The battle over a Supportive Housing development that the Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC) and Department of Housing Preservation and Development would like to build on the site of municipal parking lot at Fifth Avenue and 16th Street in the South Slope is heating up. And, so is the outreach effort by the FAC to lessen opposition to the 50 studio apartments they want to build. More that half of the housing in the complext would go to formerly homeless adults. Some units would be set aside for senior citizens and young people leaving the foster care system. A meeting of the South Park Slope Community Group and Concerned Citizens of Green Wood Heights–both of them veterans of many development battles in the South Slope, Greenwood Heights and Sunset Park–will discuss the proposal tonight (2/13) at 7PM at the Grand Prospect Hall (263 Prospect Avenue.) Community Board 7 will have a public hearing on Feb. 15 at 6:30 pm at St. John–St. Matthew Emmanuel Lutheran Church, which is located at 283 Prospect Avenue.

The concerned reaction of neighbors (many of whom have been up in arms about new development on 15th and 16th Streets) has led the FAC to send emails to residents and to schedule a tour of another supportive housing facility on Warren Street. FAC director Michelle de la Uz writes:

Over the past several weeks, there have been a lot of questions and speculation about FAC’s proposed development at 575 5th Avenue. Many people are wondering, what is supportive housing? Who will live in the building? Will it be an attractive addition to our community?…You are not alone in your concerns. When FAC first proposed the 551 Warren Street building more than five years ago, some of the neighbors and civic groups in the community shared several of the concerns that you all have expressed about the proposed 575 5th Avenue project. Despite those original concerns, they have come to embrace the tenants and the building and recognize it as an asset to the community.

FAC is opening the facility at 551 Warren Street to residents on Saturday, Feb. 24 from 2-4PM.

Reactions of South Slope residents runs from overtly hostile to cautious to supportive.

The parameters of the Albee Square project on the site of the Gallery Mall sold by Thor Equities for $125 million are becoming clearer. Today, the New York Times reports that the city’s Industrial Development Agency will give the new owners $3.2 million in tax breaks. The plans drawn up by Albee Development LLC call for nearly half a million square feet of retail space, about 125,000 square feet of Class A office space and 1,000 rental apartments, 20 percent of which would be for tenants of moderate income. There is no estimated building height yet, but it’s thought that it could be the tallest in downtown Brooklyn. Meanwhile, some tenants are saying they were lured into moving into the Mall with promises of renovation and success but will now be forced to close their businesses.
[Photo courtesy of Forgotten-NY, check out the excellent item on downtown Brooklyn]

In contrast to the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village last year, which drew barely a word of official concern that tenants living in affordable apartments would be displaced, the $1.3 billion sale of Brooklyn’s Starrett City has provoked a great deal of interest. There is talk of Congressional hearings. There are vows to block the sale. There is skepticism. Says Housing and Urban Developent Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who is rarely quoted saying anything: “This transaction has the potential to threaten New York City’s low-income housing market and those who need it. It will aggressively review this sale and give it close scrutiny.”

The complex was sold to Clipper Equity, and covers 40 acres and has 46 towers with 5,881 apartments and more than 14,000 tenants.

So, the interesting question is, why did the Stuy Town sale–which is having an impact on far more people in Manhattan–go through without a hitch, whereas the Starrett City deal appears to be on the verge of falling apart?

Some of Today’s Starrett Stories:
Hold Your Horses [NYDN]
Concern Grows Over Starrett City [Sun]
Starrett City Sale Draws Two New Doubters [NYT]

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

• What’s Next for the Beep? [Brooklyn Record]
• New School Would Add 100K Sq Feet to Atlantic Yards [AYR]
• Brooklyn Chinese New Year Celebrations [About Brooklyn]
• Jacques Torres in V-Day Mode [Brooklyn Enthusiast]
• On the Lookout for Wifi Terrorists at the Tea Lounge [OTBKB]
• Seed of Transportation Revolution in Red Hook [streetsblog]
• Northside Piers at 20 [INSIJS]
• The Architectural Character of Williamsburg [Block Magazine]
• Photo Tour of Borough Park [Brooklyn Ramblings]
• 15th Street/Eighth Avenue South Slope Situation Gets Internal Investigation [IMBY]
• Reinterpreting Robert Moses [Razor Apple]
• More Moses [No Land Grab]
• Of Gyms and Germs [Runs Brooklyn]
• Lola’s Out [Out and Back]

The resourceful people at the Green Roof Whole Foods Market blog have dug around and collected a bunch of links to articles about how the grocer’s big store in Madison, Wisconsin came to have a green roof. The chain’s execs flatly dismissed the idea for their proposed Gowanus market at a meeting of the Park Slope Civic Council in January. Residents, however, have launched a petition campaign to try to convince Whole Foods to build a green roof, curtail parking to discourage driving and to develop a transportation plan. It is all very interesting in that Whole Foods cultivates an image as a progressive purveyor of wholesome products and has incorporated environmentally-friendly elements into some of its stores. Yet, it has rejected such proposals for its Brooklyn store. Most of the chains stores have to go through the local zoning and planning process, whereas the Gowanus store is skirting public review because it is being built below street level. Building the stores as a big basement, in effect, allows the grocer to build “as of right” on the parcel. Clean up plans for the heavily polluted site have yet to be approved.

Related Posts:
Residents to Whole Foods: Modify It

Remember Ye Olde Gowanus Swimming Hole, the big hole full of seeping, and possibly toxic, groundwater on the Whole Foods site in Gowanus? Well, with the cold temperatures, it’s now the Gowanus Skating Pond. There are big piles of dug up dirt and rubble on the site these days, some covered by plastic tarps and some not.

Related Post:
Residents to Whole Foods, Gowanus Edition: Hold the Hole

That’s an odd animation of one of the proposals for the radical remake of the Coney Island Aquarium above. This is the design was created by WRT and Cloud9. Static images are available over at ruiz-geli.com. The winning design among the three finalists was supposed to be chosen as early as December, which hasn’t happened.

Related Posts:
Ray of Light in the Coney Island Muck: More Aquarium Renderings

The winter wonderland scene comes from 184 Kent, the Williamsburg building that was landmark and de-landmarked and is awaiting conversion to luxury condos, re-design by Arquitectonica. Water was cascading out of an upper floor window on Sunday, which is what was causing all the ice.

Related Post:
Auf Wiedersehen: 184 Kent Will Morph Into Something Different

We’ve seen plenty of ducks on the Gowanus Canal before (insert your wisecrack here), but we’ve never seen dozens of ducks in one place on the Big G. We caught the Major Duckage above on Saturday just south of the Carroll Street Bridge and they were still there on Sunday. We think ducks on the Gowanus are cool, but it does lead us to wonder if they know that Prospect Park isn’t that far away. And also, given some of the water quality issues, are these ducks, you know, fucked?

Ikea was busy on its sprawling construction site in Red Hook last week. So much so that the first outlines of the big blue-and-yellow box the Swedish multinational is building on the Brooklyn waterfront are now showing, and visible from blocks away. It appears as though it will form an interesting backdrop to the Red Hook Ball Fields.

Related Post:
Ikea’s Right Hand Digs While Left Hand Fills

Here are a few still images that we shot this weekend of the demolition crew working for Thor Equities methodically hacking off pieces of the Revere Sugar Dome in Red Hook. The top three segments are now gone, except for the two panels seen above, which will probably be dispatched first thing today. You can view all 12 photos here or a slideshow of them by clicking here. There’s also a Demolition Porn Video below, which you can scroll to see or, if you wish, click here.

Although Thor Equities demolition crew didn’t do much work on the Revere Sugar dome during the bitter cold last week, the mini-warm up on Saturday had them out with their blow torches again. We caught the tail end of their labors. Click here or just watch the embed below.

Last weekened, we noticed that some children’s rides in Coney Island on property owned by developer Joe Sitt were still there and wondered what would happen to them. Today, we know the anwswer: a Coney Island watcher who goes by the name of Captain Nemo reports on the Coney Island Message Board that some of the children’s rides on the small lot on the Bowery were moved out on Sunday afternoon. (If you’ve been to Coney, you might know this lot by the barking guard dogs that sometimes go bonkers when you walk past them.) The rides are on a big parcel owned by Thor Equities, that is also the location of the Go-Kart tracks and batting cages that are being demolished. We assume that a “Zipper” ride that is also on the property has gotten the boot too. We won’t for a moment argue that the grungy area was nice, but we still have to ask whether this big clear out is necessary long before any approvals for a new project are granted or whether they’re a tactic to create pressure for a fast re-zoning. And, does this mean the nice guard dogs are now out of a job?

CONEY ISLAND BONUS: Someone posted a statement by Lola Staar, the creative entrepreneur that was evicted from her boardwalk location by Thor Equities. She says, in part, “The developers who have recently bought most of the land in Coney Island are evicting me from my store, Lola Staar, on the boardwalk. I can’t go into detail right now about this bazaar, scandalous and deceitful chain of events….but hopefully very soon the world will know!!”

Related Posts:
Coney Island Death Watch: Lola Staar Boutique Evicted
Coney Island Death Watch: Early Demolition Porn

City officials–some of whom have previously questioned allowing highrise condos along the Coney Island boardwalk as part of Thor Equities redevelopment plan–may already be edging toward a deal with the developer. Courier-Life reports there was a meeting in Borough President Marty Markowitz‘s office last week that included developer Joe Sitt, Council Member Domenic Recchia (who represents Coney) and Coney Island Development Corp Chair Josh Sirefman. The result:

The city may be closer to allowing for some residential housing in the amusement and entertainment district of Coney Island, Courier-Life Publications has learned…Sources said all at the meeting were in total agreement that the focus of Coney Island should remain an amusement and entertainment district that is private sector driven and in which the public sector serves as a catalyst. Sitt made the argument that some housing along Stillwell Avenue south of Surf Avenue is needed to achieve a year-round presence, sources said.

Sources said Sitt argued that the residential component is needed in order to move along on redeveloping Astroland and the rest of the amusement district.

All at the sit-down agreed that the amusement area needs more than just a 100-day-a-year draw.

Sitt argued that in order to be profitable, the amusement area needs 1.4 million visitors in Coney Island to take rides. It was brought up that last year the Cyclone had about 120,000 riders and Deno’s Wonder Wheel had about 200,000 riders, according to sources. Sources suggested that if Sitt could sell the amusement area as 180 days of excitement instead of 100 days, he could turn a profit.

For the city’s part, they want some kind of formula that ensures a “nice amount” of amusement and entertainment uses that allow for residential units to be built.

The rezoning process could start as early as September and there is some thought that the city will require the “amusement and entertainment area” to be well underway before the housing goes forward. The parcels Mr. Sitt appears to be targeting for housing are some of those currently being cleared.

Coney blog Kinetic Carnival, which addressed the issue over the weekend, wrote:

Nice amount mean the city is now in open agreement with reducing the amusement zone to allow more space to build the condominiums.

Therefore it seems that the condominiums will probably either be part of what is now Astroland or perhaps Thor is intending to place the residential buildings in their other lots. Where the mini golf course sat, the batting cages and go-karts were, or where the Henderson building is. (though that lot may be too small)…Either way, this is all indicating that Thor is tightening their reign over the city and will have the rezoning they are aiming for.

It would appear that if Mr. Sitt’s public comments about being unable to do the Coney Island project without housing had their intended effect of softening up some city officials that had previously been lukewarm to the developer’s planned 40-story condo towers. It promises to be a fascinating spring, summer and fall.

A reader with an incredible eye and superb research skills tipped us off this with a comment. The building on top is 150-158 Fourth Avenue in 1936. The building on the bottom is 150-158 Fourth Avenue in 2007. We posted about the building a few days ago. The photo is from the Museum of the City of New York. Here’s the description of the building in ’36:

A few blocks from the busy intersection depicted in Billboards and Signs, Abbott found this boarded-up row of old-law tenements. The row was built circa 1880 for the Irish immigrants who worked on the railroad and road construction drives of that era. Rather than conform with the new fire and sanitation regulations, the Fulton Savings Bank, which owned the buildings, abandoned them. The corner building, however, remained occupied by a radiator products store on the ground floor, with apartments above.

The geometric pattern formed by the blocked windows attracted Abbott’s eye, as did the ground-floor profusion of posters for movies (My Man Godfrey), sports (Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Chicago Cardinals), and cabaret (Harlem Nite). Taken one week before election day, the photograph also shows a Democratic Party campaign poster for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Governor Herbert K. Lehman.

These tenements survived decades of decline and, with Fort Greene’s recent revival, have been renovated and are occupied.

Even the corner building is in use as it was in the ’36 photo, though we’re thinking the writer spoke too soon in terms of the building being “renovated” and “occupied.” We’re thinking we like the 1936 version of abandonment better than the 2007 one because of the posters.

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

• Cop’s Husband Shoots Cops in Park Slope [Gothamist]
• Cop Arraigned After Park Slope Shooting [Sun]
• Caro Urges Keeping in Mind Impact of Moses’ Projects on People [AYR]
• Image: The Beach at Brooklyn Bridge Park [Dumbo NYC]
• Not Yet Renovated in Brooklyn [Lost City]
• Wiki War Over Ratner [Don’t Worry It’s Just Reality]
• Image: Revere Sugar–02-11-07 & 09-06-07 [A Sad Day for Birds II]
• 40th District City Council Candidate Questionnaire [No Land Grab]
• Hipsters Are Cool, but Ones That the Pay Rent Are Coolest [NYT]
• City Taking Bid on BAM Tower with Dance Studio [NYDN]
• This is How They Get Rid of Coffee Cups in Red Hook [Shadows and Light]
• Oro Condos are Worth Their Weight in Gold [Set Speed]
• Best & Worst Valentines, Including Near-Death Via Ikea Sheets [OTBKB]

A year ago today, New York City got a boatload of snow, although we still wonder whether it was the record 26.9 inch snowfall measured in Central Park. This was Seventh Avenue in Park Slope on this date last year. Snow is in the forecast for Wednesday, but what a difference a year makes.

(A Note From GL: We never re-run a post, but we put this item up on Saturday morning and things go to the bottom of the pile quickly here because of the number of daily posts we do. In case you don’t read us over the weekend or if you have some reason to wander over here today for the first time, we wanted to place it in today’s rotation as well. If you’ve seen it, we apologize–it’s pretty much a once in blue moon thing. If not, then here it is).

The censors officials at the Brooklyn Public Library have decided that some art from the Footprints show can’t be shown at the library. Is it gay-themed art or something overtly sexual? Nah. Just a depiction of Atlantic Yards as a toilet bowl, a portrait of Develop Don’t Destroy’s Daniel Goldstein and that sort of thing. The Library issued a bizarre statement explaining that they’re publicly-funded when The Real Estate asked them about the censorship the choice they made to exlude six works. That’s Donald O’Finn‘s censored excluded work to the right. (Horrifying, isn’t it? Are those turds sky boxes floating in the crapper?) You can see the portrait of Daniel Goldstein that that Library won’t show here and one of Amy Greer’s photos here. (You can see DDDB’s statement here.)

Censorship, particularly crass and brainless politically-motivated censorship, is one of our hot button issues. We could even vaguely understand if they were keeping something awful and offensive from their walls, but they’re not exactly trying to spare the people of Brooklyn a depiction of the Virgin Mary surrounded by little vaginas and dung. No, this is self-interest and stupidity of the highest order. The Library, in its statement to The Real Estate, even vaguely tries to blame local gallery owners and artists for participating in the decision as part of a “selection committee.”

In deciding to ban these works, the Brooklyn Public Library is behaving like a little village library in 1980s Transylvania refusing to show a portrait of Nicolae Ceausescu wearing one of those funny noses with eyeglasses and mustache. Actually, we’re overstating the case–the backwoods Transylvanian Communist censors would have had a better excuse, either because they were true believers or because they were afraid of being dragged out into the forest by the Secret Police and shot for mocking Ceausescu. The people at the Brooklyn Public Library, on the other hand, are said to not want to offend Bruce Ratner as they are trying to suck up to him do some fundingraising development work so that he’ll bankroll their floundering BAM Cultural District project. (Perhaps as a follow-up they can block internet access to DDDB and other websites that are deeply critical of Atlantic Yards. It could be worth an extra four or five hundred G’s, minimum.)

Guess this means the “Free Speech Zone” installation the library hosted in 2004 was only an abstract idea? Well, yes, actually. The BPL has had some censorship issues with actual books in the past. For instance, this case, which made waves in September.

You can say we’re overreacting or that our knee just jerked up, but our opinion of the BPL has fallen because of this. On the positive side, we haven’t had a case of Brooklyn art censorship to mock and rant about in a while, and we haven’t been able to invoke Nicolae Ceausescu in a blog post before and truly miss writing columns about police state East Bloc countries, so in that sense the library has our gratitude.

Today’s Times pays some attention to Public Place, the big empty property in Gowanus that is the former home of a Manufactured Gas Plant and the site of serious toxic issues whose scope remains unknown. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

It is what’s under the ground that makes the site noteworthy and explains why it has sat dormant since the 1950s. The property, the location of a gas plant long since demolished, is too contaminated for habitation, and though the city has owned most of the property since 1975, the toxic waste has remained largely buried.

Slowly, however, changes are coming. In 2003, KeySpan agreed to clean up the site because its predecessor, Brooklyn Union Gas, once owned the factory there. The company has been working with the State Department of Environmental Conservation to study the land, and this month, representatives of both are scheduled to meet with city government officials to discuss cleaning up the land and development options, which include housing, commercial space or a park.

Toxics on the site go as deep as 120 feet and the mess is thought to have migrated underground to the other side of the canal. Another plume of toxicity might be slowly moving in the direction of the trendier part of Smith Street. The coming battle will be whether to build residential housing as part of the mix of development on the site.

Related Post:
Will Gowanus “Public Place” Be Sent to Detox?
Meet the Poster Child for NYC Brownfields

It’s Sunday, the day we turn to our favorite Brooklyn Craigslist Missed Connection of the week. We didn’t spot anything totally off the wall this week, so we’re going to highlight one of the more amusing ships passing in the night postings about a teacher, a guy and his dog.

you are an 8th grade teacher who likes dogs – m4w – 30

i met you at the local bar by my apartment in williamsburg, i actually have no idea what its called, but my friends were there drinking and i hopped in there for a few and you were there. we got to talking and you told me that you teach the 8th grade and that you really like my dog. we would both like to get to know you better, me primarily, the dog just wants to lick you really. i would have tried to talk to you more but i saw you were with a few friends, but now i really regret it.

Photos:

• Armory Pigeons [Atomische]
• Prospect Park [Eric_1132/flickr]
• Mary Whalen [Lex’s Folly]
• Frozen Japanese Pond at BBG [Dope on the Slope/flickr]
• Brooklyn Backyard [seriously excited!]
• Memorial Building of Brk..ly. [Runs with Scissors/flickr]
• Park Slope [Joe’s NYC]
• Newtown Creek Digester Slideshow [I’m Just Sayin/flickr]
• Burned Out in Gowanus [f.trainer/flickr]

Words:

• Rep. Clarke Pulls Support for Atlantic Yards, Cites Barclays Deal [B. Hghts Courier]
• The Redemption of Robert Moses [NYT]
• More Moses Revisionism [AYR]
• Underground Railroad House is Now Museum Facing Demo [Downtown Star via NLG]
• More Details on Weird Park Slope Cop Shooting [7online]
• Beans, Nuts and Duty [Callalillie]
• City Kow-Tow’s to Thor’s Hammer [Kinetic Carnival]
• Washington Park Wall Still Stands Guard in Gowanus [NYT]
• Joe’s SPerette Stands Firm [Lost City]
• It Don’t Take Much [Erica’s Blog]
• Gnashing of Teeth Somewhere Near Gowanus [Inversk Street Ingrate]
• Making Art in the Shadow of the Gowanus Expressway [NYT]
• Expanding the Tree Pits on Myrtle [Myrtle Minutes]

Here’s a short playlist of eight vids you can click through on the player, including a quirky Coney Island short at the end. Most have been uploaded fairly recently.

Remember Pool Aid, the group that was agitating against concerts produced at McCarren Pool by Live Nation, the Clear Channel spinoff? They were shooting a video last summer at the pool and it appears they’re launching it this month. Their email says, in part:

Save McCarren pool from corporate interests and anti-fun noise protestors by coming out to Union Pool on February 27th to see the brand spanking new video from Poolaid.

Whether McCarren Pool has been saved from anything is up in the air, as the Parks Department has been mum on programming this summer, although it held some meetings with interested parties (including some of the big concert promoters) late last year. Its planning, though, has been going on behind closed doors. There are some hints, however, that more big-ticket concerts are coming, as it was mentioned recently that money coming from concerts would be put into an open space fund for Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

In any case, the Pool Aid vid premier party is on Tuesday, Feb. 27 from 7-9PM at Union Pool.

Related Post:
More Concerts and a Rebuilding Plan for McCarren Pool?

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Williamsburg, Brooklyn