[Photo courtesy of Frank Lynch/flickr]

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and, especially on weekends, images.

Pics:

• The Community Bookstore [seriously excited!]
• Famous Park Slope Mister Softee Truck [No Words_Daily Pix/OTBKB]
• Pete’s Clam Shop [lornagrl/flickr]
• Empire Boulevard [Atomische]
• New York is Dead Sexy [f. trainer/flickr]
• B63 [Park Slope Street Photography]
• A Year in Brooklyn [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Crashing ’64 World’s Fair NY State Pavilion at Night [Sucka Pants via Gothamist]
• Don’t Talk Shit on the Roof [The Lovely Brenda/flickr]

Not Entirely Pics:

• Brooklyn Heros at Fourth Avenue Station [Gothamist]
• The Scent of Coney Island is $178 a Bottle [NYT]
• What to Do with an Apartment Turned into a Cave by Construction? [Lorngrl]
• How to Ride the B61 (or Any Other Bus) [11222]
• Fun with the Ratnerville Singout [AYR]
• Development Watch: 651 Coney Island Avenue [Brownstoner]
• 651 Coney Island Avenue Rises [Flatbush Gardener]
• Color and Light in Red Hook and Turkey [Callalillie]
• Better Get Hurt When Hit While Riding Your Bike for the NYPD to Care [Streets Blog]
• PLG Becomes Cingular Cell Phone-Less Hell [163 Ocean]
• Dumbo Summer Events 2007 [Dumbo NYC]
• Coney Island Block Party Today [Free NYC]

Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Havemeyer Street is the church where the annual Giglio Feast takes place in Williamsburg. It has many local supporters and, apparently, rasies about $250,00 for the parish. One of the firms listed on this sign, though, kind of jumps out at you. This sign has been up for some time, but we just noticed it again and thought it made for an amusing photo. The Giglio Feast, by the way, was profiled at length in amNY yesterday including several stories, video, a slideshow and more. So, which supporter doesn’t, um, blend?

Related Post:
The Giglio Dances Again in Williamsburg

Maybe you saw the film shoot in Park Slope last week for Diminished Capacity or read our item about it. Well, we got an email that the production is looking for extras for filming they’re doing between June 5 and June 8. We figured we pass on the information. We don’t know where they’re shooting next week. If you’re interested in your possible five or so seconds of fame in the background of some shots, email dimcapcasting@gmail.com.

Coney Island, Brooklyn

We say goodbye today to the Brooklyn Record. This morning Brownstoner publisher Jonathan Butler announced in a post that he was closing the Record, which was about a year old, and folding some of its content into Brownstoner. We’re sorry that Brooklyn is losing the Record, as we can use all the voices getting out as much information about Brooklyn stories to as many people as possible. Mr. Brownstoner wrote, in part:

Going forward, some of the things we’ve been putting in the Brooklyn Record basket in recent months—like storefront openings and closings and the more human-interest side of real estate, for example—will find a home under the Brownstoner umbrella. Other topics, like kick-boxing classes and indie rock concerts aren’t going to make the cut.

The good news is that Brownstoner will be growing.

If you had any doubt that Astroland is toast at the end of the season, look here. We don’t know about talk of keeping it open for another season or of it reopening elsewhere. What we do know is that almost all of its rides are now up for sale and that they’ve been listed with a company called Ital International that sells amusement park rides. They are listed as “available” as of Labor Day. There is a lengthy discussion of the Astroland Sell Off on the Coney Island Message Board. The Water Flume, manufactured in 1965 and said to be in “excellent condition” will set you back $199,000. The Tilt-A-Whirl, on the other hand, is only $29,000, as is the Scrambler. The Pirate Ship, though, is $199,000. Dante’s Inferno is $225,000. No price is listed for the Astrotower. For that, you have to call.

As we’ve reported, architect Robert Scarano is apparently changing the exterior design of his building at Second Place and Smith Street from metal to red brick. However, Carroll Gardens residents say their opposition is as much about the scale of the eight-story building in the neighborhood of two- and three-story brownstones as it is about the metal finish on the rendering on the architect’s website.

Mr. Scarano told a community leader yesterday that “the images we have been seeing are ‘misleading.'” The flyers that residents have been posting are said to “exaggerate” his intentions for the Carroll Gardens site. (The rendering is still on the Scarano Architects website, however.)

“I know what they’re saying out there,” Mr. Scarano also told the Brooklyn Paper’s Ariella Cohen. “But now we’ve studied the area, and the building is going to be less modern.”

A neighbor of the proposed development wrote GL to say:

It’s wonderful to hear Mr. Scarano has become more receptive to our community but I think it’s far too early to break open the champagne. First of all, saying something and actually doing the thing you say you are going to do are not the same thing! Frankly spoken, talk is cheap. Plus, the height of the building is still insane…brick or metal, 8 is still too high!

We live in 2-4 floor residential brownstone buildings over here…. many of us on beloved landmark blocks our grandparents built. Six floors is still higher than almost everything around here. Six is fair, not 8!

Plus the subway plaza used by thousands of commuters weekly needs to be respected as a neighborhood gathering place where people of all ages spend there time waiting for the train to go to work and elsewhere. It’s a neighborhood tradition and no one wants to wait downstairs!

While no one over here is opposed to development per se, we don’t even have a supermarket here anymore due to recent development! Furthermore countless family businesses like pharmacies, video stores, cafes, xerox places, hardware stores, notions stores and others… businesses owned and operated by neighborhood families for years have suffered and or closed their doors entirely in the name of “recent development’ in the past few years so where does it end?

One resident noted at the Community Board meeting that the neighborhood wants “beautiful architecture that respects the design and scale of our historic Carroll Gardens neighborhood that many of our grandfathers built. Is Mr. Scarano going to live next to it we wonder?”

She credited the blogs that first reported the neighborhood opposition and posted renderings of the building (including Gowanus Lounge and our coverage on Curbed) for bringing attention to the story:

As for the local newspaer coverage: it’s about time! where have you been? we already tried to get the newspapers down here and nothing was even remotely fast enough to handle our issue. Power to the blogs!!

Interestingly, GL has learned that the Second Place brownstone adjacent to the development is being sold. Our source indicates he has reliable information that the likely buyer is the developer of the controversial Scarano building.

Related Posts:
Smith Street Could Get Very, Very Shiny
Smith Street Revolt Brewing Over Shiny New Building
More Heavy Metal Backlash in Carroll Gardens

As you have probably already heard, today is the official start of hurricane season. In its honor, we’re recalling the, um West Indian Monster of 1893 and one of its victims, Hog Island (yes, it’s in Queens, but it makes a point, and Brooklyn was pretty trashed by the storm too). The 1893 storm, which was a Category 2, came ashore in Jamaica Bay, near where JFK airport sits today. Some saloons, casinos and resort hotels on a sandy spit of land called Hog Island were completely washed away. A few miles west of the hurricane’s eye, almost every building on Coney Island was destroyed. There was extensive flooding in Brooklyn, with water reported as being “waist high” far inland, and wind damage to many of the city’s new skyscrapers.

Here’s a little description of the storm that was in a sobering article on “The Big One” that ran in the New York Press a couple of years ago:

On the night of August 23, 1893, a terrifying Category 2 hurricane did strike New York City. It hit land in the marsh that is JFK Airport today and began the erosion of the low-lying resort…All six front-page columns of the August 25, 1893, New York Times were dedicated to the “unexampled fury” of the “West Indian monster.” The storm sunk dozens of boats and killed scores of sailors. Everything below Canal Street was under water. In Central Park, hundreds of trees were uprooted…The brand-new Metropolitan Life building on Madison Avenue was severely damaged when a heavy-iron fence was torn away by the wind, plunging 10 stories and crashing through a stained-glass dome before landing on a mosaic “including quantities of costly Mexican onyx.”

A 30-foot storm surge swept across southern Brooklyn and Queens, destroying virtually every man-made structure in its path. In Brooklyn, at Wyckoff and Myrtle Avenues, “the water in the street was up to a man’s waist,” and residents used ladders to get in and out of their houses. Most of the boats moored at the Williamsburg Yacht Club were “sunk, driven ashore or demolished.” The East River rose “until it swept over the sea wall in the Astoria district and submerged the Boulevard.” At Coney Island, 30-foot waves swept 200 yards inland, destroying nearly every man-made structure in its path and wrecking the elevated railroad.

Hog Island was seriously eroded by the West Indian Monster. Then, in 1896, a storm cut a new channel through it. Later in the year, it had been reduced to “small patches of sand covered with a few feet of water when the tide receded at daylight.” By 1898, no more Hog Island.

As for the current day, you can always read one of the annual New York City is screwed stories and think about the implications of a storm with 130 mile and hour winds, a 30-foot storm surge, $100 billion in damage and 3 million of us evacuated.

You can check out the Wikipedia article about the hurricane and Hog Island here. Also, there are numerous articles in the Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Eagle Archive. That’s part of a story from Sept. 10, 1896 below.

We came across an interesting blog entry about Coney Island on a blog called A Child of Atom. We like it because it gets at the “people’s playground” flavor that Coney Island has that could be erased with enough of a luxe upscaling. This week’s Observer has a piece that wonders if there’s anything in Coney Island worth “saving,” so to speak, other than the handful of landmarks such as the Cyclone, Wonder Wheel, Nathans and Parachute Jump that remain. (Interestingly, it contains a lot of remarks from Shoot the Freak founder Anthony Berlingieri who, clearly, has not been obligated to adhere to developer Joe Sitt’s “Gag Rule” because he has very positive things to say about any redevelopment and of space for his business in one of the new buildings.)

We’d suggest that it isn’t so much the possible bulldozing of the ragtag collection of arcades and vendors’ spaces that is the issue as it is what will replace them. A redevelopment that is sensitive to Coney Island’s history and that respects the multi-cultural place that it is and maintains the attraction it has for people of very different socio-economic backgrounds would be a good thing. One that bulldozes amusements and replaces them with boring, out-of-scale highrise condos and shopping center retailers would be a bad thing.

We digress, however. Our point was to relate some nice writing that captures a piece of the Coney spirit:

Coney Island is going away. It’s a sad truth that New York City is being developed within an inch of its life. Everything from warehouses to piers are turning into condominiums and a lot of the flavor of the neighborhoods, and consequently the city, is being glazed over with that midwest sheen of homogenity. The latest victim is Coney Island, that low-rent bastion of carnival culture that was once called “Sodom by the Sea.”…Out on the baordwalk is the usual mix of beach stores selling tee-shirts and sun lotion, bars and beach food vendors selling everything you can imagine fried, and/or stuck on a stick. But the real attraction is the people. Beach bums, loud Dominican mother’s, women in bikini’s dancing on stilts, drag queens, burlesque dancers, screaming kids, carny workers, sideshow freaks… everybody is welcome in Coney Island and no one feels out of place. It is one of the best places to people watch that I have ever seen.

But now it’s over. This is the last year of Coney Island. The area has been purchased by a real estate developer. They promise that they aren’t planning to put in shoebox condos.

So, the question is, will middle aged Dominican women we watched dancing on the boardwalk, the gentleman with the missing front teeth that sold us our onion rings at Astroland this weekend, the Puerto Rican guy running the shady card game on the Steeplechase Pier and the family from East New York playing the water balloon game all have a place in the New Coney Island? There’s more to it, and it’s worth clicking over to read the entire item.

Last time we started to honor 33 Roebling, AKA 236 N. 10th Street, we came upon the interesting fact that Enrique Norten and TEN Arquitectos will be the project architect. So, it’s only fair that we return to original purpose, which is to point out how wide open the place is and what a crapfest the fence is. It’s also more fun these days for your inner construction fan, as there’s construction equipment sitting atop a mound of demolition rubble with which to play. Then again, the Mayor apparently found out that the Department of Buildings is, um, a tiny bit behind the curve when it comes to doing its job by reading the Daily News, so what’s a crappy fence here and there? We have total confidence the city will get up to speed now that the mainstream media has told them about the disaster that has been hiding from them in plain sight on blogs and via the thousands of calls to 311 that seem to have, um, been routinely ignored. In the meantime, stuff like this is fun for all the kids in the neighborhood!

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

• Unexpected Downtown Brooklyn Housing Boom [AYR]
• Zip Cars in Fort Greene [Clinton Hill Blog]
• The Kodachrome Building is a Very Pleasant Surprise [Brownstoner]
• Coney Island History Project Grand Opening Slide Show [Kinetic Carnival]
• Coney Island History Captured [Metro]
• Barge Pool to Open July 4 between Pier 4 and Pier 5 [Newyorkology]
• Overgrown Warsoff Park Offers Bed-Stuy Refuge [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• AP Writer Down with Carluccio’s Hero Sandwiches in Bensonhurst [Brooklyn Record]
• Closed Hospital Across from Prospect Park Sold, Could Become Housing [Across the Park]
• Checking Out Bay Ridge [Big Sky Brooklyn]
• Accused Killer Acting as Own Lawyer in Brooklyn Trial [NYP]
• Miss Heather Has a New Idea with a Sex Toy Theme [newyorkshitty]

Google knows how to make a splash, and it’s doing so with its street-level images. There are abundant concerns being voiced about privacy issues, and we have to say we were amused to find Casa GL, even if you’re not quite able to see into the windows. A little weird, we’ve got to say. Nonetheless, we only post this to note that in Brooklyn, much of Park Slope, Fort Greene, Carroll Gardens and places like Coney Island have been mapped. We thought, we’d take a look around Gowanus, and while it cuts off around Second Street and Bond, you can take it over the Carroll Street Bridge and Union Street Bridge. Or you can try Dumbo. Or a little bit of Coney Island. Etc. And, well, if you live on the streets that have already been photographed, you can breathe easy. On the other hand, if you’re in Williamsburg or Greenpoint or other neighborhoods that aren’t up yet, look out for that van snapping away. Or, maybe, they’ve already been through and just haven’t posted the images yet.

We noted a lot of event postings today for the weekend, so we’re listing them on their own. Nice weekend ahead in terms of activities, and this is just a small random sampling.

• Bushwick Open Studios Today through Sunday [BushwickBK]
• Short Films in Fort Greene Park on Saturday [Myrtle Minutes]
• Best Park Slope Church Book Sale is Saturday [OTBKB]
• Drop Off Your E-Waste at Smith & President on Sat., Sun. & Mon. [Z. Madison]
• Dumbo Block Party on Saturday [Dumbo NYC]
• Clifton Place Community Garden Plant & Bake Sale on Sunday [Clinton Hill Blog]
• Don’t Demo Domino Concert on Sunday [WPA]
• Forgotten-NY Greenpoint Tour is Sunday, June 10 [Brooklyn 11222]

Which way? One way? Nah. Just, way. This example of construction-related diminished signage is brought to us by the development tentatively known as Seven Berry, at N. 7th and Berry, in Williamsburg. If you’ve been by the corner lately, you know it for its pink wallboard surrounded by blue netting because its been in that condition for what seems like forever. Regardless, North Brooklyn’s intrepid Dog Shit Queen hit us off with this photo, just like she did with an earlier shot of a stop sign for fifteen-foot-tall people at this very same development. Attention New York City Department of Transportation: Construction is seriously messing with some of your signage, and in a way that does not seem to improve driver or pedestrian safety. Or do is this kind of think okay (until the Daily News does a story about it)?

Related Post:
Say What?: Williamsburg Stop Sign Edition

We were going to feature this building as a “What Were They Thinking?” entry, but realized that the issue with it isn’t so much its over-the-top ugliness, as the fact that it’s sandwiched between two other buildings in a most unpleasant way. Don’t get us wrong, 422 Prospect Avenue in the South Slope is pretty ass ugly. But, it strikes as more of Sandwich Building, which is the Brooklyn equivalent of a Manhattan Sliver Building.

That sound you hear at the on Smith Street near the Carroll Street subway stop? It’s the noise of the community organizing to try to seriously change a building planned for Smith Street and Second Place. The image above is a rendering someone in the neighborhood created and put on a flyer showing how what we’ve called the Heavy Metal Building might look. A resident also emailed us to say:

Word on the street here is this largely Italian-American and professional/Wall Street Community wants to take a postion that “yes, we know development is going to happen, but let’s aim for sane/sound architecture based on sane/sound architectural and city planning principles not just put up a big ole metal box that makes some greedy developer with no conscience or sense of style the quickest buck possible before he hightails it out of here on his way to ruin some other innocent Brooklyn block. Sure to be at issue are the height of the building as well as the beloved PLAZA in front of the train where in fact many people love to hang out while they wait for the train upstairs in the air and sunlight!

The photo below is the mural that appears to have gone up on a wall in the little plaza at the entrance to the subway station. It was sent to us by a reader late last night, and could be Brooklyn’s first Robert Scarano-related mural. (Mr. Scarano’s firm has designed the proposed building.)

Still developing.

Related Posts:
Smith Street Revolt Brewing Over Shiny New Building?
Smith Street Could Get Very, Very Shiny

No, not the bridge & tunnel kind of toll. This kind of Toll. A Gowanus resident sent along this photo of signage that has appeared on Bond Street and First Street, which would be close to the epicenter of the roughly 400-unit luxe development the Toll Brothers would like to build on the shores of our favorite South Brooklyn waterway. The structure on property you see in the distance on the right was demolished over the winter. There is some interest in landmarking the property on the far left, which also fall in the Toll Zone. The battle discussion continues this evening with another public session involving Community Board 6, the City Planning Department and local residents. Any irony in the above photo with “Toll” and “Dead End” in the same frame is entirely accidental.

Related Post:
Bond Street Residents Unhappy About Toll Brothers Project
Gowanus Groundwork Laid for Toll Brothers in “Subarea B”?

This is just too good to pass up, particularly since the official launch of Bond No. 9’s Coney Island fragrance is Friday. To us, Coney Island on a hot summer day is one part ocean, one part fried food, one part assorted suncreens and tanning products and one part trash marinating in the sun. Bond No. 9’s take, on the other hand, is ‘tangy and citrusy,” which is kind of funny, because the only citrus in sight at Coney Island is what some of the vendors use to make fruit drinks. In any case, clearly we spend a lot more time writing about Brooklyn than about scents, because we’re not sure we’d make a good fragrance reviewer. Here’s one review of Coney Island from the Perfume Smellin’ Things Blog:

The start of the scent is a tangy citrusy blend. I smell lemons, limes and even oranges. They smell a little candied, but not overwhelmingly sweet at all, bringing to mind a refreshing, only slighly boozy drink served in a glass with sugared rim. For a while there, I smell a slight melon note, but just when I start to think that scent might go a fruity route, it changes the direction drastically. It grows warmer, “thicker”, more “solid” in feel, the vanilla becomes very apparent as does the cinnamon note. At this point, I like the Coney Island quite a lot. It has the kind of soft, not too obvious gourmandness that I always appreciate. I don’t smell chocolate or caramel, the middle stage is all about sweetly piquant cinnamon and fluffy vanilla on me. If the scent stayed that way, it might have even ended up on my wish list for summer…The drydown, however, was disappointing for me. After the joyful, colorful robustness of the top and heart notes, the composition suddenly looses all its oomph and becomes rather pale and unexciting. The base has an aquatic note that bothers me and an overall understated, neutral feel of a typically fresh unisex scent. I very much wish that the bright, happily inebriated, indeed carnival-like feel of the first two thirds of the scent stayed till the end.

Oh, God, say it ain’t so. We think that means the blogger doesn’t like Coney Island once you’ve been wearing it for a bit. Noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

Related Post:
Get Your Coney Island Fragrance from Bond No. 9

Back in March we posted about major changes coming to Union Avenue between Havemeyer Street and Richardson Streets around N. 9th and N. 10th Streets. Change is definitely in the air, as can be seen in the photo taken by our favorite Brooklyn advice blogger dabbing in real estate development news, Bad Advice. She writes:

Maybe they’re just fixing the roof. Could be they’re just refurbishing an old building and making it into something useful, like a methadone clinic or halfway house for the tragically hip. But this morning as I left my house, I saw these guys on the roof of the chocolate factory (much sweeter smelling than the cabbage factory, FYI) and got the distinct feeling that I was staring at some demolition in preparation for some new construction. Can’t wait. What Williamsburg definitely needs is more luxury housing.

We’ve added the rendering of what is to come at the location of the old Manhattan Chocolate factory, which is at 580 Union Avenue, to the her photo of the workers. Permits are in process, so whatever the nice gentlemen in the work gear were checking out on the roof, it was clearly in anticipation of getting the Green Light for demolition. If you’re into wall murals, of which the building has a whole bunch, get out there while you can.

Related Post:
Union Avenue About to Change Big Time

This post over at the Bay Ridge Blog jumped out at us because it raises the always-provacative issue of museums and the art they display. The museum in question is the Brooklyn Museum and the blogger takes issues with the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. There is background here. The blogger had almost joined the museum in 1999, but opted not to after the Virgin Mary art issue in the Sensation exhibition. So, when he went back to join up recently he found the Sackler Center and opted not to join again. He writes:

What the hell is “feminist art”? It sounds like something joyless, thin-lipped, and political. Wiki describes it this art movement as referring to “the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, the movement began in the 1960s, flourished throughout the 1970s, and the effects of it continue to the present. ” That’s the positive spin. But this is a separatist and exclusionary strand in the artistic universe. I don’t think its particularly interesting to men –or women. And this is to be a permanent collection, sharing the museum with the art of ancient Egypt?

Sorry, I won’t support this.

The museum’s a fine space, despite the amateurish turns they’ve taken over the past decade. I do want to visit soon. Target Stores hosts a free “First Saturdays” program once a month. I may visit next weekend. If they ask me for a contribution, I’ll say “no”. Go ask Elizabeth Sackler!

Our own issue with the museum is that its collection tends to be too eclectic to cohere and that it tries to show to much in too little space, drawing attention away from some genuinely important work in its collection. We rather like the Sackler Collection ourselves and we love Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party.”

Quadriad Development, which is building on the block bounded by Bedford Avenue, Berry, N. 3rd and N. 4th Streets in Williamsburg, made a presentation to Community Board 1 this week and fleshed out a bit of its vision for the parcel. It confirmed that it wants to build a 24-story tower at the corner of N. 3rd and Berry in addition to a five-story building with 75 units of housing that have already been announced. Interestingly, Quadriad intends to make the Williamsburg development–which uses affordable housing and other amenities as the carrot to entice zoning concessions for buildings far beyond what existing zoning allows–a model for its projects citywide. It is called “Community Incentive Zoning.” The Williamsbug block on which Quadriad wishes to build was downzoned as part of the overall Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning. The developers have targeted a large number of other Williamsburg projects for highrise/lowrise housing and commercial developments.

“Coming soon to a neighborhood near you,” remarked Williamsburg activist Phil DePaolo.

Related Post:
Paperwork is in on the Bedford Avenue Quadriad Site
Double Speak of the Week: Community Incentive Zoning

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

• Judge Fines Ratner Contractor for Unsafe Demolition [AYR]
• Housing Authority Land Sale Will Test East New York Development Popularity [NYT]
• Petition Drive for a Prospect Park Pool [Metro]
• Coney Island History Project Center Opens Today [Kinetic Carnival]
• Former Coney Island Hospital Exec Fined for Triple-Dipping [NYP]
• Brooklyn Landmark at 16 Court Street is Up for Sale [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]
• Don’t Demo Domino Concert Coming Up in Williamsburg on Sunday, June 3 [WPA]
• BAM Rose Cinema Hikes Prices to $11 [Set Speed]
• Another Bodega is Born [Bed-Stuy Blog]
• Traffic and Late Night Food in Greenpoint [Brooklyn 11222]
• On Free Delivery and Trying to Eat After 9PM in Greenpoint [newyorkshitty]
• David Yassky Supports Congestion Pricing [Streets Blog]
• Tips for Doing Up Stoopendous on June 23 [OTBKB]
• The Seventh Avenue Park Slope Accordian Guy [Velvet Sea]
• Take a Slice of Life Tour and Find the Best Brooklyn Pizza [About New York]

The next meeting in the series of community sessions leading up to rezoning proposals for Gowanus takes place tonight against the background of a purge of nine CB6 members that is believed to have been, in part, motivated by a desire to diminish opposition to allowing taller, bigger buildings in the neighborhood. The Community Board 6 Land Use Committee meeting will be held at 6:00PM at P.S. 32, which is located at 317 Hoyt Street between Union and President Streets. Representatives of the Department of City Planning will be on hand.

In the meantime, Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG) sent along some observations from a previous Gowanus planning meeting, at which a list of goals “to be used as a framework for discussions about the future of the Gowanus Canal corridor” was presented. FROGG writes that “These goals were arrived at in previous meetings the agency had with Community Board 6. They were presented in a circular diagram assigning no specific order or priority and the agency seeks to strike a balance among them. They are to be the jumping off point for the next phase of the neighborhood outreach meetings.”

FROGG ordered the list of goals in terms of “priorities that FROGG would like to suggest addresses the community’s concerns.” Here they are:

1) Support environmental cleanup

a) Brownfield land cleanup and remediation
b) Aquatic brownfield cleanup: with attention to storm water management and CSO events

2) Maintain continued industrial and commercial activities

a) Recognition that industrial and commercial activities are distinct from each other and have different needs
b) Provide a supportive environment for the existing jobs, and encourage the use of union labor in any new construction
c) Encourage opportunities for creative and new technology work places

3) Address neighborhood context and character

a) Limit height and density conditions to preserve the unique quality of the corridor, especially its open space and sky views
b) Maintain the height and density restrictions that apply to adjoining neighborhoods
c) Open green space

4) Encourage mix of uses where appropriate and possible

a) Allow and encourage creative reuse of existing structures

5) Achieve waterfront public access at Canal’s edge

a) Recreational open spaces adjacent to the Canal could provide a pleasant green conduit through the area: South Brooklyn has playgrounds and ball fields but lacks open green spaces

6) Promote affordable housing opportunities

a) Both land and aquatic brownfield cleanups to enable this possibility

Related Post:
Burden Calls Gowanus “Great, Unique Opportunity” at Polite Gowanus Rezoning Meeting

We won’t for a minute claim that the problems with the building and development industry and the violence it inflicts on the quality of life of Brooklyn residents from Sheepshead Bay and the South Slope to Williamsburg and Greenpoint are anything new. Corruption, malfeasance, the development industry and city government have all fit together like hand and glove for generations. Yet, there is something about the excesses of the current building boom and the lack of municipal oversight that have taken problems to new levels. This week, the Daily News ran the kind of series that draws attention to the kind of scandalous nonperformance of city government that imperils quality of life. The series covered outrages in the South Slope, abuse of immigrant workers, the disgusting big picture and more.

None of this comes as news to anyone that lives in neighborhood where buildings are going up on every block or who’s spent more than five minutes walking around any number of Brooklyn neighborhoods. For a sense of the scope of the problem, consider that the Buildings Department was called on to conduct 413,844 inspections last year with a 350-member inspection force, which works out to 1,182 inspections per person. No wonder builders and developers can get away with everything from undermining neighboring buildings to working illegal hours and doing dangerous work and ignoring Stop Work Orders. The conduct of the Bloomberg Administration on this front–and before it, the Guiliani Administration–has been grossly negligent.

They even seem to vaguely realize it now that they’ve been publicly shamed. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff told the news that Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster had met with the mayor about improving standards and enforcement. He admitted that the Department might be “more reactive than it should be” and said, “We are running to catch up in the face of a spectacular building boom.” The News reported:

Doctoroff said Bloomberg inherited an understaffed and inefficient Buildings Department rife with corruption. “We have made substantial progress,” he insisted.

He said a new city construction code, expected to be implemented by year’s end, will increase penalties for violations and reform aspects of the much-abused honor system that allows architects to certify plans without verification.

In neighborhoods like the South Slope where resident pressure and blog coverage has embarrased the Buildings Department, residents say there have been improvements. In other neighborhoods, problems like slow response and inaction persist. Of course, right now, we are only talking about construction-related problem, not the environmental horrors all over North and South Brooklyn to which both the state and the city are turning a blind eye as toxic sites are developed for housing with virtually no proactive public oversight, no information that buyers can access easily and with a kind of environmental clean-up honor system for developers.

More oversight is needed on all fronts. And it needs to be put in place quickly.

Historian and tour guide Francis Morrone offers some tips for those unfamiliar with Red Hook in today’s Sun. Here’s a sample:

For the curious, here’s what I suggest. Begin at Carroll and Van Brunt streets. It’s a few blocks from the Carroll Street station of the F and G trains. You can also get there via the B63 bus from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. You’re near the southern end of the Red Hook Containerport, one of only two such facilities in the city. Containerization, with its bigger ships and need for vast open lots, spelled the end of Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s freight shipping industries after World War II. Since freight shipping was what Red Hook was all about, the area declined. Then the city announced it was going to condemn a great deal of land to build a big container port in Red Hook. This ramped up the exodus. When the city scaled back its plans, much of Red Hook was like a ghost town.

It’s a fun thumbnail to the neighborhood, if you’re not familiar with it and worth a read.