If you’re interested in Gowanus Canal environmental issues, tonight is one of your nights. There’s a community forum on the canal from 6PM-8PM at the Belorusian Church at Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street. It will cover water quality issues, including the nasty issue of Combined Sewage Overflows (raw sewage flowing right into the canal) and future clean-up efforts. Participants include Department of Environmental Commissioner Pete Grannis, State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, “senior officials” from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Army Corps of Engineers, and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. Others on hand will include Members of Congress Yvette Clarke, Jarrold Nadler, and Nydia Velázquez, State Senator Martin Connor, Assembly Members Joan Millman and Felix Ortiz, City Council Member Bill DeBlasio and representatives of Community Board Six, Gowanus Canal CDC, Gowanus Canal Conservancy, FROGG, Urban Divers, UPROSE and Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation.

Contribute to a toy drive in Greenpoint at the Boulevard Tavern or the Diamond or give your coats to the NY Cares Coat Drive drop-off at the Church of the Ascension, at the Java Street entrance, on Sundays (11:00am – 1:00pm), Tuesdays (4:30pm – 7:30pm), Wednesdays (4:30pm – 7:30pm) and Saturdays (10:00am – 12:30pm)–Greenpointers

Need a unique piece of furniture made material rescued from a building in New York City. Then, go to 284 Van Brunt. “These guys are really giving new meaning to the phrase “straight-outta Brooklyn!” Brooklyn Farm Table not only builds extremely tasteful furniture, they do so using century-old wood that has been rescued from buildings in the five boroughs!–Green Brooklyn

The piers that still exist would be disconnected from land. There’s no use for a pier that the public can’t get to or that a ship’s crew couldn’t get to without a boat. If Ikea severs those piers, we’ll never get a permit to build them back and that infrastructure will be lost.

The interesting things is aerial photos from Microsoft Virtual Earth show Ikea may already be “severing” the piers. As for the comments submitted to the Army Corp, a source notes:

This new permit gives us another chance to ring in. It is a different type of permit requiring public comment, thus the notice. Of course, all the buildings are now gone and Graving Dock No. 1 is filled. But maybe we can keep the piers from being severed and maybe influence the development of the esplanade.

Assuming they haven’t already been chopped. A letter from the Roebling Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology is below. You can view an image of the letter to the Army Corps from the Waterfront Museum by clicking here.

The Daily News’ Jotham Sederstrom has solved a Coney Island mystery. State Sen. Carl Kruger say that he “dipped into his campaign coffers and spent ‘several thousand’ dollars to bus more than 400 residents who stormed the city’s Coney Island redevelopment meeting.” Kruger paid for 10 school buses, bought hundreds of hats and printed leaflets. (There have also been many suggestions that some of the protesters themselves were paid to attend.) Per Mr. Sederstrom’s article:

“I paid for it all out of my campaign fund,” said Kruger, whose move forced city officials to cancel the jam-packed meeting at Coney Island Hospital.

“I bought the hats, made the signs, printed the leaflets and paid for the buses. I financed the entire thing.

“Nobody knows how much [the redevelopment is] going to cost, who’s going to do it or when it’s going to get done,” said Kruger. “Quite frankly, Coney Island and Brighton Beach residents are too old to buy green bananas, to buy into failed promises and dashed dreams.”

According to state campaign finance regulations, campaign committee spending has to be related to running for office or holding public office. No complaints have been filed, but any that are will be investigated.

1) We were curious about the two barges that were reported to have sunk in the Erie Basin at some point over the Thanksgiving weekend. A source noted that the sunken barges were doing work on the removal of a submerged dry dock. No word on why they went down.

2) As part of the agreement that allowed Ikea to demolish historic structures on its property, the retailer documented the demolished buildings and will take steps like noting the outline of the Graving Dock which it filled for parking. It also, one might recall, documented evidence of a previously buried Graving Dock. (The retailer may be using paving stones removed from Beard Street to accomplish the task.) Ikea is preparing “interpretive panels” and other material for display on the “public esplanade” around the parking lot. A source notes: “The bollards and cleats–equipment used by ships for mooring–are being painted IKEA blue and yellow for installation on the esplanade. I fear that it will just be a big billboard rather than a really interpretation of the history we have lost.” Ikea also repainted the old shipyard cranes on the site, changing them from blue to gray in the process of giving them some much-needed upkeep. Hopefully, it is not primer for painting them blue and yellow and affixing Ikea logos to them.

Activists trying to influence the shape of the Ikea in Red Hook seem to have been stymied at every turn of the process, particularly in terms of efforts to preserve historic buildings on the site and protect its working Graving Dock. Because of the site’s waterfront location, the Army Corps of Engineers has played a role in the process, although advocates contend that it has circumvented the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Now, it appears that notification of a public comment period (that ends today) wasn’t given to Community Board 6, at least according to an email we received from someone that requested CB6 ask for a public hearing because of this. Here is a description of the process from Mary Habstritt, who is chair of the Preservation Committee of a rabble rousing group known as the Roebling Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology:

This permit, because it facilitates IKEA’s development should result in a full review of all the “historic resources” under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). Historic resources takes in any buildings, engineered structures such as bridges or dry docks, or archaeological remnants over 50 years old. NHPA essentially says that any federal agency providing funds or permits which facilitate a project must look at all the impacts upon historic resources, determine if the resources are historically significant (not everything over 50 years old is important), and for those which are significant, develop a way to avoid or mitigate any “adverse impacts.”…

There are a lot of layers of bureaucracy that have governed what happened at the IKEA site which made it fairly impenetrable to the public and preservationists. For instance, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, then a project of the Municipal Art Society, spoke at every ULURP hearing as did Red Hook’s own Waterfront Museum. The National Trust for Historic Preservation also wrote a letter that is part of the ULURP public record opposing demolition of the buildings, including the 1867 pumphouse. Yet, IKEA fairly successfully claimed in the press that the MAS-led fight to save the Graving Dock came too late because they had the chance to speak during ULURP and didn’t.

An interesting public process from beginning to end.

Some Coney Island Message Board regulars are urging that people send emails to State. Sen. Carl Kruger, who paid for the protest that descended on a Coney Island Development Corp. meeting a couple of weeks ago. The poster known as Captain Nemo has posted a link to the Senator’s online email page and is asking others to send him their thoughts. In the meantime, here are excerpts from a letter that Coney Island USA’s David Gratt sent after that meeting to Sen. Kruger:

I was disappointed by your decision to crash the information session scheduled for the evening of Monday, November 19 and am confused by your opposition. You have indicated that proposal to designate private property as parkland is “backdoor eminent domain” but that does not appear to be the truth. As I am sure you are aware, there is private property that is owned and managed within the boundaries of the Adirondack State Park and a number of our National Parks and that seems to work for everyone involved. While property in this situation is encumbered by the designation, the owners still own, maintain, and operate their property, and are able to pass it along through their families. In many cases, the property could be sold to the government at a pre-agreed on price when the owners decide to sell. This is an accepted way of facilitating the increase in park space throughout the country…

But I am especially disappointed because while I was in the Bronx, fighting to keep the Yankees out of Macombs Dam Park (another potential example of “backdoor eminent domain”) your office was unfortunately silent. Why is this issue important to you now, when it was not before? I am also somewhat confused by your “three questions” of “What will it cost,” “Who will develop it,” and “How long will it take?”.

It seems to me that the city’s proposal needs constructive criticisms at this point. I have a number of concerns myself, including: the issue of working with private owners in a public park; the issue of local retail taking the place of entertainment retail; and the issue that the proposal does not respect Coney Island’s history in a tangible sense. If you could clarify your opposition, I would be happy to make your position known on the Coney Island Message board and perhaps there are issues that we could work on together…

It is going to get a lot more interesting as time goes on.

We’re actually pointing this out in partly in jest, but only partly. The city has started a pilot “Notify NYC” effort for which one can sign up to get text messages, emails or calls from city government with emergency messages. (The press releases went out yesterday, and many papers, including the Times, have stories this morning.) We’re not sure we want a text message from Mayor Bloomberg that a storm surge is about to drown us, but even if we did, Brooklyn isn’t included in the program. Here’s the basic info:

Notify NYC is a new service designed to enhance the delivery of emergency information to the public. During the pilot phase, the City will test different kinds of public messaging, including email, text messaging and telephone, to determine the best way to launch a citywide program. There are currently four communities involved in the pilot.

The areas are Lower Manhattan, the Northeast Bronx, the Rockaways and Staten Island. You can read more and sign up here, but that’s about it, if you live in Brooklyn, for now. We’re sure they’ll toss us in there after the pilot.

The “future visioning” effort for Flatbush called Imagine Flatbush 2030 is coming up on Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30 at the Brooklyn College Student Center. The effort is a joint venture of the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC) and the Municipal Art Society. Sustainable Flatbush describes it as:

a community visioning and dialogue process — designed to get you together with other Flatbush community members to collectively create a more sustainable neighborhood. If you care about the environment, community health, protecting diversity, ensuring affordable housing and a whole host of other community issues, this is the meeting for you!

Given that a lot of Brooklyn communities aren’t planning for 2009, let alone 2030, it’s a very interesting undertaking. (Click on the image above to see it at full size.)

One imagines there was pretty stiff competition in this category, yet, some clear favorites seem to have emerged as providing the crappiest service in the Burg. Black Betty and Juliette lead the pack.–Gridskipper

From Lefferts Place near Grand: “I left my apartment at 7:30 am on Saturday morning and found a puddle of urine and a used condom on the landing outside my door. There was some sort of drug baggie, cigarette butts, and a coffee cup on the stairs on other floors. The front door and gate were wide open when I left in the morning. I’ve only lived in the building for a year but there haven’t been any incidents like this so it was obviously quite disturbing.”–Clinton Hill Blog

Picture one [left] is of very nice, renovated brownstone with, not-quite-original- but-it’ll-do, iron shutters. On Union Street in Carroll Gardens. This lovely thing sits across from 321 Union Street. See Picture 2 [right]. 321 seems to have gotten lost on the way to Miami, or Osaka. 321’s units were all pre-sold, sight unseen. A 2 bedroom is a steal at $900.000. The sage paint color makes this building easy to find in the dark. The tree in front, until we complained, had its base and roots completely cemented over. The owner/contractor/designer whoever, actually cut the cement away but I am not sure he would have unless we said something about it. He balked at the idea that the exterior color wasn’t in tune with the neighborhood.

The Corcoran site describes the striking 321 as follows: “This new 7 unit boutique condo provides the best of modern design in brownstone Brooklyn.”