March 11th, 2007 · Comments Off on GL Brooklyn Sunday TV
For our YouTube Sunday video player offering, we turn to vids about Greenpoint. Click through them on the embed below or go over to the playlist by following this link.
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March 10th, 2007 · Comments Off on Sunset ParkTower of 42nd Street Succumbs to Pressure
The 12-story building on 42nd Street in Sunset Park that would have been triple and quadruple the height of most of its neighbors and would have blocked views from the park itself, is no more. The developer has backed off from plans and will build a 5 1/2 story building on the site. The Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors, (SPAN)–a group of residents, homeowners and activists prompted by the development–claimed victory yesterday afternoon.
“We sliced that building in half!” said Johnny Trelles, a founding member of SPAN who lives across the street from the proposed building at 420-42nd Street in Sunset Park. “With this major battle won, the Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors will continue until we win the rezoning war.”
Councilwoman Sara M. González, who organized a meeting to “outline for the developers the full breadth” deemed the cutback “certainly unusual in my experience.”
An emailed release from the Sunset Park group said:
When they heard about plans to build the 12-story building, local residents who oppose irresponsible, out of context development quickly organized, held rallies and turned out in force for community forums and events aimed at preserving the character of the neighborhood. They enlisted the support of the local community board, elected officials, city agencies and activists from nearby neighborhoods who are experiencing a similar onslaught from developers.
“We are concerned about increasing and rampant non-contextual new development in Sunset Park,” said Ivette Cabrera, another founding member of SPAN. “Many other nearby communities like Greenwood, South Slope and Bay Ridge have been rezoned and we deserve the same protection from these developers.”
There will be a press conference to announce the building’s size reduction at Noon today. A “march and vigil” that had been planned for Sunday is now a victory celebration. It will take place at 12:30PM in front of the construction site at 420-42nd Street.
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Yesterday, we posted an item about the crappy nature of postal service in Boerum Hill–mass misdeliveries of mail, never being able to get a package delivered to your door, etc. The comments left by readers are as fascinating as the original emails, so here’s a furhter sampling of Brooklyn Postal Horrors. We’ll start with this:
Add to your list the Red Hook post office, serving 11231. Truly abysmal. In five years, they have never succeeded in delivering a package successfully to our door. They never ring the bell; I would know since I work at home. We never get a first notice, or second notice slip—only the FINAL notice. They ignore messages I leave for them on the door. (“Please ring! I am home!”) And when you make the long trek to the post office, they are slothful and inattentive and always have trouble finding a package.
Then, we’ll sample this:
as a resident of 11217, I can verify all of these complaints and more. I was just at the post office this morning at 8:50 AM to pick up a package that I received a slip for even though I was home. Of course the package pickup window wasn’t open so I had to stand on the line, already 8 people deep with only two windows open. After their periodic disappearances and reappearances, all 8 customers were waited on and it was my turn.
We’ll have a taste of this:
I want to second the complaint leveled against the post office in Red Hook. In addition to going days without mail (typically followed by one day of 15-20 letters), I have only had one package delivered successfully. I was home sick at the time and watched the mailman leave the missed package slip without ringing. After running downstairs and knocking on the window of his van, he begrudgingly handed me my mail and informed me that it was a good thing he decided to “chill” there for a few minutes or I would have missed him.
This tasty bit:
Add another disgruntled 11231 to the fray. I don’t actually mind that the mail person just leaves packages outside the door without ringing the doorbell because I’d rather risk someone stealing my boxes than having to deal with the Red Hook P.O.pickup in person. When I first moved into my building three years ago, most of the mail would just end up in a pile on the floor inside the non-locking front door.
My postman is AWESOME! Sometimes he’ll even leave packages at my apartment door (on the 2nd floor) so I do not have to go to the P.O. and pick them up.
So, there you have it, you can get your mail in 11222.
On Thursday, we wrote about the crappy fence at the 110 Green development site in Greenpoint. Well, it became a little more interesting (for a fence) when Magic Johnson’s development firm announced it was investing money in the big project. By afternoon, workers were toiling on the fence, installing big poles. We have complete faith that Magic’s Big Greenpoint Fence will turn out to be one Kick Ass Fence. In the meantime, the incomparable Dogshit Queen of Greenpoint emails us up-to-the-minute photos of the scene. New fence is in the top photo. The bottom photo? Well, still a couple of hurdles before The Magic Fence is complete.
March 10th, 2007 · Comments Off on Barbara Corcoran is Still Very Big on Red Hook
GL’s got a story in the Brooklyn Paper this week about the building that Barbara Corcoran bought in Red Hook a couple of years ago. The building’s storefront, at 293 Van Brunt, is still empty, which may or may not say something about the long timeline for developing retail in The Hook. In any case, here’s a couple of excerpts:
Corcoran’s Red Hook buy was the real-estate equivalent of David Bowie calling a band his favorite. Asking prices in the neighborhood started going up once Barbara Corcoran had made her bet on Red Hook.
Yes, some new businesses have opened in the last year, including a jewelry shop and a high-end soap emporium, but they are all mostly clustered on Van Brunt between Wolcott Street and the Fairway…When Corcoran bought the three-story building, she was projecting $2,500 a month in rent for the storefront, and $1,600 and $1,750 monthly for two apartments upstairs. The apartments eventually rented, but the storefront still sits.
“This property is not in trouble, and neither is Red Hook,” said Beth Kenkel, the agent. “We all strongly believe in Red Hook. Some people thought Barbara bought the building as some kind of press ploy. And, yes, she may have overpaid just a bit, but in the long run, this is going to be a great investment.”
There you have it.
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Is there a neighborhood in Brooklyn where people are happy with the service they get from the Post Office? Well, we can say with some confidence that it’s not Boerum Hill. We came across a bunch of emails that have been circulating in Boerum Hill groups. So, we thought we’d excerpt from a few of the more pointed complaints, and particularly note the person that got 23 pieces of misdelivered mail at once. There’s this email:
I have been having much difficulty getting packages to be delivered by the USPS. The delivery person will not even ring the bell, but come by on days when I am home and just sticks the notice on the outside door and walks away. This happens even when I leave him a note in the morning saying, “hey usps deliveryperson! I am home! please ring!!!” Then the notice is taken from my door, and the package is never brought. Without this notice, they will now not let me pick up my packages.
Which prompted this reply:
We always get misdelivered mail. Always. One day last week we got no less than 23 (yes, that’s twenty-three) letters addressed to other addresses — in a single mail delivery. We are on Dean, and the letters were to others on Dean St., Bond St., Hoyt St, and . . .Utica Avenue. We often get mail addressed to Carlton Avenue, Dean Street about 5 miles east of us, and various Coney Island addresses…Plus, my son’s subscription to Sports Illustrated for Kids came in December (first issue on subscription). But his SI for Kids was stolen for the January, February, and March issues…
The postal workers at the 11217 station — notwithstanding any brief show of “change” trotted out for a couple weeks to answer the community’s concerns — remains a travesty of inefficiency, meanness, rudeness and attitute. I might add that it is a disgusting mess, which is a reflection of the management and people who work there. Obviously nobody at that post office cares.
What a contrast to the small postal offices scattered in the suburbs, exurbs, and the country. Frankly, even 11201 doesn’t seem so awful compared to 11217 (though it is far from a model of efficiency and pleasantness either).
Which led to this response:
Please include 11201. We have one or two mailmen in particular who never deliver packages, or who set them outside the front door (!) They put the ‘failed delivery’ notices in with the regular mail. That is, the notices are bundled, in a rubber band, inside the regular mail. Hmm.. wonder how they know they will not be able to deliver the package even before they come to the house?
And this:
Something dramatically wrong is clearly happening in 11217. It sounds from some of your descriptions as if there is a struggle between the management and the others in which all parties are attempting to get the others in trouble because they are seriously disgruntled. Or is there an animus on the part of some of the employees against brownstone owners?
We got an email from a reader living on State Street who details the situation at a building that shows 66 code violations from the beginning of 2006 through last week, not counting hundreds more in previous years. The resident writes:
I live at 451 State Street in Brooklyn and it’s a nightmare and there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the NYC government to help. We don’t have heat or hot water basically every other week for a few days and all the city does is take the complaint and sometimes issue a violation (where the City gets the violation money yet we get nothing and we’re the ones with the higher electricity bills because of portable heaters or hotel bills because it was just too cold to stay in the apartment). There was a dog being held captive in the basement but, thank god, he was rescued. The smell of his feces and urine still remain… Garbage is never taken out because there is no super, so tenants wind up doing it so that it doesn’t pill up 10 feet high in the front.
I have a real issue with our lack of support from the City. One would think that constant violations would amount to something. Letters from the city as well as certified mail slips stack up near the mailboxes until the landlord collects them…but there doesn’t seem to be any follow up on the City’s part or ANY real help for us. Logging complaint after complaint is useless, it seems…I just want to get out of my lease or receive some compensation for the nightmare.
Of course, you could produce an entire Brooklyn blog (and several New York City ones) based on tales like this. We’re especially struck by the lack of responsiveness by the city. It’s not surprising, given municipal nonfeasance on a daily basis as it concerns construction, development and landlord-tenant matters, but it still stinks.
The Carroll Gardens-Gowanus skyline is changing. The building with the growth on top is the one dubbed the Carroll Gardens Hell Building because of the infernal nature of some of the construction work. The Bunker on Bond, meanwhile, is our name for that big cinderblock thing on Bond Street that looks like a huge gun emplacement you’d have expected to find on high ground in the mid-20th Century. Together, they definitely alter the view from the Carroll Street Bridge and this vista could itself look like a quaint period piece in about five years.
GOWANUS BONUS: According to Found in Brooklyn, the neighborhood group that had its first meeting recently to express concerns about development plans on Bond Street and in Gowanus now has a name: “Friends of Bond.” They are looking for a place to have meetings.
The Department of Transportation proposal to make Sixth and Seventh Avenues one-way has stirred up a hornet’s nest of opposition in Park Slope. The developments have been detailed over at Streetsblog, which first broke the story of the plan that could turn both avenues from two-way streets into one-way streets with speeding cars. Latest to join the chorus of voices–which hasn’t even been formally presented–is the Park Slope Civic Council, which has drafted a letter to Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials. It reads in part:
While the Park Slope Civic Council will reserve final judgment until after the details have been heard, several of you have contacted me asking for our initial reaction. The Civic Council is seriously concerned that the primary result of this plan will be to move more traffic through our neighborhood faster, not to improve pedestrian safety. You should also know that the response from neighborhood residents, many of whom have contacted us, as I’m sure they have you, too, has been overwhelmingly negative.
Our specifics concerns are:
This plan is about moving more traffic through the neighborhood faster. One-way streets have a higher motor-vehicle carrying capacity than two-way streets…
One-way thoroughfares are less friendly to neighborhood life.
DOT has already indicated that the plan requires community support to go forward. If we were to wager money, we’d bet that this plan is a non-starter.
Turning local streets into one-way arteries that encourage higher speeds springs from an anachronistic and discredited school of transportation planning. The irony would be if all the attention the DOT proposal has drawn helps spur action to turn Park Slope’s biggest one-way highway–Prospect Park West–back into a calmer two-way street.
There is a public meeting on the idea in Park Slope on March 15 in the auditorium at Methodist Hospital. Here are links to some of Streetsblog’s excellent and original coverage of the issue:
March 9th, 2007 · Comments Off on Quadriad’s Williamsburg Presentation Delayed
Turns out that a representative of Quadriad Realtywon’t be making an appearance at a Community Board meeting in North Brooklyn next week after all. The presentation has been postponed. North Brooklyn community organizers were already trying to turn out community members for the presentation about the proposed Quadriad Realty mega-project on Beford Avenue in Williamsburg. The project’s name seems to have morphed into “Quadriad Williamsburgh Terrace” rather than “Williamsburgh Square,” but it still would involve multiple highrises and require a rollback of the 2005 rezoning. That plan allowed highrise development on the waterfront, but limited building height “inland.” One of the principals in Quadriad Realty is former Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo. Their last community presentation was in April 2006.
Williamsburg’s Phillip DePaolo sent out an email earlier this week saying, “We need a large turnout from communities throughout the city. If this developer wins every downzoning past, present and future is at risk!”
The Community Board meeting will still deal with the very interesting topic of post-rezoning issues in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. It will take place on Tuesday, March 13 at 6:00PM. The location is 211 Ainslie Street, at the corner of Manhattan Avenue.
(The photo above was one of the painted murals on the side of a building that Quadriad is still trying to aquire for its project, at N. 4th Street and Bedford Avenue.)
March 9th, 2007 · Comments Off on Aurora Loses Scaffold, Gains Tags & Broken Window
Over on Karl Fischer Row along McCarren Park, aka Bayard Street, the Aurora has lost its scaffolding but seems to have attracted some vandals. The building is at the most advanced state of construction of all the Bayard developments, which seem to have been underway forever. It’s interesting to see how the first building will look from street level.
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March 9th, 2007 · Comments Off on Sign of Spring: "Making Brooklyn Green"
You know spring is just around the corner when a Brooklyn horticultural event is on the agenda. In this case, it’s the 25th Anniversary of Making Brooklyn Bloom. It will take place tomorrow (March 10) from 10AM-4PM at the Brookly Botanic Garden and feature speakers, workshops and exhibits about greening neighborhoods and growing local fruits and vegetables. It’s being presented by the BBG (cherry blossoms in about six weeks, give or take!!!). The event is billed as:
the biggest Making Brooklyn Bloom event ever, and will focus on the burgeoning interest in urban agriculture in Brooklyn and the many benefits that urban greening-including growing fresh organic food-has on local communities. The free event offers hands-on workshops, speakers, and exhibits presented by regional experts who will present attendees with innovative, organic, home and community gardening ideas. The experts will also provide greening ideas for urban communities and discuss the community health benefits that derive from cultivating open green space and keeping a focus on local food.
The BBG says you should try to be there by 10.
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If you’re like most people, you probably only know about the old industrial art of making gas from coal at Manufactured Gas Plants, if you live near where one was located. Maybe you’ve read about manufactured gas in the context of so-called “Public Place” on Smith Street. Even so, the odds are very good you don’t know about the one that used to be where the Lowe’s and Pathmark are today or the one where the Thomas Greene Playground is. You probably don’t know about at Kent Avenue and N. 11th Street where the Williamsburg Gas Light Company used to be, either. They’re of interest because when the plants (which created gas from coal before it was replaced by natural gas) were rendered obsolete by the 1960s, they left behind a toxic stew of substances underground, most of which haven’t been cleaned up. There were 23 such plants in Brooklyn, everywhere from Coney Island to Greenpoint. The Department of Environmental Conservation has an entire section on its website devoted to the plants, contamination and cleanups.
Nationally, there were more than 50,000 manufactured gas plants. Here’s what they left behind (and what’s sitting under “Public Place” at depths of up to 150 feet) according to a site devoted to Manufactured Gas Plants:
Manufactured (or artificial) gas was made primarily from coal, as well as many other organic feedstocks. During the gas manufacture, tars were created and leaked, spilled or discharged to the environment. These tars are not susceptible to natural degradation and therefore have lives that will extend into geologic time. Manufactured gas plant wastes do not “go away.”
The tars are made up of 500 to 3000 different compounds, typically toxic to humans, mammals, and plant life. Sometimes carcinogenic, these tars are more dense than water, thus tending to sink into the groundwater environment where they contaminate passing ground water. Tar is not to be considered equivalent to asphalt, which is a residual of natural petroleum deposits and of oil refineries. Also associated with gas manufacturing were captured impurities such as ammonia, cyanide, sulfur and heavy metals, particularly arsenic.
There were three plants in Gowanus, indicated in blue on the map above. The Metropolitan Gas Light Company site is the current Lowe’s and Pathmark, it was partly cleaned, but significant toxins are still beneath the surface. The Citizen Works parcel is the “Public Place” site, which is the subject of a current development and cleanup discussion. The Fulton Municipal Gas Company site is the site of Thomas Greene Park and playground. The extent of the contamination there has not even been determined.
March 8th, 2007 · Comments Off on The Beard Street Hole: First of Many?
Among the many things that the 346,000 square foot Ikea now rising along Beard Street will bring to Red Hook are up to 50,000 additional cars a week on local streets. (Or, 2.5 million a year.) The impact they will have on the community–both in terms of quality of life and on the neighborhoods streets and infrastructure–remain to be seen. Neighbor Chris Curen sent us these photos of problems on Beard Street, which could indicate more to come. He writes:
There is a broken water main on the IKEA site, which is running water onto Beard Street, and has been for some time (at least a month). For some reason, the DEP comes by once and a while to mess with it (but not fix it). They’ve torn up Beard Street twice. This is Beard Street’s second water main break since Dec 30th (and Red Hook’s 3rd). I guess the question is why do guys need HAZMAT suits to fix a water main break? Is this indicative of future stress on Red Hook’s, um, antiquated, infrastructure?
If you’ve bee on Beard Street’s cobblestones recently, you’ve seen the impact that increased truck traffic has already had, in particular, the sinkage of paving stones here and there.
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Yesterday, Crain’s reported that Earvin “Magic” Johnson and the Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund are going to provide $12.4 million of financing for the 110 Green Street Condominiums. The project will be a six-story building with 130 units. Mr. Johnson said, in a statement quoted in Crain’s that “We are believers in Brooklyn as a place that is economically growing, healthy, entertaining and the place to be.” The Greenpoint project is the venture’s third in Brooklyn, the most prominent being the conversion of the Williamsburgh Bank Tower to One Hanson Place. We’re nitpicking, but we’ll point out that 110 Green was one of our Construction Sites Du Jour for the interesting way in which the site has been secured from the public. You can read a report on the condo itself, here. So, maybe the Magic name will ensure that the fence is fixed so that the demolition and contruction site don’t continue to be neighborhood hazards?
Our Court Street correspondent has reported in with a rundown of food and retail developments on the Gowanus Expressway end of that street. We present the news exactly as she gave it to us:
1)Leo’s Bar, down the end of Court St, which has been mentioned in various blogs is still not open. Last week there were several stop work orders posted to the door with notes from the buildings authorities – lack of/outdated permits seemed to be the reasons cited. The notices and letters have since been removed but see no building work happening either.
2) The building that houses Le Scaramouche–the cute Argentinian bakery mentioned in some blogs as a good breakfast spot–is up for sale. Does this mean Gabriel, the guy who runs it, is out of the place? He’s a good guy, very hard working and does right for the local community. Let’s hope he doesn’t get ousted. Go support him – they’ve got a new range of fresh breads in and they’re great.
3) A gourmet-type French food store opened a few months back down by the office for Court Street Cars. Sadly they never seemed to do much business and have since closed up. They definitely tried hard and had interesting produce but I guess it’s just too quiet down that end of the street to turn over a profit.
Noticed something interesting in your Brooklyn neighborhood? Gowanus Lounge is all ears. You can reach us at gowanuslounge (at) gmail (dot) com.
So, the newest installment of the Captain America comic book has a sniper killing the superhero, but that’s not why we’re writing this. Superheroes are a little off topic for us. No, an Associated Press story about his (possible) demise contains the following tidbit:
From a headquarters in Brooklyn’s shabby dockside Red Hook neighborhood, he embarked on new adventures with the Marvel cast of characters.
Whether this had anything to do with Red Hook’s recent real estate boomlet is unclear.
Of course, the hundreds of news stories about Captain America’s “death” focus on his demise. But we’d rather focus on Red Hook and say: The writer called it a “boomlet” rather than a “boom”?
March 8th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roebling Oil Field Update: Still Oily
Construction continues at the site we call the Roebling Oil Field, dispatching oil seepage with concrete and protective membranes. The western end of the site, which is at a less advanced stage of building, is still giving up some black gold, though. Meantime, there are reports that a nearby site has begun to give off an oily smell as work starts on its foundation. Neighborhood noses are already trained in that direction.
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