The gloom we’re seeing at the Brooklyn weather observatory is a precursor to what is supposed to be a rainy day. The forceast calls for some rain, starting around 10AM, and a high of 49. Tonight will be rainy with a low of 38. All in all, a good day to use and lose an umbrella.–Accuweather

Is there a miniature game of Beat the Clock underway with the controversial building at 360 Smith Street and others in Carroll Gardens? A text amendment to city zoning that would change an odd city definition that has defined a number of very narrow street in Carroll Gardens as being wide (allowing taller buildings) is in process. Yesterday, City Council Member Bill de Blasio’s District Director sent out an email with the timetable for the change:

City Planning is now applying the text amendment to all place blocks (1st,2nd,3rd,4th), 2nd street as well as President St. and Carroll St. between Smith and Hoyt. We are still on track for an early April Certification with a 30 day clock on both the BP and the CB in respect to their public hearings.

Meanwhile:

1) The always lively Carroll Gardens rumor mill is reporting that there might be a holdup in securing financing for the project. Crazy speculation or reflection of the deteriorating credit environment and real estate market?

2) How much of the plaza at the Carroll Street subway stop that is much loved by residents will be lost with development of the new building? The Carroll Gardens Brooklyn History blog produced an image showing the plaza with the one-third that would be lost to the new building show in red. The blog writes:

The residents of Carroll Gardens will lose one-third (22-feet) of the Second Place Subway Plaza…and an important neighborhood tradition, when developer William Stein’s controversial out-of-context condominium complex is built over the subway plaza.

The “lost plaza” is in red in the image below.

The battle over the proposed downzoning of Grand Street to eliminate the possibility of towers in a predominantly low-rise neighborhood is coming down to the wire. Much of the impetus to get it done has been an effort to thwart two particularly tall Karl Fischer buildings that developers want to build at Driggs and Grand. One would be 15 stories and the other ten. They would be next to three-story tall buildings. With the help of community leaders, the rezoning, which would cover 12 blocks and limit most buildings to 4-6 stories depending on where they’re located, has moved very quickly through the approval process and has had significant support among residents. In the meantime, the developer of one of the buildings has been engaged in what would appear to be one of the clearest examples we’ve seen of Beat the Downzone anywhere in Brooklyn. The way the process works, if a foundation is done before the rezoning takes effect, the building can rise to 15 stories. The practice has produced some of the most bitter development disputes in Brooklyn, as contractors often violate Department of Buildings regulations with impunity as they race to beat to the clock. On Grand Street, demolition, excavation and the pouring of a foundation have all been going on at the same time at the site of the 15-story Karl Fischer building.

Late last week, a barrage of emails began arriving from opponents of the downzoning who say they’ve organized a new group called the Grand Home and Business Owner’s Organization, which says it represents 100 of 254 property owners that would be impacted by rezoning. The opposition managed to make yesterday’s Post, claiming a “cost” of rezoning to property owners of $120 million (assuming they all want to build tall buildings). The group’s own emails actually claimed a “cost” of $400 million. One email said the developer of the Fischer building is “prepared to immediately sign-off on an agreement” limiting the building to six stories without a downzoning. Another email said, “What kind of message does this send to developers across the city when the public review process can be bypassed and neighborhoods targeted that are ill equipped to fight back?” Another email predicted that rezoning “will once again put Williamsburg on the teetering edge” of “neglect, rampant crime, and out and out lawlessness.”

A commenter on Curbed yesterday said that the “this dust up is an attempt by the developer of the 14 story building at Driggs and Grand to muddy the waters long enough to get his project going before this change goes through.” Another said that he had been contacted “by two different developers asking me to make phone calls and send emails to help them put a stop to the down-zoning.”

Given the speed with which the developer of the 15-story building is operating, even a short delay could get the “Monster Tower” vested under the old zoning.

We consider composer Phillip Glass the ultimate cerebral musician. Therefore, we take great pleasure in watching him ride the Cyclone in this video which is part of the trailer from a fascinating looking new documentary on one of the true living musical geniuses of our time. The documentary is called GLASS: A Portrait of Phillip in Twelve Parts, and we got an email about it yesterday, noting our own fondness for the Cyclone and Coney Island in general. (The full trailer can be viewed here on YouTube or here on the film’s website.) The film will open on April 18 at IFC Center (323 Avenue of the Americas), and play for a minimum of 2 weeks. Here’s a bit more about Mr. Glass and the Cyclone and Astroland from a note we got via email:

I have been working on a documentary film of composer Philip Glass – he’s a huge fan of the Cyclone! While he was studying at Juilliard he and his friends would ride their motorbikes to Coney Island one day every year to ride the Cyclone and hang out at Astroland, something they continue to do to this day. This is such a great New York image.

A still shot of Mr. Glass on the Cyclone is below. Absolutely priceless.

We write about the area around Carroll and Bond Street a lot, but usually in the context of development issues. Yesterday, around noon, a reader sent us a photo of a police investigation related to a death at 326 Carroll and said that foul play was being investigated. As it turns out, someone living in the basement apartment at that address was murdered. According to 7Online:

Police tell Eyewitness News a man was discovered dead, possibly fatally stabbed, in a basement apartment in the Carrol Gardens section of Brooklyn. The victim, a man in his 20s, was found inside 326 Carroll Street at around 11 a.m. this morning. The medical examiner will determine the cause of death. However, detectives believe he may have been fatally stabbed.

The Times provided this detail:

…Sanjeev Seekoomar, 34, was found on Tuesday morning stabbed to death in his basement apartment at 326 Carroll Street in Carroll Gardens, the police said. The door to the apartment was pushed in and the apartment ransacked, indicating a possible burglary or robbery, but motive was being investigated, the police said.

The Daily News adds the details that the victims throat was slashed and that he may have been killed by a possible sex partner. The Post opines that the victim may have known the killer.

Scary and sad.

Our frequent coverage of Coney Island has landed us on an interesting mailing list. Yesterday, we got some interesting spam from Svetlana Timofeeva in the Republic of Moldova asking us if we’re interesting in buy a carnival ride called Top Spin 2: “Our company name is ‘Sinax’ SRL and we are the owner of a ride park in the Republic of Moldova, Chisinau city but now we would like to sell one of our ride-Top Spin 2. This ride was bought from Huss Company in 1997 after the major repairs, being manufactured in 1993. Our model represents a mobile version with 28 seats. The price is negotiable.” Well, we hear Thor Equities might be setting up a few rides on their land in Coney Island. Just kidding. Astroland already has one.–GL Inbox

One of the hallmarks of some of architect Robert Scarano’s work is the use of exterior wood. Among the buildings that have gotten this treatment is the one on Bond Street that we call the Bunker. (The same building with the dogs that attacked people and a small black dog last week.) The vicious attack reminded us that the very slow moving development has made a bit of progress in recent months independent of crazed killer dogs running the streets. But we digress. Our sole purpose here is to present a couple of photos of The Bunker with Wood.

We got an email yesterday alerting us to the opening of Metal and Thread on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook on Saturday. The shop opens Saturday (3/29) at Noon and there’s an opening party from 4PM-7PM. It’s located at 398 Van Brunt, which is between Coffey and Dikeman Streets. One can check out some of their products online by clicking here. The website describes the enterprise as:

two artists living by the sea…between the two of us,we design,create and produce all of our work in our studios…one studio is mostly metalwork,and the other is mostly thread…we also collaborate on several jewelry collections,including our favorite medium…which is a metal, fabric-like mesh medium…it is very cool and wonderfully lightweight.

Check it out starting on Saturday.

As we reported yesterday, PS 154 in Windsor Terrace became the first school in New York City to ban the use of styrofoam trays and substitute eco-friendly trays made from a sugar cane fiber known as Bagasse. Whereas styrofoam is a petroleum-based product that takes tens of thousands of years to break down, the cane fiber trays decompose within 45 days. City schools use 850,000 trays a day or four million every week, so a switch to an eco-friendly alternative would actually make a significant environmental contribution. The press event announcing the pilot program featured Council Member Bill de Blasio along with students and parents. Mr. de Blasio said that “It is deeply troubling that the DOE knowingly purchases and uses million of styrofoam trays a year despite the fact that styrofoam is extremely harmful to our environment and creates massive amounts of waste.” A bit more from the Council Member’s press release:

Polystyrene, more widely known as styrofoam, is composed of Benzene, Styrene and Ethylene. Styrofoam is a licensed trademark of its manufacturer, the Dow Chemical Company. Benzene and Styrene are both listed on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s hazardous substance list. Styrofoam does not biodegrade; it crumbles into fragments that have no expiration date. Styrofoam trays, as they fall apart, prevent other trash from decomposing.

Councilmember de Blasio has also introduced legislation, Intro 609, which would prohibit the use of styrofoam by City agencies and food establishments. The cities of Berkeley, California and Portland Oregon were some of the first to prohibit polystyrene food packaging. Due to public pressure, Mcdonald’s stop using polysterene packaging in 1990.

Styrene, a basic building block of polystyrene, is considered a possible carcinogen. Toxic chemicals can leak out of the products into the food that they contain (especially when heated in a microwave). Per the press release: “These chemicals threaten human health and reproductive systems. These products are made with petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource.”

Olive Vine, which has two Park Slope branches, is opening up a new location on Court Street. “All I got on this one at 316 Court Street at Degraw Street is what the sign says–fine Middleastern [sic] Food coming soon with the name of Olive Vine Cafe. Hey, if it means a secondary spot for falafel in the neighborhood, I’m all for it. A woman cannot live by Zaytoons alone.”–A Brooklyn Life

We’re slightly behind the curve about Brooklyn Flea this week, but given all the press big and cool new flea market coming to Fort Greene from our friends at Brownstoner has gotten the last few days, (New York Magazine hit it on Monday; the Daily News wrote it up at length yesterday.) one would have to be out of touch to not already know about it. It opens on April 6. We thought Brooklyn Flea was going to be cool, but it’s going to be even bigger and better than we figured, with so many vendors interested in participating, that there will be rotation from week to week (which will also give people a reason to keep returning). There’s going to be excellent food, concert to kick it off and more. It will be every Sunday from 10AM-5PM at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School on Clermont Avenue. The market will cover the 40,000-square-foot schoolyard. It’s not going out on a limb to predict that Brooklyn Flea is going to be a huge success.

It’s hard to make too much of this, but there something in the decline reported in “four Brooklyn neighborhoods hard hit by the subprime lending crisis over the past six months.” A report from HMS Associates says that home sales in Bed-Stuy, East New York, Brownsville and Ocean Hill were down 64 percent. The reports author says he thinks an analysis coming out soon will show a more widespread drop: “I think we’re going to see a lot less sales in the better neighborhoods and probably even a drop in prices as well.”–Crain’s

We love new blogs that get us to stop skimming and actually read. The wonderful new Carroll Gardens Brooklyn History blog. It combines informative posts about neighborhood history with vintage photos and some more current issues. Check out an excerpt from this post about the Carroll Street Bridge, which is one of our top five Brooklyn landmarks:

Monte’s Venetian Room, an Italian restaurant two blocks away on Carroll Street, repainted the bridge in green, white, and red – the colors of the Italian flag around 1978…On November 12, 1985 the Carroll Street Bridge rolled into the open position to let the tanker Jet Trader pass through the Gowanus Canal. Two days later, an inspection revealed that the bridge was plagued by serious structural problems. These included corroded steel, deck holes and overworked and failing machinery. Department of Transportation engineers did not consider the bridge sound, and therefore decided to leave it in the open position. This severed a nearly 100-year-old link between the Carroll Gardens and Park Slope communities in Brooklyn.

Inadvertently, the designation of the bridge as a City landmark became an obstacle in getting funding to upgrade and repair the bridge. To be eligible for State and Federal funding for the estimated $3 million rehabilitation cost, the bridge would have had to be rebuilt to “modern” standards – with a steel deck instead of a wooden one and with other changes. These would not have been in accordance with the wishes of the Landmarks Commission that requires that the bridge retain its historic elements that include its wooden decking…

All we can say is, keep those posts coming.

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

• Killings in Two Brooklyn Neigbhborhoods [NYT]
• Mr. Ratner’s Brooklyn Tech Pledge [AYR]
• Doctoroff Cleared to Work on Big City Projects [NYT]
• 150 Myrtle Revealed [Brownstoner]
• Street Trees Now Mandatory for New Development [110 Livingston News]
• Street Trees No Longer an Optional Accessory [CityRoom]
• Details About the Brooklyn Body Snatchers [NYDN]
• 11th Avenue “Appalachia” [Brooklynometry]
• All the Sights on Orient Avenue [New York Shitty]
• Buds and Circuses in the Park [A Year in the Park]
• Total Redo of Happy Days Diner [McBrooklyn]
• Brooklyn Flea Look See [Brooklyn Based]
• Life Stands Still at Farrells in Windsor Terrace [Lost City]

We’re a little early on this, but it’s never too soon to start thinking about the real onset of spring. April 5 is “Opening Day” at Prospect Park and will include the Little League Parade, a volunteer cleanup and other activities. Here’s a bit from Eugene Patron of the Prospect Park Alliance, who sent this email a while ago:

Just after the Yanks and the Mets take the field for their home game openers, nearly 2,000 Little League players will start the 2008 baseball season in Prospect Park. The pint-sized players will be joined by their friends, families, local community leaders and elected officials for a parade through Park Slope and on into the Park. Everyone then will gather at the Prospect Park Bandshell for a ceremonial first ball toss to start another great season of baseball and softball at the seven fields in Prospect Park’s Long Meadow and the six fields at the historic Parade Ground.

The Little League Parade gets underway at 10 a.m., starting at Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street, then moving along Seventh Avenue to 9th Street before turning up 9th Street into the Park and ending at the Bandshell. The Opening Day ceremony at the Bandshell will begin at approximately 10:30 a.m.

Also worth cheering for are Prospect Park’s dedicated volunteers who will be holding an Opening Day Clean-Up, April 5 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Anyone wanting to lend a hand can meet near the Tennis House. Call or email for more information: (718) 965-8960, volunteers@prospectpark.org. Young children can get into the spring cleaning spirit at the Park’s Lefferts Historic House during Spring Wash Day, 1 – 4 p.m. (both April 5 and April 6). Out come the washtubs and washboards as Lefferts turns back the clock to when Brooklynites cleaned without the help of electricity. Free.

Opening Day is the perfect time to take a ride on the Park’s historic 1912 Carousel, visit the interactive nature exhibits at the Prospect Park Audubon Center, explore the Park’s waterways on the electric boat Independence, or visit with the more than 80 species of wildlife at the Prospect Park Zoo!

Ah,the Independence is back in action, which means that winter has been completely dispatched.

The scaffolding around the Quadriad Development site on Bedford Avenue at N. 3 Street in Williamsburg is up and the Stop Sign…well, it’s still visible, as long as one is not in a hurry and looks carefully.

“Yesterday I finally brought our deceased Volvo’s license plates to the DMV Express on 34th Street. We knew that we couldn’t discontinue our insurance unless we surrendered them. Who can forget the hall of hell that the Department of Motor Vehicles used to be. Sometimes I think I am hallucinating when I go to the efficient, organized, even pleasant DMV Express. Like, is this for real? Ah yes, it used to be an unfathomably horrific experience to get a driver’s license renewed or register a car. Yes, horrific. You never knew how long you’d be there. Entire lines would be stalled waiting for an employee to return from lunch. Nowadays I go to the DMV with a kind of cautious glee. And yesterday was no exception. I looked forward to dumping the plates and truly entering life without a car.”–OTBKB

This seating comes from Eldert Street in Bushwick and even has seat belts. It comes via the roving camera of Miss Heather.

The Karl Fischer building at N. 4 Street and Driggs in Williamsburg has a name: nforth. The tagline is “Go forth.” Will construction sites next to it and behind it be a disincentive to buyers?–Curbed

[Photo courtesy of Charles Andrisano]

The photographer, Charles Andrisano, emails to say, “Spring is in the air, and I took advantage of our ever present sparrows. This shot was taken from my living room window in Bay Ridge two days before Easter Sunday.”

Today’s forecast calls for some spotty showers this morning, with cloudy skies that will yield to sun and a breeze, although outside the Brooklyn weather observatory it would appear the clouds have or are yielding early. The high will be 59. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low of 71.–Accuweather

PS 154 in Windsor Terrace officially became the first school in New York City to ban styrofoam lunch trays and replace them with environmentally friendly trays made from sugar fiber. Council Member Bill de Blasio appeared at a press event this morning with parents and students to make the announcement. City school currently use 850,000 styrofoam trays a day or more than 4 million per week. Per a press release from the Councilman’s office:

The new trays are made from sugar cane fiber known as Bagasse, made from cane fiber pulp left after juicing. They are designed to easily break down either in a landfill or in backyard composting, within 45 days. In contrast, the trays made of styrofoam typically take 10,000 years to break down and studies suggest the possibility of chemical migration into the food our children eat each day.

More detail tomorrow.

This is the scene a little while ago as sent to us by a GL reader in Carroll Gardens. A reader writes that a resident was found dead on in an apartment on Carroll Street near Bond and that police are trying to determine if foul play was involved. Our reader writes: “The site of the possible foul play is directly across the street from 333 Carroll, between Bond and Hoyt. The cops put caution tape around the entrance to the basement level of the house. The house’s owner said they were investigating the death of his tenant and the police are trying to figure out if it’s a murder. There were four cop cars there and other neighbors said police were questioning them and looking through their trash.” There’s no definitive indication, however, about whether the death was by natural causes, by accident or a homicide.

Community Board 6 has submitted its written testimony in the “scoping” process for the big Toll Brothers development on the Gowanus Canal. Among other things, the Community Board says the environmental review must look at the development in the context of other big projects that could be coming to the neighborhood and weigh its impact that way. It calls the scale of the Toll development “overwhelming compared to the surrounding built environment” and also says the project is, in some respects, “in direct conflict” with some goals of the city’s Gowanus rezoning framework and faces significant toxic challenges that weren’t outlined in the developer’s document. The Toll Brothers want to develop their project independent of the overall Gowanus rezoning.

In terms of the area that should be studied, the Community Board suggests:

A “larger land use study area” should include all development projects that have been proposed to begin before the build out year of 2011, within a ½ mile radius around the site. Such projects as the City’s Public Place project at the southeast corner of Smith and 5th Streets, projects currently under construction and planned along 4th Avenue…

CB6 notes the site’s long industrial history and says that the developers have not gone back far enough in time to gauge the site’s potential environmental problems. Here are some of the details of possible contamination including lead and heavy metals, oil and asbestos, which are valuable:

…the eastern portion of Block 452, Lot 1 was occupied by Reliance Paint Company, a paint manufacturing site, which suggests that lead, heavy metals, and other hazardous materials may very well be present on the site. Block 458 was divided into a southern half occupied by Standard Oil Company of New York, with several tanks on the eastern portion of the site, and a northern half occupied by Frank D. Creamer & Company, building materials storage. The 1939 atlas showed Pure Oil Company occupying Block 452, Lot 15 having as many as 5 storage tanks on site. It also shows on the western portion of Block 452, Lot 1 the construction of several “fire proof” buildings, later identified as Major Warehouses, Inc. in the 1950 atlas. Friable asbestos and/or other fire proofing materials used in the construction of the buildings could likewise be present on the site.

The document suggests the city study “split zoning” for the site and says the developers proposal for taller buildings on Bond Street is “inconsistent” will goals laid out in the overall Gowanus planning framework and with any contextual zoning that might be planned for Carroll Gardens. It also warns the buildings would cast shadows across the canal, “plunging a substantial portion of the canal into darkness during extended portions of the day must be studied, not only for it’s impact on nearby property owners, historic resources and public open spaces (e.g., streets, sidewalks, etc.), but the potential disruption to the fragile ecosystem present at the canal.” And, CB6 wonders if raising the project above the floodplain and “reconfiguring the site’s natural overall drainage system is likely to result in some unforeseen consequence.” (Perhaps increasing the flood threat for neighboring buildings?)

There is much more in the document. (A PDF can be viewed here. WARNING: PDF File.) We will close with this passage about how the immediate future of the Gowanus Canal could be incompatible with condo development, particularly as the pumping station that keeps the canal from completely smelling like crap is shut down:

During this time we anticipate the return of odors to the area resulting from this stagnation of the canal water, which we consider to be incompatible with simultaneous residential habitation proximate to the canal.

To put it more bluntly: Gross.

A special Carroll Gardens correspondent who’s been keeping an eye on the southern reaches of Court Street for us sent along these photos of the exterior of the space that will be the expansion of Frankies 457. Our friends at Eater had a look inside last month, and it’s unclear what’s up except that it’s a major expansion and that it’s a significant undertaking that will take some time.