Billy Stein, the developer of the controversial 360 Smith building is apparently planning a presentation about his building at the next meeting of the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association. The CORD group has been agitating to get information from the developer about the building and has, in fact, posted 67 questions it would like answered. Mr. Stein, however, is said to be reluctant “to put certain things in writing” because he may be reluctant to find the information posted online and, perhaps, making its way into print media. Here’s an email from Council Member Bill de Blasio’s District Director Tom Gray that is circulating via the CGNA email list:

If you missed it at the last CGNA meeting Billy Stein has requested a personal appearance at the next meeting. I anticipate he will be prepared to answer all of your questions regarding the project. With the world of blogging I can sympathize why he would not want to put certain things in writing. It limits the ability to debate and answer follow up questions in real time before information is posted.

At his last appearance before the CGNA, Mr. Stein showed revised sketches of the 360 Smith building but refused to allow the rendering to be photographed. He also asked all journalists (not just online ones) not to quote anything he said.

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

• On MLK Day, the Question of Jobs, Housing and Infrastructure [AYR]
• MLK Day Comes to Brooklyn [McBrooklyn]
• Dr. King on “the Fierce Urgency of Now” [Brooklyn Junction]
• Update on Arsenal Found in Brooklyn Heights [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
• Arsenal Found at Home of Columbia Professor [Sun]
• Brooklyn Heights Bomb Stash [NYDN]
• Possible Bias Attack in Crown Heights [WNBC]
• Bank of America Paints Court Street Red [PMFA]
• Carlton Avenue Bridge Closing Slightly Postponed [No Land Grab]
• Some Brooklyn Blogger Faces [Reclaimed Home]
• Bushwick Doesn’t Want to Say Goodbye to Blue Monday [Gothamist]
• Brooklyn Pet Psychic [NYT]
• Coney Island Videos [Kinetic Carnival]
• A Look Into Club Shadows [Bay Ridge Rover]
• The Former Asimov Candy Store [Brooklynometry]

Brooklyn bloggers had one of their semi-regular meet ups yesterday at the Frank White Cafe + Gallery in Clinton Hill. The meeting was hosted by the Clinton Hill Blog. Check out an excellent photo set of the meeting posted by Flatbush Gardener on his flckr page.–Flatbush Gardener/flickr

Play space, open space, green space – what do you imagine?!? Join us for a group discussion hosted by the Old Stone House and Brooklyn Parks to get your input on potential renovations to the 5th Avenue side of the park between 3rd and 4th streets. Please RSVP and let us know if you are planning to attend –oldstonehouse@oldstonehouse.org or call 718-768-3195. This is a wonderful opportunity for community input, and we look forward to hearing from you.

It will take place at the Old Stone House in JJ Byrne Park, on Fifth Avenue between Third Street and Fourth Street. Hopefully, the organizers will widely distribute a summary of the meetings and of the conclusions to share with the broader community.

There are a lot of activities at Old First in Park Slope today in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. There is an amazingly long list and the program runs from 10AM to 7:30PM. Check out the details.–OTBKB

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s day, the full “I Have a Dream” speech.

On Friday, a thread popped up on the Prospect Heights Forum on Brooklynian about a little white dog that had been found wandering on Eastern Parkway and had been taken in. There was discussion about finding his owners. The dog’s photo was posted on flickr. By Friday night, he was reunited with his people. We love a happy ending.–Brooklynian & flickr

In the summer, when it gets blazing hot, we will occasionally post a photo or video of Brooklyn in winter. So, during this little cold snap, we bring you the Floating Pool. Ah, summer.

We went out at 6pm tonight (Saturday), to the sounds of construction at the corner of Court and Union in Carroll Gardens, and are now home at 11:59pm, enjoying the periodic boom of about 5 guys tossing construction debris off the roof of the building across the street into a metal dumpster. You’d think the n’hood opposition to the building so far would have made the developer a little more sensitive…I’ve called 311 and the local precinct, for what it’s worth.

The other email said, “Disturbing my sleep is one thing, but tossing asbestos around like that?“

We saw another email that said the Department of Environmental Protection responded to a 311 call and our special Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Correspondent sent in the photo above of air monitoring machines in back of the building. We don’t know if these are newly-installed or have been there throughout the process.

In the same vein about concerns in the neighborhood about what is going on at the Clarett Group project, a couple of comments left by GL readers are also of interest:

I live nearby and routinely see shadowy figures leaving the building and driving out of the parking lot at midnight. It’s a very sketchy scene. I can only assume they’ve begun the demolition and asbestos removal in the dark of night…that or they’re having some great poker games in an empty building.

And this:

I live adjacent to the project – they seem to be doing all of the asbestos transfer to the enclosed dumpster from 11:00pm on through the night.

As an Architect who deals with construction issues on a day-to-day basis, this is a perfect example of sneaking around and questionable business practices. There does not seem to be work going on during the day that would necessitate a “night shift” due to trade conflicts.

Unless a tight deadline requires a 24 hour shift, the only reason to do the work at night is to avoid drawing attention to what’s going on and begs the question: What exactly IS going on?

We’re not sure whether the complaints about noisy midnight work tweaking the neighborhood quality of life or the bags of unknown debris being tossed off the roof in dark of night are more compelling. Both are equally interesting in an “I wouldn’t want to live near this (possibly dangerous) mess” kind of way. It would appear there are some serious questions and/or fears about how a potentially deadly substance is being handled right in the middle of Carroll Gardens.

We return to that hot spot of lust and organic products, if not Brooklyn Missed Connections–the Park Slope Food Coop–for this week’s top choice, which amuses in a subtle way:

Park Slope Food Coop – Wed – Coconut- milk-buying Nursing Student – w4m – 30

Maybe a minute or so into our conversation (I was scanning your soup ingredients), I realized I’d had that particular conversation before. Did you realize that we met sometime early last year, albeit briefly, in a bar in the South Slope? You forced your number on me although I was there with a couple of guy friends. It was pretty brazen of you, so I called, we spoke, and that was that. Anyway, you’re a lot cuter than I remembered you being in a dimly lit bar, and I was too dazed from a long day of classes to play the “I know you somehow” game, sooo…if you would like to swap short biographical sketches with me a third time, get in touch.

Definitely meant to be.

• Three Die in Bensonhurst Apartment Fire [NYT]
• Bensonhurst Apartment Blaze Tragedy [NYDN]
• Finally Telling Time Again [Lost City]
• Goodbye Blue Monday [New York Shitty]
• Foraging at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket [A Year in the Park]
• Remembering Sunset Park Rock Pioneer Ron Ardito [Sunset Park Blog]
• The Fight Over the Clones [I’m Seeing Green]
• Brooklyn Heights Obama Rally Today [McBrooklyn]
• Dumbo Weekly Links [Dumbo NYC]
• The Windowless Room [Bed-Stuy Banana]
• Jane Jacobs Coverage Collected [AYR]
• Bensonhurst Get Together [NYT]

The Khalil Gibran Int’l Academy has been much in the news, starting with issues having to do with a Park Slope location that was changed to Boerum Hill. In any case, the school comes back to Park Slope for a night on Tuesday, January 29 with an event at the United Methodist Church that starts at 6:30PM. It’s called “Seeking Justice, Speaking Truth” and described as an “evening of celebration & performance to support Khalil Gibran Int’l Academy. Stand w/us against anti-Arab & anti-Muslim racism!” The church is located at 410 6th Ave, which is the corner of 6th Ave and 8th St.

Every week, we like to pick a few comments that GL readers have left during the previous seven days and highlight a few of them. Here are this week’s somewhat random selections:

340 Court Street #2: Collateral Damage Edition. “You don’t think anything can shake these brownstones until a backhoe starts banging away in the next lot, then it does seem like London in the Blitz. We live about 100 yards due west of this house and our block shook like this when they were sinking a new elevator shaft for the library’s new handicapped entrance. We had some interior wall crack; we also had to fix water damage to our side wall foundation walls when their excavation exposed it to the elements.”

J.J. Byrne Park: Slow Going in Boymelgreen Section. “The building’s nowhere near finished. The building owner’s caught in the money crunch, like many other developers of his type. His other building on Atlantic Ave. across the street from the jail is having the same problems – exterior looks mostly finished but there’s a lot inside that needs work.”

A Beautiful Carroll Gardens Recollection. “I feel that Carroll Gardens is not alone in what this person is saying. I live in a building where a woman lived and so did half of her family. She moved nextdoor and raised 5 children in one or two apartments. Back in the day when If someone moved out, you could claim that space and move right in. She has stories of the delis and movie theatres that lined court street. The old bars along the Waterfront. I think there is comraderie among some of the new guard, but, not all. I have been watching the generational ebb and flow for almost 20 years. I am hurt, now, when I walk into a store on Smith Street and am followed, as if I am a shoplifter. Even more saddened when I am percieved as a cold hearted “Liberal”. The days of stoop chats are waning, especially in CG. Soon our beloved row houses, which I had taken for granted all these years, will all wear caps of glass and steel and no one will care, years from now, what came before…downsize, now. Preserve what is unique for future generations.”

Citypoint Tower: 65 Stories on Flatbush. “For me the problem’s not height, per se, and it’s not a matter of NIMBY-ism. The problem with Downtown Brooklyn is that within five years it will be a Rich People Only, zone and have only a tiny smattering of non-white faces. That’s boring and ugly.”

Some random Brooklyn vids posted to the YouTube recently.

Fulton Ferry State Park in Dumbo is open again. A reader writes to tell us that it was open yesterday and, may in fact, have reopened earlier in the week. The park was closed in December after structural problems were detected at the old coffee warehouse in the park, which is called the Empire Stores by many. Officials said they had to close the park to keep the public safe from any debris that might fall.

Only yesterday, while noting a Brooklyn Paper story about the problem, we wondered when the park would reopen and why it had been closed down, given that car were parking on the street directly below a part of the building where cracks were found. A state parks spokesperson didn’t give a date for reopening, saying, “Right now, our primary concern is keeping people safe.” Developer David Walentas had the right to develop the property, but lost it in 2002 to developer Shaya Boymelgreen. Mr. Boymelgreen, in turn, had the rights taken away in 2006. The Empire State Development Corp. notes that it has failed to find a developer. An opponent of the real estate development aspect of the big Brooklyn Bridge Park plan directly blames the ESDC. Someone from the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, which supports the park plan, includes lawsuits filed by opponents on the list of reasons things have gone so slowly and notes the State Parks Department has a tiny budget for maintenance. Meanwhile, one of the most historic buildings in Dumbo has been allowed to deteriorate to a point at which its structural stability is threatened. At least the park is open again.

This email, which is circulating via the Boerum Hill Yahoo Group, is about some less than savory drug-related goings on on and/or near Dean Street:

Yesterday I found a syringe in my front yard. While I have seen these laying around in the past, this one was FILLED WITH BLOOD! I was totally grossed out!!! I know we have a meth lab in the hood, I guess junkies frequent the area too. I know there’s nothing to be done, but felt the need to share, and vent my frustration.

Never dull.

A significant amount of open space and parks were promised as part of the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning that allowed development of buildings up to 30-40 stories tall on the East River waterfront. Residents have been frustrated by the slow progress on the city’s parks commitment versus the relatively quick pace of development that has followed. The rezone, which was not embraced by everyone locally, and was on one of the most significant neighborhood makeover attempts by the Bloomberg Administration. The open space component and “inland” downzone that was part of the bigger package were intended to create neighborhood support for the highrise part of the plan.

From the Pierrepont Playground at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade: “Your nanny finished one red bull, popped a top on the other and proceeded to lose her patience or rather continued to lose her patience with your little girl all dressed in pink. One twin or close in age child was outside of the double stroller and one was inside by herself. The nanny handled her very harshly, buckled her in with a meanness and just was very tough with every movement…The way the nanny handled this child in public was rough. I wonder if her touch was softer when she got her home, out of the limelight?…”–I Saw Your Nanny via McBrooklyn

Is architect Robert Scarano still working on a controversial Carroll Gardens building? Carroll Gardens blogger Pardon Me For Asking reported that Tom Gray from Council Member Bill De Blasio’s office had told people at the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association Meeting on Monday that Mr. Scarano is no longer working on the project at 333 Carroll Street that has come to be known as the Carroll Gardens Hell Building. Mr. Scarano is still noted as the architect on the Dept. of Buildings website, but then, no new documents have been filed. Queens Crap points out today that there is a comment on PMFA that might have been added by Mr. Scarano, who has been known to leave commments on website posts concerning him or his work. This comment is anonymous. It says, “Of course I am still on the website as the architect, dumbass, because I am.” Time will tell.