other contaminants getting into the air in high concentrations – to toxic conditions directly below the surface are well documented – and if I lived next to or down wind of this site, I’d be very concerned.”

Always look out for the crooked pedestrian crossing sign, especially on S. 3 Street in Williamsburg.

Visible work is finally picking up on the conversion of Cobble Hill’s 156-year-old Strong Place Church, whose interior we visited before the start of work. “The structure—which has long reminded me of a bombed-out ruin you might find in postwar Dresden—has very visibly been getting the fresh starts of a roof in recent weeks. It looks like Baxt Ingui’s January promise that work ‘will pick up significantly’ is coming true.–Lost City

It is hard to say anything about this overturned Greenpoint sofa except that Miss Heather calls it the Green Street Tartan based on location and pattern.

It look gorgeous, if chilly, outside the windows at our Brooklyn weather observatory this morning. The forecast calls for a lot of sunshine followed by increasing clouds in the late afternoon. The high will be 48. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low of 36.–Accuweather

Information about the Celebrate Brooklyn lineup this summer is trickling out and, once again, Bumpershine has helped spread word of the shows before anyone else. It’s not just any season either, but the 30th anniversary summer. The annual Opening Night Gala performance on Wednesday June 12 this year will feature Issac Hayes. There is more info about the show here at the Celebrate Brookyn site. Here are a few other shows noted so far:

06/24/08 Gilberto Gil (Benefit/Tickets $35.00 – $60.00)
06/26/08 Carolina Chocolate Drops
06/26/08 Dixie Hummingbirds
07/17/08 Jerry Douglas, The Holmes Brothers
08/03/08 Daby Tourethe goods before anyone else.

Of course, that’s just scratching the surface. More info as it comes out, including the full schedule release very soon.

This could be one of the most riveting City Council hearings to be held in a long time: on April 8 the City Council Transportation Committee will be having an oversight hearing on G Train service. The announcement was made by committee Chair Chair John Liu yesterday. The release announcing the session said that “Witnesses from the MTA will be asked to speak about ridership data, plans for the future, conditions, and other issues regarding G line service, and the public is also encouraged to testify about their own experiences.” The hearing is at 1PM in the City Council Chambers at City Hall. There is a City Council resolution calling on the MTA to immediately improve G Train serve and not implement any service cuts. In circulating the announcement, the Save the G Train group says:

For all of you who’ve been endlessly frustrated by the roller coaster ride that is G line service levels, Save The G is asking you to turn out in force on April 8th. Riders from Queens AND Brooklyn have been affected by the MTA’s various management decisions and random service changes.

If you’d like to more directly help spread the word about the hearing, Save The G can certainly use your help. Please reach out to savetheg@yahoo.com with your contact information, noting what sort of advocacy contributions you can make, and we’ll be sure to thank you in person on April 8th. This is a major opportunity for G riders to speak and be heard; let’s make the most of it!

Updates at the Save the G blog.

Here’s this week’s adoptable pet of the week from the Brooklyn Animal Rescource Coalition (BARC) shelter in Williamsburg.

[Photo courtesy of dog magician/flickr]

Here is Aponte and some information about him:

This is Aponte. He was liberated from Animal Care and Control and is one happy, friendly dog! He was skinny, and his handsome brindle coat a bit dull when he arrived at BARC, but he’s well on his way to becoming a former shelter dog success story. Aponte is about 50 pounds of pitbull mix, and approximately 3 years old. To meet him in person contact BARC. If you’re not ready for a serious commitment, BARC’s volunteer dogwalking program is a great way to get a canine “fix” and maybe meet your next best friend.

Clearly, any potential adopter has to decide if a particular creature in need of a home is right for their living situation, needs and their ability to provide the proper level of care and attention. The BARC Shelter is located at N. 1 and Wythe in Williamsburg. More info about them here.

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Sometimes, voicing an opinion in a way that is designed for public officials and bureaucrats can be a good thing. Brooklyn bus riders will have a chance to rate the buses they ride staring on Tuesday (yes, April Fool’s Day) and running through April 18. Per Sewell Chan on the CityRoom:

For many Brooklynites, the public bus system is a lifeline for getting around. The B61 in Red Hook, the B37 in Bay Ridge, the B48 in Sheepshead Bay and the B83 in Starrett City are all vital pathways for commuters, particularly in neighborhoods that have few or no concentration of subway stations….the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is giving local bus customers in Brooklyn a chance to rate — and rage against? — their routes using “Bus Rider Report Cards.” New York City Transit expects to hand out thousands, if not tens of thousands, of report cards for commuters to fill out…

The report cards will also be available on the MTA website by clicking here. (Currently the link leads to surveys for Staten Island buses.) in city’s most populous borough.

The report card asks for ratings on 19 elements of service including wait times between buses, seat availability, clarity of bus destination signs, whether the bus operates on schedule, cleanliness, lack of graffiti and scratchitti, courtesy of the driver, “ease” of paying the fare and more. Grades are from A to F and there’s also an overall rating for the route. Surveys will be handed out on buses and can also be done online (starting April Fool’s Day). The survey will run through May 23.

Well, the joey at the Prospect Park Zoo, who was the sujbect of a naming contest, has been named Riley. The four finalist names were Nari, Kylie, Kinta and Riley. The Borough President made the announcement yesterday. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Heart of Brooklyn conducted an online poll and received hundreds of suggestions. A press release says the name Riley was submitted by Allison Make. Riley is the third kangaroo to be born in Brooklyn, and the Prospect Park Zoo is the only zoo in the Northeast with western gray kangaroos. We were pulling for the name Coney, but politics and getting votes is a tough business. Riley is nice.

If you remember our post on March 12 about the 10 tons of chopsticks that caused a collapse at a StorageMart where refugees of the illegal matzo bakery induced clearance of 475 Kent Avenue were storing belongs, then this follow up detail will be of interest. Yesterday, Jake Mooney posted a story on the CityRoom that will appear in tomorrow’s City Section about the collapse. Here’s an excerpt:

But there is something about the details, they have found, that moves people to wisecracks. Mostly the fact that, as Carly Sullivan, a spokeswoman from the city Department of Buildings confirmed this week, the Brooklyn storage locker collapse originated in a unit on an upstairs floor that was holding thousands of pounds of chopsticks. The utensils, packed tightly into boxes, got too heavy and caused the floor to collapse, breaking a water pipe and flooding units below.

Mr. Clark’s run of bad luck is the subject of the Dispatches feature in this week’s City section, and building residents said there were other 475 Kent refugees in a similar position. Kirk Edwards, who, like Mr. Clark, is a photographer, said that he had moved his possessions out of the StorageMart at 50 Wallabout Street, the site of the collapse, just days before it happened. (Mr. Clark moved most of his things out too, but had left some behind, and that was what was damaged.) Several residents also mentioned a neighbor who may have had his prized record collection in the lockers, though I wasn’t able to track him down for confirmation.

Read the full story, it’s got some great detail about the ironic Chopstick-Matzo Connection at 475 Kent.

Yesterday, we posted about the presentation by a team from the Toll Brothers about their big and controversial project on the Gowanus Canal. Here are some renderings of the development, which has been designed by GreenbergFarrow with landscape architecture by Lee Weintraub, which we posted yesterday on Curbed, but didn’t feature here.

Preliminary work is underway at the Public Place site between Smith Street and the Gowanus Canal, with residents already expressing concern about safety precautions during the cleanup of the highly contaminated site. On March 31, representatives from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination and KeySpan/National Grid will make a presentation to Community Board 6. Topics will include the level of environmental contamination, remediation plans for the site and the next steps in the cleaning process. The meeting will take place at 6:30PM at Long Island College Hospital, which is at 339 Hicks Street in Conference Rooms A+B. People living near the site are concerned that was work has started before their questions have been answered.

This was the scene on Thursday night at the opening of Coney Island of the Heart at the Bond Street Gallery in Gowanus. The neighborhood’s first photography gallery is “housed in a 100-year-old townhouse. Inside, it has exposed brick walls, and out back is a tranquil courtyard.” The show features photos shot by Harold Feinstein and “celebrates the history of Coney Island as the playground of the working-class melting pot through exuberant and singular images of the Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Russians, Puerto Ricans, and others who have played there.” The gallery is located at 297 Bond Street. There was a showing of James White Photos going on at the dance studio next door as well. That photo is below.

[Image for GL courtesy of Deborah Matlack/Matlack Photography]

Photos:

• From the Forte Roof #1 [Blue Jake]
• Prospect Park West [Velvet Sea]
• From the Forte Roof #2 [Blue Jake]
• Bring Our Troops Home [Atomische]
• Shadow Play [Lex’s Folly]
• Hero Worship [Brit in Brooklyn]

Not Entirely Photos:

• Ratner Finances His Manhattan Office Tower [AYR]
• Lights Out Today from 8PM-9PM [Green Brooklyn]
• Be Careful, the Park Slope Mystery House Was Owned by Witches [OTBKB]
• Brooklyn Honor Student Stabbed [NYP]
• Is a Lost Dog Sign a Symbol of Gentrification? [Bed-Stuy Banana]
• Red Hook’s Metal & Thread Opening [ABL]
• Tower of Fun Fights Dumbo Crime [Dumbo NYC]
• Glamor for 99 Cents [Brooklynometry]
• The Balconies of Broadway [New York Shitty]
• Learn About Hibernaculum [A Year in the Park]
• Coney Island in the New Fierstein Musical [Kinetic Carnival]

No, not a sofa, but it’s a very distinguished bit of street seating. It’s from Harrison Avenue in Williamsburg and comes of course, from Miss Heather.

One doesn’t need a weather forecast to know that it’s going to be gorgeous out there today. The view from the Brooklyn weather observatory is one of blue skies and brilliant sun on this Saturday morning. The forecast calls for a day that will be breezy with a lot of sun and a high of 47. Tonight will be clear, breezy and cold with a low of 29.–Accuweather

This is a rendering of what a new shelter on N. 1 Street in Williamsburg from the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition, or BARC, will look like. It would be a few hundred feet from the 80 Metropolitan luxury development being put up by Steiner Equities.

A team of architects, planners and others working on the big Toll Brothers project along the Gowanus Canal made a presentation in Carroll Gardens last night. The group briefed the Community Board 6 Land Use Committee and fielded questions from an audience of about 50 people. Despite rhetoric in the community that has been heated at times, most of the questions were polite, although exchanges became heated around the topic of the project’s impact on the neighborhood sewer system. The project would have 447 units of housing, and Toll Brothers VP David Von Spreckelsen (photo below) said the firm is looking for approval for the development apart from the overall rezoning of Gowanus because with a year and a half left for the Bloomberg Administration “we are not sure if that rezoning will happen.” He said that “we’d like to set the standard for appropriate development on the canal.” In response to a question about the sagging real estate market, Mr. Von Spreckelsen indicated the firm is “committed to the project” and said that “we’d love to go forward.” The Toll VP also argued that the community has “a unique opportunity to help shape the development” and that it wouldn’t occur after a rezoning when a developer could undertake a project on the site “as of right” without community consultation. He cited development along Fourth Avenue as an example of post-rezoning development and said, “I’m not sure anyone is happy with that.”

About 130-140 of the units in the project would be designated as affordable housing rental units. The balance would be market rate condos. The project would have 268 parking spaces. L & M Equity would develop the affordable housing.

City Council Member Bill de Blasio said whether or not to go ahead with the project remains “an open question” although he said that he gives the Toll firm “credit for putting together a proposal that addresses public concerns.”

The Toll team unveiled a number of previously unseen renderings of the project, which has been designed by GreenbergFarrow, including views of the development from the canal and from Bond Street as well as drawings of the “publicly accessible open space” that would be built along the canal. An environmental consultant said the firm had done 33 borings and dug 16 test wells and that it had found “exactly what would be expected” from a century of industrial use that included the manufacture of paint and the storage of oil. Cleanup plans include the removal of some contaminants, but some pollutants that can’t be removed would be covered and capped. She said that environmental issues on the site were similar to others that the Toll Brothers had developed, including the Northside Piers property in Williamsburg and the Fifth Street Lofts site in Long Island City.

In environmental terms, the development would be LEED certified and would have its own storm water collection and treatment system, although the development would be unable to handle the volume of rainfall during the heaviest storms. The issue is particularly sensitive in Gowanus because raw sewage flows directly into the canal if it rains hard enough. Architect Navid Maqami (photo above) of GreenbergFarrow explained the project’s design and layout, with four story structures along Bond Street, rising to 12 stories along the canal. (The building height is one of the most controversial aspects of the project in the community, although it may be in line with what the overall neighborhood rezoning would allow.) Landscape architect Lee Weintraub, who designed the Valentino Pier in Red Hook, called the public space on the Gowanus “a canal park as opposed to an esplanade.”

Brownstoner has a full rundown of the presentation plus a photo gallery and there is a photo gallery of renderings at Curbed. The developers hope to begin the land use review process sometime before summer.

While preliminary work on the Public Place site between Smith Street and the Gowanus Canal only started last week, work crews have already denuded the site of trees and vegetation and it would appear that some digging has started. Neighbors have been concerned about whether the site will be monitored for any possible airborne contaminants, although many of the toxins left behind by the manufactured gas plant that once occupied the site are deep underground. Council Member Bill de Blasio sent a letter to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development last week with a long list of questions about monitoring the work, but it’s unknown if there has been any response. The extent of the work is very visible from the F and G trains as it travels on the Culver Viaduct down into the Carroll Street Station.

We love tales of construction work going on after or before hours. So we immediately gravitated to this post on the Prospect Heights forum on Brooklynian because it’s titled “Jackhammering on Vanderbilt at 5:30AM“:

who did this? why would you do this? 5:30 am and then at 7 am (when I had just gotten back to sleep). I think it was the diner- what is going on? why 5:30 am?

We will simply highlight the following “you’re out of luck” response:

I live next to a full renovation in an adjoining brownstone, they are gutting and re-doing the first floor and basement and adding a huge 3 floor extension to the back. Time and again work has been done before and after legal hours during both weekdays and weekends. The first time this happened when they started work back in October the owner basically tried to absolve herself and said to speak with the contractor. They guaranteed they would not be doing any noisy work on the weekends. That did not last. I called 311 the first time and of course they sent an inspector hours after the weekend work was done and noted that the inspector saw no work being done and the complaint was dismissed. They stopped work during November – January due to a lack of funds supposedly but resumed in February and started working later and later. I called 311 again but nothing has been done in 3 weeks with the complaint even though the dept of buildings assigned the complaint to the “emergency response team”. So basically whenever the noisy work persists after legal hours my wife and/or myself will go over to the site and tell them to stop. Usually they comply without a fight. So basically 311 has done nothing and probably never will in this case…

More people satisfied with the response on quality of life issues related to construction.

There is a good chance that trouble is just starting for the Atlantic Yards project as public officials potentially take a fresh look at the development. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries says he’s “deeply troubled” by the Atlantic Yards Stall. “I’m deeply troubled by the notion of moving forward with an arena without a firm commitment to advance the affordable housing connected to the project,” he said. “I’m still firmly committed to the position that eminent domain should not be used to build a basketball arena and will articulate that position to Governor Paterson and his administration.”–AYR

This is our dear friend 525 Union Avenue, which is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement for Sunday Work. The days of loud, fun work are in the building’s past, however. Today it sits there as the most utilitarian building in the Williamsburg Karl Fischer collection. The interesting question is, will it get an odd name and marketing campaign or have something quieter and befitting its pedestrian low-key appearance?

Among the things that came up at Wednesday night’s community session in Windsor Terrace on the Mayor’s Resident Parking Permit Program was congestion pricing. One of the points of contention, according to GL Correspondent Anna Lewis was the fate of the money that would be raised by fees:

Many residents expressed cynicism about the fate of the revenue raised by congestion pricing and the $354 million promised by Washington if New York’s politicians approve the plan by April 7. According to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan, the revenue and funds would be directed to the MTA. However, City Council Member Bill de Blasio said, “I am profoundly dubious about more mass transit being the outcome.” He called his past experience with the MTA “a trail of broken promises” and in the long term he said he favors changing the MTA’s governing structure to give NYC more power. When asked what environmentalist measure he would advance as an alternative to congestion pricing, Councilmember De Blasio said he favors a rail tunnel between Brooklyn and New Jersey, which could take 1 million truck trips per year off the streets.
–Anna Lewis

Architect Gene Kaufman’s Decora on N. 10 Street in Williamsburg has shown its color: light green tiles not unlike those one might find in a funky bathroom are at the top of the structure, which may or may not be modeled in shape after a light switch and which will inspire reactions from many people.–Curbed