This announcement caught our attention with its headline: How Safe is Your Garden, Really? There are actually many issues that could threaten its safety, which is why there’s a “Community Gardeners Forum” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Auditorium tomorrow (6/16) from 10AM-1:30PM. Numerous community gardens across the city are threatened, most of them by development. In Harlem, for instance, 20 gardens could disappear. The release we got says, in part, Join Us on June 16. Help us revitalize the unified voice of community garden citywide, and work with us to preserve and strengthen your garden and all gardens.” The BBG Auditorium is located in the BBG at 1000 Washington Avenue.

If you’ve got children and you need something to do with them tomorrow, think about doing up the Dumbo Family Picnic. It takes place tomorrow (6/16) from 3PM to 7PM and it’s sponsored by the DUMBO Parents Organization. The location is Main Street, between Water and Plymouth Streets. The email we got said:

At 3 pm, the ‘urban’ picnic will start on Main Street where you and your family will enjoy the following entertainment, food, activities – all for only $20 per family – sponsored/donated by local retailers and businesses:

–Performance by Dirty Socks Funtime Band:
Voted #1 kids band by Time Out NY Kids – performance starts at 4pm.
–Puppet shows – 5:30pm on Main St and 6:30pm at Brooklyn Bridge
Park
–Bouncy castle / face painting / sand art / balloon sculpting /
circus camp activities
–Ice cream / hotdogs / corn on the cob
–Iced coffee / iced tea / lemonade
–Gift bags for kids
–Special appearances by Flower Fairy, Polka Dots and Blue Bunny!

“Traditional picnic” to follow in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Bring Your Own Picnic Basket. The cost is $20 per family. For more information click here.

Inclusion on the list “means a lot to New York City and to Brooklyn” said Municipal Art Society director Kent Barwick. “It is a recognition that the places where people worked are an underpinning” of our culture.

Much of the focus of the remarks was on preserving remaining industry and on saving the working waterfront as much as it was on saving historic buildings that are threatened. “Maintaining a vibrant, working waterfront is essential,” said City Council Member Jessica Lappin.

Ward Dennis, a member of Community Board 1 and member of the Waterfront Alliance of Greenpoint & Williamsburg noted that three years ago the group, which advocates for historic preservation in North Brooklyn, could not get a meeting with the former head of the City Council’s Landmarks Committee, whereas the current Chair, Ms. Lappin, was a speaker at today’s event.

“This listing says that this history matters to all of us,”Mr. Dennis said.

Brownstoner has more photos of the event here and boat ride that followed it here. The Waterfront Preservation Alliance has a blog item here. The MAS has also launched a new Save Industrial Brooklyn website.

The church is at the epicenter of a neighborhood that is changing around it, a stone’s throw from all the development on Roebling Street, Karl Fischer Row on Bayard Street and side streets like N. 7th. It’s also near a number of other big developments slated to rise on Union Avenue. It is also directly behind a construction site at 525 Union Avenue where building work has been going on on Sundays during church services.

The developer has been contacted by the church and promised to stop the work, but it’s continued. The Department of Buildings has been contacted, according to GL’s source, but (drum roll) hasn’t responded. We videotaped the hideous noise around 10:30 one Sunday morning a few weeks ago. You can see it and and listen to it below, as we figure it’s worth reposting here for illustrative purposes.

Some parishioners have even thought about protesting at the construction site one Sunday instead of going to mass if the booming, clanking, crashing, cutting and hammering don’t stop.

Community Board 6 held its first meeting since the Atlantic Yards/Gowanus Massacre by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Council Member David Yassky that ended the service of nine longstanding members. The Board voted down a resolution criticizing the dismissals and suggesting that the “independence and, indeed, the fundamental value of Community Boards are undermined” by removal of members based on their position on controversial issues. The Board voted against the measure by a voted of 14-6 with a large number of abstentions.

“There was no litmus test and I was not asked to rubber stamp anything,” one of the new Markowitz appointees said.

Nearly an hour of last night’s meeting in Park Slope was taken up by introductions and an explanation of the workings of the body for the new members, several of whom arrived more than a half-hour after the 6:30 meeting start time. CB6 Chair Richard Bashner thanked the deposed board members “for their many, many years–and in some cases decades–of service.” Mr. Bashner named most of the members that were removed by Mr. Markowitz to non-member positions on CB6 committees.

“As an advisory group were are strongest when we work together,” Mr. Bashner said, although he added that “very strong advocacy…is perfectly fine.” CB6 was noted for the opposition of many members to Atlantic Yards last year, a factor that played into the dismissals. The upcoming rezoning of Gowanus, in which CB6 will have an important role, was believed to be another element in the decision. There is significant debate over the density of development in the neighborhood and the Borough President supports zoning at the higher end of the scale.

“I’m honored to be accepted as a new member,” said Brad Lander, the former director of the Fifth Avenue Committee and Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development who was appointed by Council Member Bill de Blasio. Mr. Lander, who is well-respected in the community, has been named the chair of CB6’s Housing Committee.

The dismissals reverberated at the end of the meeting, when a community member presented the board with a symbolic rubber stamp. “What the Borough President did was disgusting and insulting to the community board, but you guys showed courage,” he said.

Scalino is open and serving up Italian food in a cozy little space with big windows at the corner of 10th Street and Seventh Avenue. The menus includes appetizers like Peperonata (red and gold pepper stew)and Sauteed Baby Artichokes. There are pastas like Spinach & Ricotta Ravioli. Right now it’s cash only and BYOB. It’s open 5-11 Monday through Friday and 11-11 on Saturday and Sunday. It’s the third restaurant to occupy the space in the last several years. There is discussion of the new spot on Chowhound, including reviews like the follwing:

We thoroughly enjoyed the food. My companion began with the Antipasto Toscano (prosciutto, salame & parmigiano) and I with the Sauteed Baby Artichokes. We followed with Paglia E Fieno Con Sugo (fresh thin pasta w/ meat sauce) and Pappardelle W/ Tomato Cream & Smoked Bacon respectively. It was all prepared with quality ingredients, executed well, and delicious!

The discussion thread is growing as more people try it out.

In the end, after nearly two months of wrangling and angry debate, the plan to install bike lanes and other traffic calming measures on Ninth Street in Park Slope was narrowly endorsed by Community Board 6 last night. The vote was 17-14 with two abstentions. In April, CB6 had referred a motion endorsing the plan back to its Transportation Committee, which held another meeting and produced another motion in support of the bike lanes. The support is conditioned on efforts to direct bicyclists to Prospect Park’s 15th Street entrance, to study traffic calming measures on Prospect Park West and to examine the impact of the bike lanes after they are installed.

The Board’s vote, however, was largely a formality, as the Department of Transportation has indicated it would go ahead with the plan regardless of Community Board backing. There was a final burst of debate before the vote last night, with opponents again speaking out against the measure as supporters held up signs in favor of the bike lanes. DOT intends to begin installing the bike lanes shortly.

The online petition to create an express F Train and extend the V Train to Brooklyn as a local got more than 750 signatures in little more than a day, which would seem to indicate the idea being pushed by the blog Brooklyn Streets has some support among residents that use the line. In the meantime, blogger Second Ave. Sagas indicates there are practical obstacles to the plan including track switches that no longer exist after Kings Highway to scheduling problems with extending the V and having it share tracks with the F between Second Avenue and Jay Street. He offers another solution to full express services:

Run the F as an express train from Jay St./Borough Hall to Church Ave. The F would stop at York St., Jay St., 7th Avenue and Church Ave. before running local to Coney Island. Meanwhile, extend the V to Church Ave. as the local. Church Ave. is the last four-track stop on the Culver Line and provides for a switch so that the V can turn around and head back to Manhattan.

With this plan, the stations with the highest number of riders would see staggered service. Carroll Gardens riders wouldn’t have to shove Park Slope residents into already-crammed trains in the morning. The V would become a more viable line in Manhattan, and everyone in Brooklyn would be happy.

You can sign the petition here.

Several people in the community, when made aware of the negotiations, say a private developer shouldn’t get control of the land. They say the vacant land and waterfront parking lots should be turned into a public park or used for amusements accessible to the working class, such as a new home for Astroland Park.

“They want to put luxury housing in, but when you come down here it’s a very democratic place — you see every variety of human being that you can imagine,” says Coney Island resident Ida Sanhoff. “When they put in this luxury housing, how are those people going to feel about going to the beach and sitting next to all these poor people?”

Taconic, which controls a 99-year lease of the landmarked Child’s building and owns an adjacent vacant block, in addition to vacant property north of KeySpan Park, plans to build a mixed-use development on the waterfront site. Plans include ground-floor “entertainment retail ,” housing and “food-related uses” in the restaurant.

The Eagle reports that Astroland’s Carol Albert is interested in the land:

Carol Hill Albert, whose family has operated Astroland for 45 years, says she’d be very interested in moving her rides west of KeySpan, to land owned by the Parks Department…Albert has, in the past, offered to help the city pay to move Astroland’s rides anywhere in Coney Island, and recently agreed to take them off the auction block in response to pleas from elected officials.

But despite the ostensibly fervent effort on the part of the city to keep Astroland in Coney Island, Albert says she often feels put on the back burner, in favor of the big developers like Taconic and Thor Equities, and left to fend for herself.

If you’ve joined the show midway, we should note that Ms. Albert sold the property on which Astroland is currently located to Thor.

Related Post:
Taconic Working to Buy Land from Parks Department

We came across this on the Coney Island Message Board and are posting it because we sure as hell didn’t know this, as per the person that posts as newbeacher:

As most people know, there’s a reason for the boards in the boardwalk being laid out in two directions: vertical and diagonal. The reason that there are 2 paths with vertical boards is for TIRES. Bikes, wheelchairs, etc. When bikes roll over the diagonal boards, they rumble and probably cause some damage.

When I go out biking in the morning, there are HUNDREDS of walkers just meandering down the bike lane. They can’t understand why a biker is racing towards them down the vertical boards.

I wish the parks department would paint “bike lane” or the image of a bicyclist on the vertical boards so these morons people will understand the difference. Other cities (Ocean City, etc) have properly designated the bike lane. I’m tired of playing “obstacle course” with old people residents.

To which came this response from the person posting as Switchback:

This is exactly why the proposed bike path would be a waste of time. I’ll bet you that even if the bike lane on the boardwalk was painted bright yellow and had orange traffic cones lining it and every block their was a huge billboard which read “Warning: The yellow area is for bicycles and other vehicles only” and had a drawing of a stick figure on a bicycle running over another stick figure people would still walk along the bike lane. I can tell you that in the parks nothing has stopped people from walking along bike paths and horse paths no matter how clearly they are marked. On the Brooklyn Bridge half is marked for bikes and yet people just walk along that side without a care in the world. Now imagine there was a path running along the beach in front of the boardwalk. Imagine how inviting it would be for people to walk along it even though the boardwalk is only a few feet away and there is acres and acres of beach right next to it.

The best thing to do is redesign the boardwalk so that bikers can use all but the very edges giving them the opportunity to steer around pedestrians. The bike paths that have always worked the best are the ones as wide as an average city street.

So, we find bike lane discussion on the Coney Boardwalk.

Goodbye, Mr. Stuckey:

• Goodbye, Mr. Stuckey; Atlantic Yards head departs for “new challenges” [AYR]
• Atlantic Yards Project Gets New Leadership [Crains]
• Breaking News from FCR’s Board Room [DDDB]
• Stuckey Leaves Atlantic Yards [TRE]
• Sayonara Stuckey [No Land Grab]

Everything Else:

• Planned Parks, Brooklyn Waterfront Included, May Cost Too Much [NYT]
• Quadriad Reprieve [Brooklyn 11211]
• What’s Up with 238 Smith? [Brownstoner]
• Petition for More F in Brooklyn [Gothamist]
• The Joy of the G Train [11222]
• Forever Double Parked on Google [Streets Blog]
• What’s Up with the Selective Parking Rule Enforcement? [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Gravesend is a Neighborhood of Change [amNY]
• “Jewish ‘Hate’ Group vs. Charles Barron” [NYP]
• Back to the McGolrick Park Bathrooms [newyorkshitty]
• Check Out DUMBOLIO Show on Saturday [Dumbo NYC]
• The Elephant in the Playroom at Community Books in Park Slope Tonight [OTBKB]
• New Glass Bus Stop in Kensington [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Coney Island Photography Workshop and Seminar [Kinetic Carnival]

As a photographer living on the edge of the proposed site, this book is one part of a long-term project to document the built environment in and around the project site in the hopes that greater public awareness will stop the project or cause it to be redesigned such that it would enhance, rather than replace the neighborhood.

The book is available online by clicking here. It is $40 in hard cover and $25 in soft cover. Mr. Collins posts on flickr as threecee and many of the photos are in this set. We’ve featured Mr Collins’ photos many times on GL, and we’re thrilled to see that he’s collected his excellent work and his observations and put them into a book.

We return to our “Say What?” series of compromised signage with this entry from the Greepoint Historic District, although some of the boundaries are a little unclear on the sign.

If you’re interested in the future of kids in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, you might want to check out tonight’s “Town Hall Meeting on the Public Schools” in the community. A notice for the meeting says that “elected officials and community leaders are asking the Department of Education to work with the community to develop a comprehensive plan for the future of District 14’s public schools.” The meeting is sponsored by Community Board 1, the Community Education Council of District 14, the North Brooklyn Alliance and the Williamsburg/Greenpoint Schools Initiative Group. It will take place at Automotive High School, which is located at 50 Bedford Ave (across from McCarren Park, between North 12th and Lorimer Streets). The meeting starts at 6:30.

Local public schools have been hit hard by displacement brought on by rapid gentrification and will face significant increases in student population as the number of residents increases by the tens of thousands. “It has been 2 years since the City passed its Rezoning Initiative, our community has been hit by a tidal wave of gentrification, but the Department of Education has yet to come here to discuss the future of our schools,” says Kate Yourke, a meeting organizer. “We have schools half-empty from displacement, while most of the new families choose schools outside of District 14. Beginning with this Town Hall Meeting, our community is mobilizing so our schools can serve the needs of all our residents, and form a place where our children can build a lasting community here.”

Discusion will include creating school budgets “based on real population numbers” and the “impact of thousands of new residents in the district.”

Fascinating news on the Atlantic Yards front: Jim Stuckey, president of the Atlantic Yards Development Group for Forest City Ratner, has resigned. Atlantic Yards Report writes that Mr. Stuckey, “the developer’s point man for more than three years on the project, has resigned from the company, ‘effective immediately, citing personal reasons and a desire to pursue new challenges.'”

AYR also wonders, “Was Stuckey fired? Well, we can’t be certain, and Stuckey did lead Atlantic Yards past some significant challenges (though others remain). Still, whenever an executive leaves without a new job, seeking “new challenges,” and when the accompanying press release makes no effort to honor him for his accomplishments, there’s no celebration going on.”

It’s fascinating in that Mr. Stuckey was the key person on Atlantic Yards. His departure is certainly curious. Check out AYR for complete analysis.

[Photo courtesy of pbs.org]

The meeting is sponsored by Community Board #1, The Open Space Alliance (OSA), and the Parks Department. There are sessions at 5PM and at 7PM. It takes place at the Swinging 60’s Senior Citizen Center, which is located at 211 Ainslie Street. The Park Department will summarize the schedule for the project and discuss the budget. There will be small discussion groups and “each table will have a large scale plan of the pool area, templates of an Olympic size pool, a multi-purpose building, tracing paper, markers, etc.” The designs are supposed to provide swimming, year-round use and preserve and re-use existing buildings.

That 24-story building that Quadriad Development would like to build at N. 3rd Street and Berry in Williasmburg drew a large crowd to a Community Board 1 meeting that was expected to vote on the proposal. OnNYTurf reports 100 community members opposed to the building turned out. In the end, CB1 tabled a vote on the building after a week of intense outreach by opponents.

A number of community board members whose votes would have been crucial to getting the building approved did not even attend the meeting. Activist Phil DePaolo, who helped lead local opposition to the highrise, told GL that the project’s supporters were concerned it would be voted down and also supported the delay.

“We can’t figure out if it’s good or bad,” Mr. DePaolo said, “but at least we bought some time. The encouraging thing is that most of our elected officials don’t think a building that size is appropriate at that location.” City Council Member David Yassky has come out against the project, saying that a building that height is not appropriate in that location.

Approval of the Quadriad project would require a reversal of the “inland” downzoning that accompanied the rezoning of the Williamsburg waterfront for highrise residential towers in 2005. Quadriad hopes to introduce its “model” of getting huge density bonuses in return for providing that one-third of a development would be affordable housing (under the developer’s definition).

[Conceptual rendering created by and courtesy of OnNYTurf]

“We can stomp our feet and snort and growl to try to create political pressure,” said resident Glenn Kelly of the most likely way to try to get rezoning accomplished more quickly. Residents fear that parts of the community have a bull’s eye drawn over them by developers because the current R6 Zoning makes it an appealing target for relatively high density development. Nearby neighborhoods like Park Slope, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights all have zoning which limit building height. R6 zoning doesn’t limit height.

“We’re very concerned right now,” Mr. Kelly said. “There are some very large parcels of land available.”

The former International Longshormen’s Association Building property, for instance, at 340 Court Street could support a 13-story building under current zoning. The building is owned by Long Island College Hospital and was recently put on the market. It could go for as much as $20 million. The building is between Sackett and Union Streets.

Some residents are hoping that a Carroll Gardens rezoning could be piggybacked with a rezoning of Gowanus, although it is unclear what sort of political and land use tradeoffs would be involved. Ironically, developers can build at higher densities in Carroll Gardens because the gardens in front of buildings from which the neighborhood takes its name are considered part of the public right-of-way. So, streets which are really very narrow are considered “wide” for zoning purposes.

Architect and Carroll Gardens resident John Hatheway, who has done a study of ways to rezone the neighborhood, says the neighborhood hopes to have that “anomaly” changed and that there is still hope that it can “bundle into the Gowanus rezoning.”

In the meantime, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has not responded to inquiries about beginning the process of expanding the neighborhood’s minuscule historic district. A meeting with LPC Chair Robert Tierney is scheduled on July 11.

If you want to get a strong reaction from a whole lot of people in Brooklyn, talk about F Train service and about how it can be improved. (Yes, the same holds true in most neighborhoods…and we don’t even want to get into the subject of the G Train or the L Train.) In any case, new-ish blogger Brooklyn Streets, Carroll Gardens has taken a strong interest in Ye Olde F Train and has started an online petition. The petition asks the MTA to extend the V Train to Brooklyn as a local and to run the F as an express from Coney Island. This makes an enormous amount of sense to us, which is why it’s probably going to prove so devilishly difficult to accomplish. It will certainly take a lot of pressure and some politcal allies since, astoundingly, the MTA has previously responded that because of work on the Culver Viaduct, (the elevated portion of track running next to Ninth Street and over the Gowanus) the earliest service can be expanded is 2012! The Kensington Brooklyn blog has been speaking up for F Train service improvement too. You can find the online petition here. The blogger spoke at the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association meeting the other night, and got a warm and interested response from residents.

A while ago, we wrote about Taconic Investment Partners Coney Island strategy, noting that the company was interested in parcels of land owned by the Parks Department, which has land around property that it has bought. Apparently, Taconic may be closing in on a deal for more land. Interestingly, web pages about the North and South Taconic ventures are back online (they had been pulled down for about a month), but some verbiage has disappeared. For instance, this wording about potentially huge size of the project around the Childs Building was pulled down:

Taconic hopes to have the potential to develop between 1,125,000 and 1,800,000 square feet of residential, retail and parking areas on nearly 5 acres of prime beachfront property. In addition, Taconic is in preliminary discussions with the City to acquire approximately 11 acres of City owned land in various locations immediately adjacent to the property. While the feasibility, cost and likelihood of such a disposition by the City can not been determined for some time, there is the potential to increase the total size of the development to more than 5,000,000 square feet.

The verbiage may have been deleted because the numbers are no longer valid or because it’s not good strategy to put such impressive statistics up for everyone to see. Regardless, the Brooklyn Eagle notes that the company is currently negotiating with the Parks Department for the property and seems close enough to a deal that details are being worked out. The Eagle writes:

Aside from the block-sized Child’s Restaurant, Taconic also owns another vacant block across the street and is in negotiations with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to buy more adjacent land west of KeySpan Park.

The problem is that when Parks land is sold to a private developer, it has to be recreated somewhere else. Without going into details, [VP Ari] Shalam and an EDC spokesperson said the two parties are in the process of working out the kinks on that deal.

If successful, Taconic would own three adjacent waterfront blocks, including the one occupied by Child’s, that the company could turn into a mixed-use development with residential and ground-floor retail.

What’s especially interesting is that Taconic has gone about its planning none of the publicity or controversy surrounding Thor Equities’ purchases of land or plans.

Our first acquisition was in the spring of 2005. The strategic plan came out just around that time. Everything that we are thinking about doing is fixed with that plan. We are going to do what we can to put it together and really bring about the reality of change in Coney Island, rather than some of the failed plans that have come and gone over the years.

Now to something that is near and dear to my heart and to many of the people here: the Childs building. The Childs building is really one of the remarkable landmark structures of Coney Island. In the development community, you hear a lot of people say, “Gee, that shouldn’t be a landmark.” But it is. With the Childs building, there are no doubts. It is a wonderful building.

There are a couple things about it that are particularly important. It happens to be at a place on the Boardwalk where there is a natural bend. Trying to draw people from the narrow, reduced footprint of the amusement area, around the stadium and into some of the more transitional areas, people will look down the boardwalk and see the Childs building. We see that as a kind of gateway piece.

The Childs building has a great history. It was once part of the Childs restaurant chain. Since it closed in 1947, various people have owned it. The person we bought it from was a bookseller. It was an extraordinarily complicated transaction. The person did not really want to do anything with it. Many organizations have tried to talk to this owner. We were successful in August of 2006, finally consummating a long-term ground lease with the option to buy.

We see it as a marquee food operation with catering and opportunities for people to come in and not only eat on kind of a passer-by basis, but actually have reservations and sit down. If you look over to Brighton Beach side, you see some restaurants that come out on the Boardwalk. As you walk by, they really pull you in.

We have proposed restoring the fascia of the building. There are some beautiful medallions on there and great detail work. The interior of the building was a mess. It was dark and dingy. We have cleaned it up made it safer, installed security.

We are trying to get in a position where it could be used very soon. Because we don’t know how the ultimate rezoning and development will occur on Coney Island, we have to be careful of what money we spend now. But we are working on a way to open up the historic parts on a temporary basis this summer or at least open up the front portions of the building for that…

One of the ideas we kicked around is to try to create access to a second floor, or the roof, for a catering facility. Wouldn’t it be great to have a wedding or an event and come out to the roof and look at the ocean? If you look at some of the old pictures, you can see that there was almost a beer garden up there. We’re going to try and restore that. But the plan for that building really has to be taken in context with everything that’s going to happen around it, not only the plans for the parachute jump, but also for Steeplechase Park which is a block or two away. We have to see what happens with the rest of Coney Island.

We’re all waiting to see what happens with Coney Island.